Tag: Castalia House

THE NINE LAWS by Ivan Throne

Castalia House is proud to announce its first mindset book, THE NINE LAWS, by Ivan Throne. Ivan, also known as Dark Triad Man on Gab and Twitter, is an impressive man who has overcome many difficulties and life-challenges through accepting the callous disregard of the world and ruthlessly imposing his own will upon it.

Do you dare to discover what you’re truly capable of? 


THE NINE LAWS is your living manual of power, distilled for you by the man who was forced to build it to survive. The author forged this system over decades of cruel experience. It began with profound trauma in early childhood, shaped itself during long training in the eastern warrior arts, and was polished amidst financial industry competition and family crisis. Master this content, and deliver yourself to a place that few men ever reach: joyous mastery of your own fate. 


This book is not for the uncertain or the timid. THE NINE LAWS is designed for men who are acutely aware that one lifetime is all they have to pursue and achieve their sacred purpose. Far more than a mere self-help book, or a simple collection of advice and ideas, THE NINE LAWS is a gravely serious operating system for success in a dark world.


Read it. Train it. Live it. Survive the dark world with momentous ferocity, and triumph.


THE NINE LAWS is 371 pages, DRM-Free, and retails for $9.99 on Amazon.


PREFACE: THE DYING CHILD

The man sat across the sterile room and watched his child dying.


He had stood calmly under the hostile machine guns of the Soviets within the charred and shattered rubble of Berlin in service to his Crown and country. He had then crossed the world to America where he built and lived, loved and raised his family.


Now this former reporter could do nothing but watch, and wait, and take notes in a sad and tired hand on a yellow legal pad, recording details with the practiced habit of a journalist as fever migraines prodded his youngest son into crying, wakeful pain. The boy would writhe, then subside into exhausted silence on the bed once more.


Bruises covered him where intravenous lines had been run for weeks into his hands and arms, his feet and ankles. With each passing day there were fewer places to insert fresh ones, fewer issuances of hope from doctors and nurses who were reduced to mere attendants of pain and no longer able to act as healers.


Days and nights were a blur, for sleep and waking were run not by play and rest, by meals and repose, but by the fits and starts of fever and the incomprehension of the innocent who woke in the dark hours before dawn and cried and cried with pain at the soft light that glowed from the nurse’s station.


As the weeks went by the man documented the progression of meningitis that writhed in the skull of his child, burning the boy’s mind away and murdering his senses.


“His hearing is going,” the man wrote.


“Even in the pain, he can tell something is happening to him, and complains that he cannot hear.”


The love and helplessness inscribed into those pages shone from the written words.


The documentation stopped near the end, when against all odds the fevers broke and the doctor took the man aside and said to him, “It’s happened. We saved him.”


The grave illness had lost. The pain was gone, and the gift of calm and sleep had replaced the tossing and turning of agony and pressure within the golden head of the young child.


Soon enough the boy went home to his family, and entered into a world where nothing made sense any longer. The world had been turned upside down, and everything had been severed.


He was deaf. Birds, laughter, music, human connection through voices had all been stolen by the disease and the fevers and the drugs pumped into him with desperate hope and quantity.


The boy could no longer walk, for the nerves that connected his inner ears to his brain had been burned away. There was no longer an up or down to perceive, and even a simple attempt to stand on his own made the world tumble and turn and the floor would leap up and slam into him without sympathy.


The voice of his mother, which used to sing to him and lull him to sleep as one of the sweetest sounds of the universe, was now silent. There was only the great effort of slowly mouthing words, beginning the long and exhausting process of teaching the boy to lip read as if his life depended on it… and it did.


The living feeling of connection with friends and family was severed forever. No longer could the boy simply listen and be an integral and accepted partner of humor and discussion, of sharing and whispers. He was now a permanent outsider, cut off and reduced to an observer rather than an equal participant.


Gone were the dreams of a little boy to be an astronaut, a firefighter, a policeman, a soldier. Never again would a future be possible that relied upon the ability to hear, to listen, and act.


And so the boy was dependent, and hurting, and terrified, and did not understand. And finally the day came when the family sat down to dinner, and he laid on the floor and cried for help, because he could not walk. And not one person came, and he laid there alone in miserable despondency.


Until he started to scream in rage.


Then his older sister came down, and stood over him. And when she spoke, she made certain he could read her lips and understand.


“Get up and walk,” she said. “Quit wailing.” Her face was harsh and neutral. “The world isn’t going to help you.”


And she turned away, and went back up the short flight of stairs to the kitchen and the family.


The boy laid there for a moment, stunned, and rebelliously enraged at reality.


Then something contracted inside him, and he sat up. He looked at the stairs, then silently wiped his face.


He crawled to those stairs and dragged himself upwards, furious, finally reaching the chair next to his father. Then he gasped and clambered until he had pulled himself onto it. Not one person at the table glanced at him or offered assistance. When he was seated, his father looked over and calmly offered him a serving of dinner. But in that Englishman’s eyes was the glint of the most powerful approbation that an officer of the Royal Horse Guards can give another man.


It was respect, and the boy never forgot that look.


I was four years old.

An interview with Peter Grant

Now that BRINGS THE LIGHTNING is out in all four formats, hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and is available on Kindle Unlimited as well, it seems a propitious time to link to this excellent interview of author Peter Grant by Scott Cole of Castalia House. The level of knowledge that Grant has about the weapons of the period, and the amount of research he puts into his books, are truly astounding. – VD

Scott Cole: How did you decide to base your first Western novel on Walt’s demobilization, journey home, and quest to find a new life in a changed world?

Peter Grant: A lot of this was personal experience. I’ve been in military service, and experienced demobilization, a journey home, and having to start all over again. I knew that hundreds of thousands have had to do the same thing after almost every war in history. I researched the stories of both Union and Confederate veterans, and found they shared similar experiences. Also, the corruption, attacks on returning Confederates by both official and ‘unofficial’ enemies such as bushwhackers, etc. are all documented in books and narratives of the period. It was a logical step to make this the beginning of my novel.

Q. Is Walt’s character based on historical figures or is he your Western alter-ego?

Walt is entirely based on historical figures. Some were Southern veterans who became first guerrillas, then outlaws, such as the James gang. Others are based on veterans from both the North and the South who wrote about their experiences of coming home after the war, then heading west to make a fresh start. I have no alter ego in the book at all.

Q. You mentioned that you fired many of the weapons mentioned in the book. Were these updated versions of the original models or part of private collections that survived the years?

These were original weapons that had survived the wars in Southern Africa. I’ve fired original versions of Colt’s 1861 Army and 1873 revolvers, Winchester Model 1873 and 1886 rifles, and the Winchester Model 1887 lever-action shotgun. All were in private collections.

Q. Walt does a good job in explaining the advantages and disadvantages of various firearms in the book. Then again, he had a lot of them. If you had to choose only one pistol and one long rifle to equip yourself with in that time what would you choose and why? Would you make different choices if you were equipping yourself for the African bush?

Good question. If I were in Walt’s shoes, I’d have gone with the choices he made, for the same reasons: the Remington revolver and the Henry rifle. Both were suitable for the plains. I’d have liked a heavier rifle as well, to handle buffalo on the plains and bear, etc. in the mountains, but if I was limited to one rifle, the Henry would be it, because it would be so much more useful in combat to have its rapid rate of fire and large magazine capacity.

If I were to pick one of each for Africa, during the period when it was still wild and filled with very dangerous animals, the revolver would be the same, but the rifle would unquestionably have to be a much more powerful weapon. Don’t forget, African dangerous game is much larger and more powerful than those in North America. I’d pick a European big-caliber rifle, probably (in the days of blackpowder propellant) an eight-gauge or even a four-gauge muzzle-loading weapon. That would have obvious limitations in its speed of reloading, etc., but it would have the power to take down the largest African animals, unlike any American rifle of the period. If dangerous animals were less of a factor, I might consider a repeating rifle; but all of the cartridges during the period in which this novel is set (mid to late 1860’s) weren’t very efficient or powerful. If we were in the 1870’s, I’d take the Winchester 1876 rifle with its .45-75 cartridge, or, a bit later, the Winchester 1886 in .45-70. By the 1890’s I’d take a European bolt-action repeater with a smokeless round; the British Lee-Metford, the German Mauser, etc.

Q. Why were the cartridges so weak and inefficient in the mid to late 1860’s? Cost savings by manufacturers or just the technology at the time?

The cartridges were weak for two reasons.

The technology to produce metal cartridges was brand-new and in its infancy. Extruded brass was unknown; cartridges had to be formed from a sheet of the metal, with consequent weaknesses at the seams. This meant that if a powerful propellant load was used, it risked rupturing the case; so all early cartridges were relatively lightly loaded. For example, the Henry rifle (and its immediate successor, the Winchester Model of 1866) used a powder charge of only 25 to 28 grains, less than many handguns of the day. The Winchester 1873 used 40 grains – an improvement, but not greatly. It took until the 1870’s for more powerful cartridges such as the .50-70 and the later, more efficient .45-70 (and their larger, longer cousins) to be developed.

During the 1860’s, the centerfire primer had not yet been invented; all early cartridges were rimfire, like modern .22LR, or pinfire. This meant that ignition was less reliable. It also meant that the bases of the cartridges were less strong, as their rims had to be hollow to accommodate the priming compound and/or the pin. It took until the 1870’s for central primers to be developed (most notably the Berdan and Boxer priming systems). That, in turn, allowed for solid rims that were stronger.

Brings the Lightning audiobook

Castalia House is very happy to be able to announce that BRINGS THE LIGHTNING, a Western by Peter Grant, is now available in audiobook. Narrated by Bob Allen, the audiobook is 7 hours and 56 minutes long.

When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can’t go home? He can go out west, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought – only how well you can do it. 


Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed west with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can’t forget.


When you can’t go home again – go west!

Safe as houses

The cartoon above is a reasonable summary of the current state of the West. After finishing The Clash of Civilizations, it is eminently clear to me that most people, from proposition-nation white conservatives to rainbow-haired, diversity-drunk, quad-gendered, genetically-vibrant multiculturalists, are as completely and absolutely clueless about what the future holds with regards to the ongoing remaking of the world order as the average rotisserie chicken. That’s not surprising. To me, the remarkable thing is how early, and how clearly, Huntington saw the civilizational trends developing. This just goes to show how useful a sound conceptual model is, and how pointless it is to stubbornly insist on retaining models that events or logic have proven to be observably false.

Which leads me to address a concern that was expressed by several people concerning the way in which certain specific individuals happen to disagree with me, such as John C. Wright, whose recent post entitled Hooey and Phooey takes serious exception to what could be described in general terms as my Alt-West thesis. From the comments:

John C. Wright
“As for Vox, I admire his fight against the enemies of civilization, he’s actually doing something about it. He can be wrong about an issue and right about the need to fight for something. An unintegrated horde of millions of people with a hostile ideology from one of the most violent places on earth should be opposed on the basis of common sense (no race-science needed).”

I agree.

This is a holy war, not a race war. The religion of secular leftism (and it is a religion in all but name) has made an alliance with the horrid and enduring heresy of the False Prophet, Mohammedanism, against the religion of the West, Christianity: those two are teamed up, and the Left are trying to use demographics to destroy us. He is right that it is an invasion: he is right that men who hate us cannot assimilate and certainly must be expelled from the nation.

Vox is dead wrong on the ultimate reasons and the ultimate cure for it. The ultimate reasons are spiritual, not genetic. The ultimate cure is revival of Christianity, a re-dedication to the founding principles of this nation, not the creation of a White Lives Matter movement coupled with an abolition of those principles.

Tom Simon
Vox is dead wrong on the ultimate reasons and the ultimate cure for it.

Sir, I am very glad that you acknowledge this. I have sometimes been fearful lest your business dealings with Mr. Beale (conducted to mutual profit) might incline you to overlook his faults in politics and dialectic.

Camilla Cameo
At the same time, I for one hope that this disagreement does not cause any rift between! (Though I suggested debate earlier, it was with the acknowledgement that the possibility of ill feeling would be a good reason not to.)

Let me be perfectly clear. I don’t expect anyone to agree with me on anything, let alone everything. I suspect – let me correct that, I KNOW – that every single Castalia House author disagrees with me with at least some aspect of my Alt-West thesis even if they tend to generally support its objectives. Not even the co-author of Cuckservative wholly agrees with me; he is not a Christian, for one thing. I think William S. Lind would probably come the closest of them all and he does not even use computers.

So, I have to assume that my idea of direct techno-democracy is right out with him.

Now, I do happen to think the estimable Mr. Wright is so vastly and utterly and risibly wrong on this particular subject that one day he will find it it hard to imagine that he ever genuinely believed what he now believes quite sincerely.

But so what? I have been every bit as wrong about other concepts myself in the past, such as free trade, just to give one example.

There is neither a rift nor any reason for one. I don’t edit and publish Mr. Wright’s books because I care what he thinks about the Alt-Right or Western civilization, but because he is one of the three best SF/F writers writing today. His novels are entertaining, important, and uplifting. I wouldn’t hesitate to publish China Mieville either even though Mr. Mieville’s ideas concerning political economy are considerably more frothing-at-the-mouth mad than Mr. Wright’s could ever be even if Mr. Wright were bitten by a rabid, syphilitic mongoose.

Nor do I admire Mr. Wright because I agree with him about one particular concept or another, but because he is a great writer and a good man. He is, without question, better than me on both counts. Although I think he is wrong with regards to American posterity, Aristotelian rhetoric, human intelligence, genetic science, and the art of war, just to name a few things concerning which we disagree, I enjoy reading his thoughts on those and other topics, and I do not mind his criticism in the least, as it is considerably more honest and substantive than most I receive. I consider it to be both an honor and a privilege to work with him.

The truth is immutable. But none of us have the capacity to see it clearly and fully. Perhaps time will help clarify who is correct and who is not, or perhaps not. In the meantime, all we can do is observe and reflect as honestly as we can.

Besides, if current events are any guide, I expect Mr. Wright and nearly everyone else to begin to come around to my way of thinking soon enough once the ongoing clash of civilizations strikes close enough to home to make an impression on them. Back in 2002, people were a lot more dubious about my opinion concerning a coming financial crisis than they are about anything I say these days. Frankly, I see “dead wrong” as a big step up from “seriously, what color is the sky in your world?”

FEAST OF THE ELFS by John C. Wright

Castalia House is extremely pleased to announce that the second book in A Tale of Moth and Cobweb, The Green Knight’s Squire Book Two, FEAST OF THE ELFS by John C. Wright, is now available. This is classic fantasy the way you remember it from your youth, true high fantasy in the mode of The Dark is Rising, The Chronicles of Prydain, and The Once and Future King.


Gilberec Parzival Moth is a strange and lonely boy who has grown up without a father, raised by a single mother who moves from town to town in fear of something she will not name. His only friends are animals, with whom he has always been able to speak. And although he has begun to learn about his true heritage of Twilight, he also discovers that the modern world is not always friendly towards monster-slaying knights errant, particularly when the police encounter them covered in blood that is not their own.


But the long arm of the Twilight world reaches even into the jail cells of Asheville, North Carolina. Gilberec soon finds himself bound to the service of an ancient writ and a higher law, and traveling to eldritch places filled with enchanted creatures, immortal lords and ladies, and dangerous temptations. FEAST OF THE ELFS is the second book of The Green Knight’s Squire, the first volume of A Tale of Moth and Cobweb, an astonishing new series about the magical worlds of Day, Night, and Twilight by John C. Wright.



John C. Wright is one of the living grandmasters of science fiction and the author of THE GOLDEN AGE, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, and IRON CHAMBER OF MEMORY, to name just three of his exceptional books. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award, for the Hugo Award, and his novel SOMEWHITHER was awarded the inaugural Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel at Dragon Con 2016.

The Green Knight’s Squire Book Two, FEAST OF THE ELFS is 175 pages, DRM-free, and $4.99. If you enjoyed Mr. Wright’s SWAN KNIGHT’S SON, then you will definitely enjoy the next book in A Tale of Moth and Cobweb. It is, in the opinion of more than a few readers, some of his best work to date.

From the reviews of the first two Moth & Cobweb books:

  • A sequel that’s better than its predecessor. It’s a great story written by a master of the English language.
  • This latest offering from John C. Wright is one of his most charming. A modern coming of age story that stands head and shoulders above the genre by virtue of its moral clarity.
  • John C. Wright, the celebrated author of Awake in the Night Land, Somewhither, and Iron Chamber of Memory, outdoes his already formidable body of fantastical works with his newest fantasy novel, Swan Knight’s Son.
  • This is the kind of tale the Men of the West might have regaled their sons with, and if the dark tide is turned, may yet again.
  • I wish I could give this book six stars. The writing was exceptional. You could feel the chivalry ringing in every word. Lifts the soul and makes you yearn to reflect what is righteous and true
  • The book is even faster-paced than the original, and packed with more adventures…. Wright has already scored a classic in the genre here.

ALIEN GAME by Rod Walker

I am very pleased to be able to announce that Rod Walker has published his second science fiction novel with Castalia House. If you liked MUTINY IN SPACE, there is very little chance you will not also enjoy ALIEN GAME.

With nothing to do but work or lose himself in the dubious digital pleasures of the Netrix, Sam Hammond finds himself bored beyond belief on the oppressive planet of New Princeton. And when he gets himself in trouble for a stupid act of vandalism, he has the choice of spending a year in prison or working off his time as an indentured servant for anyone who buys his contract. 

He might have chosen prison if he’d known that he’d find himself working security for a safari colony on a jungle world where the herbivores are the size of a stadium, the apex predators are vicious lizards that can turn themselves almost invisible, and the skies are filled with huge, acid-breathing fliers. But when New Princeton’s Minister of Ecology arrives for a visit with a spaceship full of wealthy and powerful guests, Sam discovers that it is Man who is the most dangerous animal on the planet. 

Rod Walker is the New New Heinlein, and ALIEN GAME marks another step in the return of science fiction to its classical form and historical heights. Written in the style and tradition of Robert Heinlein’s 12 classic juvenile novels published by Scribner, ALIEN GAME is an exciting tale of space, technology, courage, independence, and the indomitable spirit of Man.

ALIEN GAME is Rod Walker’s second book in his Old School SF series. It is not a sequel to MUTINY IN SPACE, but is set in the same universe of the Thousand Worlds. While the books are intentionally written to be reminiscent of the twelve so-called juveniles of Robert Heinlein, they are not slavish imitations or color-by-numbers copies; it would probably be more accurate to describe them as being two parts Heinlein, one part Correia.

Let’s just say Mr. Walker and I are considerably more comfortable with guns, and rocket launchers, and orbital artillery, than Alice Dalgliesh, Heinlein’s editor at Scribner, ever was. Written by Rod Walker and edited by three-time Hugo-nominated editor Vox Day, ALIEN GAME is 160 pages, DRM-free, and $4.99. Available only on Amazon.

Three book reviews

Not to excessively shill my own books here, but I’ve been meaning to post two of these rather substantial reviews for a few days, so when a third happened to appear, I thought I’d better just post them all at the same time. First, a review of Cuckservative, which is characterized as “something of a primer on the main positions of the Alt-Right”:

The Alt-Right is a recent  movement in western politics. The rise of the Social Justice Phenomenon and their takeover of the mainstream left, and the inability or refusal of the current political elite to address let alone being to deal with a febrile global situation has led to a resurgence of ideas that had for decades been lingering at the fringes.

Lingering not because they were defeated, empirically wrong or quite quite mad, but because they challenge a set of assumptions without which the current political consensus cannot operate.

The media’s monopoly on the dissemination of information and their complicity in maintaining a crumbling narrative has been smashed by the cunning and sophisticated use of the internet by alt-right writers. These writers are actually performing the function of the fourth estate and the present American election may be the first where a candidate’s campaign has been undermined by “citizen journalists”. It is a movement whose time has come, and which has the tools to change, possibly even save, a beleaguered Western culture.

This book was recommended to me by one of the authors after I asked for clarification of his position on Free Trade, and can be seen perhaps as something of a primer on the main positions of the Alt-Right.

The book is not a dense academic thesis and is aimed at the general reader, with a conversational tone throughout. Technical elements are clearly presented yet not simplified into error. The philosophical and historical underpinnings of some of the arguments are also clearly, compellingly and accurately presented.

An agnostic, Jose Camoes Silva’, has some thoughts concerning The Irrational Atheist, which are generally favorable, although I must correct him on one point. I do not believe, and have never argued, that “Goodness of religion ⇒ Existence of God [of that religion]”. I believe reading my book with Dominic Santarelli, On the Existence of Gods, would suffice to disabuse him of that notion. But that is a minor point, made only in the interest of clarification.

 Sam “reincarnation might be possible” Harris

I remember Sam Harris saying something along the lines of that quoted phrase at a conference. He really seems to believe a lot of mysticism and superstition. But his audiences forgive him those small trespasses, as long as he continues to attack the religious, under the guise of attacking religion.

I did read one of Harris’s books; it made me want to relapse into the Catholic faith of my upbringing. (I didn’t.) That’s how biased, poorly thought-out, poorly researched, supercilious, and absurd it was. I thought that was the worst possible case for atheism one could make.

Then I watched Harris in a conference and realized that a worse case was possible. If I had any doubts regarding my agnosticism, I would have become a young-Earth creationist speaking in tongues and handling snakes right then and there.

If anything, VD’s takedown of Harris is too kind.

Paraphrasing an earlier essayist, Harris’s books aren’t to be tossed aside lightly; they should be thrown with great force.

And finally, it was a distinct pleasure to learn that Robert Wenzel of the San Francisco Review of Books not only reviewed SJWs Always Lie, but thought rather highly of it.

The book is brilliant. Day understands the tactics used by SJWs and he understands the psyche of SJWs. What’s more, he has done heavy battle with SJWs in the science fiction arena and as an original player in #gamergate.

Day is an Alt Right leader and I don’t agree with all his views and I don’t agree with all the tactics he suggests in his book. I consider the battle against central planners, and other authoritarians, to ultimately be a long game, intellectual battle, where SJWs are mere grains of dirt in the eye.

My guess is that Day sees short-term skirmishes with SJWs as important in the long battle. I don’t. However, I do see Day’s tactics as extremely important survival techniques, so that SJW attacks don’t knock you of the box when developing your long game.

And, heaven help you, if you are in the corporate world minding your own business when SJWs launch and attack on you/

Thus, I consider this book  must reading for anyone in the corporate world so that corporate-types know in advance how to react and what to do if they are the target of an SJW attack.

It is also necessary reading for anyone in the intellectual battle, academics, bloggers, etc. SJWs don’t play fair and they could do serious harm to your career if you respond incorrectly.

Finally. it is a valuable book for anyone who finds himself in debate with SJWs. Day brilliantly explains why logical debate doesn’t work with SJWs and he shows how to win in debate against them.

Anyhow, there is a little light reading available for those of you who are only familiar with my work here on the blog and are interested in diving a little deeper down the rabbit hole.

Amazon is hard

alexvdl of File 770 is having a hard time figuring out how Castalia House publishes Nick Cole’s excellent Dragon Award-winning novel Ctrl-Alt-Revolt!.

Also of note is that, Ctrl-Alt-Revolt is the prequel to a book published by Harper Voyager. Although it’s listed as “Castalia House” on the ballot, the book was written for Harper, and then they declined it, and the author then complained of censorship and self-published it. If it’s published by CH then someone should mention that to Amazon, as it certainly doesn’t have that imprimatur there.

Really? It doesn’t? Meanwhile, the Injustice Gamer chronicles the feelbadz of the SF-SJWs.

As we announced on the day the Dragon Award finalists were made public, we publish the hardcover and paperback editions of Mr. Cole’s excellent, award-winning novel. Because Mr. Cole was already self-publishing the Kindle and Audiobook editions, we saw no need to do so ourselves. We will be publishing the sequel, which will be called Ctrl-Alt-Replay!, in all four editions next year, as well as other books by Mr. Cole, who is rapidly becoming a favorite among the readers of Castalia House.

As for the idea that Castalia is a vanity press, I will merely note that it now publishes 58 books in as many as four editions each. It has not yet published a single book by me in 2016. The next five NEW releases it will publish in September and October are:


Alien Game by Rod Walker
Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright
Nine Laws of Power by Ivan Throne
Six Expressions of Death by Mojo Mori
An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney

We will also soon be publishing the following five books in hardcover and paperback editions:

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright
The End of the World as We Knew It by Nick Cole
Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson
Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich
The Eden Plague by David VanDyke

Various audiobooks are also forthcoming, as well as print editions of SJWAL in Spanish and Portuguese.

Congratulations, Dragon Award winners!

I’m very pleased to report that Somewhither, by John C. Wright, has been awarded the inaugural Best Science Fiction Novel at Dragoncon.

And I am equally happy to be able to say that Ctrl-Alt-Revolt! by Nick Cole, has been awarded Best Apocalyptic Novel.

Congratulations are also due to Larry Correia, whose Son of the Black Sword was a well-merited Best Fantasy Novel winner, and to Castalia author-to-be Brien Niemeier, who won Best Horror Novel  for Souldancer.

The 2016 Dragon Award winners:

Best Science Fiction Novel
Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm, John C. Wright (Castalia House)

Best Fantasy Novel
Son of the Black Sword, Larry Correia (Baen)

Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel
The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (Harper)

Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel
Hell’s Foundations Quiver, David Weber (Tor)

Best Alternate History Novel
League of Dragons, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Best Apocalyptic Novel
Ctrl Alt Revolt!, Nick Cole (Castalia House)

Best Horror Novel
Souldancer, Brian Niemeier (Self-published)

Best Comic Book
Ms. Marvel

Best Graphic Novel
The Sandman: Overture, Neil Gaiman & J.H. Williams III (Vertigo)

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series
Game of Thrones

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie
The Martian

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC / Console Game
Fallout 4 by Bethesda Softworks

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game
Fallout Shelter by Bethesda Softworks

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game
Pandemic: Legacy by ZMan Games

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game
Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game (7th Edition) by Chaosium Inc.

Mailvox: so much worse

Castalia House exists because it is needed. Badly needed, it appears. A reader writes:

So I just read two stories from the latest issue of Analog magazine. I must tell you about them.

Story #1 is about a multi-racial research female scientist working for a white male research director. Her role model is a deceased multi-racial scientist who died in an experiment, famous, but whose death led to the current research director getting his job. She recreates the experiment and learns that the current research director rigged it to kill the heroic female multi-racial scientist so he could take her job.

Story #2 is about the CEO of a company who is married to his Chief Science Officer, who is a beautiful dark-skinned girl who beat up his bully in high school. He has IQ 140 but she has IQ 170. They develop brain-and-body augmentation technology and she becomes the first transhuman, better at everything than him in every way but she still loves him. But Christian extremists are outraged and terrorism ensues and they kill her, even though she is wonderful in all ways and a believer in non-violence. He has his own brain implanted in her cyborg body so they won’t know they won, and then goes on a killing spree against the Christian leaders who urged on the violence. Yay for transhuman transgender women ending Christian violence.

All I can say is, it’s so much worse than I thought.

This is exactly why Castalia exists. Consider these excerpts from the five most recent reviews of our latest novel, SWAN KNIGHT’S SON:

  • An excellent medieval fairy tale in the modern age.
  • Outstanding. I’m truly amazed.
  • Coming of age story written by of one of the greatest wordsmiths of our times. It is a story of a young man who doesn’t fit into society because he is too morally upright for the decadence that infests modern society.
  • A masterpiece
  • A true knight battling the forces of evil, while discovering who he is on multiple levels

 Remember culture > politics. What we are fighting here is a cultural war for the soul of the West.