Tag: Castalia House

Volume X: initial reviews

The initial response to the return of THERE WILL BE WAR and the new Volume X is extremely encouraging. Here are a few selections from the reviews and emails I’ve been receiving:

  • This is one of the best collections of SF writing I have ever read…. What really gets me about the series is how pertinent they are to today’s geopolitical situation.
  •  I want to emphasize how much quality the CH works have. What you are doing is important…. I’ll
    definitely be following up by purchasing the other volumes and Riding
    the Red Horse    .
  • I’m delighted to see this
    masterful series is back again, now addressing the issues of the 21st
    century. Dr. Pournelle’s introductions alone are worth the price of the
    book
  • This book is an absolute blast. A collection of short stories all of
    which have a military sci-fi theme, the stories themselves trend towards
    the top in terms of writing and story telling.
  • This anthology is exactly what to
    expect from serious men thinking and writing about war in the future and
    the technology of war as applied to both future and contemporary
    warfare. 
  • This is a fine effort, very timely, certainly one worth the
    investment of time and a few dollars for any person with an interest in
    the subject of war. It leaves me hoping that Volume XI finds us in
    months instead of decades.
  •  This is my first exposure to this
    series, and I find this installment intriguing. I found the preface of
    this book quite striking…. I am very much interested in reading the earlier volumes, and also look forward to future releases.
  • Well Worth the 25-Year Wait. This is an incredible book!
  • Volume 10, the latest There Will Be War, is worthy to stand with the best of that series. Mil-sf doesn’t get better than this.

As I have previously stated, Riding the Red Horse was the best mil-SF anthology published in the last 20 years. And there is no question that There Will Be War Vol. X is even better. If you have any interest in either science fiction or current events, it is a book that you simply must read.

This exchange was rather amusing:

I want the paperback to match my 9-volume set, damn it!
 
We’re going to sell you a
whole new set. The Volume I + Volume II omnibus in case hardcover will be
published next month. We’re going to release Volume IX in ebook next, so that we
can do a Vol IX + Vol X hardcover as the second in the print series. Then we’ll fill in the
blanks….

Those thrice-damned SJWs didn’t lie for once:  You ARE evil!

What part of “Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil” gave it away?

UPDATE: Not bad for Launch Day. Congratulations to Jerry Pournelle and all of the contributors.

 Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276 Paid in Kindle Store
    #1 in Genre Fiction > Historical > Military
    #1 in Military > Strategy
    #2 in Genre Fiction > War

The return of There Will Be War

After a 25-year hiatus, Jerry Pournelle and Castalia House are pleased to announce that the famous military science fiction anthology series, There Will Be War, has been revived with There Will Be War Volume X. This has been a long time in the making, with more than a few challenges and detours along the way, but as a fan of the series from the 1980s, I am absolutely delighted to see it come alive again, although I regret the fact that there is, once more, a genuine need for it in light of current world events.

In many ways, the first nine volumes of There Will Be War have proved to be a chronicle of the Cold War; reading those earlier volumes published in the ’80s is a literal education in both the events and the psychologies of that time. We will be fortunate indeed if the challenges described in There Will Be War Volume X, in both fiction and non-fiction terms, prove to be similarly ephemeral, and disappear from history as speedily and as bloodlessly. Unfortunately, some of the contributors to the new volume would appear to be less than entirely optimistic in that regard.

There Will Be War Volume X is 401 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $4.99 on Amazon. The editor, who arguably did his finest job in selecting stories and essays since Volume II, shared some thoughts on the revival of his classic series at Chaos Manor today. Highlights:

There Will Be War Volume X will be on Amazon Monday. We will see where it goes from there. There is already a campaign to boycott the book on the grounds that the publisher is a scoundrel. This is apparently something to do with fan politics and awards. I can only say that it has been a pleasant experience to work with them. I have all the editorial decisions, of course, including story choices…. I find them very competent and helpful.

We also have some good stuff from new authors, who apparently prefer to be in this book rather than in the traditional magazines; I’m a bit flattered. Anyway it’s done. If you like war stories you will like this book

Note to New Release subscribers: if you don’t have an email in your inbox tomorrow and you’ve been having trouble receiving the emails despite being sure that you’re a subscriber, get in touch and I’ll send you the link to the bonus books. You won’t want to miss them!

And one more thing: fans of the series will no doubt be glad to hear that the hardcover omnibus of Vols I and II is very nearly done and will be published in January.

UPDATE: Mr. Pournelle notes that one of the contributors, CDR Phillip Pournelle, USN, was just awarded the Surface Navy Association Literary Award for “The Deadly Future of Littoral Sea Control”, which is one of the non-fiction pieces that appears in Volume X.

It’s all too telling

Mike Glyer announces the incipient publication of There Will Be War Vol. X on Monday. SJWs at File 770 respond accordingly:

CORA: from my West European POV, listing the military ranks of several of the contributors along with their names looks very weird. But I guess the target audience expects that sort of thing.

JERRY POURNELLE: Military ranks are shown for military contributors of non-fiction. i can think of no reason why they should not be.

SANDDORN: Aren’t you leaving out several Dr. or PhDs, you know, real titles?

As opposed to fake titles like LtCol, Col., Lt. Col., and CDR? Unbelievable. SJWs are even more despicable than you probably imagined.

But that tells you everything you need to know about SJWs. All that matters to them is sitting obediently in a classroom, regurgitating information like a good and properly programmed little girl.

The reason military titles are used for the non-fiction contributors, and are not used for the fiction contributors (some of whom happen to possess them), is that if one is writing on the subject of, say, modifying the U.S. Navy’s fleet composition, one tends to have just a little more credibility on the subject if one is, in fact, an officer in the U.S. Navy intimately familiar with the pros and cons of the current composition.

This doesn’t mean that military rank is the only credential worth taking seriously; the fact that the U.S. Marines think so highly of a certain contributor that they have a terrain feature on their training grounds named after him is arguably even more indicative of someone whose opinion you would do well to at least grant serious consideration. And if another contributor’s work is declared to be doctrine by an armed force, well, then, you simply shut up, read, and learn.

But neither a general’s stars nor a doctorate means a damn thing when it comes to writing fiction. There, the work must stand alone.

How you can help

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve added an Amazon banner ad on the right sidebar. For years, people have been telling me that I should get an affiliate program going, considering how many people have bought books there in support of me, in support of Castalia House, or as the result of a book review. I simply never got around to it, being busy with rather more hands-on priorities, but as part of my effort to better maintain focus (and some much-needed external encouragement), I finally took the time to set it up.

I’m sure you know how it works. Not only will VP get credit for direct sales of the product linked, but also for any items you go on to purchase in that session from that particular entrance into Amazon. So, start your Christmas shopping here! It doesn’t matter if you click on the banner ad or on one of the various book covers; the books under Castalia New Releases will always serve as a functional Amazon portal. Or you can click on the text link underneath them on the right: Amazon VD Page.

There have been a lot of changes in the last two years, but one thing that remains the same, and will always remain the same, is that the core blog content of multiple posts per day will remain free. Commenting will also remain as free and unmoderated as I can permit it to be without permitting the spammers, trolls, and monomaniacs to disrupt the discourse. You don’t have to support VP by utilizing the associate program in order for this to continue because it will continue as it has been regardless, but the more you do, the more we can do.

There Will Be Volume X

You may have thought that Castalia House was done for 2015 following the release of its most recent Political Philosophy bestseller
earlier this week, but nothing could be further from the truth. Not only are we hard at work getting several audiobooks out before the end of the year, but we are less than two weeks away from reviving a series that has lain dormant for 26 years since the end of the Cold War.

That’s right, for the first time in nearly three decades, Jerry Pournelle’s legendary There Will Be War anthology series of military science fiction and military fact, which served as the inspiration for Castalia’s Riding the Red Horse series, is back! Dr. Pournelle has been hard at work putting together a collection of the best of the new breed mil-SF writers with the best of the old guard, and the result is one of the most formidable collections of talent since the second in the series, the epic There Will Be War Volume II, which featured Poul Anderson’s “Time Lag”, Joel Rosenberg’s “Cincinnatus”, William F. Wu’s “In the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen”, and Eric Vinicoff’s “‘Caster”.

Only time will tell if Volume X will prove to be similarly memorable, but the lineup of contributors would be hard to beat. In addition to an introduction by Jerry Pournelle, the new volume features:

  • Gregory Benford
  • Charles W. Shao
  • William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC
  • Ben Bova
  • Allen M. Steele
  • Michael Flynn
  • Martin van Creveld
  • Matthew Joseph Harrington
  • Cheah Kai Wai
  • Col Douglas Beason, USAF, ret.
  • John DeChancie
  • CDR Phillip E. Pournelle, USN
  • Russell Newquist
  • Brian Noggle
  • David VanDyke
  • Lt Col Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret. and Michael L. McDaniel
  • Poul Anderson
  • Larry Niven

The much-ballyhooed End of History and the permanent triumph of democratic liberalism has proven to be a mirage. As Dr. Pournelle has repeatedly warned us, There Will Be War.

If you still haven’t signed up for the New Release mailing list, you’re definitely going to want to do so for this one, as the bonus book offer is even better than the one we offered earlier this week. The book will initially be out in ebook, in audiobook early next year, then in a hardcover omnibus edition with Volume IX sometime in Spring 2016.

Cuckservative at Return of Kings

Roosh introduced Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America, to the Return of Kings readership. If you’ve already read it, perhaps you might leave a comment there with your impressions for the benefit of those who haven’t otherwise heard of the book. From the Prologue:

What is now taking place in Europe is a microcosm of what is happening, on a larger scope and timescale, in the United States of America. Although the European population of 508 million is larger than the U.S. population of 320 million, the 28 member nations of the E.U. fit into about half the land taken up by the 50 united States. Moreover, unlike the heterogeneous American “nation of immigrants”, the European nations are homogeneous and distinct, with long histories, traditions, and collective memories that stretch back for centuries. That is why a much smaller number of immigrants arriving in a much shorter period of time has triggered the powerful nationalistic response that is already overturning governments and will ultimately shatter the European Union.

That is why it is important to realize that the same divisive process is well underway in the United States, albeit at a larger order of magnitude. And one of the tragic ironies of American politics is that it is the very group of people who most proudly proclaim their loyalty to the U.S. Constitution and to the traditional values of America’s founding fathers, conservatives, who have helped lead the way to America’s decline and eventual collapse. They have done so by forgetting the central purpose of the very document they revere.

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America contains an extremely important phrase that is almost always ignored by those who appeal to it, or to the men who wrote it, in defense of immigration. It states:

    We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The key phrase is this: “to ourselves and our posterity.” The blessings of liberty are not to be secured to all the nations of the world, to the tired and huddled masses, or to the wretched refuse of the teeming shores of other lands. They are to be secured to our children, and their children, and their children’s children.

To sacrifice their interests to the interests of children in other lands is to betray both past and future America. It is to permit an alien posterity, like the newly hatched cuckoo in another bird’s nest, to eliminate our own, and in doing so, defeat the purpose of the Constitution. It is, like the cuckolded husband, to raise the children of another man instead of one’s own sons and daughters.

It is, in a word, cuckservative.

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America

Fifty years ago, America was lied to and betrayed by its leaders.

With virtually no debate, Congress passed the most radical change to immigration law in American history. Since 1965, America has endured the biggest mass migration of people in human history, twice the size of the great wave of immigration into the USA between 1870 and 1930. As a result, Americans are being displaced in their own land by an ongoing invasion that dwarfs Operation Barbarossa, is two orders of magnitude larger than the Mongol hordes, and is one thousand times larger than the First Crusade.

America’s so-called conservative leaders and the conservative media have joined forces with liberal internationalists in openly celebrating this massive invasion, relying on bad theology, outdated economics, and historical myths to falsely claim that immigration is a moral imperative, an economic necessity, and in the national interest. Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America is a powerful defense of America’s right to exist as a nation by two Native American authors, as well as a damning indictment of a conservatism that has failed to conserve America’s culture and traditions.

In Cuckservative, John Red Eagle and Vox Day warn Americans that if they do not defend their culture, their posterity, and their nation, they will eventually find themselves on their own Trail of Tears.

I don’t think it would be going too far to say that this is an important book. One reviewer has even called it “The most important book Americans can read going into 2016.” In many ways, it is a book that has been years in in the making, which was one reason Red Eagle and I were able to write it so quickly. The basic premise, which is that a) nations are people, and, b) people can be rapidly replaced by other people in any given geographic location is both offensively controversial and historically undeniable. In this way, it is thematically connected to SJWAL, as both SJWs and cuckservatives are intrinsically at war with observable reality.

From the reviews:

  • “This book is hard to accept, but it is worth your time.”
  • “This book provides an amazingly thorough and honest explanation about the catastrophic effects of mass immigration throughout history.”
  • “A look at how America is being moved towards
    becoming another nation that is American in name only, with the help of
    many who pretend to be “conserving” our nation and its culture of unity.”
  • “At times it is an uncomfortable read. It looks at things we don’t talk about as a society.”
  • “The sum of the book is much bigger
    than all of the parts combined and is an absolute need-to-read for
    anyone who isn’t interested in seeing the downfall of Western
    Civilization.”  

More than anything, the book is about the puncturing of myths, including many myths that I myself once not only believed, but held inviolate. For many readers here, this will be a distinctly uncomfortable read, in some cases, perhaps even an infuriating one. And for those who are inclined to take some of the aspects of the book too personally, I would remind you that while the macro is not the micro and the exceptions are not the rules, it is the averages, the rules, and the macro that determine the fate of nations.

The emails have gone out to the New Release subscribers, and I would like to thank Jonathan Moeller and Fenris Wulf, both of whom are supporting this launch with their books. I hope you will enjoy their books as well; they are certainly more purely entertaining than Cuckservative.

As far as the launch goals, two of the four goals have already been achieved. Thanks to those who hunted it down on Amazon prior to this announcement, the book is already #1 in both the Political Philosophy and Nationalism categories. It still remains to be seen whether it can crack Amazon’s top 100 on Day One.

Monday

Somehow, between Red Eagle, Mike Cernovich, Red Meat, Automatthew, myself, Castalia House’s star proofreader, and the self-appointed religious conscience of the blog, we have managed to complete Cuckservative in time to ensure its Amazon release on Monday. I also just received the second of the two bonus books; it is a complete riot, so if you haven’t signed up for the New Release mailing list, please note that this is your last chance to do so before the Cuckservative mailing goes out on Monday morning. You can sign up on the left sidebar. <——- Look over there.

As one of the authors, my opinion is too close to have any perspective at all, for better or for worse, but two of the early reviewers have used some form of the phrase “hits it out of the park”. Red Eagle himself said after going over the completed manuscript, “this is a powerful book”.

It is going to be considerably more controversial than SJWAL was. I would be absolutely astonished if it was not vilified as being heartless and unapologetically racist, and I will be astounded if the words “vicious”, “hateful”, and “Nazi” do not appear in almost every critical review. It should have a real shot at the record for the most one-star reviews on Amazon. I wonder what the record is?

In the book’s defense, all I can say is that it is remorselessly true. We didn’t bother with footnotes or a lot of citations because we know how that game is played; this is not a dialectical book, it is weaponized rhetoric backed by solid dialectic. And, as we know, the best rhetoric always stands on a foundation of truth.

There will be many things about the book that will make you uncomfortable, things you will not like. Some of you will even be offended. But we cannot, and we will not, apologize for writing about the truth as best we see it. Reality is what it is. The facts are what they are. The future will be what it will be. I don’t like many aspects of what appears to be the most likely scenario any better than any other sane individual, but then, no one ever asked me to arrange matters.

A few people have questioned whether Red Eagle exists or if I invented him in order to deflect some of the inevitable criticism. All I can say is that a) he wrote more of it than I did, b) he’s a more engaging writer than I am, and, c) if you genuinely believe I wrote both SJWAL and Cuckservative by myself since June, you’re insane. Also, there will be no deflecting any criticism. The open borders crowd is going to view Cuckservative as something between the hateful bastard of The Bell Curve and Mein Kampf, and a set of blueprints for making a working nuclear bomb out of Legos printed on the back of a Cheerios box.

Translation: I don’t think SJWAL‘s reign as “the most dangerous book in America” is going to last beyond Monday. The goal is to hit 1k on Monday.

10 reasons to GROW OR DIE!

All right, that was a little bit much. It’s actually 10 reasons to garden at this particular point in the space-time continuum.

Someone commented on one of my videos the other day that she was “a city girl” who didn’t know what she was doing in the garden… and that she was probably just going to give up.

I urged her to keep going. Now is a terrible time to quit gardening!

With the way the world is going, this is the time to garden like you’ve never gardened before. Here are just a few reasons.

1. GMOs
Do you really want to be part of a big science experiment, eating gene-spliced foods without knowing if they’re safe or not? Me either! Grow your own food with heirloom seeds and step away from the lab.

2. Economics
The economy is rotten and is likely to get worse. Runaway immigration, shaky banks, rising food costs, global unrest… all these have an impact on wages, investments and savings. Fortunately, a garden can save you some serious money.

3. Eating Local
Why count on food coming in from 1,000 miles away? Eating locally is a big deal right now – and you can’t get any more local than your own yard. Put in a garden and cut out the shipping!

Read the rest of David the Good’s article there.

SJWs always minimize

SN wondered when SJWs will stop trying to dismiss Castalia House:

How many No. 1s do you think Castalia will have to publish before the rabbits stop referring to it as “an obscure Finnish publisher”?

Well, we know the answer is “fiver”, since we’ve already published more than five #1 category bestsellers and rabbits can’t count past that. I’d have to look it up, but I believe we’re approaching ten by now. We happen to have three at the moment, and only narrowly missed having four at a time, as 4GW Handbook was #1 in Military Strategy last week, but has fallen to #10 now.

 In case you’re wondering, as I did, how Grow or Die and Compost Everything could both be #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, the answer is that whereas Grow or Die is #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, Compost Everything is #3 in that category, but #1 in the Gardening & Horticulture > Gardening Techniques category. So apparently it gets its own little orange ribbon too. Which is nice.

Anyhow, it really doesn’t matter what the rabbits say, think, or do. The fact is that we’ve barely gotten started. We just put out our first press release last week, our new Editor-at-large is just gearing up to get rolling, we will have a new announcement to make in the near future concerning audiobooks, and the retail channel that is the primary reason Castalia even exists is very close to launch at last.

We haven’t made any noise in the science fiction and fantasy categories yet, but we will. We fully expect to become the leading publisher there in time, but we’re not in any particular hurry to get there. Our focus is excellence, and everything we do is with the aim to improve upon what we’ve done before. We have great authors, authors such as John C. Wright, Martin van Creveld, William S. Lind, and Jerry Pournelle, and we have some younger authors that we are in the process of developing, but our depth is still somewhat thinner than we would like. But we will not sign up new authors simply for the sake of putting out more books. Our goal is for me to represent the low bar for Castalia House.

We know we have the best support any small publisher could hope for, and we are intent on proving worth of your trust. We aren’t going to publish any stinkers because we have to get X number of books out per quarter, and while we may make the occasional esoteric call from time to time, we have the luxury of simply refusing to release substandard works.