Tag: Castalia House

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

Today we are officially announcing the publication of ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS, a curriculum created by Dr. Sarah Salviander, a research scientist whose areas of particular interest are quasars and supermassive black holes. She is a research scientist at the University of Texas, is one of the authors of “Evolution of the Black Hole Mass – Galaxy Bulge Relationship for Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7” and “Narrow Emission Lines as Surrogates for σ * in Low- to Moderate-z QSOs” in addition to many other scientific papers, and teaches classes as a visiting professor of physics at Southwestern University. Dr. Salviander describes the new curriculum at Castalia House:

“Look around the web for a high-quality, modern-science astronomy homeschool course and you won’t find much. There are a handful of scripture-based astronomy courses that seem to cover little more than the seasons and motions of the night sky, and one very expensive software-based curriculum. I realized there was a need for a comprehensive, modern, and affordable astronomy homeschool curriculum, and set out to develop one based on my years of teaching astronomy at the university level. A couple of years ago, I mentioned this in an offhand way to Vox Day; it turns out Vox had been contemplating offering a series of affordable, electronically-available homeschool curricula, and so we began to discuss the possibility of making astrophysics the first of many such courses.”

 So we are pleased to announce ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS, the first offering in the Castalia Homeschool line. The curriculum is available only through the Castalia House store and costs less than $60.00. No further expenditures are necessary for the course as the textbook is available online, although we recently received permission to publish the primary textbook and will soon offer it accordingly at an affordable price. Our objective is to keep the price of all curricula under $100.

The curriculum is designed for students aged 13+. It has been described as “a top-notch astronomy curriculum” by Laurie Bluedorn, author of Trivium Pursuit. As per suggestions from the readers of this blog, sample PDFs from all four books of the curriculum have been made available for free download on the relevant product listing of the Castalia House store. If you are, or if you know, a homeschool mother of teenagers now preparing the fall course schedule, I encourage you to take a close look at ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS and consider using it for the next school year.

Mailvox: making the choice

In response to yesterday’s column about it being time to choose your side, I heard from a reader who is interested in creating a short fiction companion site to Castalia House. While I don’t have the bandwidth to do much more than offer advice and perhaps some branding, I’m interested in finding out if there is anyone here interested in being involved in some way, shape, or form, be it editing, contributing short fiction, or helping with the site.

If so, mention it here, and if there are enough people that are interested, I’ll see about gathering the names and sending them to the individual concerned. There are a number of possibilities here I can imagine, from amping up Stupefying Stories to creating an entirely new short fiction brand. But the initial path will be determined by how many volunteers are willing to get involved.

As I told the guy, there is no money in short fiction these days. It has to be a mission and an objective to be pursued as an end in itself. I’d like to see it happen, as I can easily envision it being the NCAA to Castalia’s NFL, where writers can develop their storytelling and writing skills in the process of becoming publishable authors. But it has to be done right or there is no point in doing it at all.

The key to making things happen, of course, is simply jumping in and doing it. At Castalia, we had no plan. We had 10 ebooks, a name, a URL, and the support of the Dread Ilk. Three months later, we’ve sold or given away more than 15,000 books. So, I have no doubt that if the people here want to make it happen, we can collectively make it happen.

It would surprise me terribly if in five years, we have a fledgling Internet TV channel and production studio going. Or perhaps we will be petty warlords battling for local supremacy in various zombie-strewn post-civilization wastelands instead. But regardless, we have the advantage of knowing that even two men joined by their mutual allegiance to a certain Name can accomplish more than most people can imagine.

AWAKE IN THE NIGHT free on Amazon

In case you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, or despite the many excellent reviews you still have not been moved to put John C. Wright at the front of your reading list, today opportunity knocks as today and tomorrow, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT is free on Amazon.

The novella was included in the Years Best Science Fiction anthology published in 2004. It makes for an marvelous introduction to the terrors of the Night Land, as well as to the dark beauty of Mr. John C. Wright’s pen.

In not entirely unrelated news, I would like to thank you all for an astonishingly successful launch of Mr. Wright’s TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN. I expected it to be of significant interest to many of you, but I can’t honestly say that I expected this:

  • #1 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > History & Criticism
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Good & Evil
  •  #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN

Castalia House is deeply honored to announce the publication of what we believe is the most important book about science fiction in years, TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright. The 369-page book is comprised of sixteen essays originally written by Mr. Wright for his journal, which have been edited, and in a number of cases, collated from more than one journal posting, by Mr. Wright.

The essays are brilliant and thought-provoking. They inspire, they inform, they educate, they entertain, and they will more than likely enrage a few readers. They provide fascinating insight into the mind and methods of one of science fiction’s greatest living masters. From beginning to end, Mr. Wright shows himself to be as able an essayist as he is a novelist.

Following an introduction by science fiction author Michael Flynn, Mr. Wright addresses everything from technological transhumanity to theological Gnosticism. He examines SF authors from H.G. Wells to Ted Chiang, and explains why it is A.E. van Vogt, and not Arthur C. Clarke or Ray Bradbury, who is the third of the Big Three of science fiction. And he explains why science fiction is fundamentally more important to humanity than what presently passes itself off as mainstream literature.

In “Science Fiction: What is it Good For?” Wright writes:  

“Stories serve several quotidian purposes. I listed them above: they are fables to instruct the young and epics to preserve the memory of the great, and ghost stories to tell about campfires to give us all a sense of proportion and remind us (like the charioteers of Caesars during their triumphs and ovations) that all men are mortal. But there is something more that they serve, a purpose which is utterly unworldly, and utterly inexplicable to the Morlocks, who have no imagination, and need none.
 
“We sons of Adam are exiles here on this world. It does not suit us. We are not comfortable here, and those who say they are comfortable in this world of injustice and disease and death are not more sane and more well adapted to the environment than we who dream; they are merely inert in their souls, too dull to hear the horns of Elfland softly blowing.”

To read TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN is to not only hear the horns of Elfland blowing, but to understand why they must be blown.

In the company with TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN, we are also announcing the publication of a second ebook by Mr. Wright. AWAKE IN THE NIGHT is the first novella that is contained in the anthology-novel AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. We are publishing it separately in order to be able to periodically give it away via Kindle Select and thereby introduce unsuspecting individuals to the epic horrors and forlorn hopes of the Night Land. It is also an attempt to address the surprising price elasticity of ebooks, as we have noticed that more than a few people prefer to take a chance on a $2.99 ebook that they will not take on a much longer $4.99 ebook. Since we are but humble servants of the market, we are happy to accommodate those economic preferences.

If you don’t mind

We are going to be announcing a pair of John C. Wright books this week, although only one of them is going to be of interest to the many of you who have already had the good fortune to read his previous release. As you may have noticed on the sidebar, Castalia is releasing AWAKE IN THE NIGHT as a stand-alone novella for the purpose of raising awareness of the excellent AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND via the KDP Select program.

However, since it is a different listing with a different ASIN, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT presently lacks reviews. So, I’d like to ask those of you who reviewed the complete collection to copy the relevant aspects of your review to the listing for the single novella as well, if you don’t mind. The sooner the better, if you happen to have the time.

Transhumanity draws near

We’re very close to releasing TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright. You can, if you are so inclined, have an early look at the cover along with the Introduction by Michael Flynn at Mr. Wright’s site. It is a selection of the very best of Mr. Wright’s reliably brilliant essays.

A whiff of Hultgreen-Curie

At Alpha Game, it is observed that appears women in the military are closing the all-important suicide gap between male and female soldiers.

Meanwhile, at Castalia House, Anson contemplates the difference between “fluff” and “poorly done” in a review of John Ringo:

If a novel is poorly done, it doesn’t much matter what it attempts to do: it is a failure. (Although the topic of what makes a book either a success or a failure is a complicated one; that’s a topic I hope to dig into over time as these reviews continue).

Today, though, I want to speak about serious vs fluff. Lord of the Rings is serious. The Sword of Shana is fluff (it is also poorly done , but that’s not relevant). What makes LOTR serious while SOS (and, yes, someone please send help ASAP) is fluff? Intent, complexity, characterization, congruence between aim of the novel, tone of the language, originality of the world, nuance of the characters, depth of the moral code, etc.

And Daniel cites Philip K. Dick’s preferred method of future-scrying:

[B]ecause the mystical experience of writing to anticipate the future will most certainly be inaccurate, one is more likely to anticipate the future by looking to the past…and scrambling it.

Castalia House Store

Ladies and gentlemen, Dread Ilk, casual fans, rubberneckers, anklebiters, and fellow Hugo Award nominees, I am very pleased indeed to announce to you that the Castalia House online store is now open for business.

Our selection is somewhat scanty at present, as the participation of certain books in Amazon’s Kindle Select program precludes them from being offered at the Castalia store for now. You will look in vain for Lt. Col Tom Kratman. You will offer no sacrifices on any Altars of Hate. Der Verstand werden Sie nicht finden. E li, i ragazzi piangono mai.

What you will find in the Fantasy section is four fine works of fiction, including AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND by John C. Wright. All of them are also DRM-free, in EPUB format. What you will find in the Science Fiction section are two tales of the future, both involving Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower, MCID-XAR. And, most importantly, what you will find in the Homeschool section are the four books that make up the ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS curriculum by Dr. Sarah Salviander. They are also DRM-free, but are in PDF format for easy printing.

While we have not yet officially announced the curriculum, as we are in the process of having the curriculum reviewed by a number of homeschool sites, I wanted to make it available to VP readers as soon as possible, as I know that there are many homeschoolers here who are presently preparing their coursework for the autumn. It has been declared to be “a top-notch astronomy
curriculum” by Laurie Bluedorn of Trivium Pursuit fame, and is literally serving as the model for other Castalia House curricula, including Physics, Economics, and Military History.

And don’t forget that the Castalia House blog is active too. Today Mascaro reviews Fearless, the second book in the Lost Fleet series.

Castalia House Goes Live!

One of our long-term goals for Castalia House is to make it the premier intellectual driving force in SF/F. That means more than simply publishing intelligent entertaining books by the likes of John C. Wright, Tom Kratman, and Rolf Nelson, and more than the publication of various educational curricula on subjects ranging from Astrophysics to Military History, but also reviewing the current state of the literary sub-genres.

So, we’re pleased to announce that the Castalia House blog has gone live with its first three daily bloggers. We’ll be adding a few more presently, but these three alone will ensure that the Castalia blog becomes a daily destination for everyone interested in science fiction and fantasy.  From Anson, a book review:

REVIEW: The Martian by Andy Weir

The last few decades have seen a decline in the genre, as the good
material has surrendered its space in the bookstores, and foot by foot,
rack by rack, has been replaced by bi-curious tattooed lyncanthrope bike
chicks, Victorian ladies in steampunk goggles (Victorian only in
breeding and couture, sadly), endless Star Trek novelizations, and other
varieties of crap.

(The last 30 years have not been entirely dark – we’ve been blessed
with some of the best space opera ever from the pen of Ian Banks,
stunning Weird Fantasy from China Mieville, amazing stuff in multiple
genres from Neal Stephenson, and more…but bright spots aside, the hot
white hot center, the default worldview of science fiction has dimmed
and become less magical, more mundane, and – yes – simultaneously more
tacky, more banal, and more despair inducing.)

I was thrilled to come across a new novel recently that broke from
this downward trend. It’s not the perfect novel (but then again, what
is?)

And from Daniel Eness, The Secret to Science Fiction:

H. Beam Piper — a man so versed in science he could sketch out, on a napkin, an engineering model of Sputnik the day it was announced, and explain it to a table of science enthusiasts — quit near-future science fiction. He did it because the scientific advances of the 1950s were coming so quickly that much of the knowledge he used for his stories felt obsolete to him by the time the magazines went to print. He was fed up with his guesses going bad so quickly like so much produce. That was 60 years ago. Has the world slowed down since then?

Jeff Sutton’s Apollo at Go suffered the opposite fate: because the NASA missions were so heavily engineered, and Sutton an engineer doing work for NASA…his 1965 “science fiction” book about the first moon landing that would happen in real life four years later now reads more like alternate history, and only a slight alternate at that.

Also, in case you haven’t read it yet, THE LAST WITCHKING, which contains the Hugo-nominated novelette “Opera Vita Aeterna”, is a free download today from Amazon.

And finally, due to the inability to sell pre-formatted PDF files through either Amazon or Smashwords, (yes, we know Smashwords sells PDFs, but they have to be submitted in Word format), we found it necessary to create our own online store. So, if you would like to support us by purchasing epubs directly, you can now do so at the Castalia House Store. Not everything is available there now, due to the limitations of the Kindle Select program, but you can expect the selections there to grow over time.

Opera Vita Aeterna

I’ve been informed that it is customary to make Hugo-nominated works freely available to the public during the voting stage, so here is “OPERA VITA AETERNA”, a nominee for the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Click on the title link or on the cover image to download the free epub. If you prefer Kindle format, there is also a mobi version available for download.

There has been a fair amount of discussion of the novelette online, almost entirely by people who not only have not read it, but know absolutely nothing about it. I would suggest that anyone who is genuinely interested in excellence in SF/F literature simply read the work and judge it on its merits. And for those who are more interested in thought-policing the genre, they can simply do as some have suggested, “rank a nominated work below “No Award””, and thereby provide us with an accurate measure of the degree to which SF/F fandom is influenced by the politically correct Left.

From the Amazon reviews of THE LAST WITCHKING:

  • The masterpiece of the trio, though, is Opera Vita Aeterna. At its core
    is the dialogue between an aging monk and a long-lived elven sorcerer in
    unwitting search of his own salvation. Day again employs both allegory
    and tremendous subtlety as the more experienced and intelligent elf is
    perplexed and impressed by the power of eternal truth. Aeterna is both
    clever and touching and might be the best story Day has produced to
    date. 
  • Opera Vita Aeterna: This is a brilliant, five-star story, and the
    best in the book, in my opinion. For me to rate a story as brilliant,
    it must be beautifully written, have complex characters, and leave me
    with a note of lingering intangibility. The elf Bessarias is on a quest
    for God, whom he doesn’t necessarily find. Through his searching,
    though, he leaves an important legacy behind him. There lies the
    intangibility–no personal, cathartic moment, but, instead, a glimpse of
    something far greater.
  • Opera Vita Aeterna is a deeply catholic work of the height of beauty,
    the power of events long after the events are forgotten, and the
    complexity and density of the Christian model of hope. Its most elegant
    turn is its ability to transform a deft and intriguing story about a
    strange sorcerer’s encounter with a rural cloister into a meditation on
    the nature of eternity. It is rare to describe a story as both
    restrained and florid, but its details are so rich and believable and
    its voice is so even. Read it, then read it again after reading Summa
    Elvetica.
  • All too brief, it balances the darkness of this book’s title story with a
    reminder that though darkness may engulf the world and seem to triumph,
    within the light there is a power that endures, which darkness cannot
    comprehend. All together, The Last Witchking is a significant offering by Vox, one I am still digesting and will read again.