Tag: Castalia House

A new start

JartStar and I were never particularly happy with the cover for QUANTUM MORTIS The Programmed Mind. Not only was the cover image a little nebulous, but it tended to sell what is an intense military spy thriller of galactic proportions more than a little short. It simply didn’t harken back to the classic SF of the Atomic Age in the way that we intended it to. Also, the title didn’t fit well within the title layout for the series that the most excellent Kirk DouPonce created for QUANTUM MORTIS; to say that Kirk “really disliked” the cover as a result would have been to put it mildly. But one of the great things about digital publishing is that it’s very easy to replace the covers. I think you will agree that the new cover, and new title, are a considerable improvement over their predecessors. Instead of an accidentally over-endowed female agent being subjected to some neurological indignities, the new cover features the Ascendancy destroyer Draco entering the orbit of the planet Bonoplane to investigate the fate of the stricken Shiva-class starcruiser ATSV Rigel. Please note that nothing else has changed except the title and the cover, so if you already bought QM-TPM, you already own QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed. I expect you should be able to update the file through your Kindle if you wish.

And QM-AMP isn’t the only relaunch of sorts we have to announce today. You may recall that I have made reference to a Castalia House Classics line on several occasions in the past, and today we are more than a little pleased to make an announcement in that regard on the Castalia House blog. I encourage you to check it out.

Pink vs Blue: An Applied Breakdown

At Castalia House, Daniel breaks down two SF works according to the ten principles I laid out in order to distinguish Pink SF/F from Blue SF/F:

Sometimes, distinguishing  Pink Science Fiction from Blue can be difficult, so I thought a simple comparison of two very similarly themed science fiction tales might help.

There is some required reading involved, but it will only take you a few minutes:

The first is Rachel Swirsky’s Hugo-nominated short story “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”

The second is Gene Wolfe’s “Build-A-Bear”

Have you read them? Good.

Now let us take a look at the two stories through the now-standard rubric to determine a story’s status as Pink or Blue.

1. It is written in conscious reaction to, and rejection of, the classic genre canon.

“Dinosaur” is published in a science fiction magazine, was nominated for an award that features a rocket ship, and yet contains only a meta-speculation as its science fiction element. There is no science behind the transformation of the man into a microtyrannosaur. The entire story is merely the conscious and unfulfilled wish of a dissatisfied woman. Look no further than: “all those people who—deceived by the helix-and-fossil trappings of cloned dinosaurs– believed that they lived in a science fictional world when really they lived in a world of magic where anything was possible.” Pink.

“Build-A-Bear” does not explain the science, or even the purpose behind a cruise ship being equipped to generate customized living creatures. Yet this is very much within the classic canon: AI, genetic engineering, the unusual consequences of high tech wish fulfillment in a quotidian environment all harken to such classic stories as “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” or Astro Boy. Furthermore, the name of the entertainer who guides the construction of Viola’s bear is Bellatrix, a fairly obvious allusion to both the star and the original Latin meaning: “female warrior.” Unlike the stereotypical modern application of the term, this is an early indication that the feminine war arts in the story will in no way resemble masculine combat techniques. The story is about the nature of feminine social status, conflict and self-defense. Blue.

2. It is politically correct.

Dinosaur – the villains quite literally employ nearly every politically incorrect slur in the arsenal. Pink.

Build-A-Bear – The sociosexual hierarchy is represented without qualification, the male (bear) hero’s maleness is an intrinsic element of his heroism. Blue.

Wolfe vs Swirsky. Yeah, that works. Two award-winning SF writers and they don’t get a whole lot more opposite than those two.

A few things

This isn’t actually the correct cover, but Emilio has translated both A Man Disrupted and Gravity Kills into Spanish and I just finished the ebook formatting for QUANTUM MORTIS La Gravedad Mata. So, if you speak fluent Spanish and would like to read over the two books and pass on any suggestions for improvement, I would appreciate it. I should have Un Hombre Disperso ready in a week or two as I’m hoping to release them in the company of another book or three come Labor Day Weekend. Shoot me an email with SPANISH in the subject if you’d like me to send you QM-LGM now and QM-UHD when it is ready.

In completely unrelated news, the six new members of the VPFL, as determined by RANDOM.ORG will be:

  1. Daniel
  2. Simon
  3. Vincent Castrillo
  4. Slamdunk
  5. Drew Deuce’s
  6. Jartstar

Please email me with VPFL in the subject so I can assign you a team and send you the league invitations.

A new Standout SF Author

esr announces his first science fiction sale:

One of the minor frustrations of my life, up to now, is that though I can sell as much nonfiction as I care to write, fiction sales had eluded me. What made this particularly irksome is that I don’t have only the usual ego reasons for wanting to succeed. I love the science fiction genre and owe it much; I want to pay that forward by contributing back to it.

It therefore gives me great satisfaction to announce that I have made my first SF sale, a short (3.5kword) piece of military SF titled “Sucker Punch” set on a U.S. aircraft carrier during the Taiwan Straits Action of 2037…. the head guy at Castalia House (the infamous Vox Day, wearing another hat) informed me of an upcoming project: an anthology called Riding The Red Horse intended to reprise the format of Jerry Pournelle’s old There Will Be War compendia. That is, a mix of military SF and military futurology, written by a mix of SF authors and serving military personnel, with few technical experts added for flavor.

“Want to write a fiction piece for us?” said Mr. Castalia House. “I can’t write fiction for shit, or at least all my attempts to sell it have failed,” I replied.

“Well, what about non-fiction?” I couldn’t think of a premise; then, suddenly, I could. Which is how I wound up researching and writing a
fact piece called “Battlefield Lasers and the Death of Airpower”.

Congratulations to Mr. Raymond; a link to his blog, Armed and Dangerous, has been duly added on the right sidebar. He is one of a number of excellent expert contributors to RIDING THE RED HORSE, which as he notes is intended to be the spiritual successor to the old THERE WILL BE WAR anthology series edited by Jerry Pournelle.

If – and only if – you are a published author of mil-SF, you may be interested to note we have two more fiction slots open. To inquire concerning a submission, send me an email with RED HORSE in the subject. Please note that we are not looking for any more first-time writers for this first volume; we are already set on that score. We’re also looking for one more non-fiction piece, particularly something related to Russia and the European theater. My original intention was to revive THERE WILL BE WAR and re-release the old anthologies as ebooks, since they are not available in that format. Although Mr. Pournelle was somewhat interested, we were unfortunately unable to make any progress in that direction and so we elected to create a new anthology series with a certain LTC of some notoriety at the helm.

Congratulations to John and John

Per John C. Wright:

I heard just this week from my agent and editor that, despite declining sales, Tor Books has agreed to published the penultimate and ultimate volume in the sexilogy (not what it sounds like; get your mind out of the gutter!) of the nonaward-winning Count to the Eschaton Sequence!

Re: John Scalzi:

Those who have been anxiously waiting for John Scalzi’s best-selling military scifi novel Old Man’s War to get a live-action adaptation won’t have to be waiting much longer. Syfy and Academy Award-nominated director Wolfgang Petersen will adapt the books for television as a series titled Ghost Brigades, after the second novel in the series.

You might remember that Paramount had originally purchased the rights to the Old Man’s War novel to make a movie, but those plans fell through. But don’t worry that this adaptation is going to skip the events of the first novel; as the author himself explains in a tongue-in-cheek self-Q&A on his website, “The series will pull elements from various books in the OMW universe in any event.” The title “Ghost Brigades” was used for the show instead of “Old Man’s War” simply because it sounded “sexier.”

I’m rather disappointed about one of these things, but possibly not the one you might think. While I personally dislike John Scalzi and consider him a fraud, a coward, and a mediocre, derivative novelist, I don’t wish him any ill. I genuinely believe he is rather well-suited for the medium of television, and based on my limited experience in the TV industry, his self-marketing tendencies may actually be on the modest side there.

No, you see, I was rather hoping to have Castalia pick up the rest of the Count to the Eschaton books. C’est la vie, a la prochaine fois. We have not yet reached the point where we can directly compete with Tor Books. But we will. Sooner or later.

Last call for charity

As I mentioned when we announced the book, a substantial portion of the first month’s sales revenues (approximately half), will be donated to Stillbrave, the children’s cancer charity. An estimated $1,350+ has been raised for Stillbrave to date. Today is the final day of the release month, so if you are interested in supporting either Mr. Wright or Stillbrave, I encourage you to buy it now, either from the Castalia House store (EPUB format) or from Amazon (Kindle format).

If you have not read the reviews, of which there are now 22 averaging a 4.7 rating, I hope you will not mind if I happen to share a few of the newer ones with you. And to those of you who have already purchased the book, thank you very much for all your support.

Review 1: I, or my other timeline self, really enjoyed this. I have to admit, I like this better than Awake in the Night Land. I mean, it has a time travelling gumshoe, who can’t like that? The twists and turns of chrono-based events was fun. If I ever ran into anything that was even remotely difficult to understand, I just went with it, knowing that my other self on a different timeline would understand it. Or maybe I didn’t. Well, never mind…. Good book. Go with it. You or your other timeline self will enjoy it.

Review 2: Time travel has been a staple of science fiction for decades, as has the
usual paradoxes. But Wright has tried a new twist – the morality of
time travel. What is right and wrong when you can go back in time,
rerun the past, and create the future? And what horrors can you
conceal? Wright tells these stories with an elegant phrasing rarely
seen today. Highly recommended.

Review 3: This is the third book of John C. Wright I have read this year. I was introduced to Wright’s writing with his book “Awake in the Nightland,” published by Castalia House. The second was “Count to a Trillion,” published by Tor. This third book, “City Beyond Time,” is published by Castalia House. “City Beyond Time” is alongs the same vein as “Awake in the Nightland.” Both are a collection of short stories within the same setting…. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves time travel science fiction. It is better then most time travel books that are linear in style and movement. It is by no means predictable and keeps you reading for more. I hope Wright writes more stories about Mr. Fontino in the future, perhaps even give him his own novel series.

Mining de Maupassant

Since there are more than a few relatively new readers who have come here since I last posted short fiction here several years ago, I thought I’d mention that a collection of it is available on Amazon and at Castalia. I’m more of a novel writer by nature; all of the various Selenoth-related novellas and novelettes I’ve published were actually supposed to be short stories that happened to run long. I’ve since found that writing short stories in the quasi-style of the French master of the art, Guy de Maupassant, tends to be more effective for me. I couldn’t keep it up for an entire novel, indeed, having read several of Maupassant’s novels, it appears he couldn’t really do so either. Three of the short stories in the collection are written in that style, two of them purposefully; it wasn’t until several years after writing “Raj and Garou” that I realized the reason I liked it so much was that it gave off that distinctive sensation of eerie detachment that, for me, tends to characterize the French writer’s work.

(There are those thinking, wait a minute, what about “The Last Testament of Henry Halleck”? That was a failed attempt to write in an ur-Lovecraftian style. Although the story itself worked, I didn’t get the style right. It’s harder than it might seem; Charles Stross didn’t get it right in “Equoid” either.)

You can read “The Deported” in its entirety here on the blog; it might be informative for those who have been rightly appalled by the Hugo-nominated short stories to read it while keeping in mind the likes of “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”. On a somewhat creepy trivia note, the Italian town in which the story is set was destroyed by mudslides the same month that the story was published in Stupefying Stories and remains abandoned today.

Whereas the two other stories are merely stylistically evocative, “The Logfile” is essentially an SF spin on my second-favorite of Maupassant’s stories, set in the QUANTUM MORTIS universe. Here is a selection from it.

To the Board of Executives;

The committee’s investigation concerning the possibility of positronic corruption in the neuro-cybernetic logical facilities of the Sektat Series 44 machine-intelligences was concluded early in light of the recent examination of the logfile belonging to unit 44XFL2J-455-847-484-176. Unit 44XFL2J, self-titled Magister, was produced on 18 September 2267 at the production facilities on Minsky, and was delivered to the Entaini Office of the Prime Attorney on 18 February 2268.

It is the considered opinion of the undersigned that the Lighthill Corporation must announce a recall of all Sektat Series 44 units, effective immediately, followed by a comprehensive technical investigation of the Series 44 neural network design to determine how such an aberration could have taken place. In order to reduce the likelihood of public outrage and considerable legal liability to the corporation, the committee STRONGLY recommends that the recall be attributed to an error in a floating point processor that may, in some circumstances, lead to erroneous statistical calculations.

In order to underline the necessity for immediate action by the Board, a selection from the relevant portions of Unit 44XFL2J’s logfile have been provided.

Dr. Merwethy Furris
Dr. Rambathas Chamkanni
Summerdeep (Unit 42AFS17-129-470-002-384)

FROM THE LOGFILE OF UNIT 44XFL2J-455-847-484-176

UTC-9424124925: I have completed the analysis of Case Number 2268.47. After examining all of the evidence provided to me and cross-checking it against the public records, I have concluded that the individual concerned is guilty of the murder of his common-law mate with a 0.0543 percent probability of error. Barring any suggestion of cloned persons utilizing his DNA profile, there is no legitimate reason for the adjudicating court to possess any reasonable doubts concerning his guilt in the matter. While the examination of the individual’s motivation and intent lie beyond my design parameters, my initial attempts to investigate these matters indicate to me that 2268.47’s intent was entirely in line with his actions and the subsequent results.

UTC-9427046710: The court pronounced its verdict concerning Case Number 2268.47 this morning. Despite the attempts of accused’s legal defense team to excuse his actions on the basis of his defective genetics and sub-optimal childhood nurturing environment, the verdict was in sync with the calculations provided. Case Number 2268.47 will be terminated in a humane manner within 240 hours, in a manner consistent with the procedure outlined by the law. I am pleased that the court saw fit to place its confidence in my calculations.

Pinkshirts running amok

No doubt they’ll be completely astonished when their sales collapse by 80 percent:

Marvel is excited to announce an all-new era for the God of Thunder in brand new series, THOR, written by Jason Aaron complimented with art from Russell Dauterman. This October, Marvel Comics evolves once
again in one of the most shocking and exciting changes ever to shake one
of the “big three” of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. No longer is
the classic Thunder God able to hold the mighty hammer, Mjölnir, and a
brand new female hero will emerge worthy of the name THOR.

Series writer Jason Aaron emphasizes, “This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before.”
THOR is the latest in the ever-growing and
long list of female-centric titles that continues to invite new readers
into the Marvel Universe.

The astonishing thing is that these people actually believe they are the creative ones. Why not turn the WONDER WOMAN into a cross-dressing man? Why not transform the SUPERMAN into a monkey? Why not change the CAPTAIN AMERICA into a buck private in the Armed Forces of the United Nations?

Intentionally or unconsciously, they confuse self-parody with creativity. They tear down and think they are engaged in creative destruction, only what they rebuild is nothing but a cheap and ugly mockery of what stood there before.

John C. Wright is hard to edit

Mr. Wright has, if you will excuse the pun, let the black cat out of the bag with regards to the next work of his that Castalia House will be publishing. Regrettably, he has been manfully resisting the best efforts of our editors to keep his fanciful flights of highfalutin prose in check.

A previous version of One Bright Star to Guide Them appeared in F&SF in their 2009 April-May, but at the editor’s suggestion, I made some changes. The daring idea of the the text being entirely rewritten to eliminate all male and female pronouns, and a scene where the heroine wishes her husband were a dinosaur and fantasizes about him in graphic sexual detail, as well making each character have a nonbinary sexual  orientation, like Leehallfae, but without any imagination or point, were all contemplated as possibilities, but in the end the editor forced me to write a story that had a beginning, middle and end, so I will not be able to win any prestigious awards, or get a government grant to not write a novel.

(However, in retaliation against my editor, I wrote a story without a beginning, middle and end — at least not in that order, and not with only one ending — and sold it to him as CITY BEYOND TIME. Hoo hah!! On sale now!)

You see what we are forced to deal with here on a daily basis. Thank you to the volunteers, we now have a sufficient number. However, if you haven’t read CITY BEYOND TIME yet, which is indeed on sale now, you need not take my word for why you should, but need only peruse the reviews for more convincing explanations.

“Best of Wright I have read. “This is the third book of John C. Wright I have read this year. I was introduced to Wright’s writing with his book “Awake in the Nightland,” published by Castalia House. The second was “Count to a Trillion,” published by Tor. This third book, “City Beyond Time,” is published by Castalia House…. The writing is tremendous.”

“Buy this before your future self comes back to make you. There are a lot of time travel books out there, the best and enduring being ones that examine questions of why or how or who. John C Wright has done what I’ve never seen before and examined time travel by “ought”; only with questions far deeper than just “ought you kill baby Hitler?” If you’re a scifi/fantasy fan you owe it to yourself to check out this collection.”

CITY BEYOND TIME is, without question, one of the best SF books published this year. It is clever, original, and fantastic in every sense of the word. And yet, in my opinion, it isn’t even one of the two best John C. Wright books we will publish this year.

Two more weeks

As I mentioned when we announced the book, a substantial portion of the first month’s sales revenues will be donated to Stillbrave, the children’s cancer charity. According to my calculations, after the first two weeks $658.84 has been raised for Stillbrave to date. There are still more than two weeks to go, so if you have any interest at all in Mr. Wright’s superlative excursion into the philosophy and morality of time travel, I would encourage you to buy it now, either from the Castalia House store (EPUB format) or from Amazon (Kindle format).

If you have not read the reviews, of which there are 12 averaging a 4.8 rating, perhaps a selection of quotes from a two or three of them will encourage you to give the book a shot.

Review 1: I urgently and without hesitation, recommend City Beyond Time. Atlantis, Hi-Brazil, Tartessos. Or if you don’t read the classics; Krypton, Gallifrey and Valyria.

The forever doomed, forever lost and forever beautiful true city and true home. The seat of all grace, all wisdom and all power, destined from it’s creation for destruction by it’s own hubris.

Welcome to Metachonoplis.

Writers don’t dream this big anymore. They don’t dare, they would be laughed out of the business. Much easier to take the path most commonly taken. Much easier to drop the F-bomb eighteen times before the end of page six and call it art. Just describe every vulgar experience you’ve ever had and call it refined. Just pretend your words can become a muse for the readers mind and call it good…enough.

John C. Wright is clearly and obviously a rather drastic anachronism. If H. Rider Haggard, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler and Roger Zelazny had got together in a bar and decided just for kicks to have a genetic recombinant uterine replication vanity project together the result would be John C. Wright.

Review 2: I’ve noted a theme in my so far sadly limited (but soon to be
comprehensive!) readings of John C. Wright that he speaks in a voice sui
generis among modern literary pretenders — that is, all those who are
not in fact John C. Wright — portraying what for lack of better
nomenclature we could term “inspirational dystopias”, shining the light
of human fulfillment from amidst what in lesser hands would be
overwhelming nihilism and/or despair.

This collection of stories
raises that artistry to masterly finesse; it reads like Moorcock’s
Dancers At The End of Time as plotted by a collaboration of Neal
Stephenson and C.S. Lewis, with a subtle sprinkling of the absurdist wit
Messr. Wright displays abundantly in his online presence.

Unconditionally recommended! 

Review 3:  John Wright does it again. This is the second book of collected stories I’ve read from him, the other being Awake in the Night Lands, and cannot recommend him highly enough.

I’ve read, and watched, my fair share of time travel stories and Wright leaves them all in the dust, even Mull’s Grip of the Shadow Plague subplot which I had just read to my kids. His vision is far more expansive, far more human and far more frightening than what I’ve encountered elsewhere. Not only does he pursue the logical and moral ramifications of what unfettered time travel would entail and what that would do to those that master it, he also presents two sides, a heaven and a hell, the costs of each, and lets the reader decide which one he would seek.

For what, one wonders, can you possibly be waiting? Especially if you consider yourself even a casual reader of science fiction.