The poverty of sex

I note, with some satisfaction, that I am now Bucknell University’s Greatest Living Novelist. Not that they are likely to brag about that fact any time soon or ask me to speak at graduation. The thing is, for all his much-ballyhooed and oft-awarded literary talent, Philip Roth was a boring and trivial novelist because he could never get his damned hands out of his own pants.

Roth’s enduring subject matter was the American male’s carnality in the age of the Sexual Revolution, and he was honest and pitiless and unsentimental about it. In his 2001 novel “The Human Stain” he railed against the neo-Puritanism that he said resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but his own work offers a horrifyingly bleak view of Americans liberated from puritanical attitudes that would warm the heart of any present-day Cotton Mather.

He began with sexuality denied. The title story of “Goodbye Columbus” concerns a couple of New Jersey kids in their early 20s — young, attractive, full of life — and how their relationship cannot survive her mother’s discovery that they are having sex. Though Roth was not a writer whose work ever delivered a message, “Goodbye Columbus” certainly makes you think that the social stricture against premarital sex was something not protective but corrosive.

Ten years later, in “Portnoy’s Complaint,” the title character pleasures himself with a piece of liver during his adolescence and goes on to a series of ruinous relationships with inappropriate women that land him (maybe for eternity) on a psychoanalyst’s couch.

Roth lays Portnoy’s complaint firmly at the feet of his simultaneously emasculating and stimulating monster of a mother. Surely a more enlightened kind of mother was emerging in 1969, when the book was published, a new kind of mother who wouldn’t distort her son in this way.

But how did this all turn out for Roth’s characters, most of whom are versions of Roth himself? Not well. His novels from “Portnoy” onward feature variegated portraits of crippled men for whom there is no liberation. The world of freer sex isn’t freeing for any of them. And like Roth himself, none of his male characters (with one exception) ever finds any real happiness or contentment in marriage or as a parent.

The novelist Nathan Zuckerman is felled by mysterious back pain that makes it impossible for him to write. This metaphor for impotence becomes literal in later books. In 1995’s “American Pastoral,” Zuckerman has become literally impotent after prostate surgery and even seems slightly relieved to have been taken out of the game.

In “The Human Stain,” published six years later, a professor in his 70s takes Viagra in a desperate effort to perform with his illiterate cleaning-lady girlfriend, barely out of her 20s.

The late novels “Exit Ghost,” “The Dying Animal” and “The Humbling” offer an unsparing and despairing view of a man no longer able to perform — a problem made especially acute by the fact that the Roth stand-ins here are alone and solitary with little to distract them but their failing bodies.

Only once, in “American Pastoral,” did Roth find the imaginative power to conjure up a person unlike himself who embraces bourgeois life and bourgeois domesticity.

The arc of Roth’s literary career should be shown to sex-obsessed schoolboys in order to demonstrate to them that there is vastly more to life than getting laid. Sex is natural and sex is good, but for the love of all that is beautiful, good, and true, it’s very, very far from the only interesting thing in life.


It’s nearly started!

George R.R. Martin is seriously thinking about starting on his next book:

SANTA FE, NM—Stoking readers’ anticipation about the long-awaited Game Of Thrones sequel, best-selling author George R.R. Martin promised fans Thursday that his upcoming novel The Winds Of Winter was nearly started. “I wanted to let everyone know that I’m sitting at my desk with a nice cup of tea, I’ve got a Word document open, and I’m just about ready to go,” Martin wrote in a blog post on his website, assuring readers that as soon as he cleared off his desk and threw a load of laundry into the dryer, he could pretty much begin. “I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but at this point, I’ve basically already brainstormed a couple of character names and written part of an outline for chapter one. After that, it shouldn’t take more than another three or four weeks until I’m ready to check a few emails, grab some groceries, and put the very earliest touches on the manuscript. Can’t wait!” At press time, the author had been forced to return to square one after realizing he needed a better title than The Winds Of Winter.

If you ever doubted success being a demotivator for a certain type of writer, you need look no further than Martin. Although Scalzi would appear to be giving him a pretty good run for his money. It must be incredibly frustrating to be a mainstream publisher having to deal with these guys.


The evil nature of fandom

Bruce Charlton explains why fandom is not beneficial for either the author or the creation:

I recently attended a talk, reading and book signing done by Sanderson; which was packed with hundreds of fans who turned-out and paid money to be there… and I say fans, because in the Q&A session every single one of the couple of dozen questions was related to the most trivial, ephemeral and superficial aspects of his work. There was not one single interesting, insightful, or challenging question asked by this mass of people; not the slightest indication that the novels were anything other than depictions of magic systems and ‘cool’ personalities.

Sanderson is an active Mormon, and all of his work is permeated with a serious consideration of religion and spirituality; both on the surface and as underlying structure. But it was clear that for Sanderson’s fandom this was of sub-zero interest – invisible and irrelevant.

The phenomenon of fandom is therefore at best trivial and fashion driven, there being more incommon between fans (regardless of what they are fans-of) than between fans and the subject of their fanaticism. Fandom is corrupting and destructive of whatever is good in the authors and works that get caught-up by it; and in its advanced form, fandom embodies subversion and inversion of whatever is specific and distinctive in its subject matter; the aim being to reinterpret and rewrite it in line with currently-dominant, top-down, manipulative social campaigns that ultimately emanate from (and are funded by) the global Establishment elites.

So the phenomenon of fandom is a product of evil purpose; and has a malign influence all-round.

My own experience with various fandoms does tend to support this negative view of it. This is why I prefer not to refer to the Ilk, the Dread Ilk, or the VFM as fans. They are certainly destructive, but not of me or my works, and they tend to be refining rather than corrupting.


A bureaucratic approach to literature

One of the central challenges George R. R. Martin always faced as a writer is that he approaches some significant philosophical questions with the mind of a bureaucrat. This Rolling Stone interview with Martin from 2014 is rather enlightening in that regard:

It’s a shockingly brutal story that you tell. The first major jolt comes when the knight Jaime Lannister pushes a child, Bran Stark, through a window because the child witnessed Jaime and Jaime’s sister, Cersei – the wife of Westeros’ King Robert – having sex. That moment grabs you by the throat. 

I’ve had a million people tell me that was the moment that hooked them, where they said, “Well, this is just not the same story I read a million times before.” Bran is the first viewpoint character. In the back of their heads, people are thinking Bran is the hero of the story. He’s young King Arthur. We’re going to follow this young boy – and then, boom: You don’t expect something like that to happen to him. So that was successful [laughs].

Both Jaime and Cersei are clearly despicable in those moments. Later, though, we see a more humane side of Jaime when he rescues a woman, who had been an enemy, from rape. All of a sudden we don’t know what to feel about Jaime. 

One of the things I wanted to explore with Jaime, and with so many of the characters, is the whole issue of redemption. When can we be redeemed? Is redemption even possible? I don’t have an answer. But when do we forgive people? You see it all around in our society, in constant debates. Should we forgive Michael Vick? I have friends who are dog-lovers who will never forgive Michael Vick. Michael Vick has served years in prison; he’s apologized. Has he apologized sufficiently? Woody Allen: Is Woody Allen someone that we should laud, or someone that we should despise? Or Roman Polanski, Paula Deen. Our society is full of people who have fallen in one way or another, and what do we do with these people? How many good acts make up for a bad act? If you’re a Nazi war criminal and then spend the next 40 years doing good deeds and feeding the hungry, does that make up for being a concentration-camp guard? I don’t know the answer, but these are questions worth thinking about. I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there is no possibility of redemption, what’s the answer then? [Martin pauses for a moment.] You’ve read the books?

Yes. 

Who kills Joffrey? In the books – and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal – the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa’s hairnet, so that if anyone did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

The reason I bring this up is because that’s an interesting question of redemption. That’s more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Is it a case where the end justifies the means? I don’t know.

The problem, of course, is how do you seek forgiveness without repentance? And how can you repent without an objective moral standard that clearly states: with this act you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?

Man cannot find redemption without God, which is why some crazy and godless men make maps of meaning filled with bizarre and imaginary creatures and warnings of nonexistent dragons, while others, less crazy, but still godless, write meandering rapefests addressing the hard questions of tax policy and population demographics.

A major concern in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones is power. Almost everybody – except maybe Daenerys, across the waters with her dragons – wields power badly.

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king.

Some readers have been kind enough to say that my own AODAL falls in between ASOIAF and LOTR in terms of literary quality. But one could, not unreasonably, say that is true of our literary approaches as well.

And yes, I am working on the final edition of A Sea of Skulls. And yes, I expect it will be out, in around 900 pages of print, in time for Christmas. The 40-hour audiobook version of A Throne of Bones should also be available by then. I just finished re-reading it to refresh my memory preparatory to the final push on ASOS.


Mailvox: your mileage WILL vary

Baseball Savant emails about his daughter’s inarguably flawless taste in epic fantasy literature:

I know I’ve e-mailed you this but my 14-year old daughter has read the Lord of the Rings trilogy 3x and the Hobbit countless times. She loves them. She basically has them memorized. She collects them if she sees copies with a different cover. It’s crazy.

She read Throne of Bones in a week. After, she read Lord of the Rings again. So I asked her, how does Vox compare to Tolkien.

She hesitated and then said….”Hmmmm, I think Vox got him.”

What I really like about Throne of Bones is that it sucks you in so fast. The beginning pages with the painting! Whoa. Loved it.

That’s very flattering, of course, and I’m delighted to hear it, but honestly, it would be hard for me to disagree more. Here is how I rank some random authors on a broad and indistinct range of criteria I have not fully articulated. In some cases, it’s based more on their peak, in others, on their average. There is no particular rhyme or reason in this regard; even the greatest novelists have their occasional clunkers.

10/10: Immortals
Tolkien, Eco, Tolstoy, Murakami, Hesse, Maupassant, Poe, Wodehouse

9/10: First-Rate
Lewis, Tanith Lee, Dostoevsky, Adams, Gibson, Herbert, Mieville, Stephenson, Balzac, Calvino, Douglas Adams, Lovecraft, Fitzgerald, Soseki

8/10: Second-Rate
Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Heinlein, Clarke, Barbara Hambly, Arthur C. Clarke, Pratchett, Keillor, Simmons, Zelazny, Howard

7/10: Third-Rate
Robert Anton Wilson, Katherine Kurtz, Ann McCaffrey, Raymond Feist, Eriksen, George RR Martin, Eddings, Card, Poul Anderson

6/10: Fourth-Rate
Gaiman, Asimov, Anthony, Bujold

At my very best, which is to say with ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT, I’d give myself an 8 to date. But I’d regard a 7 as perfectly reasonable, depending upon your tastes. And yes, I can explain each of these ratings in detail, but I’m not going to do so here.


MAILVOX: Just read your recent posts on Gaiman, was curious which book or two you would recommend starting with China Mieville? I have read about his work here and there and it seemed intriguing but never got around to it, am interested now upon seeing that you admire his writing.

I would read The City and the City, followed by Kraken, and then, assuming you enjoyed both of those, read his best, which is Embassytown.


EVS follows up

Ethan gave me the chance to speak my piece, so I’ll leave him with the last word for now. However, I will respond to one of his commenters.

James Robins
I don’t get vox man. I mean comparing yourself to Gaiman? Nobody is haruki murakami, hes a great writer. But vox? Come on lol.

It’s pretty simple. I am a better novelist than Neil Gaiman by almost every reasonable measure. Anyone who has read a sufficient variety of both our novels will recognize that pretty easily. Gaiman writes a variant of the same book with the same sort of characters almost every time. Even his Sandman is a Gary Stu of sorts. I have much wider literary range and can write everything from haunting shorts that could almost pass for modern Maupassant to murder mysteries to epic military fantasy. I don’t write myself into my books and I can even successfully pull off the “you genuinely think he’s dead but actually he isn’t” trick without cheating or magic or medical science or anything but pure literary sleight of hand.

George Martin can’t do that despite repeated attempts. Gaiman can’t do it either. And as for Murakami, I have been writing a literary novel inspired by his style for years, although since I am not Japanese, it is more likely to feature a wedding than a suicide. I have no idea when it will be finished, if ever, but I think I might be able to pull it off. And if I can’t get even reasonably close, then I won’t publish it.

I admire Tanith Lee. I admire JRR Tolkien. I admire John C. Wright. I admire China Mieville. I admire Alan Moore. I admire Umberto Eco. The only thing I admire about Gaiman’s writing is his ability to give everything the flavor of a fairy tale. That’s not nothing, it’s actually pretty cool, but it’s very far from the most significant thing. Sure, he sells a lot more books, but then, Dan Brown and Katie Price sell even more and I don’t have any respect for either of their literary abilities.

Anyhow, there is no need to pay any attention to my opinion. Read the reviews of the Arts of Dark and Light instead. Better yet, read the books and decide for yourself.

  • This book contains strong traces of DNA from Umberto Eco and Neal Stephenson but it stands on its own as a fantastically monstrous creature.
  • A Throne of Bones, for me at least, shines like a beacon in this literary twilight.
  • One of the best Fantasy novels I’ve read in the past ten years.
  • Better then GOT. I read a lot of fiction. Vox’s writing skill is superb.
  • I’d put it on par with Tolkien in terms of epic fantasy.
  • I am a big time Tolkien and George Martin fan. Vox’s Selenoth has wiggled its way between Middle Earth and Westeros.
  • Comparisons with Martin are much more useful, and there I agree, Day comes out ahead.
  • Vox Day has catapulted himself into the storied and rarefied rank of writers that sits just below The Master himself. That’s right, I went there. I just said that Vox Day has written a book that is nearly as good as J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.
  • Easily the best epic fantasy series out today.
  • It is the best fantasy book of the past 50 years.

Since we’re on the subject, a bit of Selenoth-related news. Because Kindle Unlimited is becoming increasingly important, we’re going to release a new version of the series specifically formatted for KU. It will be EXACTLY the same text, but divided into more readily digestible 50k to 60k chunks and released under the series name LEGIONS OF BLOOD & BONE.

And yes, I’m still working on A SEA OF SKULLS. And yes, it will be out this year. It will be worth the wait. I think I can safely promise you that. I’m not interested in just getting it out, I am attempting to further raise my writing game.


Upon further review

Last night I made two comments that drew an amount of attention. Well, three, actually. Allow me to explain:

First, as a result of Marvel badly misplaying its hand in an attempt to bypass the two major comics distributors and go direct-to-dealer in the late 90s, Diamond managed to establish a near-monopoly over the comics distribution business. Like all monopolies, their customer service has gone downhill as their prices have risen. If you combine their own reports on total retail sales with Hoover’s report on their annual revenue, Diamond takes 22 percent of the total retail dollar that goes through the comics stores. That amounts to a 37 percent markup, 17 points and 85 percent more than is normal for a distribution business.

It’s good to be the monopolist. The additional markup amounts to $55.8 million annually, or $31,885 in lost profit to each of the 1,750+ brick-and-mortar comics stores in the USA. It’s no wonder these stores are struggling or that long-established retail establishments are closing down everywhere from Arizona to Iowa and Sacramento. Diamond isn’t evil or even particularly rapacious, they are simply failing to recognize that they have been devouring their own seed corn. The rise of digital delivery systems combined with the shrinking physical channel is going to place Diamond in an increasingly difficult position; I would expect them to buy some of the independent publishers and get into content production themselves as time goes on, since from what I hear they are pretty smart.

Second, we have found it difficult to establish Alpenwolf even though we have completed one DevGame game and have several others in various stages of development because the major free game sites, Addicting Games and Kongregate, have kept changing their strategies in ways that make it difficult to work for them. Since we already built a complete virtual goods and virtual currency infrastructure, there is no reason why we shouldn’t simply launch our own free-to-play site. It’s going to be very small by gaming standards, and will probably launch with 3-5 games, but at least we’ll have a vehicle for getting our games out there to the gamers. From there, its simply a matter of building traffic and that’s not a challenge that frightens us. Frankly, it’s probably preferable to be able to grow slowly and steadily int his regard. Look for announcements asking for volunteers concerning forum moderation and writing trivia questions for everything from the NFL and NCAA football to comics and television shows in the next few months.

Third, if you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman.

When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road. That being said, of the various comics I have read, Sandman is head-and-shoulders above the rest.

As for my own writing, you might contemplate this: How many other authors flow as easily across as broad a range of genres as I do? How many authors have historically done so? Perhaps my inability to focus precludes achieving greatness in any one genre, but I think that sort of unusual breadth at least merits consideration.

UPDATE: this guy has a skeptical, but reasonable perspective on the situation.

To say Arkhaven has been controversial is an understatement. From the moment the company’s flagship title, Alt-Hero, was announced the internet was debating whether a right wing perspective would “save” comics, or further damage an already fractured industry. But as I said before, what’s lacking is a shared notion of what “saving comics” really means. That said, there is a general consensus that Mark Waid’s head on pike would be a good start. Which brings us back to Vox Day and Arkhaven. Most criticism directed toward Vox can be boiled down to: “The last thing comics needs is another goddamn writer with an agenda.”

A self-described libertarian nationalist and member of the Alt-Right, Vox Day has never been shy about his politics. Likewise, his yet to be release Alt-Hero series looks to be something of a satire of today’s overly politicized comics. The project is still months away from completion, so for now we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, Arkhaven has two titles digitally available on Amazon—Quantum Mortis and Right Ho, Jeeves. Both are selling well. Neither are political in nature. And there’s the rub—Alt-Hero could be a political screed. Then again, maybe not. But so far Arkhaven’s catalog hasn’t shown itself to be a mouthpiece for anybody’s politics. If only we could say the same for Marvel.

Does this signal a new dawn for comics? Well, if bringing content to an ignored demographic is Arkhaven’s end goal, it’s not a bad start. And drawing new readers to the medium is a net gain for everyone. But as Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver has been quick to point out, the company currently has no presence in Diamond’s monthly Previews catalog, which is a prerequisite for getting books stocked in comic book stores. And in Sciver’s eyes, if a company isn’t moving product through brick-and-mortar shops, it’s contributing absolutely nothing to the overall health of the industry.

I’ll be blunt, if Arkhaven can eventually become successful enough to provide comics shops with enough monthly product to pay the rent, Vox will not only save the industry, he’ll be the motherfucking Batman.

Better yet, the Shade.


Mailvox: up your game, people

JF writes about the declining quality of the comments here:

Over the years that I have been reading your blog, I haven’t always agreed with everything you say, but I always find that it challenges my thinking about the world. I traditionally have enjoyed the comment section, also. However; over the last year, after reading the post I find myself doing a quick skim through the comments to see who is actually posting to see if it is worth following the discussion.

A number of the commenters who brought thoughtful, funny, and intelligent views seem to have moved on or only comment sporadically now. This has left the comments section to become filled with more midwit posturing and monomania that derails conversation (such as “muh purity”). I don’t know what the solution is, or if it even needs one.

If I am out of line, just let me know. Either way, I’ll continue to read.

He’s not out of line, he’s absolutely right. Now, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a natural consequence of the blog readership having grown from 3,000 pageviews a day to 105,582 pageviews a day. The early readers tended to be highly intelligent outliers, almost all of whom were WorldNetDaily readers and familiar with a wide range of political subjects and authors. They were not monomaniacs and they had the ability to intelligently discuss a wide range of subjects as well as an interest in doing so.

Now we’ve got everything from Disney shills to commenters who see a nefarious Jewish hand at work in the fact that they ran out of skim milk this morning. I don’t follow every discussion in the comments myself.

Now, this doesn’t really matter all that much because the blog does not exist for the sake of the comments. The comments are mostly there as a requested courtesy for the readers and the posts of most interest to me seldom receive anywhere near the most comments. That’s fine, because things are what they are, not what we might wish them to be. But if you’re a commenter, perhaps it might matter to you that people notice the fact that you don’t have much to say and you say the same thing over and over again.

(Which, of course, you could say is true of some of my posts on certain subjects, but then, history keeps happening and you can’t say I don’t manage to throw the occasional curveball on even the oldest chestnuts.)

The moderators do a pretty good job of blocking the trolls and neutralizing the shills, but they can’t make people smarter, give them a broader perspective, or make them better-read or more interesting. That’s something every commenter will have to do for himself. So, perhaps you might want to think about this and put a little more thought into your next comment. Or perhaps you’ll just blurt out the same damn thing you’ve already posted here to no noticeable effect on 27 previous occasions.

It’s up to you. Just don’t think the readers don’t notice… and remember that there are more than a thousand of them for every one of you. Also, drop the posturing. If you feel the need to strike poses and posture, just get your own blog. Or a mirror. If you find that you’re about to make your third heated comment in another tedious pose-off with another commenter that everyone else is ignoring, just walk away from the keyboard. Believe me, no one – NO ONE AT ALL – is interested in those ridiculous arguments that never resolve anything.

We could, of course, turn on the feature that limits comments to members of the blog, which would permit the moderates and me to eliminate the shills, the trolls, and the tedious. In the past, I’ve resisted doing so in the interest of maximizing the range of the discourse, but if we’ve now reached the point of the tragedy of the commons, perhaps it is time to consider doing so. Then again, informing Google whose comments I permit here might be unwise, in light of recent revelations about the converged tech giant. Feel free to share your opinion.


Wright on Knight

The illustrious John C. Wright adds to the increasingly incandescent luster of the Castalia House blog with his first regular post there:

It is an eerie thing to reread the half-forgotten stories treasured in one’s youth. For better or worse, the hold haunts never look the same. The worse happens when eyes grown cynical with age will see tinsel and rubbish where once glamor gleamed as fresh and expectant as the sunrise in the Garden of Eden. And, to the contrary, the better happens when one discovers added layers of wonder, or deeper thoughts to savor, than a schoolboy’s brain can hold.

So I decided to read, in their order of publication, the Conan stories of Robert E Howard. I was not a devout fan of Conan in my youth, so some stories I had read before, others were new. But in each case I was surprised, nay, I was shocked, at how much better they were than I recalled.

In this space, time permitting, I hope to review each tale as I read it, starting with Phoenix on the Sword. But before any review talks about what Conan is, let me tell the candid reader what Conan is not.

As with HP Lovecraft’s spooky tales or with the adventure yarns of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the unwary reader often confuses the popularized and simplified versions of iconic characters, Cthulhu or Tarzan, with the character as first he appeared in the pages of a pulp magazine. Tropes now commonplace, endlessly copied, at the time were stark and startling and one-of-a-kind.

The original character who is later taken into a franchise or revised for comic books, film and television, or who is copied or reincarnated by the sincere flattery of lesser talents, is inevitably more raw and real than such dim Xeroxes of Xeroxes. These franchise writers, imitators, and epigones rarely do justice to the tale they copy, some, for whatever reason, do grave injustice.

And, of course, certain writers of modest talent and no memorable accomplishment delight to assume the pen and mantle of the art critics and connoisseur in order to diminish the stature of author they cannot match. They do a deliberate injustice to iconic characters, and further muddy the perception.

Read the whole thing there, and not just because Mr. Wright administers Damon Knight, the John Scalzi of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, a well-deserved posthumous kicking. It is ever so fitting that the SFWA Grand Master award bears that petty little mediocrity’s name.


You CAN judge the artist by the art

And in some cases, most definitely should. The Dark Herald reviews The Last Closet:

I first ran into Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work in college.  A friend who had steered me right on several occasions, (Dune, Canticle for Leibowitz, Lefthand of Darkness) strongly recommended City of Sorcery to me.

He was overdue for a clinker.  City of Sorcery had a number problems for me.  It wasn’t an ideal first entry to the Darkover world.  It was jumping into the middle of an established universe.   If you weren’t all that familiar with the rules of this world as established by the author, then you had to puzzle out a lot stuff as you read the book.  Bradley was disinclined to fill in the blanks.  Also, back in those days I was Science Fiction Snob.  Sure I’d read Tolkien and Leiber and yes, I played Dungeons and Dragons.  But as an SFS I viewed science fiction books as vastly superior not least because they didn’t run to eight hundred pages and fantasy was starting to do that…a lot.

This book was clearly fantasy mascaraing as science fiction.

Also it was just a little bit…off.  There was no one thing I could really put my finger on.  Just a general feel of something that wasn’t quite right here.  Sort of when you walk in to a mist spray of fine vinegar, you know something’s wrong but it’s a little too diffuse to say what.

There was a miasma of something very off putting with the women in this book. An unpleasant edge, almost like they were the anti-Bujold characters.  The heroines were the Renunciates.  It wasn’t explicitly stated what they had renounced but it was obviously heterosexuality.  It was  a club for angry lesbians with the quasi religious overtones of a goofy hippy religion,  (which as as Gen-Xer I had little use for). The protagonist was the Chief Terran Agent on Darkover who had gone native and married another woman and were somehow raising a kid together.  The enemy was a bunch of evil space lesbians who were plotting…something(?),..I forget what. It was the characters that mattered in this book and I didn’t like any of them.

When my friend asked me about it, I made some joke about, The Lesbians In Spaaaaaace.  He didn’t like the joke at all and told me so.  I replied that the author was clearly writing about that of which she knows.  My friend laughed a little too loudly because he was about to ‘one up’ me, in true Gamma fashion.

“Nope, she’s happily married with two kids,” he smirked.

“Yeah, I got my doubts about the happily part,” I replied.

Holy crap, I never spoke truer words.

People often talk about the necessity of distinguishing between the artist and the art, but usually in the context of not rejecting the art on the basis of the behavior or character or politics or ideology of the artist. And this is correct, because to do so is to commit the genetic fallacy.

However, it is right and proper to judge the artist on the basis of the art. More often than not, the art created by the artist provides relevant insight into his psyche; it is very difficult to write the opposite sex well and it is also very difficult for a man to write characters who are different than his own socio-sexual rank.

Read Louis L’Amour and Robert Ludlum. Then read John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman. The difference is readily observable. Then read Piers Anthony and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Notice the creep factor? Exactly. This is one area where you can reliably trust your feelings.