Tag: writing

“When Jethro Exposed the Simulation”

Now THAT was unexpected. Roosh demonstrates a hitherto unsuspected talent for writing science fiction:

“Remember when you spawned Hitler?” Fodos asked.

“Remember?” Ghartek replied. “That was the highlight of my career! But it almost crashed the simulation.”

“What I loved about it is how you weaved Biblical themes into Hitler’s actions. It really scared the Jews.”

“Wait until we give Israel to Iran in the next update. The Persian empire must rise again!” Fodos laughed.

“Hey watch this,” Ghartek said, “I’m going to mess with this guy by vanishing his orange toothbrush.” Ghartek made a couple clicks on his display and then somewhere in Siberia, a man couldn’t find his toothbrush, no matter where he looked.

“He’s checking the door to see if someone came in to steal it.” Ghartek smirked, pleased at his work.

Both Fodos and Ghartek were senior programmers on Bethlabus, a planet where a race of hyper-intelligent species called Homo futurans lived. They shared human genetic ancestry with those living in a simulation that they controlled, though technically the connection was only virtual. Real Homo sapiens died out long ago, following in the footsteps of their Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis ancestors. Futurans created the simulation to better understand their roots and their future, with a goal to prevent their own extinction. The simulation itself was housed on a quantum computer the size of a city block.

While there were dozens of simulations in operation, Simulation Earth was the most interesting. Not only was it the longest, spanning over 5 billion years, but it seemed to mirror what Futurans knew about their own past of spurts and stops in evolution that seemed to be a microcosm of the rise and fall of human empires. Data from the simulation was continually analyzed with reports presented yearly to the public through academic papers and conferences. “If we understand our past, we will safeguard our future,” the motto went.

The most important fact they learned from the simulations is the universal difficulty of intelligent organisms to properly foresee and plan again long-term disasters.  Once a species gets too technologically advanced, their over-confidence in problem solving and fixing the environment actually accelerates their demise instead of retarding it.

Read the whole thing there. It’s better, and more genuinely science fiction, than anything that won a Nebula Award last week.

There Will Be Volume XI

Jerry Pournelle has an important announcement.

There Will be War Volume XI

 Now open for submissions at twbw@castaliahouse.com. Publication will be in late November or early December of this year. Reprint anthology, but original works are eligible; three original fiction stories in Volume X were nominated for Hugos; winners will be announced at MidAmericon II in August. Although unpublished works will be considered, there is no additional payment beyond payment for reprint rights, and first publication rights remain with the author (until, of course, they expire at publication of this volume).

Payment is $200 on acceptance. This is an advance against royalties. Royalties are a pro rata share of 50% of all royalties due from the publisher (the other 50% is to the editor). We buy non-exclusive anthology rights.  Publisher is Castalia House, which will make advances and royalty payments directly to the contributors. Again, payment is the same for previously published and previously unpublished works. Story selection is by me (the editor).  Editor’s contribution will include a volume introduction and introductions to each contribution, and may include more as I judge necessary.

Submissions can be fiction or non-fiction of under 20,000 words relevant to the future of warfare.  Previous volumes have included stories of ground combat, interplanetary and interstellar naval engagements, “space opera”, terrorism, a major essay in asymmetric warfare by a professor of military history, and articles from military journals. Most works to be included have been previously published. Submissions accepted until October 2016, or until announcement that the volume is filled.

Two classic stories by well-known award-winning authors have already been accepted, others are expected. I emphasize that payment of an advance against royalties is on acceptance.

Don’t quit your day job

Consider how many books are sold by a traditionally published multi-Hugo winning author:

It’s the question every writer dreads: “How many books have you sold?”

It’s a tricky question because for 99% of the year, those with traditionally published books honestly have very little idea. But two times a year – in the spring and in the fall – we receive royalty statements from publishers, which give a sometimes cryptic breakdown of what has sold where. So for those keeping track here with my “Honest Publishing Numbers” posts, here’s an update.

THE MIRROR EMPIRE

Sold about 23,000 copies as of December 31st, 2015 (representing about 16 months of sales)

EMPIRE ASCENDANT

About 7,000 copies as of December 31st, 2015 (note that this book came out in October last year, so that’s only two months of sales. Not bad)

That’s not bad, but less than one would tend to imagine. However, to put it in perspective, “tiny” independent publisher Castalia House reliably sells between 3,000 and 10,000 copies per book. Self-published Mike Cernovich has reported over 15,000 23,000 copies of Gorilla Mindset sold since June 2015. And while I’m not at liberty to talk about their book sales, mostly self-published and sometime Castalia authors Jonathan Moeller and Christopher Nuttall both sell… considerably more than that.

All without any of those books appearing in a single traditional bookstore. And despite being nobodies in the eyes of every mainstream publisher, they’re all doing rather better than most traditionally published authors.

Almost a third of published authors make less than $500 a year from their writing, according to a new survey, with around a half of writers dissatisfied with their writing income.

In the wake of a year that has seen a bitter war of words rage between traditionally published and self-published authors, the survey shows that the old way of doing things continues to reap the most financial rewards for writers, with traditionally published authors making a median annual income of $3,000–$4,999, and independent writers a median of $500–$999. So-called hybrid authors, however – those who publish in both ways – did best, earning $7,500–$9,999 a year.

This is why I always tell people who say they want to write that they should never pursue it as a career. It is a pastime; if you enjoy it, then by all means, write! But don’t focus on the possibility of making money, and by no means plan on it. Do it because you love it. Let your enjoyment of your work shine though it.

It can be done. Larry Correia shows that hard work can sell books. John Scalzi shows that relentless self-marketing and politicking can sell books. Mike Cernovich shows that owning social media can sell books. But the odds are against the average individual, and against the better-than-average individual as well.

UPDATE: Jerry Pournelle adds his thoughts on the matter:

Some of us do a little better than that.  See my essay on how to get my job.

Self publishing works for some who work very hard, and do a lot to let their intended readership know their works exist. Being displayed for sale in a bookstore used to work, and for some  still does, but being known for writing good stories of a particular kind has always been the key to making a living at writing.

My essay was written  before the self-publishing revolution, when independent publishers were known as the vanity press, and sold mostly to the author’s friends and relatives; today it’s possible to sell eBooks to a large niche readership, who, I suppose, can be thought a big expansion of friends and relatives; big enough, sometimes, to support someone who tells them stories they will pay to read.

Of course, as Mr Heinlein taught us, we write for discretionary income: as Robert put it. Joe’s beer money, and Joe likes his beer.

The New Fat Fantasy

Having successfully championed minorities, women, homosexuals, and rainbow-haired, sexually-confused, surgically-mutilated freaks in science fiction, SF-SJWs have defined their next urgent anti-discrimination priority: fat chicks.

You’ve read a couple books where fat girls get to be loved in the real world, and that’s wonderful, but fat girls don’t get whisked away into alternate worlds and told they’re a long lost princess. Fat girls don’t get to see the magical underside of New York City. Fat girls don’t save planets.

It’s an interesting dichotomy. Many, if not most, fantasy writers are fat women, but fat women are apparently discriminating against fat women in their books, either because they are a) self-hating or b) subject to a false consciousness instilled by Society and The Patriarchy.

I’m going to guess that our intrepid champions of the overfed and underprivileged are going to go with option (b). But if the literary world shortchanges the big-bottomed woman, at least they can be assured that the rock world appreciates them. Talk about a LOT of bass!

Yeah, it’s not Latin at all

It’s always amusing how the midwits at File 770 are locked into the position that everything I do must, by definition, be stupid, evil, and wrong. A couple of them are still striking poses about the title of Opera Vita Aeterna:

No, that’s not how medieval Latin worked. It still had grammar!

That title is crap Latin whether it is supposed to be Classical or Medieval Latin.

You can’t just write out strings of straight dictionary words of Latin and hope they mean what you want them to.

The change from Classical Latin to Medieval Latin was a little more like taking this:

    To be, or not to be–that is the question:

And making this:

    It’s a question of being or not being.

That Beale title is more the equivalent of

    Is! Is! Negate! Is! Yonder! Query!

Actually, it’s not Latin at all. I don’t speak Latin. I speak Italian. And it’s not actually proper Italian either, which would be Un’opera della vita eterna, but in the hallowed tradition of my fallen intellectual hero, Umberto Eco, I abbreviated it, then added an extra A to give it a Latinate flavor. I not only didn’t “just write out strings of straight dictionary words”, I didn’t use a dictionary at all.

Now, if the File 770ers were genuinely familiar with my writing, or were doing anything more than posturing and virtue-signaling, they would have criticized my bad Latin in Summa Elvetica, where I did actually write in what is actually supposed to be Latin.

Praeterea, homo in Die Sexto creatus sunt. In ordine naturae qui in narratione Creationis descriptus, perfectius praestat. Ergo homo est perfectior quam aelvi. Tum, perfectissima res animae estseparatio ab corpore, quod in illa re similior Dei angelorumque, et purior, quod separatur ab ulla aliena substantia. Quandoquidem non aeque perfecti atque homines, aelvi ulterius quam homines ab perfectissima re animae. Ergo aelvi habent animae naturaliter sibi unita.

I would, of course, welcome any grammatical corrections they might suggest and will be happy to add them to the novel should they be able to provide any.

You can always tell a midwit, because he’s always in a hurry to show everyone how smart he isn’t.

On editing

The SF-SJWs at File 770 are appalled at the fact that Tor Books and Castalia House author John C. Wright is willing to go on the record and state that,
in his opinion, I am a better editor than the late, Hugo Award-winning editor
David Hartwell:

These are the recommendations of my editor,
Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the most hated man in Science Fiction, but
certainly the best editor I have had the pleasure to work with.
– John C. Wright

Charming. Take this and go home, David Hartwell, as we would say in Italy.
– Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on February 17, 2016 at 3:51 am

JCW is a writer convinced that his every work is a glittering jewel of
exquisite literary craftsmanship. VD is an editor who doesn’t meddle
with his writers’ texts. (For an example of this, see “Shakedown Cruise”
in Riding the Red Horse, where Campbell nominee Rolf Nelson makes
*ahem* many interesting and innovative aesthetic choices when it comes
to things like verb tenses and punctuation, and VD lets them all stand.)

That
sort of writer is bound to get on well with that sort of editor. Bit
rough on the readers, of course, but, pffft, what do they know?
– Steve Wright on February 17, 2016

I suspect that what he was good at was being edited by David Hartwell.
– Peter J on February 17, 2016

JCW,
while styling himself as a coldly-rational intellectual, reveals that
he’s actually a fool whose opinions are driven entirely by ignorance,
arrogance, and emotion. Every thing he’s written over the last year has
made it very apparent just how much his career is owed to the efforts of
the editors at Tor who transformed his usual drivel into something
coherent.
– Aaron on February 17, 2016

It is hard to decide whether I am more flattered by the estimable Mr. Wright’s high regard or amused by the level of ignorance demonstrated by the usual suspects. The former, I am finally forced to conclude, as I have come to expect the latter from the low-IQ denizens of an otherwise very good site.

You see, I have perspective that they do not. Unlike them, I have seen Mr. Wright’s unedited prose. I know exactly what it looks like. And as it happens, it looks very much like the prose that appears in Mr. Wright’s novels that are published by Tor Books. John is an excellent writer; he is one of the greatest SF/F writers alive. But he writes very, very quickly and he is prone to what one might describe as an exuberant approach to writing. Last year, Castalia House offered him a contract for a 60k-word book. I am now reading the manuscript, which clocks in at nearly 200k words.

Even those authors who don’t like Mr. Wright or his style might well contemplate suicide if they truly understood how speedily and effortlessly the man writes… and writes well. When I say he is a great writer, I do not do so lightly, nor do I do so because I am fortunate enough to publish some of his works. I say it out of pure envy and awe.

Now, I am not privy to the details of the editing process at Tor Books. I have not discussed it with Mr. Wright or anyone else. But it would not have surprised me in the slightest to learn that it frequently consists of sending the manuscript directly to the proofreaders, correcting any infelicities of grammar and typos, then publishing the book without any real editorial activity at all. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that David Hartwell had not even read all of the books that he “edited” either.

As Castalia House authors know, I either edit a book or I decline to edit it. If I edit it, I decide whether I will apply a scalpel or a machete to the text. In the case of certain authors, I ask them if they would prefer a scalpel or a machete, and honor their preference even if I think it is mistaken. In one recent case, I removed one-third of the manuscript’s word count. In another case, I had the author cut out more than 20,000 words. I suspect that I have excised more words from a single novella by John C. Wright than Mr. Hartwell did from Mr. Wright’s entire oeuvre. So, not only do I “meddle in my writers’ texts”, I do so much more heavily than the average editor does.

The mistake that these File 770 commenters are making is thinking that one can reasonably judge the quality of an editor’s work by the final product. You cannot. You can only judge it by comparing the submitted draft of the manuscript to the final product. For example, my
book The World in Shadow is a MUCH better book than The War in
Heaven. It is better in every way. But the editor at Pocket Books did a brilliant job on The War
in Heaven, because the first draft was a disaster and she made me
rewrite the entire book twice, with lots of hands-on advice and examples.

But she did nothing on The World in Shadow, she did literally nothing. Her entire
editing process consisted of telling me that the book was good to go as submitted. The published book is nearly word-for-word identical to my submitted manuscript, so much so that we were later able to create the ebook from the unedited submission.

It is true, for example, that Rolf Nelson takes a uniquely creative approach to verb tenses and punctuation, but it is very, very far from the truth to claim that I let them all stand. Why do we publish him, then? Because Rolf is an excellent storyteller, and if you are more interested in grammar than story and characterization, then you are not part of Castalia House’s target market. Literary style is only one of the four major aspects of writing; one of the reasons that Castalia House exists is because the mainstream publishing houses have become overly obsessed with style and ideology at the expense of story, characters, and ideas.

And I will go so far as to say this: I am a much better editor than whoever is supposed to be editing George RR Martin’s books. Had I been the editor, A Dance with Dragons would have been 700 pages shorter and it would have been considerably more enjoyable.

UPDATE: It appears my surmise about the extent to which Mr. Wright’s books were edited at Tor Books was correct, as per L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright

Just in case anyone wondered: John has tremendous respect for Mr. Hartwell, whom he admired, appreciated working with, and liked as a person. But Mr. Hartwell almost never made any changes to John’s manuscripts.

Mailvox: a brief lesson in mainstream publishing

Dave doesn’t understand how publishing works:

Why didn’t those same gatekeepers that kept your books from being published disallow the contract offer from the start? How dysfunctional are these publishers that one entity signs you to a book contract but another doesn’t allow anything to be published. Did they sign you with the intention to convince you to write something that would be acceptable to the gatekeepers?

  1. Because they didn’t know about it.
  2. More dysfunctional than you would believe. 
  3. No.

It’s pretty simple. Editors have a good deal of leeway. The vice-presidents, vice-publishers, and marketing executives very seldom know much about the books that are being signed. They won’t have seen the book because it hasn’t been written yet, so all they know is what the editor, who is the internal champion of the author and the book, tells them.

The usual process was this:

  • Editor runs across one of my books or the blog.
  • Editor reads the book, reads a little of the blog, and contacts me.
  • At editor’s request, I come up with a book concept.
  • Editor likes concept, offers book deal.
  • Book deal proceeds, up to and including contract signing.
  • Female director of marketing is asked for input, googles me, throws hissy fit and insists that the project be canceled due to my being “too controversial”.

After this happened for the third time in a row, I stopped talking to mainstream publishers. When I am approached by an editor – which has mostly stopped now that they are all familiar with Castalia House – I just tell them that I am not interested in mainstream publication. For me, at any rate, it’s a complete waste of time, especially since the rising percentage of SJWs at the editorial level means that the number of left-wing gatekeepers is increasing.

And I suspect most authors who lean to the right are gradually going to come to reach the same conclusion that Mr. Cole and I have, especially as the bookstores continue to die off.

The SF gatekeepers strike again

Both Sarah Hoyt and I have previously written about the ideological gatekeepers in publishing, a situation that has persisted for at least 20 years and has continually gotten worse over time. The SJWs in science fiction deny it,of course, and they’ve been able to get away with doing so because most authors are afraid to talk for fear of their careers being destroyed.

But the ability to publish independently is eliminating that fear:

I launched a book this week and I went Indie with it. Indie means I released it on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. I had to. My Publisher, HarperVoyager, refused to publish it because of some of the ideas I wrote about in it. In other words, they were attempting to effectively ban a book because they felt the ideas and concepts I was writing about were dangerous and more importantly, not in keeping with their philosophical ideals. They felt my ideas weren’t socially acceptable and were “guaranteed to lose fifty percent of my audience” as related back to me by my agent. But more importantly… they were “deeply offended”….

apparently advancing the thought that a brand new life form might see
us, humanity, as dangerous because we terminate our young, apparently…
that’s a ThoughtCrime most heinous over at Harper Collins. Even for one
tiny little chapter.

Here’s what happened next. I was not given notes as writers are
typically given during the editorial process. I was told by my agent
that my editor was upset and “deeply offended” that I had even dared
advanced this idea. As though I had no right to have such a thought or
even game the idea within a science fiction universe. I was immediately
removed from the publication schedule which as far as I know is odd and
unprecedented, especially for an author who has had both critical and
commercial success. This, being removed from the production schedule,
happened before my agent had even communicated the editor’s demand that I
immediately change the offending chapter to something more “socially”
(read “progressive”) acceptable. That seemed odd. How could they
possibly have known that I would or would not change it? It seems
reasonable to ask first. And stating that I would lose fifty percent of
my readers if I wrote what I wrote, well, they never seem to mind, or
worry about losing readers, when other writers publish their
progressive-oriented personal agendas on modern morality when they’re on
the “right side” of history regarding the anti-religion, gender and
sexuality issues.

They don’t worry about those issues because they’re
deemed important, especially when they’re ham-handedly jammed into the
framework of the story. They must deem it a public service, especially
if there is a corresponding Social Justice outcry. It’s for the “greater
good” and the critics are just bigots anyways. Isn’t that what they
always say? That anyone else who doesn’t think the way they do is just a
bigot and a phobic of some kind. What a boorish way to dismiss a
counter-viewpoint. Thinking like that made the concentration camps
possible. So, maybe they were so upset by what I’d written they forgot
to be professional? They merely demanded that I rewrite that chapter not
because it was poorly written, or, not supportive of the arc of the
novel. No, they demanded it be struck from the record because they hate
the idea I’d advanced. They demanded it be deleted without discussion.
They felt it was for… the “greater good.” That is censorship, and a
violation of everyone’s right to free speech. They demanded it be so or
else… I wouldn’t be published.

That’s how they threatened a writer with a
signed contract.

I refused.
I am a writer.
No. One. Will Ever. Bully. Me.
Ever.

I’ve had four – FOUR – book contracts either paid off or canceled myself because a gatekeeper inside the publishing house disliked the ideological content of a book that the editor had wanted to sign. In fairness, this hasn’t always been an SJW gatekeeper, as Media Whores was killed by a conservative publishing house after they learned that I was not solely targeting the left-wing media whores, but had written a chapter on Bill O’Reilly.

But in three out of the four cases, it was an SJW playing thought police. Publishing, as an industry, has largely been converged, which is why so much of it is so unreadable these days. They are genuinely less interested in selling books and making money than advancing their social justice cause.

The shortchanging of House Hufflepuff

In which one of the non-quidditch related shortcomings of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series is explained:

    For instance, Slytherin
    Took only pure-blood wizards
    Of great cunning, just like him,
    And those of sharpest mind
    Were taught by Ravenclaw
    While the bravest and the boldest
    Went to daring Gryffindor.
    Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest,
    And taught them all she knew,
    Thus the Houses and their founders
    Retained friendships firm and true.
…

“She took the rest”

“She took the rest”

Okay. So maybe Hufflepuff doesn’t pick students with dependable, useful, non-flashy but underrated qualities. Apparently, Hufflepuff just takes the rejects.

Yeah.

We’ve hit, by the way, on the biggest flaw of Rowling’s House system. She pays lip service to people overcoming the expectations set by the house they’re sorted in, but in reality characters who are part of Slytherin are evil, characters who are in Gryffindor are good, and the middle two houses don’t matter. Rowling at least has the decency to add in Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw and one of the series’ most interesting and beloved characters, but in Hufflepuff…well, there’s Tonks. Except that we’re never actually told Tonks is a Hufflepuff until after the series is over. And let’s not even get into all of the problems with Rowling’s portrayal of Slytherin House.

I could never figure out what Hermione was doing in Gryffindor when she was an obvious Ravensclaw. I mean, being intelligent and studious to the point of being annoying about it was the primary aspect of her personality.

But as I pointed out many years ago, Rowling isn’t any good with coherent plots or worldbuilding; nearly everything about Harry Potter is entirely nonsensical. What she’s good at is creating vivid characters and appealing to the lowest common denominator in children. And that, quite frankly, is a considerably more valuable skill than mere logic or literary talent.

Mailvox: leadership is socio-sexual

CD wonders about how socio-sexuality relates to politics:

I read an interesting article recently. It was in Politico, but the basis seems sound)

Putting that together with the various “game” categories you use, it looks to me like there may be a built-in dynamic for people.  When things get really bad, the deltas naturally turn to an alpha who seems to have the right ideas.  It looks like that may have been triggered in the US.

On a slightly different topic, I have been trying to determine the relative percentages of deltas, betas, and alphas.  By gender, since I think the percentages differ.  (I ignore sigmas, since the percentage is so low, and gammas since — who cares?)  I have some rough numbers from personal experience, but I haven’t been able to find any research which sheds light on this.  Are you aware of any?

There is no way that socio-sexuality doesn’t affect politics. It affects every aspect of human endeavor, and it is a much more reliable predictive model than nearly any form of psychology I’ve ever encountered.

But you can’t ignore Gammas, in fact, I have constructed a literary theory of socio-sexuality which Delta Man’s has applied to the Gammas that explains a considerable amount of how science fiction has devolved over the years.

As for research, considering that I expanded the concept and articulated some of the various socio-sexual ranks, I can say with certainty that absolutely zero academic research on the topic has been done. But there will be, because it actually works, not only to explain, but predict.

I’ll be posting it at Alpha Game later this week, but it was remarkable how much Delta Man’s Gamma model correctly anticipated Naomi Novik’s book Uprooted, which is one of the leading contenders for this year’s Hugo Best Novel. Now, Novik is a woman, not a Gamma, but either what applies to Gammas can be applied to women or Novik is following the Gamma lead in her books.

Of course, she’s also married to a writer, so… regardless, it is really remarkable how the model can be used to correctly predict not only the behavior, but even the hair color, of the women encountered by the male protagonist.