Friday the 13th!

Yes, it's Friday the Thirteenth!  You know what that means!

No.  Not that.

Or that.

Sheesh, some people...

No, every Friday the Thirteenth, I knock the price on Perchance to Scream down to 99 cents!

Get it while it's hot!

Awesome gun control essay by Ivan Throne

Ivan Throne:  How School Shootings are Destroying the Left


https://darktriadman.com/2018/03/08/how-school-shootings-are-destroying-the-left/ "I tell you that if you bear love for your children, and for the people of the United States and their future, it is a foul and putrid repudiation of that love to prevent their schools and churches being hardened by armed men willing to defend them with lethal force."

The Star Wars that Should Have Been

The incomparable John C. Wright pens a review of the Star Wars sequel the fans wish had been made...

The twin errors any sequel in any genre must avoid are these: first, the sequel must not violate or overturn anything established in the original, including taking care to continue with themes, story elements, characters and backdrops the audience expects; second, the sequel must not cling too closely to the original, nor be content merely to repeat story elements.

You cannot simply have the rebels still fighting the selfsame Empire they defeated in the last movie blowing up yet another iteration of the Death Star. That would be ridiculous! 

...It is something of a paradox, since the audience wants the same story that they liked the first time, but not done in the same way.

The cleverest and most satisfying way I have ever seen a writer answer this paradox was E.E. Doc Smith, when he opened GRAY LENSMAN with the startling revelation that the villainous space pirate king, Helmuth, slain in climactic combat at the end of GALACTIC PATROL, was himself merely an agent of a larger, deeper, darker group.

Now, of course, this tradition is not new to EE Smith. Beowulf, after slaying Grendel in the golden hall of Hereot, is permitted no long rest, but must descend into an accursed swamp to fight Grendel’s Mother, a monstrous hag tougher than the first monster.

In this way, the hero, or the hero’s heirs or disciples, is, in effect, fighting for the same cause and against the same foe, but the significance of the first victory is not diminished. Instead, the scope is larger, and the battlefield gets bigger.

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The Publishing Industry

Jon Del Arroz explains--probably a lot better than I ever could--why I chose to focus on self-publishing instead of trying to get in with big major publishers.  This is in regards to a memo DC comics sent out to their employees and freelancers regarding what was "okay" to say on social media.

Of course some people's mean spirited speech will be more equal than others.

DC wouldn't hire me in a million years, because I don't toe a company line, I am an independent thinker, and they don't allow those in t he comic industry. It'll be interesting to see how it goes later this year when my The Ember War adaptation hits amazon. If/when that sells well, what then?

Even a smaller publisher like Angry Robot doesn't care about anything other than their political signaling. They didn't even dignify me with a response when I emailed Mike Underwood about The Stars Entwined, which I'll be putting out March 20th. Of course, I'm blocked by him on twitter -- despite sharing a drink with him at a convention several years ago. It's all about the political signaling, even if I outsell the vast majority of their titles already...

This is why it's imperative to build your own platform if you want to have any semblance of free speech. You can't do it through these companies, they'll never let you. They hate you at the end of the day, and this is how they begin to show it.

"Build your own platform."  Excellent advice, and definitely worth listening to.

Vox Day commented on the same memo, and nailed down the problem; as usual, "what's okay for me is not okay for thee."

This is why SJWs always prefer nebulous Codes of Conduct and Community Police to clear, objective guidelines that can be impartially applied. You see, the "rules" are supposed to be applied only to those who violate the Narrative, while allowing complete freedom of action to the SJWs.

As a non-leftist, free speech and anti-censorship, straight white male, who has written for Lew Rockwell and works at the Mises Institute, I'm fairly well convinced that anything I did try to submit to the big publishing houses would hit the round file faster than you can say "censored."  I will continue to follow the advice of Jon and Vox and grow my own platform.

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Excellent Article: "Together or Separately" by Brian Niemeier

Brian predicts what Dr. Jordan Peterson likely has in store:

They know that further debate is useless--not that they ever meant to beat him in a good-faith contest of ideas; rather they tried and failed to trip him up. So they're trotting out the tactic that's been their go-to gambit since #GamerGate: make vague, unsubstantiated claims of harassment, blame Peterson's fans, and smear him by association. His continued presence is a painful reminder of their humiliation, so the game now is to get him de-platformed and disemployed.

The article is full of excellent advice. 

Crowdfunding Comic Books

Check out the new Freestartr campaign.  Comic artist Will Caligan lost his job due to SJW attack, and this crowdfunding operation is to help him out.






...and wow.  Not even three hours in, and the original $7500 target has been reached.

The Murder of the Sword and Sorcery Genre

Jim Fear makes some excellent points.

Nobody who doesn't really care about your pet issue is going to think it's anything but you preaching, and that isn't what they came to sword & sorcery for. They came here to watch good guys bash bad guys (or at least reasonably okay guys bash bad guys), airship pirates conducting daring raids, wizards of vast and deadly power hurl spells, monstrous creatures eating people, underwater kingdoms threatened by ancient evil, unthinkably valuable artifacts stolen by intrepid thieves, and on and on the list goes of things you could be doing rather than putting people to sleep with your boring message fiction that seems to be trying to take up the majority of fantasy literature these days.

I've said something similar in the past; if your story is more focused on "the message" than "the plot," then you are preaching instead of telling a story.  And the only people who don't mind being preached at are the already converted--to whom preaching is a total waste of time anyway.

Looking forward to Arkhaven!

As a long-time comic book fan--heck, I can remember when the entire X-Men team was made up of five white teenagers and their bald mentor--I'm definitely looking forward to Castalia House's new comic book imprint.  They've got scads of comics raring to go, starting with Quantum Mortis and expanding from there.  Check them out!

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Worldcon: Arroz is in good company

Jon Del Arroz discovers there is a historical precedent set by Worldcon to ban people they didn't want speaking.

The Futurians were kicked out of the first Worldcon because organizers feared that they would distribute communist propaganda. The group included a number of luminaries including Asimov and Pohl.

Because  of their fear of not Asimov hurting anyone...but spreading political ideas that they found too dangerous for the times...WorldCon banned Isaac Asimov.

The implication is clear. The elites in science fiction believe I have the potential to be the next Asimov. They want to ensure I’m deplatformed as much as possible because they fear the influence I’ll have politically to change their stodgy, outdated culture, which would change science fiction into something that’s thriving and fun. In the process, they’d lose their control over the kinds of stories that are published.

...that's the kicker, isn't it?  Somehow, it always comes back to the gatekeepers.

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Retro-Rocket Review: The Funniest Star Trek Novel Ever

I have been reading aloud to my kids for more nights than I can count.  We started bedtime books when the eldest was nine...and that kid now has a PHD.  We still do bedtime books now, when the youngest is 12.  We have read the Narnia books, and the Tolkien books, back-to-back-to-back, and with the possible exception of some of the Percy Jackson books and two or three of the Myth Inc. books, none of them has had my kids rolling on the floor as much as How Much for Just the Planet.

Think about it.  Federation prospector ship and Klingon battle-cruiser discover a huge deposit of dilithium on a planet, simultaneously.  The Federation crew is forced to abandon ship, sending it on to contact the Enterprise.  However...the ship's computer is malfunctioning, and as the escape pod leaves the ship, the food replicator begins spewing out an unstoppable flood of peppermint milk shake.

It only gets weirder from there.

Then, when both the Enterprise and the Klingon cruiser Fire Blossom arrive to negotiate for the rights to the dilithium, the natives decide to make their point...musically.  The book reads like a Gilbert and Sullivan musical, with the crews of both ships being dragged along on one misadventure after another.

Fun, laid back, refuses to take itself seriously.  

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Worldcon Ejects Arroz

That's right, the World Science Fiction Convention committee has decided to "downgrade" the membership of writer Jon Del Arroz from the "attending" level to the "supporting" level.  This comes across as censorship, since Jon has been critical of the industry, and the fact that he's a Hispanic writer speaks volumes also.

In slightly related news, there will be a new set of awards to be handed out around the same time as this year's Worldcon.

UPDATE:  PJ Media has picked up the story.

"With Worldcon's statements about 'intent' to violate their rules, and failure to specify rules, this is a clear targeting over my politics because I'm a vocal Christian and Hispanic Trump supporter," says Del Arroz. "The left claims I should be banned for controversial political opinions, but the only opinion I espouse on a regular basis is that artists should not be blackballed for their politics. That shouldn't be a controversial topic. It is imperative that artists be free from fear of retaliation of their industry in order that they might create great works of art. This is the ultimate free speech issue."