Christian

On 6/29/2021 at 2:36 PM, Lou K said:

It's cozy. Nice yard. Shooting range you say?

You looking for a shooting range, Lou?

They opened one on this side road behind where my family live in Holly.

It’s in the backyard of this house. 
The house is really nice. An older house. Julie and I were looking in to, maybe, buying the house at one time before the people with the shooting range bought it; but it was way out of a proletarian price range.

Also of interest, at the end of this side road (and it’s an unpaved road, you know), there’s this really creepy house…er well, mobile home, I guess. They have all these motion detector lights and anytime you drive to the end of the road, someone always comes out of the house to watch you and make sure you leave, even if it’s fuckin’ 2 in the morning. 
We’re pretty sure it’s either a Right-Wing militia, a meth dealer, or a cult.

If the fuckin’ border ever opens again, I’d invite you to come up there, if you wanted. 
Shoot some guns, take you on a tour of the swamp, show you where a militia live. That’s a fucking Michigan Summer! 
Maybe Florida too, but probably not as hot as Florida.

You’d have to bring your own guns. Pacifist, you know, so I don’t own any, myself. 

Yep. One of the worst influences on the horror genre (there are worse writers, but his popularity makes his influence more adverse). Plus (outside of a few early novels), they’re too overly-long and verbose to be quick, fun reads. He badly needs an editor to edit his five-hundred pages of drivel down to a succinct two-hundred pages of averageness. 
I do enjoy a few of his short stories, which I feel aspire to something a bit more than simple pop entertainment. Even then, a majority of his short fiction is tripe.

The best horror shows us the bleakness at the heart of this world and lets us know it is unsalvageable. 
If I’m not laid out in a state of depression at the end of a horror story, it’s not worth the time.

Thankfully, horror fiction seems to have begun to outgrow the King influence in recent years, with genre writers entering the field who have actually read fiction outside of the pulp horror genre ghetto. 
Unfortunately, we now have his mostly talentless son in the field now to continue the King legacy for many more years.

Yeah. I was going to point out that one as not qualitatively different than King’s other novels.

Roadwork is superior to King’s novels, but it is The Running Man I consider his best book. The other two other original ones I don’t consider that impressive.

I don’t think the guy has a split-personality, but technically true!

It’s something I’ve pointed out to conservatives who like to point out how evil the Left-Wing French Revolution (which was applauded by the majority of those same “founding fathers”, I might add) and Communist Revolution in Russia compared to the civilized and moral “good war” of the American Revolution. 
It’s simply not true.  
While the excesses of the French Revolution or Soviet Russia were certainly extreme as compared to the more moderate American Revolution, the conservative’s idea about a “polite revolution” in the United States, setting it apart from the violence of the French Revolution or Communist Revolution, is simply propagandistic.

(The same can be said of the American Civil War and actions shown by the supposed morally superior Union. Which isn’t to deny the true morality of opposing the vilest evil of slavery.)

While the aims of all those causes may be good and just, the means of using violence in order to accomplish any goals (even the most worthy) will always lead to immorality. 
Only those who refuse to resort to violence in support of any cause, and especially those causes they believe in the most, can be judged in the end to have lived a truly virtuous and just life. 
Anyone can kill me, they can take my property, but they can never force me to kill. In that, I am always Free.

The fact that the victorious American settlers would then go about a systemic genocidal campaign in order to steal the property of the Native populations is, of course, even more grossly ignored. 
To the Native people, this “American revolution” becomes every bit as horrible and bloody as, at least, the French Revolution if not also the Bolshevik slaughterhouse.

Here in Canada, the largest scandal of the day is the revelation of mass graves found at the historical government-run residential schools. 
The Canadian authorities took children away from Indigenous families to be raised at these schools, where they could learn to be “European people”. 
Their families never found out what happened to most of these children. 
So many of them died and were buried in unmarked graves. 
The horror of not simply losing property, but losing your children, and even never knowing what happened to them, is inexcusable.

The seeming lonely sanity of Samuel Johnson at the time stands out as the only appropriate response to the North American colonies:
He wrote, “The British and French governments are the first two governments in all of history which have legalized thievery.”

Ah yes…like the “alien internment camps” set up for Japanese-Americans in the United States. Where citizens were sent quite legally!

I guess quite a few of these people lived on quite lucrative land out in the western United States, which white folk with money were able to get their hands on while the Japanese-American tenants were kept in the camps.

It’s believed by many that the internment policy’s support had more to do with gaining access to this land cheap, moreso than even racism related to war scaremongering.

Oh, I can see enough of a property bubble here in Canada, thank you very much.

I’m not sure if Canada is now the #1 overpriced market in the world, or if NZ is still beating the insanity in this country, and Canada is at a measly second place.

It is, indeed, the good life.

Here’s to the coming next economic meltdown. Cheers!

I grew up with a swamp in my backyard.

They are discussing using eminent domain to soon buy up all the properties on the street where I grew up so that they can turn it in to another retail sector.

We need to be like the guy in that Stephen King novel Roadwork.

As if the city needs another damn Wal-Mart or McDonald’s.

Avaunt does spam!

I see someone finally took notice of the fact that the Baen Books’ internet forum has become a meeting place for the alt-Right.

Eric Flint has posted a rebuttal.  
While I’m not opposed to the spirit of some of Flint’s pleas to the Left, the fact that it is nothing except an apologia for Baen Books’ appealing to the alt-Right is troubling.

Like I agree with Flint about “terrorism laws”, but I have no sympathy for those on the Right whining about terrorism laws now. 
A Muslim man drives a car in to civilians…”Islamic terrorism! Muslims are the enemy of civilization!”. A racist white guy drives a car in to civilians…”Oh, it’s not terrorism! It was just a guy having a bad day. It could happen to any of us!”. 
Not to mention the Right whining about how Black Lives Matter and Antifa should be on the domestic terrorist lists just a year ago. 
Yeah. Talk about disingenuous and hypocritical.

I’m pretty sure that Baen solely keeps Eric Flint around due to plausible deniability.

Everytime something like this occurs, Flint is trotted out to give his speech about how he is a Socialist and Baen publishes his fiction.

The last time they trotted the guy out to make a statement was the stupid “sad puppies” controversy.

Baen obviously markets itself as the publisher that will publish the Right-Wing sci-fi books that other publishers won’t touch…you know, because of the fact that most editors are concerned with the quality of writing and not simply how well a novel would “fit with 1950s-style genre conventions”.

Funny how these types continually rail against individuals being given a chance (in their opinion) “solely because of identity politics”, yet these “best of the breed” pure-blood white males think that publishers shouldn’t be allowed to publish books based on the quality of prose or characterization due to discrimination!  
“Where’s the affirmative action for those who want to write books for a living but can’t actually write?! Huh?”.

The fact remains that, regardless of Flint being a Socialist, a large number of Baen’s core roster of full-time authors in the present day are Trump supporters.

It’s especially funny when he trots out some of his veteran friends from the sci-fi field in an attempt to bolster his cause…such as David Drake. 
Sure, the guy is a Conservative and militarist, but he refused to vote for Trump! Well, thanks for showing the breath of Baen’s diversity, Flint…especially since Drake has been published by Baen since the 1980s anyway. It seems if you are a new writer wanting to be published by Baen, you better have a MAGA hat to get in the door. 
Drake is probably pissed. “Thanks for blowing my cover, Eric. Now the Baen fans are going to stop reading my book because I’m a mainstream Republican, instead of far Right! No, wait. That Biden guy, he sure did steal that election from our guy, huh? Keep buying my books!”.

There was a time when Jim Baen ran Baen Books as a typical specialty publisher and would even publish books by a flaming feminist like Joanna Russ (even though Jim Baen hated her fiction, he realized Russ could write). Jim Baen’s been dead for years though and those days were a long time ago.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this fact about Baen Books. That’s simply Baen’s publishing model, and it is successful.

What is problematic is that alt-Right people have gotten together on the Baen Books’ Internet forum to bond over their white supremacist and fascist fantasies.

The forum is a hotbed for talk of violence. Eric Flint downplays it as “masturbatory”, but in a current political situation where unhinged lunatics convinced that their failings in life are caused by “minorities”  are willing to use violence, having an internet forum where the users are posting encouragingly about the “coming next American civil war” cannot be simply brushed off as empty talk.

Eric Flint certainly isn’t helping matters by going online to talk about the “bias” being shown by these people who are calling for boycotts of Baen’s presence at sci-fi conventions due to the content of their internet forum.

The organizing has already been successful, as one sci-fi convention canceled Baen’s representation as a guest at their convention. They released a statement that after reviewing the Baen Books internet forum, they saw countless instances of appeals to violence and hate, and they don’t want to encourage this in the sci-fi community.

What do you know. The book is pertinent to recent events, after all.
Odin:”We’re going to build a wall around Asgard. It’s going to be a beautiful wall. It’s going to keep out some real bad hombres. We are going to get the Jotunns to build us this wall, but we aren’t going to pay them for it. They say they can complete it in just one season. Loki’s got a genius idea.”

Al Ewing’s next series for Marvel has been announced. He’ll be finishing Immortal Hulk soon. 
His next book will be Defenders. It’s a book that Ewing has shown interest in the past. Ewing writing Dr. Strange is always a plus…even if Dr. Strange is apparently going to die in September.
The only other character confirmed for the team is the Masked Rider, which was Marvel’s first western character introduced during 1939, a character that Ewing fleshed out in the Marvel Comics #1,000 special.
Ewing will still continue to write SWORD.

True, but he hasn’t written a lot of novels either; outside of the Viriconium stuff, which are quite good for what they are, but were still early in his career.

Some of his short fiction from that time was easily superior to his Viriconium novels.

His first two novels (The Committed Men and The Centauri Device) were quite nice, and I would recommend reading them, as they do stand out as quite nihilistic and dark in the very New Wave-manner, but are obviously the work of a young writer discovering his voice.

Which just leaves the Light trilogy for the other “mature” novels, which are not really my thing.

Course of the Heart was very much my pick for the best by Harrison, but I’ll have to decide about his new novel.

Oh. Interesting theory. Maybe.

Like that his father’s name is really Thomas?

I was finally able to acquire M. John Harrison’s new novel, The Sunken Lands Begin to Rise Again. It was only just released over here.

Hopefully, it will be better than the last William Gibson novel I read…The Peripheral…as far as a new book by an older classic genre author.  
That book was just plain sad*. It read like a Whitley Streiber science fiction novel. Don’t get me wrong, I love Streiber, but you know what to expect from Streiber’s fiction, and don’t expect Gibson’s fiction to be on that same level.

*The back cover sounded like a good book. I wish I had just read the back cover.

I’m sure I have nothing to worry about though, because:

1.)Harrison was always able to write circles around Gibson’s prose.

2.)I’m pretty sure Gibson wrote that book with the express purpose of hoping to get it picked up as a film.

Harrison’s new novel is broadly about “Brexit”, but it doesn’t overtly feature “Brexit”. It seems to be close to a non-genre work.

Odin hanging himself from Yggdrasil for nine days is also in the Poetic Edda.

He sacrifices himself to himself in order to acquire the Runes. Then, later, he rips out his own eye in order to gain the power of second sight.

Well, Loki needs to be introduced. It’s simply not worth it unless you get Thor and Loki making fun of Odin for acting like a “girly man” by learning “shamanism”.

Plus, it would also be great to have a plot point where Loki dresses up like a female horse (I mean, he shape-shifts in the original story, but if they’re trying to make things more realistic) and gets raped by the Jotun’s horse.

Loki still has to acquire Odin’s spear, Gungnir, from the dwarves.

Wait until he rips out his own eye to gain more magical knowledge*.

Have Thor and Loki made fun of him for practising “shamanism” yet, as “shamanism” was associated with the feminine in old Norse tradition?

*Probably can’t ever be as trippy as the Marvel story where Odin’s eye became its own character, mind:

Not really, no. He mostly writes military sci-fi crap. I haven’t read a lot by him, there might be a few things he wrote I would enjoy. Nothing I’ve seen though. I’m not going out of my way to find out…at least not when I’ve still got another hundred books by Reynolds to discover (ha, ha). 
No, but I have better things to read.

The fact that he named one of his survivalist hero characters after William Quantrill, who formed a gang to hunt down escaped slaves in the pre-Civil War south, doesn’t really endear the guy to me either.

I think Niven being associated with Dangerous Visions was why people might have mistaken him for anything other than a hard sci-fi restorationist.

Another thing I never understood is why editors chose Dean Ing to finish Reynolds’ uncompleted novels after his death. Ing is buddies with Pournelle, it seemed like an odd fit.

I’ve only read one of the posthumous Reynolds books (Home Sweet Home: 2010 AD*), and it read fine. It didn’t suddenly end with Rambo telling everyone to vote for Reagan or end up speaking Russian tomorrow, or anything like that. I can’t speak to the quality of any of the other one Ing completed.
 

*It’s about the Apache declaring independence from the US.

He was published in Analog too much for them, maybe?

They were allowed to admit to reading Philip Dick and Brian Aldiss from the ‘50s also, surely.

OK, time to take a break from high-brow literature and international fiction.

Time to read a nice vintage pulp sci-fi novel by Mack Reynolds I picked up used for just 3 bucks. Let’s see…The Time Gladiators? Why, that sounds like something I’d hate to try to read, considering that I find action scenes in fiction nearly unreadable.

Ha! I love it! This novel could truly be classified as “subversive”, I’d say. 
I mean, I know Mack Reynolds. I’ve read lots of novels by him, but he always seems to have lots more, even though he’s been dead since the 1980s. How is that even possible? 
Usually, I choose novels by Reynolds that are written with a political message pretty clearly delineated. 
Some of the novels are quite good.

See, mom is never going to buy little Jimmy the book called “Black Man’s Burden” or the one with the crucified corporate CEO on the cover.

This one though, is just hilarious. I can imagine some kid during the early-‘60s seeing this mass-market paperback on a spinner rack. “Time travelling gladiators? Buy me this one, mom!”. Mom, a red-blooded suburban American none the wiser, not realizing she was buying far Left propaganda for little Billy, who just wanted to read some mindless violence.

Oh no! While the novel starts off mundane enough…a future world where the Cold War still dominates…potential nuclear war has made an actual war too dangerous, so international incidents are settled at the world court, where the champion warriors chosen by each side fight in the arena.

Then…a world map taken straight from George Orwell…an America based on Huxley’s Brave New World…hmm…

Suddenly…what the hell? Characters are having in-depth discussions about corporatism, “new class” economic theories straight from a C. Wright Mills book, technocracy, the difference between Trotskyism and Stalinism…

Dear lord! What is this going to do to Jimmy’s brain? How can little Jimmy be inculcated with the American dream and love of Capitalism when he’s shown the way the system really works? 
All he wanted was to read about glorification of blood and violence!

Now he’s going to go out and smoke a reefer, sleep with a bunch of hippie chicks, and try to smash the system!

And that’s the origin story for Abbie Hoffman.

It sounds perfect, like a John Constantine team-up with Mercury.

He can be bitter and moan about how horrible life is, she can try to cheer him up with talk of rainbows and puppies. He’ll tell her, “Sod off!”. She’ll cry about how John doesn’t understand that life is only dark if you don’t ever allow yourself to see the light. John’ll get drunk in a seedy pub and think about how much he hates himself for hurting her, and decide to find her and tell her he’ll try to do better; only to start the vicious cycle again.

The name is usually given as Surt in English. The actual name is Surtr, from Norse.  
Surtur is more a Marvel Universe version.

I’m reading Song of Synth by Seb Doubinsky, a Cyberpunk/dystopian novel.

The main character is an anarchist hacker attempting to bring down the mass-surveillance government. When he’s arrested by the secret police, he decides to sell-out. He is now working on behalf of the government to stop subversive elements (many his old friends) from upending the militaristic-surveillance society.

Meanwhile, a new illegal drug is hitting the streets, called Synth.

The drug allows the user to actually change reality, at least to a limited extent. Although, even the sellers aren’t totally sure how the drug works or of what it’s truly capable.

The main character starts to use Synth as an escape from his new life as part of the system.  
He next discovers an underground novel called The Potemkin Overture where he is the main character.

He begins to question reality, and wonders how much of his life he is creating while using Synth.

At this point, reality seems to splinter. Another society begins to slowly overlay the other reality. There the have-nots seem to be on the verge of a revolution.

He also meets a woman in that reality who just so happens to be working on creating a detox program to deal with Synth addiction.

He no longer fully remembers which is the true reality. Maybe both or neither are real.

Sort of an updated version of William S. Burroughs and Philip Dick’s “Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch”.

I’m not sure if I read it on your advice (heh), but I did get around to reading the first two books in the series.

Pretty cool mash-up of Lovecraft, conspiracy theory, and spy thriller.

Nice, fun romps.