All posts by Machine Trooper

The New York Publishing Cartel: A Peek Behind the Curtain

Some years ago I passed along some information from a one-time publishing insider, as part of a post at The Two-Fisted Blog:

During a given fiscal year, a tradpub house only has so many books it can publish. First dibs go to the proven heavy hitters like Stephen King, whose grocery list would become a New York Times Bestseller as long as his name is on it. Next in line (and this is nauseating, if not surprising) are the writers who “know people” inside the industry. There is a little more scrutiny/quality control here than for the big name authors, but this is where a lot of the worthless drivel comes from. Next on the pecking order are female minorities. Then male minorities. (Homosexuals have been given quota parity with racial minorities for quite a while. Now they are one of the most powerful special interest groups in existence and I have no doubt this is reflected in the current pecking order.) Then women in general (which sometimes includes men who write for female audiences and/or who write female protagonists, plus men who use female pseudonyms). Everyone not heretofore mentioned is at the bottom of the slush pile, competing for the very smallest portion of the publishing pie.

…Somewhere in there (unless the author is a celebrity with clout), the book must pass the ideology test–the politics must resonate with that of the New York Publishing Cartel, and any characters in the book who believe differently had better be either from the Archie Bunker/Frank Burns/Denny Crane cookie cutter or, better yet, the next Hitler or Darth Vader.

Jonathan Stamm has confirmed that it’s much worse now, in his post at Return of Kings:

I am not joking when I say that one of the best possible investments in your writing career, as a straight male who wants to get published, would be to hire a fat transgender “woman” of color and simply ghostwrite for “her,” or else acquire pictures of one and add “agoraphobic” to your Twitter resume of socially appealing forms of oppression—so no one expects to ever meet you.

No occupational field has inhaled diversity quotas this much. Looking at lists of award winners, grant recipients and editorial board members, made up predominantly of women, one would think that men are half-way illiterate. But in truth, far-left badges are ravenously shared and traded by the NY literary establishment, with many magazines and agents expressing a preference for “underrepresented writers,” not to mention all the literary events based around LGBT youth, minorities, inner-city kids, etc.

This whole “underrepresentation” mantra is blatantly dishonest to the point of absurdity, of course. But in the mind of a creative SJW, they must compensate for centuries of “oppression” with every contract; every book; and every character. The lack of cross-dressing perverts on the bookshelves in days of yore must be avenged!

Witness Garth Risk Hallberg, whose novel City on Fire recently received the possibly highest advance ever given to a novel: $2 million. Right from the first page, Hallberg introduces us to an interracial gay couple comprised of a wealthy but negligent white man who walks out on his long-suffering, paragon-of-virtue black boyfriend.

Or consider the “masculine” baseball novel The Art of Fielding, which revolves around a college dean and his affair with a black male student…

…It’s impossible to know where the virtue-signalling impulse ends and the story-telling begins. Possibly, they are trying to avoid the fate of Jonathan Franzen, who, despite being a bespectacled, militantly Democratic bird-watcher who writes an excess of female characters, faces a wrathful literary establishment who can’t quite countenance a straight male writer who has opinions about things.

It was foolish of me to have ever assumed I could be tradpubbed by the NYPC. And while I never sold my soul to make it past the gatekeepers (write the obligatory “strong female characters,” pander to the sodomiphiles; incorporate anti-American messages; etc.); I really regret watering down my earlier fiction for the benefit of those who would have never appreciated my restraint anyway.

High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris

Guest Post by Jim Morris

High Couch is a classic. It is also, so far as I know, sui generis. In a long life of writing and editing in which I have written nine books, edited more than two hundred and read thousands I do not know of another book like it, not even remotely. On one level it is an exciting sci-fi adventure. On another it is a sword and sorcery epic, and on yet a third it answers Freud’s famous question, “What do women want?”

A brilliant woman has decided to give the game away, and guess what? Feminists have attacked her for it.

The writing style is heroic, but readable and fun. The characters are recognizable, the plot is satisfying, and the world it creates is like nothing you have seen before, but is still believable. It also contains what I consider the most erotic single sentence in all the thousands of books I have read:

“Flesh toy, come here!”

If that doesn’t set up a scene in your mind then you have no business reading fiction.

I’m not going to give the plot away. I’m just going to recommend it. Highly.

Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris or others. She has contributed short fiction to the shared universe fantasy series Thieves World, in which she created the Sacred Band of Stepsons, a mythical unit of ancient fighters modeled on the Sacred Band of Thebes. She created, orchestrated, and edited the fantasy series Heroes in Hell, writing stories for the series as well as co-writing the related novel, The Little Helliad, with Chris Morris. She wrote the bestselling Silistra Quartet in the 1970s, including High Couch of Silistra, The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne.

This quartet had more than four million copies in Bantam print alone, and was translated into German, French, Italian, Russian and other languages.

In the 1980s, Baen Books released a second edition. The third edition is the Author’s Cut edition, newly revised by the author for Perseid Press.

Ethnos Will Rise Against Ethnos

I don’t usually agree with Vox Day concerning race. And since he seems to believe that the solution to every single problem or issue known to man is separatism…we don’t agree on a whole lot of anything I guess.

But then he said this:

Everywhere you go, from San Jose to Melbourne, the race war will find you. Vibrants don’t give a damn that you are a good anti-racist. They could not care less that you deplore racism with every bone in your body. They are totally indifferent to the guilt and shame you feel over the actions of your ancestors. They understand, as you do not, that there is no such thing as racial equality, there is no such thing as a “proposition nation”, and there is no such thing as a Brotherhood of Man.

They hate you for the very simple reason that you are not them. And they will attack you, unprovoked, every chance they get.

Like it or not (and I don’t), he is absolutely correct in his statements here. My personal experience has taught me this, as defeatist as it may sound.

Where I disagree with Vox and his ilk (pun intended) is how inevitable this was. They insist that genetic differences demand set patterns of cognitive conformity, and imply that race alone has brought us to the brink of ruin. But we didn’t have to let the divide-and-conquer strategy work. (Plus, the traitors who pushed America onto the slippery slope were lilly-white–and no dark-skinned boogeyman held a spear to their heads.)

Nevertheless, here we are. Self-fulfilling prophecies have manifested; perverted revisions of history are clung to as gospel; and speaking the truth accomplishes little besides identifying yourself as a target to those who haven’t already targeted you.

You may pride yourself on being colorblind (as I once did). But the “vibrants” are not. They won’t become colorblind, and have no intentions to do so. How much suffering you experience will depend on how stubborn you are about accepting this reality.

"Stick to your own kind."
“One of your own kind… Stick to your own kind.”

You will be judged according to your “skin uniform” and little else in days ahead. If you are white, the “vibrants” hate you already. That hatred is just below the surface and ready to turn violent at the drop of the next catalyst.

I won’t even address Islam here. Anyone with a functioning brain is aware of how dangerous Muslims are–whatever their racial makeup.

islamRight now, as offensive as this concept is, if you encounter somebody of African descent, there is a 94-98% chance they will gleefully destroy your life, liberty and property, and that of your posterity, when opportunity presents itself. Opportunity at the ballot box today or in the bullet box tomorrow. Their education (from all and whatever sources) has taken advantage of mankind’s fallen nature to program them in the direction they desire to go, anyway, and they are absolutely convinced that they are entitled to anything they can get, by whatever means is most convenient for them.

Most Hispanics are the same or similar. And frankly, the rising undercurrent of white tribalists will eventually be no different. (The redneck parasite class already has the entitlement mentality.) Maybe you’re white, but you’re not white enough. Or not the right flavor of white, see? Comment threads around the web are already demonstrating these trends.

"Vox is gonna have his Day tonight..." Sorry--couldn't resist.
“Vox is gonna have his Day tonight…” Sorry–couldn’t resist.

When the cold civil war turns hot, and you encounter somebody of a different color, are you willing to risk your life, your family’s life, and the life of your proven allies, on the 2-6% chance that the individual is the exception and not the rule? Or will you put them in the dirt with 94-98% certainty you did the right thing? Or will you pause to weigh all the possibilities, assuming the other guy will give you a minute to sort it out? Maybe you’re uncomfortable even considering this scenario. Does your discomfort now guarantee you’ll never have to make such a choice?

Vox has been blogging frequently against the “proposition nation.” That’s the “America is an idea” sentiment that I myself have expressed, because Americans are ruled by law, not by men–whatever color the men in question happen to be.

To be honest, Vox is using the accurate definition of “nation.” God established the nations, and the distinction was/is purely genetic. So a polyglot like the USA is not, technically, a nation.

The USA is a country–a country founded on this conviction:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The country built on that foundation (that fundamental, you might say) is what I once volunteered to put my life on the line for.  I am an American. I have not consented to change my citizenship to a regime that is destructive of these ends. No such fundamental transformation of my country to such a regime  is legal. Everyone in Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House took an oath to preserve my country and its law. Just because they are lying traitors does not obligate me to surrender my unalienable rights protected by that law.

You may insist that such a country doesn’t exist anymore. Judging by what’s going on, you’d appear to be right. In fact, I have suffered certain infringements myself. But that doesn’t mean I’ve surrendered. It also doesn’t mean I will always suffer, while evils are sufferable. It only means I pick my battles and won’t piss away what I do still have in order to make some martyr statement that two-legged sheep won’t heed or even appreciate.

You can choose to forfeit your own rights. Most North America-dwellers are choosing that, will, or have already. That does not obligate me to do likewise.

I’m an American. I don’t care what you think that means to you. What matters is what it means to me. If you are against the foundational truths summarized in the excerpt above, you are my enemy, whether you look like me or not, and whoever your ancestor was. That’s where my line is drawn. That means one side will call me a cuck; and the other side will call me a racist. Both sides will be shooting at me one day, probably. It doesn’t inspire a warm fuzzy, but I can live with that.

Where is your line drawn? If you think matching skin tones is more important than matters of life, liberty, property, and what god you will serve, sin loi. If you don’t, then please examine the alliances you’re making.

 

Muhammed Ali’s Greatest Contribution

In the past I’ve usually posted something about D-Day when June Six rolls around. This year, however, the death of an iconic heavyweight is all the buzz–and much less likely to confuse and engage the apathy of the historically challenged.

I don’t have a copy of The Great Heavyweights on the computer I’m using right now, so I can’t excerpt from it, so let me sum up Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali first:

  • The man could take an extraordinary amount of punishment–especially to the body.
  • He was also extremely difficult to hit–probably the most elusive heavyweight there’s ever been, partially thanks to his very unorthodox defensive style.
  • His hand speed was also impressive for a heavyweight–though not quite in the league of Floyd Patterson’s.
  • His lateral movement was the quickest of any heavyweight in his time.
  • However, he did not have a great punch. He wore his opponents down with attrition and head games. He was a master at psychological warfare.
  • Judges and referees consistently let him get away with illegal tactics that no other boxer gets away with on a regular basis. He was also awarded decision victories against fighters who kicked his ass.
  • Despite his claim to be “the Greatest” (regurgitated by every black person on the planet, and plenty of non-blacks as well) he was not the greatest boxer; and not even the greatest heavyweight.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at one way he changed sports in the USA.

Watch the little fight promo segment starting around 5:44.

Can you imagine a jock talking about himself and an opponent this way today? And most jocks in any sport spoke this way once upon a time.

I wish I could locate some interview clips of the Rock I’ve seen in the past. Once a reporter repeated some trash talk from a scheduled opponent, then stuck the microphone in Rocky’s face for his reaction. With no change in demeanor or tone, he said “That’s for him to prove on the (date of the fight).”

Keep in mind: this guy was a cruiserweight according to the scales, fighting pros who were 10-20 pounds heavier, all his career. He had very little in the way of skills, and was matched against some extremely tough men–the worst of them were friggin’ tanks. I don’t know if there’s a dude alive today who could take a punch like those guys could. And they were mostly complete fighters–not obsessed with headhunting like those who followed. Yet Marciano fought 49 bouts with 43 knockouts (most of them in the first round) and never lost a professional fight.

What am I getting at, you ask? It’s not just what he said, but what he didn’t say. If anybody ever had excuse for an ego trip, talking trash about how bad he was and how he was going to make a grown man scream like a woman, the Rock was it.

Watch the beginning of this clip. (“Sugar” Ray Robinson is possibly the best pound-for-pound boxer who ever lived. And yes: Ray Leonard and Shane Mosely were called “Sugar” because it was hoped they would be as good as him.)

Now look at this class act, here:

It’s far from just this individual–pretty much all of them are this way (with rare exceptions, like Evander Holyfield). And it’s not even just boxing–jocks in every sport are full of themselves and ready to talk smack whether asked to or not. They don’t even have to be good; they’ll do it anyway. In fact, it’s not even just jocks. Hang out in the inner city (of any city) and you can’t help but notice overbloated egos on display–and you’ll see it in all races and ethnicities.

What happened between the first two clips and the third?

Ali happened.

Egomaniacal jocks weren’t just accepted after Ali; they were preferred. Pride became a virtue and humility ugly.

Of course there were men with huge egos before–but they had to dial it down in public lest the average Joe see how ugly and petty they actually were. But, in general, even gifted men didn’t indulge in delusions of invincibility; and alpha dogs spoke louder with actions than with words.

Ali elevated smack-talking into its own sport.

Nowadays the male (and far too many females) of the species become experts at self-aggrandizement first, then worry about actually developing skills second…if ever.

The IX by Andrew P. Weston

Guest Post by Jim Morris

The IX is the most inventive science fiction novel I have read since Stranger In a Strange Land. That’s saying a lot. The plot is highly complicated, and yet so clearly and gracefully written that it is easy to follow.

In the far future in a galaxy far far away the Arden are besieged by the Horde and though it will take a long time it is clear that their defenses will eventually crumble and they will be destroyed … unless.

The Ardenese, in an act of creative self-immolation sacrifice their lives to save their DNA, in hopes that someone will eventually reseed the planet with its original inhabitants. Their lead computer, The Architect, also recruits defenders through time and space, specially selected for qualities that are not apparent to the Ardenese, from a far off planet called Earth. They snatch great fighters from different eras just before they were about to die anyway. So they’re thrown into a probable suicide mission with their bonus time.

There are problems integrating fighters who were snatched in the act of trying to kill each other, and from far different times, the IX Legion of Rome and Scottish tribesmen, the US Cavalry and Indian tribes, and 22d Century Royal Marine Commandos and terrorists, all welded into an integrated force.

The ending is to wildly inventive and too brilliant to give away here. Suffice it to say I ended the book with tears in my eyes.

Andrew P. Weston is a Royal Marine and Police veteran from the UK who now lives on thel Greek island of Kos. An astronomy and law graduate, he is the creator of the bestsellers The IX, and Hell Bound, (a novel forming part of Janet Morris’ critically acclaimed Heroes in Hell universe). Weston is also a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the British Fantasy Society, and the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.

When not working he devotes spare time to assisting NASA with two of their remote research projects, and writes educational articles for Astronaut.com and Amazing Stories. He has also been known to do favors for friends, using his Royal Marine Commando skills.

A New Publisher in Town

I met author Jim Morris a few years ago, and we’ve been in sporadic contact ever since. It’s just come to my attention that some of his books are being picked up by a new publisher.

I contacted Chris and Janet Morris (no relation to Jim) of  Perseid Press, and they agreed to answer a few of my questions.

VP: What is your story–how did you become authors?

PP: We met when we were 19, actually through the music business.  Each of us had written songs, lyrics and music, independently. Both had begun playing instruments at an early age. Janet had created a school newspaper in the sixth grade and won prizes for poetry even earlier; Chris had worked in bookstores, and started playing guitar when he was 12.  Both families were highly literate, so music and musicals, as well as fiction and nonfiction, were always part of our lives.
Janet could read and write and tell time before entering the first grade; Chris’ influences took a more political path, since his father was a famous photojournalist, and picture editor for the Washington Post and the New York Times. We met in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where we first lived together; and those were heady, sometimes dangerous, times for all involved with the arts and politics.

We began writing songs together, joining bands, and put several bands together, two of which had production interest.  Janet started her first novel at 25, High Couch of Silistra, about the same time Chris started The Christopher Morris Band, and both projects got different agents the same week, and signed unrelated book publishing and record deals the same month.  Chris’ album on MCA and Janet’s first Silistra book, published by Bantam, were each released in 1977.  This led to a redistribution of effort:  Janet wrote three more novels in the Silistra series, later to be called the Silistra Quartet; Chris focused on his band and song writing.  We wrote together, edited and assisted one another.  And still do. In the late 1980s, we each became research directors for a Washington think tank, where we were the architects of the US Joint Nonlethal Weapons program,  and assisted select western nations in starting their own programs; we also led the first defense technical evaluation team to the then-Soviet Union to assess Russian military technology, and supported the US Army and the USMC in various areas, including what was at the time called the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad (or MERS).  For a score of years we raised and showed American Morgan Horses, the remnants of the U.S. Government’s only horse-breeding program, and had several World Champions.

VP: Both of you’ve been writing SF/F for a while, now. What would you say makes your “brand” unique?

PP: Our books are not for the faint of heart, or the politically correct, nor are they dumbed down. They are challenging and meant to be so. We explore the human condition, and what relationship and responsibility an individual has to self, society, and planet.  Just as our deep experience with horses informs our books about ancient cavalry fighters, so do our futuristic books have a basis in technology areas that will shape our future. But most of all, the books we write are the books we want to read.  By pleasing ourselves and writing honestly, we bring a directness to the topic areas we explore, whether those are nuclear war, time travel, genetics and behavior, or questions about government itself, good and bad.  And we hope always to meet our own standard.

VP: Are there recurring themes you deal with in all or most of your books?

PP: We examine the heroic model, the importance of individual struggle in service to an ideal. In Greek mythology, philosophy and ancient history, we find lessons that can help people today, whether those lessons are presented allegorically or directly. We are particularly interested right now in hero-cults and how humans deal with crises, as well as considerations of metaphysics, mortality and morality.

VP: What motivated you to become a publisher?

PP: We stopped writing fiction when we began writing in the national and international security area.  This meant walking away from burgeoning careers as novelists, but we thought it important to serve as we did.  When, in 2009, we felt the need to write a new novel, which became The Sacred Band, we talked to our agent about sending it to the usual suspects, but we wanted to keep our e-publishing rights.  Under those conditions, a 21st century publishing deal of substance would be difficult, and this was the final deciding factor:  Rather than give up our e-publishing rights, we started Perseid Press, where we can control the covers, print size, book length, and production values as we had never been able to do when published by New York behemoths.

VP: Was it difficult establishing a publishing house; or with your contacts/network, was it just a matter of making a few calls?


PP: Anything worth doing is difficult. Perseid Press evolved, rather than being established.  We provided some backlist titles, our agent facilitated some e-publishing for us under Perseid’s name to begin with.  We revived our Heroes in Hell series so that we could help showcase emerging talents.  We conceived our “Authors’ Cut” editions so that we could go back and revise and expand books we felt deserve digital immortality. Writers came to us, people we knew and people we didn’t know.  So we have become a very small press, publishing what we like from writers who “write dangerously,” which is, in a nutshell, what we ourselves do.  Often the books we buy and write don’t fall into existing marketing categories.  And that doesn’t scare us.

VP: (Just a personal note, here: As a young GI (“cherry” in the unit-specific dialect) I quickly learned an axiom popular at my first duty-station–that there were probably 80 males for every female for a 50-mile radius around Fort Bragg, NC. It might have been an exaggeration, but it was true enough for practical purposes. Whenever time off was granted (but not enough to drive beyond that 50-mile radius), I got away from the barracks as fast as possible, even if I didn’t have a plan for what to do. Two of my favorite haunts were Ed McKay’s Used Books off Yadkin Road, or the news stand/bookstore in the Cross Creek Mall. At the latter, I remember seeing a few of your Heroes in Hell books. I almost bought one a couple times, but reading about anyone in Hell wasn’t quite the escape I was looking for. I was worried I might be on the road there, myself.)

What are your ambitions for Perseid Press?

PP: Our main goal for Perseid is that we not lose quality as we grow.  Perseid wants to be bigger than we had intended, and we are keeping a very tight rein on it, but new opportunities are hard to resist.  We have a website that functions as a bookstore of sorts, and a network of people who believe in what we’re trying to do.  In one sense we are a couple of fingers in the leaky dike holding back the flood of illiteracy; in another sense, we are curators selecting books we think should survive. In yet one more sense Perseid is a literary triage effort, for a society which has lost its cultural compass and lies close to intellectual death. This is an uphill battle, perhaps, but as Tempus said in The Sacred Band:  “We make the world better one battle at a time.”

VP: I hear you on the illiteracy deal. It’s been the bane of my existence for a few years. Do you plan to remain focused on SF/F?


PP: We love sf in the true sense:  speculative fiction with a moral component, but not a moralizing component.  We will always look at well-thought sf, if the adventurous literary quality is there.  We already have published a rigorous historical by Janet, I, the Sun, about the greatest king of the Hittite empire, and that character has much to say that applies to life today. We are publishing a magical realism/literary book called Truck Stop Earth by award-winning author and journalist Michael A. Armstrong, whose novel Bridge Over Hell we have already published; we have published a memoir about an ex-patriot in Peru, Reckless Traveler, by Walter Rhein. We are publishing Andrew P. Weston, the author of The IX, Exordium of Tears, and Hell Bound, in both fantasy and science fiction; Andy is a former Royal Marine and is still active in the security area.  A new addition to our roster is Jim (James Franklin) Morris, author of the bestselling War Story; we are honored and excited to be publishing Jim’s alternate history/magical realism novels, beginning with Tahlequah, and republishing at least three of his nonfiction books, including War Story.  And we’re readying our first entry in the paranormal-suspense area, Schade, by  J.P. Wilder, also a special forces graduate.  And of course, we continue the Heroes in Hell series, and have begun a new shared concept series with Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters, to be followed by…  you guessed it…  Heroika 2: Shieldless.

The Perseid Press website is: http://www.theperseidpress.com/

VP: Somewhat involved in the book biz myself, I’m impressed with what an increasingly tough racket it is. The pool of potential readers seems to be shrinking all the time, while the number of published authors grows rapidly. POD publishing and ebooks have revolutionized the industry, which is a double-edged sword: It’s easy to break into the business now, but it’s harder than ever for readers to find an author’s books (at least when that author is an indie, and doesn’t have some sort of platform to exploit). Frankly, so much of the indie fiction out there is poorly written, that the stigma indie authors are saddled with is understandable. Yet the Big  Five are in such trouble financially these days, there is speculation that indies and micropublishers will be the only game in town one day. As professionals in the industry, I’d love to hear any insights or opinions you have on the state of things, the future of publishing, etc.

PP: As far as insights into publishing as it changes: along with the rest of humanity, we are trying to deal with the information overload of the internet, which in its turn is reducing literacy and attention span. We see audio books as a possible mitigating factor, but no such factor will make up for the simple lack of education that is so pervasive, coupled with the pernicious assurance that the uninformed opinion is as important as the informed opinion.  We go forward based on our own goals, prejudices, and perspectives, hoping to attract a growing readership of like mind.  When we edited books or anthologies for the big NY publishers, we learned that you, as an editor, are looking as hard for a writer to excite you as that writer is looking for a simpatico editor.  When the two meet, sometimes magic happens, but not often enough.  We’re concerned by the “dumb like me” attitude we see growing, by poor-quality books proliferating — but then one remembers Henry James, who coined the term “trash triumphant” to describe publishing at the end of the 19th century. Literature survived those days; it will survive these days. There always will be bad writing, self-indulgent readers, and those who only want to hear ideas with which they already concur, literature that ratifies their pre-existing tastes.  We simply have more people today.  The ones who choose video games rather than books are not our readership.  We’re not serving the reader with a five-hundred word vocabulary, but we have no quarrel with those publishers or authors who are doing so, now that the slush piles of former days are all available free of charge.

VP: Please explain the “dumb like me” expression–I haven’t heard it before.

PP: “Dumb like me” is a phrase describing the attitude of those who consider reasoning a chore, a stressful exercise threatening to revisit dearly held notions of reality, worse, to overturn them with a priori observation, undermining ‘blissful’ ignorance. We won’t use it again in any way implying that we harbor such a view.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” -Isaac Asimov

VP: Sounds a lot like what I routinely encountered in school, and on Facebook.

As I’ve found out first hand since throwing my hat into publishing, there are hundreds of reasons an author might fail to gather a following, and many of them seem to be completely random wrong time/wrong place kind of reasons. I have my own short list of authors to whom I am grateful because of the books they’ve written; but for whatever reasons they have not enjoyed the success I believe their writing deserves. Two such authors from the tradpub era are Len Levinson and Jim Morris.

Jim Morris has been slept-on for long enough. Now his latest book, Talequah/Battle of Sorcerors and some of his classic non-fiction (including The Devil’s Secret Name) have found a home where they’ll be getting new covers and some adept marketing. Virtual Pulp wishes him phenomenal sales, and thanks Perseid Press for taking the time to respond.

I can’t say exactly when, but we’ll be reviewing some Perseid Press books here in the future.

The Culture War Heats Up

There is a surging groundswell in the grass roots of America. I’ve noticed it (I daresay I’ve been a part of it) for the last few years. It is pushing back against the left-wing cultural svengalis and their Narrative. It’s not huge or sensational (yet), but it is widespread.

Anti-war protestors in the 1960s had a saying that went something like this: “What if there was a war, but nobody showed up?” Well, I’ll tell you what happens when one side doesn’t show up: that side loses.

For generations centrists and everyone right-of-center simply have not shown up for the culture wars. Predictably, the leftisWWIIposterdefendfreedomts have blitzed right through battlefields of opinion and ideas unopposed–like the Red Army rolling through eastern Poland in 1939–so that their monopoly on the flow of information, including creative expression, was ironclad.

It took some irritated computer nerds to show us that the left is far from invincible.

WWIIpostercarpoolingIn fact, #gamergate showed the world that the SJWs, feminists and Marxists (cultural and otherwise) are not only vulnerable, they’ve become arrogant from never being challenged for so long, and prove to be weak, inept cowards when confronted by a smart, determined opposition. They are beatable. Very much so.

But you have to actually show up to the fight if you’re going to beat them.

In greater and greater numbers, the right wing is finally showing up to fight in the war for the mind and soul of our posterity.

WWIIposterlickem

One of the armies joining battle now is the Conservative/Libertarian Fiction Alliance.

Looking for a good book to read, but tired of sucker punches and nihilistic misery when all you want to do is relax? You’re in luck … Behold! A gallery of conservative and libertarian-friendly fiction.

 

WWIIposterbackemup

The CLFA has expanded from Facebook into their own website, and are compiling a wish-list library of books written by non-leftists (or at least sans the ubiquitous leftist Narrative rammed down our throat at every turn).

Books need not be political or moral message fiction; we’re mainly looking for good, entertaining stories that happen to embrace things we love, like individualism, self-reliance, the importance of liberty, and so on. Sometimes these books are even written by self-proclaimed leftist authors. But whatever – a good story is a good story!

Hoowah. At least one of my favorite books was written by an author who I later met, and it turned out we were quite at odds, politically. WWIIposterbuybondsBut by whatever arrangement of circumstances, he told a great story.

It’s nice to read a novel with a political slant that cuts against The Narrative. But often, it’s even nicer to read a book that’s apolitical–no message or counter-message; just a good story, told well. But even those are more and more difficult to find, so it pleases me that such books won’t be excluded from the CLFA gallery.

(BTW, have you ever noticed how right-wingers are openwWIIposterbiggunshomefront about their political biases, but left-wingers pretend to be impartial centrists and throw a fit when you call them out on their biases? Hmm…there’s at least one blog post in that curious state of things.)

CLFA’s gallery of fiction is in its infancy right now, but already it is proving  to be as diverse as the right wing writ large.  Authors run the gamut from “social libertarians” and “establishment conservatives” all the way to radical “religious right” rebels like me. You’ll find not only tradpubbed popular authors like Larry Correia and Andrew Klavan, but plenty of indie authors you’ve been missing WWIIpostersavecansout on until now.

The CLFA has also organized its own award. I believe this is the second year of said award. The finalists have been chosen for 2015 and voting begins in June to determine the winner.

WWII was the last time the USA fought a war with the intention of pursuing absolute victory. It wasn’t just the soldiers, sailors and marines committed to the war effort–the wives, children, parents, grandparents and 4Fs also did what they could. They bought War Bonds, collected cans, organized bake sales, wrote letters to GIs overseas, and fed them or danced with them when they came home.WWIIpostermetaldrive

If you are a reader, consider doing your part on the home front of the Culture War. When you’re looking for a good book, go somewhere like the CLFA first. (And buy using their links, to help them offset the cost of their website–and provide them incentive for the time and effort they put into doing this for us.) If you’re going to spend your “voting dollars” on a book anyway, why not vote for books written by authors who are fighting to take our culture back?  When you discover a good read, don’t just finish it and go about your business–write a review and increase the book/author’s chances of being discovered by others who would appreciate it like you did. Then tell another reader about your discovery.

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It’s natural to assume that documentary films and nonfiction books would be the most influential weapons in the culture war, but they’re not. Entertainment, in its various forms (fiction, movies, music, etc.) has been an enormous influence on how people think. Consider which political faction has dominated entertainment; then examine the state of our culture today. If that dominance isn’t challenged now, while it’s still possible, you are only going to get more of the same and worse…but to a greater degree.

The soldiers on our side in this war are marching to the sound of the guns. Your support would be dearly appreciated, down in the trenches.

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Warfighters, Patriots, and Masculinity

Quintus Curtius at ROK asks the question, “Why Does America Lack A ‘Warrior-Patriot’ Ethic?

He answers this well into the article.

America has spent the past forty years shaming and denigrating that ethic by systematically removing masculine virtue from the public sphere.

Unfortunately, he only answers half of the question.

An observant, intelligent, and honest person won’t deny that true masculinity is villified at every turn in our increasingly toxic culture.  This is pretty well documented in the manosphere. The post handles that aspect well. But what about the patriotic aspect?

Whether inside or outside warrior circles, American patriots today comprise a marginalized counterculture.  Only in America are people who love their country demonized by the establishment, mainstream media, the education cartel, pop culture, and the average Joe.

We’ve learned contempt for the American republic from all the above, beating The Narrative into our heads everywhere we go, all our lives. Finding the information to overturn all this conditioning is still possible, and not yet even all that difficult…but few citizens of this country, including “conservatives” (whatever that means) ever do discover the antidote to the anti-American worldview.

The elites have not only poisoned and confused the warrior-patriot ethic, they’ve fundamentally transformed our armed forces into a hostile environment for warrior-patriots. And their social engineering plus ubiquitous propaganda has just about driven the American warrior-patriot to extinction.

Partially on-topic is this new clip from InfoWars. Alex Jones touches on how feminization is being used to destroy the effectiveness of the Armed Forces. He also touches on drones–to include replacing human ground troops with robots.

The Whitewashing of Bill Clinton is Complete

The alternative media first grew some teeth during the Clinton Administration. Nevertheless, cucks and even the “alt right” have been programmed to believe Slick Willie’s only (or worst) crime was his perjury concerning a blowjob he received from an intern in the Oval Office.

Before Hussein occupied the White House, American politics had never seen anyone as corrupt as the Clintons, or any politician who could get away scot-free with so many blatant abuses.

Putting aside, for the moment, the Clinton’s rap sheet from Arkansas, here are just a few items from Blythe’s legacy that have been censored out of recent history:

  • Trading military secrets to Red China in exchange for campaign contributions. This was high treason, period. But once caught, the Democrat and mainstream media (but I repeat myself) spin doctors deflected any scrutiny of the Teflon Traitor by concocting a narrative that the real problem was in rules about campaign donations. In impressive Hegelian fashion, they got “Campaign Finance Reform” codified into something more accurately known as “The Incumbent Protection Bill,” making it harder for grass roots voter movements to compete with the elites like George Soros; David Rockafeller, Warren Buffet, Henry Kissinger, et al.
  • Letting the Red Chinese raid the US Patent Office. Slave labor, suicidal (on the US side) trade policies and selective environmental policing weren’t enough of an advantage for the mass murderers in Beijing. They must also be allowed to steal the inventions and ideas of Americans with no redress of grievances.
  • Using the FBI to spy on, intimidate and silence his political opposition in Congress. This was a precedent, by the way. Think of how the IRS has been a tool Hussein uses to intimidate and silence his enemies in the electorate.
  • The immolation of men, women and children after using platoons of federal troops, helicopters and armored vehicles to lay siege to peaceful civilians. The siege began with a shoot first, knock later, “search” of a home and church based on a dubious warrant after previous attempts to entrap and incriminate the victims had all proven baseless.
  • The lame duck presidential pardon of multiple criminals whom the Clintons owed favors for committing perjury to shield the Clintons from criminal investigations.
  • The theft of furnishings from the White House upon leaving office.

These are just a few examples of the high crimes (though I guess the last one was really just a petty crime) and treason committed by the Teflon Traitor as president.

He also gets (and gladly accepts) credit for the economic recovery which began before the ’92 election, which his policies slowed down. Same thing with the “balanced budgets” and renewal of the recovery orchestrated by the “Contract With America” Congressional majority elected in 1994. He fought against them every step of the way, yet receives the credit for their accomplishments.

And in a coup of unprecedented proportions, Clinton’s allies on both sides of the aisle appointed as an “independent council” (to investigate Whitewater and his other scandals as Governor of Arkansas), leftist idealogue and closet Clintonista Ken Starr, lawyer to the middleman in the treasonous deal with the Red Chinese. Predictably, the “investigation” was just another layer of coverup.

Remember, the Chinese have been preparing for a war with us they believe is inevitable, and during these same years they threatened to nuke our west coast. Thanks to Clinton, that is no longer a laughable threat.

The Monica Lewinski scandal was and is just a smokescreen to hide Willie’s crimes against we the people–they used one of his minor scandals to distract us from all the major scandals. It’s sad how effective this strategy is, even on those who fancy themselves as red pill.

The Trumpening is a Big “Up Yours” to the GOP (Democrat Lite) Establishment

Captain Capitalism nails it once in a while,  as in paragraphs like these, aimed at the Lesser Evil Party:

You couldn’t protect the constitution if your wife’s loyalty depended upon it.

No matter what you say, no matter what politician you throw forth, you have lost 100% of the GENUINE, REAL republican American constituency, and we are now voting for anybody (and I mean ANYBODY) who isn’t a career politician and actually might make a change.

The key thing to understand (and I know that’s hard for you lazy, fat establishment types, not to mention baby boomers who are stuck in the Nixon era) is that no matter how much you HATE and LOATHE Trump, the American republicans HATE AND LOATHE you even more.  They’re sick of your non-performance, they’re sick of your corruption, and they’re sick of you impotence and incompetence.  They are so sick of you they’d rather vote for what is clearly an opportunist over your “best” candidate you present forward because he is at least “different.”

 

What he (and most Americans) miss is that the pattern of GOP betrayal is not due to well-intentioned buffoonery.  It’s not because “Republican leadership” is incompetent. It’s not because they’re cowards (though they are). It’s not because they’re corrupt in a general sense (though they are). It’s because they are owned/controlled by the same foreign and domestic enemies who own/control the Democrats.

You are under the assumption that we the people are the boss, and our public servants are beholden to us (who pay their exorbitant salaries)  who they allegedly represent.  But they changed sides while you were napping.  Their real job now is to sell us down the river, bleed us dry, all while pretending to be our hapless advocates who are just too consistently incompetent to ever win a significant victory or stop our leftward slide over the cliff.

It is also their job to sabotage and assassinate the character of any Republican who is not compromised like they are. This is why they fight harder against the Tea Party than against the Democrats.  It’s also why some of them go on record admitting they will vote for Hillary if Trump wins the nomination.  (Or, in some cases,  if Cruz wins the nomination. )

Trump may prove to be just as corrupt (in a general sense) as they are. He may institute/accept/perpetuate disastrous, suicidal, anti-American policies just like they do. But the puppeteers can not allow somebody they don’t own/control to attain a position of such importance. Period.

You need to realize the problem is not with Trump, but that it is with you.  YOU are the problem.  YOU are the ones who failed.  You are so corrupt, but more so, inept and cowardly that the real Americans would rather vote for a potty-mouthed, straight shooter, than any of the “Slop v. 3.0” you’re going to serve up this round.

This reminds me of how I once broke up with a girlfriend. She was absolutely convinced that it was because I must have found someone else. My response to her assumption was approximately this: “Don’t flatter yourself. The only woman to blame for me leaving you is you.”