Is it really Boomers' fault?

Boomers catch a lot of heat for being the "me" generation, for being the last generation to live better than their parents, for orchestrating America's decline from a proud nation to a failed social experiment. Every measure of societal health has fallen off a cliff since Boomers came of age in the '60s and '70s, and negative trends have accelerated since they rose to power in the '80s and '90s.

A question arises. Is it their fault?

I've been toying with the idea it isn't. A sea change occurred in the first half of the 20th century. The post-war liberal consensus became the de facto ideology of the ruling class. There were a few high-profile exceptions, like Charles Lindbergh and Joe McCarthy, who exist now as caricatures of backwardness. But the real power resided with the Kennedys and Rockefellers.

That ideology did not really begin to bear fruit until it had filtered into and reshaped the public consciousness. Many Boomers were toddling around in diapers while this was happening. Not one Boomer sat on the Supreme Court that delivered the Roe v. Wade decision (1970). Not one Boomer voted for the Hart-Celler Act (1965).

So if it's not Boomers' fault, whose fault is it?

Adam Lane Smith wrote a terrific piece on intergenerational views of heroism. I recommend you read the whole thing, but I pulled this quote:

If WWI was bad, at least people believed it was “the war to end all wars”. WWII convinced the survivors their sacrifices had been in vain. The Lost Generation struggled to stay out of it until they were dragged in, then they sent their children, the Silent Generation, to die in another futile war against the same enemy: Germany, this time on steroids, plus a new enemy: Japan. These two brutal regimes showed the Lost Generation and the Silent Generation that humans were capable of true evil, and many came back scarred and broken from the confrontation.

These battered, ravaged souls who threw themselves into workaholism to feed their dying kids and lived on the edge of disaster gave birth to the Baby Boomer generation. They also craved freedom from the stifling inner city, and returning GIs were given incentive to build their own single-family homes. A single woman was now responsible for maintaining the entire household while a single man was responsible for funding every aspect of life. Cue the rise of “Mother’s little helper,” designer anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills to help cope with the increased stress of isolated nuclear families who don’t have time to learn about each other or develop deep loving bonds.

How could these older generations possibly give Boomers what they needed to understand love, objective morality, warmth, nurturing, and family responsibility? Most Boomers barely knew their parents on the inside, down in their emotional core. We call the Silent Generation exactly that because they refused to talk about how they felt because they’d probably commit suicide if they stopped to think about all they’d endured and had taken from them. The Lost Generation and the Silent Generation gave themselves in near martyrdom to provide for their children, but the absence of larger family structures meant many Boomers went without those additional guideposts (grandparents, uncles, aunts) that would have taught them the value of love and family.

Some grew up understanding love nonetheless, seeing the deep sacrifices made on their behalf and recognizing what it meant. Many did not. Many Boomers resented the harsh disciplines laid upon them to prepare them for what the Lost Generation and Silent Generation knew were the secret horrors of the world. “Toughen up or you’ll die” could be an exact quote from these older generations, but to the Boomers, the strict rules from absent parents who came home exhausted and angry and barely had time for their kids smacked of draconian totalitarianism.

“You can’t tell me what to do, old man,” became the rallying cry of the Boomer generation. The movie Grease embodies this, and we start to see the true rise of the antihero.

No one wants to pile on the generation hardened by two world wars and the Great Depression. They bested the Ottoman Empire, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Dust Bowl. It would be tragic to suffer so much for the sake of world only to let faith and the first principles of culture wither on the vine, before their children could taste it.

Yet I think that's what happened.

No matter. It's up to Gen X, Millennials, and Zoomers to reverse the momentum of the recent past. It starts with faith in God, and builds through culture and community.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

The rhetoric of "racism"

Re: George Floyd, John Boyega went on a rant on Instagram to condemn racist white people. Aside from Boyega's usual candor and enthusiasm, it was fairly standard stuff.

Most notable was the pushback he got from his audience. White people flooded his mentions claiming they weren't racists, what about anti-white racism, etc. I found this interesting. Why didn't they take Boyega's rant at face value? After all, condemning racism is about the least controversial thing you can do these days. I offer three explanations.

1. Racism has been so abused as an epithet, no one really knows what it means anymore. Does it mean a belief in the lesser value of black people's lives, views about black people's genetic inferiority, or observing real-world differences among races? I've also heard thinking racism isn't a big deal is itself racist.
   
   Whatever your definition of racism, I doubt more than a fraction of the people your definition fits is capable of murder, as in the George Floyd case. Is Boyega lumping everyone together? If so, that triggers a defense mechanism in many people: Don't put me in the same category as people who aren't like me.
   
   
2. The language of race, ethnicity, and nationality has incredible rhetorical power. Defying 75 years of cultural counter-programming, group identity is ingrained deep in our human natures. It's why Trump caught such flak for talking about Mexican rapists and drug dealers. Objectively he wasn't talking about all Mexicans, but it felt like he was.
   
   In more primitive times, inter-tribal relations were concerned about keeping an even scoresheet of grievances. Lex talionis: If you kill one of us, we have the right to kill one of you. Group identity imparts group guilt for individual crimes. Some who bought into the counter-programming will naturally seek absolution.
   
   
3. Boyega's white audience isn't racist. I can all but guarantee there's not a single white racist who's a fan of Boyega. In fact, some of them may regard being a fan of Boyega as a point of pride. If so, I can see how they would look for a head pat for not being one of the evil people he's talking about.
   
   This speaks to a larger issue in "call out" culture. The people who would most benefit from being called out by you often don't hear you and/or don't care. So if the point of a rant isn't to virtue-signal, if it isn't to engage in 2 minutes' hate, what is the point? Some people, rightly or wrongly, infer you're talking about about them.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

If this fallen world gets you down and you yearn for escape and adventure, consider my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Slippery slope

Economics professor Glen Whitman says "pointing out a logical fallacy is a way of removing an argument from the debate rather than just weakening it… if you can show that the original argument actually commits a logical fallacy, you put the opposition in the position of justifying why their original argument should be considered at all."

Thus in debates pitting the enlightened heroes of modernism against the Cro-Magnons of tradition, you'll hear the modernist refrain, with a pretense of sophistication: "That's a slippery slope." Smart bois have been levying the slippery slope fallacy at sound arguments against the spiritual erosion of the West for generations. It's a conditioned response, and who can blame them? It's worked without fail.

Francis Schaeffer wrote a book describing this, called How Should We Then Live?, one of the great books of the 20th century whether you're Christian or not. The original premise of Western Civilization is the God of the Bible. Some people did not like the conclusions of that premise. So they came up with a new premise to reach the conclusions they wanted. Except the premise they came up with led to other conclusions no one wanted, conclusions that transformed civilization. Now all that's left is a veneer of the past.

This is the slippery slope in action. A thing on level ground is stable. You can build upon it. Tilt the ground, and the whole structure falls. The lesson is intuitive once you've been exposed to it. To quote a popular hymn, "all other ground is sinking sand."

So when a smart boi points out your slippery slope "fallacy," burst his conceited bubble with a rhetorical needle. Who denies the law of gravity? Not even Flat Earthers are that dumb.

It's not enough to merely beat back the philistines. People crave art that speaks to the truth of their created nature. That's what I and many other writers are trying to do. I've linked to some of them in the blog roll on the right (click here for the site's desktop version).

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

An AI robot for children

It really wasn't too long ago that we looked to the future of robot and AI technology with optimism rather than fear. Ideas of a technological utopia pervaded the post-war liberal consensus, which interpreted people as their own worst enemy. Social progress married to technology would fix man's flawed nature.

I'm not sure when exactly the bubble popped. Technology is too weak to override nature and at the same time too strong to be trusted, as depicted over and over in popular books and movies like Jurassic Park. Further, and more impactful I think, was that the digitization of life on the Internet concentrated unheard of power in a handful of stateless, unaccountable megacorporations who turned out to be as censorious as Pravda.

So any enthusiasm for Moxie, an AI robot designed for children, is at least 10 years past its expiration date.

This kind of advertising is purposely designed to hit you right in the feels, but like the Google Super Bowl ad it's got just enough creepiness to make the hair on your neck stand up. Let's dive in.

At the suggestion of his parents, Riley goes from binge-playing a mobile game to interacting with an anodyne avatar for a collective of middle-aged computer programmers based in Southern California. The supportive, well-meaning parents monitor from a distance and are pleased as punch at Riley's progress. With Moxie's help his emotional IQ is skyrocketing, even though the kids at school who would be his friends are bullying him for playing with a doll.

Then comes the ad's pièce de résistance. Riley is to gather intelligence on a friend and report back to Moxie. Moxie drops this proposition with a "no one has to know" look on its animated face. We are left to wonder why a cloud-connected AI would want information about your kid's friend's interests, as well as anything else a credulous child may confide. If you've been following Big Tech's data mining operations the last few years, you already know.

Fast Company demoed Moxie and noted this:

What’s still unclear to me, despite asking the company directly, is exactly what Moxie’s lesson plans will include. What is the actual content, and how is it presented within the flow of conversation? Is Moxie a friend who likes to talk about feelings, or a serious instructor who might teach your child math?

Content is everything, especially when it comes to letting something near your kid, let alone drop $1,500 on it. If Moxie were some random Facebook account, you would be wary of your impressionable child giving it attention. Why is it any different when it's a real live avatar?

There is one silver lining. Moxie's designers built in a 1-hour maximum for "play" before it goes to sleep for 24 hours, like the screen time limit that most parents impose on our kids to prevent habit formation. However, that does not pacify my inner neo-Luddite.

Make your kids go outside and make friends. It's the best way to socialize them. And it's cheaper.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Realism and the quest for meaning

At its best, worldbuilding not only offers an escape to the audience. It enhances the verisimilitude of a story. However novel the setting, if its rules are internally consistent and logical, and the setting-bound characters have understandable motives, the reader will connect.

The idea of fully immersing the reader in the setting is seductive. What quicker way to learn, or what better way to make them feel as the characters do? It may seem intuitive that the more realistically the setting is presented, the more verisimilitude the story has, but that is often not the case. Realism flattens the space the writer works in, disallowing narrative concepts that inform the reader how they should feel about the characters and where the story is going. This can actually leave the reader confused and with a cold, empty feeling.

From the realism Wikipedia page:

Realism as a literary movement was based on "objective reality." It focused on showing everyday activities and life, primarily among the middle or lower class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. It may be regarded as the general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules."

You've probably heard of Chekhov's gun. It's the dramatic principle that if you take the effort to show the audience something, it should come into play later. A gun is the most striking example of this, but it could be anything. Cranky Uncle Bill has a prosthetic leg. The question leaps to our mind: Why? Such a detail must be included for a reason. That reason is the payoff. The prosthetic leg is the setup.

Realism disdains this principle. If something is there, it's there whether it comes up again or not.

This extends to all story elements, not just setting. Real people are textured and exhibit the full range of emotion. They do not fit into the molds of heroes and villains. The realist approach calls that "simplification." Thus, for the sake realism, character archetypes are done away with. There is no black and white, but endless shades of gray.

The same goes for plot. What did you do today? You may have started a book, cleaned out the garage, taken the kids for a play date, or prepared a big family meal. But so many other things happened that don't align with personal narratives. You watched TV, slept, ate, went potty. These mundane activities, interchangeable day to day, have no bearing on plot. But, if a depiction of reality is the foremost goal, who are you to leave it out?

This cuts the writer's job in half. Normally a writer creates the fictional world of the story and selectively depicts it in service to the story. Under realism, the writer gives you everything without discernment. You might call this vain and lazy, and I wouldn't disagree.

Realism has its place, especially in literary and period fiction. Elsewhere, though, it has a tendency to demoralize the reader. People approach stories with a variety of wants and desires. Perhaps first among them, on the meta level, is the quest for meaning. What is a story but to give meaning? I'm not talking about the meaning of life, just something to care about, like the success of a startup or the outcome of a battle. Realism denies this want by obscuring meaning in the people and events it depicts in copious but profane detail. So the reader's left feeling cold and empty.

For further reading on this subject, I recommend Rawle Nyanzi's blog post, "Indoctrinated Into Realism."

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi and a quest for meaning, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

A word is worth a thousand pictures

While readers form varying degrees of attachment to setting, characters, and plot, from a writer's perspective it's setting that makes the plot and characters possible. In science fiction and fantasy, we call this worldbuilding.

In a misguided effort to "show, don't tell," novice writers risk killing the setting by describing it to death. The hero walks over a hill and is presented with a vista no one has ever seen before. What follows are several block paragraphs amounting to set design notes for the Hollywood adaptation that'll never be made. You can practically hear the whir of the camera as it pans left to right.

I get it because I've been there. My natural state is to communicate my unique vision in all its glorious detail. It's why I started writing in the first place.

There are two problems with this. One, it limits the reader's imagination. If you say castle, it conjures a different image in everyone's mind. But if you say an imposing gray castle with a 15-foot moat, stone towers thrusting into the cloudless sky and flying the lord's coat of arms, a horse stable, a chapel, 46 liveried servants, and a roaring fire at one end of the banquet hall, you have conditioned the reader to rely on you to tell him everything that was otherwise implied.

Now, there's nothing wrong with those details. Some of them may serve a purpose. But if they don't serve a purpose, they're just more words the reader has to muddle through to get to the point. This brings me to a good general rule about detail. Books are not a visual medium, so don't focus on how something looks. Focus on what it is, on what it does.

Two, and I credit my editor with this: The more you explain something, the less it makes sense. Unless you are a wizard like Tolkien, make broad brush strokes except as needed. Every detail and nuance you introduce that doesn't impact the story has the potential to confuse the reader and break the worldbuilding.

I've been rereading Dune to analyze how it so effectively connects with readers. A big part of this effectiveness is the worldbuilding, which has no rival except in Tolkien's Middle-Earth. So how did the master, Frank Herbert, craft the world of Dune?

He started with a lot of expositional dialogue. He couched it in the tensions of a royal family being ordered to a new fief, something even a child can understand. The Baron Harkonnen's scheming and Paul's sparring session with Gurney Halleck serve the tension well. The exposition also comes via Paul's questioning of his identity, jumpstarted by the famous gom jabbar scene. The exposition never comes all at once, but in pieces, with the important pieces often repeated for emphasis.

When it came to the setting of Arrakis and literal world building, Herbert focused on relevant details. For example, Fremen have blue within blue eyes and wear stillsuits to conserve their bodies' moisture. Most other details about them are incidental. House Atreides's base of operations is a city in the Imperial Basin, surrounded by the rock cliffs of the Shield Wall. Other than that, Arrakis is worm-ridden desert. Simple. How far and how high the cliffs are from the city, the size and population of the city, etc. doesn't matter. So why act like it does?

This post was inspired in part on Jeff Vande Zande's post, "World building in fiction." Check it out.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

IndieGen.xyz

Publishing power was decentralizing and democratizing before the current pandemic turned the world upside-down, with ViacomCBS announcing they were selling Simon & Schuster in March. In the last 2 months, the trend has only sped up, with Barnes & Noble to be the next major domino to fall.

As tradpub's slow demise sinks the book market into chaos, readers will miss the content curation legions of laid-off agents, editors, and publicists used to provide. People read what's put before them, and what's put before them is put there by a distribution and marketing network that will soon go extinct.

Long story short, we are all independents now.

Amazon could have filled readers' need for content curation, but they've dropped the ball. Into the void steps IndieGen.xyz, a "virtual convention" for indie creators. It's the brainchild of Paula Richey, who writes:

We can’t rely on big platforms to give our indie creators a level playing field. They’re all too invested in engineering the outcomes they want. Here, your work rises or falls on its own merit. How well will you serve your customers?

I’ve had my suspicions confirmed that a certain giant retail platform is turning into a pay-to-play marketplace. Just like I’ve said, sponsored ads are taking up all the best space, and the regular spaces for all the little people have been nerfed to make those ads more necessary.

IndieGen.xyz is a straightforward, customer-centered search, not a complex algorithm that hides some things and recommends others. This is why it doesn’t host the actual sales pages or handle the payments. It doesn’t take up a lot of space. It doesn’t need to sort the shoppers. All they have to do is browse the site and find what they want. I hope some of them want what I have to offer at OtherRealm Studio, and will eventually buy some IndieGen.xyz merch as well once I get that done, but I’m not about to cheat to make it happen. I create what I create and people want what they want; it doesn’t need to be complicated.

Richey is doing a public service with this site, and I'm proud to support it. This is where the rubber meets the road. Browse the booths, or if you've got something to sell, apply for one yourself. The process is easy and quick.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Revolution against taste

A revolution against taste.

That's the most accurate way to describe the direction of The Last of Us Part II.

I'm not talking in particular about Ellie and Dinah's lesbian relationship, or the evil Christian cultists who play the bad guys. Those are choices any SJW creator would make, in alignment with the world as they see it.

I'm talking about taking control of a character, Abbie, whose actions and motivations are the opposite of what fans of the first game enjoyed. For a game so narratively focused as The Last of Us, killing the hero and beating the heroine to within an inch of death is the last thing any player wants. It's the antithesis of what a sequel should be.

"We don’t use the word 'fun.' We say 'engaging,' and it might seem like a minor distinction, but it’s an important one for us, which is, we believe that if we're invested in the character and the relationships they’re in and their goal, then we're gonna go along on their journey with them and maybe even commit acts that make us uncomfortable across our moral lines and maybe get us to ask questions about where we stand on righteousness and pursuing justice at...ever-escalating costs." –Neil Druckmann

 

Why play a game that the creator touts as divisive and uncomfortable? That might work for a 2-hour movie, but not for a 40-hour game where you actively engage the story. Gamers are not masochists. The least they expect from a game is a good time.

Many games fail because they aren't fun. If half the leaks are true, The Last of Us Part II fails in spectacular fashion because it is deliberately not fun. It's an inversion of the very idea of entertainment. You should like what you hate.

The malice and depravity of this meta statement is in part what's driving the backlash. Here's hoping other creators take note.

Rather than pay $60 for a virtual Maoist struggle session, why not read an entertaining, underpriced book? I've made available the first 4 chapters of my sci-fi thriller, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon for under a buck. I appreciate the support!

As always, let me know what you think. Leave a comment below and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Relativism sucks

There's a joke that says you should tell the truth because it's easier to remember. That's because the lie is fabricated while the truth is observed. For a lie to prevail, it must claim an equal footing with the truth or silence the truth completely. Thus arise relativism and totalitarianism.

The most pernicious lie advocates for the supremacy of the will. It prevents sinners from recognizing themselves as such, and hardens their hearts to God. They substitute their own truth over the created order, foresaking the one true remedy to their fallen spiritual condition.

"To every man his own truth, and the God within." –Marion Zimmer Bradley

"We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." –Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI

That objects have no inherent value, only subjective ones that people assign them from the disorder of their minds, is a construct that allows falsehood to flourish. If the truth is like a hill standing above the plain, you must level the hill to prop up the lie.

You see this leveling in modern art. How could Life magazine insinuate Jackson Pollock was the greatest living American painter in 1949? Did the war kill off every talented artist in America? No, it just concretized the intelligentsia's prejudices against icky objective truths that have enflamed so many men to separation and violence. Contrast Pollock's drip paintings with a Monet or a Rembrandt. One is the work of inspiration, talent, and industry. The other you can't discern from garbage.

Even art by a mediocre talent is preferable to Pollock’s best efforts. The key difference is in the attempt at saying anything of substance. Pollock gave his paintings nondescript names, like “No. 5,” because names with actual words, which have objective meaning, might prejudice the viewer against what the viewer wants to see. Oh, you see a tree orchard? I see old men playing chess. Tom sees a shipwreck.

"The world prior to the modern age was filled with divine meaning and purpose. And the mission of the artist was to serve humanity by awakening us to that divine meaning and purpose by representing such in new and beautiful complexions. But the rise of modern science in effect de-sanctified the world by supposedly exposing all cultural meaning systems as fabrications. The world is not governed by the gods or divine meaning or purpose, but rather by physical, chemical, and biological causal laws. The mission of the artist is now redefined; the modern secular artist all too often seeks to celebrate the new, the hip, by tearing down cultural fences and mores and exposing them as artificial constructions. Art increasingly exists to shock, to turn our heads and grab our attentions with blasphemous and pornographic content. So much of modern secular art is a window into a world devoid of any objective meaning, any sense of care and purpose." –Steve Turley

That alienation you feel when you look upon modern art is the loss of hope for truth. Look upon enough modern art and the mental decks will be cleared for an evildoer to manipulate you to do his bidding.

By contrast, it is no small thing to entertain people with your art. There is something beautiful in the specificity of a story, the way it resonates with the truth and speaks to the reader's emotions and lived experiences.

I want to know what you think. Leave a comment below and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Please give my books a try, and visit the author blogs listed in the sidebar. I've made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Faith that frees

Let me tell you guys a quick story, and you tell me if it rings true. In a culture that values freedom as a good in itself, the deceiver's strategy has been to convolute the concept of sin and brand Christianity as a rule-based system.

The strategy was an unqualified success. Because a free society must have legal boundaries, crime became a distinct category of sin in the cultural consciousness. Crime hurts other people, whereas non-criminal sins are "victimless." This popularized the "I'm a good person" rejection of faith. Someone who hasn't done anything wrong doesn't need to atone for his sins, so it goes.

For many people, biblical literacy is being able to quote the Ten Commandments. Seven years after becoming a Christian, I've never heard of someone inspired by that list of shalls and shall nots, or from the rest of the Mosaic law. In the Torah days, God assumed His people were faithful and His words would be written on their hearts. They were not. The Pharisees distorted God's to an end unto itself, transforming faith to pedantic rule following. Strikingly, the same image pervades a hedonistic culture's view of Christianity today. Various denominations' weakening of doctrine, rather than defang that view, enforced it.

The post-war liberal consensus, ever fearful of sectarianism, adopted as a core feature suspicion of men and their ruling passions. Rather than use these energies for good, peace-seeking churches squelched them, denying men a faith aligned with how God created them. Suddenly manners mattered most and doctrine mattered less. Good little boys mind their manners. They don't break the rules and they don't get in trouble. They also don't fight wars, don't start businesses, and don't spread the Gospel.

Bold, flawed, inspired men do those things. Bold, flawed, inspired men respond to calls to action, and the call that resounds loudest is the one sounded by the Creator, as in Ephesians 6:13-17:

Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Fight the deception with truth. You are a Man, a soldier of God. Your flesh is not a prison; it is His temple, His outpost in enemy territory. He made you imperfect, but in your imperfections lie your spiritual gifts. Use them forthrightly for good.

Whether you're a creator or not, you're always on the lookout for independent voices outside the corporate entertainment machinery. Give my books a try, and visit the author blogs listed in the sidebar. I've made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Reel them in: Dune

(A follow-on to "Hooked by the first chapter: Dune.")

My wife needed all of 2 days to read Dune, which is fast even for her. She liked it, with some minor reservations. I'm a slower reader, so I've only read the first 6 chapters. I'm not reading for pleasure. My intent is to analyze Frank Herbert's craft. Each successive entry in this series will probably cover larger portions of the book, since I want to avoid repeating myself.

Here's my analysis of chapters 2 through 6 of Dune:

• Crafting an over-the-top villain. If Baron Harkonnen had a mustache, he'd be twirling it. He spends most of the second chapter hidden in shadow, spinning a globe like the scheming madman in a children's cartoon. We don't get a description of his grotesque appearance until the end of the chapter, but his dialogue reveals much. He is sadistic, impatient, and expressive. He sighs and growls and repeats his words, often with emphasis. Note his passionate expression, in contrast to Paul's self-control. He bickers with his Mentat assassin, Piter De Vries, casually threatening his life. De Vries is revealed to be an addict of sorts, and his compensation for orchestrating the Atreides family's downfall is the Lady Jessica. You could call him a sensualist, like Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov. He and the Baron repeatedly refer to each other by name, which⁠—if that's ever been done to you, you know⁠—is very condescending. The third person in the room, the Baron's ambitious eye-rolling nephew, Feyd-Rautha, is mostly silent in this scene. He wants to supplant the Baron's son as heir, but he personally can't stand him. The sum of these character traits paints a vivid picture of a greedy, malicious royal household.
  
  
• Spoiling the twist. It's remarkable how Frank Herbert spoils Dr. Yueh's betrayal in the second chapter. It's then confirmed in an excerpt from Princess Irulan's writings a few pages later. Given away so early in the story, does it even qualify as a twist? What's more is House Atreides know the betrayal is coming⁠—and the Baron knows they know. What they don't know is how they're going to be betrayed. Henceforth every scene has a built-in tension that keeps the pages turning: Will the Atreides find the traitor? And what will come after if they do or don't?
  
  A minor issue my wife has with Dune is it's not explained how or when Yueh's wife was kidnapped. It's no small thing. The kidnapping would have been a major event in-universe, so why isn't it treated that way? In my opinion this is a shortcoming of the book, but, like a good writer, Herbert uses craft to cover it up. He focuses the reader on the known fact of Yueh's betrayal, not on the mechanism. If he'd kept Yueh's betrayal a mystery until page 200, the surprise, if it was going to have any clout, would have to be explained. Some readers might be alienated by the fact that House Atreides, which includes so many sharp minds, missed something so obvious.
  
  
• Expanding the cast. After another scene with Paul, the Reverend Mother, and Lady Jessica, we get three quick scenes introducing the supporting cast. First comes Mentat assassin Thufir Hawat and Gurney Halleck, then the traitor Dr. Yueh, and finally Duke Leto Atreides. The technique of introducing these supporting characters one by one is helpful to the reader. Having Paul be the one constant in all three chapters ensconces him as the main POV character.
  
  Now, about Gurney: ugly, lumpy Gurney. He's the most lovable character we've seen so far. He plays music, sings songs, and banters with Paul. Their friendship is personal, even if Gurney is his father's employee. What best exemplifies this is how Gurney frightens Paul in the sparring session. It's those you are closest to who can take such liberties without hardening your feelings towards them.
  
  Duke Leto comes last in the procession, a choice that surely was deliberate on Herbert's part. Having the Duke come last gives the impression of a busy, albeit caring, father. Around him Paul is at his most relaxed and vulnerable. The Duke allays his fears and shares details about the family's strategy and tactics. Like a good father, he does not talk down to him, but rather teaches him, helping develop Paul's faculties by subtle suggestion and encouragement. The Duke comes off as a tragic character, confident and capable and discerning, but like Paul a man with an unavoidable destiny. He cannot avoid the trap the Harkonnens have set.
  
  
• Let the dialogue do the work. For a work celebrated for its attention to detail, it's fascinating how often the setting for the action in Dune is a nondescript room. At least in these first few chapters, there's hardly any setting interaction. For the character action, dialogue is seemlessly integrated, often supplanting narration. Paul and Gurney's sparring session stands out. Herbert mostly describes only one character's movements at a time, leaving you to infer the other's. The narration is efficient and moves quickly to summary, rather than give a blow-by-blow account.
  
  The other event that stands out is Dr. Yueh showing Paul how to work a microfilm-type device. Operating it is rather mundane, and Yueh's explanation stands on its own. A novice writer may not intuitively understand this: Unless there's a specific reason for it, you don't need to tell the reader the same thing twice. You give weight and realism to what the characters say by letting them tell the story. You should also let their words reveal their character, such as Yueh's halting way of speaking shows he's afraid Paul will sense his motives, or how the Baron's breathy speeches betrays a sadistic mania.

What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below. I'll reply as soon as I can.

If you've read Dune and you're looking for something new to read, give my books a try, and visit the author blogs listed in the sidebar. I've made the first four chapters of my second book, Seeds of Calamity, available for free. It's set 200 years in the future and contains an alien parasite that gives its host clairvoyance! If that piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Time to reopen

The death rate from the coronavirus is nearly 2,000 per day, which is terrible, but that's a measure of mortality, not of infection rates. The purpose of soft quarantine was to mitigate the virus's spread so sick people don't overwhelm the hospitals (flatten the curve).

April 4th, about 3 weeks after we hit the panic button, and a week later than I predicted, daily new cases peaked. Since then we've tapered from a high of 34,000 new cases per day to 25,000. That's a slower dropoff than anyone wants, but it was never going to come down as fast as it rose. This bell curve will have a long tail.

We're beating this bug, and it's thanks to mitigation that the numbers aren't ten to a hundred times worse.

It's time to let businesses reopen. People want to work, and they don't want to stay cooped up all summer. It would take a massive redistribution of wealth, either through tax increases or currency devaluation, to sustain so many unemployed for an extended period of time. A crisis like this prove why fiscal responsibility is so important. Since the Great Recession, the national debt has risen $15 trillion. Keynesian economic policies have left us no fiscal flexibility to deal with a protracted crisis.

Ignore the noise about zealous cops, corrupt bureaucrats, and draconian governors. You knew of them already, and you know they're harder to get rid of than a tick in the nether regions. This virus is still real. The cases are real. The deaths are real.

An appropriate amount of fear has been cured into society. You can sense it when you're out in public, when you have to share the sidewalk with someone, that jitteriness. That being the case, I think we can return halfway to normal without creating a runaway outbreak. And if that works, we can drop restrictions entirely and let common sense govern the people.

The coronavirus took a lot of people by surprise. Even on March 13, when the president hit the panic button, it was difficult for me to see what the big deal was. At the time we had only 41 deaths. I thought it was an overreaction and I privately advocated doing nothing.

Good thing I wasn't setting policy. The sinister way this virus incubates in the body for up to 2 weeks without the host showing symptoms means once you first see it in the general population, it's already spread to thousands of other people. And those people are spreading it to others. If we had waited until the power of this virus was evident, a disaster would have been unavoidable.

Texas started reopening last Friday. If your state hasn't, it should at least be considering it. There will be local exceptions, like metro New York, but there's no city in America as dense or as reliant on public transportation as New York.

I want to know what you think. Leave a comment below and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Whether you're still hunkered down or not, you're always on the lookout for quality independent voices and entertainment. Give my books a try, and visit the author blogs listed in the sidebar. I've made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

UPDATE (July 2021): If you're reading this after the worst of the pandemic has passed, I want to apologize for empowering the government against the people. I was wrong. Hopefully the bitter taste in my mouth will prevent me in the future from placing so much trust in those who manufacture and manipulate narratives to control others.

Kill the bad guy

A hallmark of middle-brow entertainment is the good guys' reluctance to resort to winning tactics. While the bad guys rack up a body count, the heroes are preoccupied with stuff like "we can't become like them." They treat winning as optional and, when inevitably defeated, find a sick kind of solace in moral victory.

I was reminded of this while watching The Dark Knight, an otherwise great movie. Bruce Wayne mopes about "what I would have to become to stop men like him" (i.e., the Joker). When he has the Joker in his sights in the middle of one of the Joker's murder sprees, he goes out of his way to not kill him. The stupidity of this decision overshadows the rest of the movie.

I look at this as a symptom of the West's identity crisis. After two world wars drawn out over 30 years, emergent cultural trends ran strongly against the concepts of identity, particularly religious, ethnic, and national identity. We were no longer a people united by a shared history, but a people defined by nebulous ideals. The test of a people shifted from their cohesion and longevity to whether they live up to their ideals. At the tip of the spear it manifests as ostensible warriors making tactical decisions as if tactics were all that differentiated them from the enemy!

You'll sometimes hear this called the post-war liberal consensus. The catastrophe of this change became evident when the first generation to be raised in this culturally rudderless environment, the Boomers, rose up in the '60s. When you kill God and stunt a man's drive to fight for king and country, you end up with fewer heroes. (See CS Lewis's great book, The Abolition of Man.) But just because heroes are not in fashion doesn't mean we don't need them.

In a fight against evil, it is enough to know whose side you are on and what you are fighting for. The rest is details. In Bruce Wayne's case, he is defending his city. The Joker is sowing death and chaos. It's difficult to understand with any moral logic why Bruce Wayne is so resistant to killing in this context. He comes across as a navel-gazing dufus.

It's the kind of mistake that could only be made in the fog of the post-war liberal consensus. Under this rubric, the enemy isn't the barbarian killing innocent people, it's us in our inability to live up to our public ideals. But who does? And what sense does it make for the perfect to war against the good while evil runs rampant?

I'll add this caveat. There is a real battle against evil that should not be ignored. The ultimate battleground is in the spiritual realm, and in that sense we should guard our hearts from the devil. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

I want to know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment below. I'll reply as soon as I can.

I've made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here. I appreciate the support!

Let it go #MayThe4th

You'd think Lucasfilm's operational pause during the coronavirus epidemic presents an opportunity to take stock of the Star Wars franchise and change course. Not so. Lucasfilm continues to debase the franchise you grew up with and love, and I'm here to tell you you should not care.

The incompetent storytelling, retconning of canon, lack of preparation, literal insults of fans, and aggressive SJW propoganda were a scandal 3 years ago. Now they're Lucasfilm's established modus operandi. Knowing what you know, you should expect the worst and get your entertainment from somewhere else.

Selling to Disney was the biggest mistake of George Lucas's career. Unless he plans to buy it back from the debt-ridden Devil Mouse for half of what he sold it for, it will be remembered forever as a senseless act of artistic self-flagellation.

Star Wars peaked 40 years ago and has produced more bad content than good since then. If Star Wars was a Ferrari, it's got a thousand door dings and a shattered windshield. What does a dented fender matter at this point?

In the words of Rian Johnson, "let the past die. Kill it if you have to." Enjoy something that's not (yet) corrupted by the world for a change.

You can start with my space adventure book, Seeds of Calamity. I've made the first 4 chapters available for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.