Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Lately and for various reasons I’ve been thinking a lot about Europe.

I’m not here to rag on Europe — mostly because I’ve been told that’s just plain mean — but rather to reflect how very fundamentally different they are from us. Mostly because they are. And the differences infuriate them and worry their “leadership” while we mostly aren’t aware there are any differences, take everything Europe says at face value and sometimes think there’s a lot we should learn from them.

Or believe their opinions of us…

Way back, when the US formed, Europeans were both astonished at the appearance of something that was supposedly formed on the lines that Rome had been founded, and the fact we didn’t implode immediately. They waited for the implosion a long time. Then settled back tow ait for us to become an empire instead. Just.Like.The.Romans.

Partly this was based on USSR propaganda, and their telling people we were decadent just like Rome and would fall just like Rome, and because that was the only form of republic that Europe knew of that lasted more than a minute, give or take. So, of course we were the same.

We are not the same as Rome. Mostly our software in the head is very different. Rome was amazing for its time, but the structures our funding fathers copied were the idealized form of Rome. In practice Rome had more in common with the Soviet Union than with us: a heavily militaristic and rapacious entity that actively sent out colonizing forces and which stripped occupied territories of wealth to reward the populace at home.

We’re far more of a trading people, far less interested in colonizing (Americans are terrible imperialists. All they want to do is go home.) We also innovate and grow enough that we can feed ourselves (and a few other people.)

Stop expecting the US to go Imperial. The problems with Rome before the Empire were not even vaguely correlated to our issues.

Like Rome, we tend to assume Europe is just the same as here. After all, a number of us came from there. Sometimes only a few decades ago.

And apparently even those people who acculturated, never reflect on how very different it is.

Part of what makes visiting Europe so difficult for me — besides the fact that my immune system is apparently made of kleenex and air planes are my mortal enemy; and the fact I live in fear that someone over there is going to read what I wrote here and I’ll run afoul of their anti-free-speech laws — is that it’s like having my face sand papered with the differences on the regular.

Deep conversations on TV over whether more homes should be built with the strong implication this is somehow the government’s business, either through direct financing or regulation. This while I sit there scratching my head, going “If people want the house built and have money to build it–” A Sunday morning panel on whether the nation needs more “kindergarten slots”. (I THINK that was while running through Holland? Maybe? That or Spain. Maybe France. The airports all have TVs) And me going “Or, hear me out, people who want their kid in kindergarten when there are no slots, if the need is that great, get together in a group and finance their own kindergarten.”

And always, always, the pervasive appeal to authority, to an extent that makes even our TV talking heads positively “don’t tread on me.”

You see, it’s not, like here, “We brought in this celebrity we tell you it’s an expert” it’s the underlying current of being sure there is an ultimate expert on something, someone who could tell you, off the top of his head and with absolute certainty that the country needs precisely 234 kindergarten slots, and be RIGHT.

There is a vast space in European programing that’s marked “ruler by divine right” goes here. These days they call that person “expert” or “genius” or a million other words, but what they really mean is “ruler by divine right.”

Sure, we have had more deference to experts than we should for the last 100 years, here on this side of the Atlantic, but if you looked beyond the glossy barrage of coordinated, all pervading media, Americans were never 100% on board with it. Tons of reasons, including the fact that our country is so vast and fractured we’re very deeply aware that local conditions might not at all match what … coff rich men north of Richmond see or think they see. But also the experience of colonizing and taming the continent set a certain skeptical “You and whose team of mules” base character to the country. And frankly a lot of us late imports came here because we like that character.

We are — as the meme goes — not the same. We always think it would be best if we could do it locally. We chafe and grumble under the necessity for any vast centralized mandate. And frankly, the market for such mandates, including the spicy mostly peaceful fire setting and murder might have been financed by the government issuing those mandates, once we track where all the dark federal money was going.

Europe? Europe has a hole where a king should be. They resent us, because they blame us for their having got rid of their kings.

Is it true? Well, kind of, kind of. Except the French revolution, while claiming to imitate us was in fact its very own crazy cakes European thing. And they never got the point of the revolution over here, which was LIMITED government. Instead, they try to stick bigger and bigger centers in their concoctions, and call them “republic” like it’s a magic word.

But the hole remains. Europe crawled up from the mire on the idea of strong tribal leaders and tribal affiliations. The Romans destroyed that, but the Romans passed. And strong tribal leaders (even if countries had to be imagined as being all related) persisted, and came back stronger than ever.

Now even the European countries that are technically monarchies aren’t, really. Instead, they’re supposed to be governed by these slick, fast talking people that even they know are bullshitters.

And they keep falling behind.

There is a “king” shaped hole at the heart of their malaise. To sooth themselves into uneasy sleep they convince themselves that someone somewhere is a secret king. “The best authorities.” “This genius” “This person who knows everything.”

What they get, of course, is more of the slick fast talking people. And they keep getting more and more weasel-like.

It’s not holding very well, mind. Better than here, but not very well. However the poor bastages have no first amendment, and the lights keep going out… And the crowds get more restive.

Yes, it’s going to end in tears over there. Would already have ended in tears if they hadn’t exported everyone with a smidge of initiative, and if they hadn’t stopped reproducing under socialism.

But even the wormiest of worms eventually turns.

However ending in tears is exactly what it will do. In all these centuries, they’ve tried to subvert us, forecast our demised, envied us, and hated our guts when we rescued them and financed their socialist dreams.

What they’ve never done, not even a little bit, is understand why we are who we are, and how we tick. They’d never for a second consider our constitution and our bill of rights.

So, it will end in tears.

Unless we can somehow demonstrate once and for all that we are better and beyond their dreams. Unless we can take a step so obvious, so immense they can’t deny it.

Planting the American flag on Mars would just about do it. Planting the American flag on Mars while, once more, performing a revolutionary cleaning of our government, taking us back to our principles? Outstanding. Planting the American flag on Mars, cleaning our government back to our own principles, and creating excellent culture that explains why our way is better and will always be, and how to follow? Perfect.

How fast do you think we can do that? Because it should be fast.

When being an example to the world you have to go big or go home. Or, in this case, go big AND go to Mars.

Let’s go.

And in my reading myself back through my own origins in science fiction, we now come to number two in the Coleccao Argonauta that formed my childhood reading: The Green Man of Greypec.

Before I go any further let me point out that the next book up is City At World’s End by Edmond Hamilton. Tuesday or Wednesday next week, depending on the state of revision, snot, etc.

So, now we’re to the Green Man. When i revised it in 2016 I was profoundly upset by a bit in the book about eugenics and socialism. This time it didn’t bother me at all. See, before I read (re-read, though i only had the haziest memory) it I read the author’s biography and found he was an enormous fan of H. G. Wells, so of course he would pervaded by early 20th century socialism.

To get past the intro: the book was first serialized in 1936 (and bears the marks of it) but revised in 1950 for book publication. I’d say still being in print almost 100 years later, and people (not just me) still talking about it is a good run.

The book was written by a British police clerk. Festus Pragnell, the author, actually wrong under his father’s name, as I guess he thought Festurs was more distinctive than Frank William Pragnell. And he’d be right. Though weirdly, he went by it in real life also.

From this site:

Working name of Frank William Pragnell (1905-1977), UK police constable, clerk and author who was known all his life by his father’s first name, Festus (even in the 1911 census, his wedding banns and his own will: “Frank William, known as Festus”).

So, you know, science fiction writers have always been weird, one way or another.

Anyway, the fact that he was from the UK is germane for the very weird things he does to the character, who is of course — for coolness (I thought it was mandatory when I was young, to be fair) an American — and they’re the sort of weird things someone from Britain who didn’t know a heck of a lot about America would do. For instance, his character’s name is Learoy Spofforth and he goes by Lea. This doesn’t seem to be an attempt to mock the character, just what he thought was a good, convincing American name.

Now, I will grant you all I know about the America of the thirties is from reading biographies, but even so that struck me as a fairly bizarre name to give anyone. Add to it that this man’s profession, and the reason he’s “well known in America” is that he’s a “lawn tennis champion” and I’ll give you a minute to roll on the floor laughing or at least scratch your head and wonder how big tennis was in the America in the thirties. And again, I’m right there, scratching my head along with you, but in all the books written in America at that time, I hear them talking about baseball, occasionally football, but mostly baseball. I don’t know if there was enough of a golf fandom. But I can honestly say never have I heard of tennis as a sport that fascinated people or made someone nation-famous. Eh. Perhaps he just assigned this guy the first sport he could think of.

Anyway, the book opens with a bang. Poor Lea is waiting trial for having bashed his brother, Charles’, head in.

He tells us he’s 28 but lived 80 years. And then he talks about his brother being a scientist and discovering worlds in atoms. From there we go to his brother saying he’s found life in one of these worlds, human like life. And his machine should be able to send a mind into the mind of one of the humans in the atom.

After various alarums and excursions poor Lea finds himself in the head of a green man. Now if you’re thinking green men after a lifetime of the culture talking of little green men. This green man is not little but a sort of massive green primitive ape, living in a green primitive culture that has caves lit by electricity speaking either of a greater culture or a decayed one.

The green ape, Kastrove, is in the middle of a raid to capture a woman who has landed in a flying machine, and who has yellow hair and looks fairly elfin. The minute Kastrove, or Lea perhaps, sees her he’s taken with a great desire to have her.

He does in fact capture her, which leads to various things including fights in his tribe, but he takes her for a mate and keeps her.

Now, since we know we’re going to be going through sixty two years, I hope you don’t expect a carefully introspective romantic relationship. We are in fact told that she comes to love him because he’s so kind to her, and they have a baby who looks — he tells us — as a normal human.

She comes from an elfin culture that lives in the ruins of an ancient, decayed civilization and no longer knows how to use any of it.

When a supervisor/agent of the larbies — the overlords over both apes and her people — comes to greypec, Kastrove’s village, for reasons of primitive politics, he takes Kastrove and Issa his mate with them to be trained as soldiers. They also take Kastrove’s and Issa’s son to train as a village leader as he grows. That’s the last we hear of them.

Throughout there are mentions of Gorlems, the enemy.

The training of Kastrove makes it obvious most of what’s happening is the Larbies mind controlling the apes and the elfin creature by hypnosis and mind control.

After several adventures, Kastrove helps a Gorlem prisoner (they’re sort of a wizened humanoid) escape.a The escapee dies in the escape, but Kastrove ends up working with the Gorlems to help them win the war against the Larbies.

The Larbies btw are intelligent molluscs and utterly ruthless.

Kastrove’s mind — Lea’s — retains all the science subconsciously, and when the Gorlems extract it, it allows them to win.

Anyway, Kastrove gets Issa back and they have a passel of kids, and then he gets back to his own time and world. I can’t say that is a spoiler, since of course the book starts with him back in Britain.

I won’t tell you the resolution which at any rate I really didn’t like as it falls under “strange psychobabble nonsense.”

So, it’s less outdated than the Adrift in the Stratosphere book. I wonder if I did read it as a kid, because I remember thinking of the atoms having worlds, and of a universe being born every time I struck a match, then dying when I blew it out. But of course there have been other book with those ideas. Curiously, his view of the atom is more current than what I was taught in middle school, but never mind that.

Most of the science fiction in the book is… well, space opera intensive. The guns fire both pellets and green gas; the cars are interesting and of different kinds; there are ruins of a greater civilization; the Grolems are what you’d expect of an “advanced civilization” as seen in the 30s.

There is the bit about how their civilization got in this trouble, because they didn’t have socialism and racial hygiene, but those were just the ideas in the air at that time.

One of the more curious ideas I found that strikes me as a distortion of the concept of evolution was his belief that given time all animals in a world would evolve sentience and intelligence to some degree.

Another point that amused me is that I might have found the “Women don’t do anything” book that allt he feminists go on about. And even here it’s not true. Yes, Issa serves as a prize of sorts in a bunch of sections of the book, but she also gets trained as and serves as a soldier (even if indoctrinated) and she chooses Kastrove, in the most unlikely romance.

The advice given about women is so quaint it’s almost hilarious. We get a bit of funny early 20th century advice from Kastrove’s father who says you shouldn’t count on getting good at relationships until your fourth. And then the end punch is kind of highly complimentary and silly about how women work.

Meanwhile really I do understand why this would upset feminists nowadays. Because most of the action is in a man’s world, so to put it, with women as accessories of sorts. But part of this reflected the world the author lived in. I figure police work at that time was mostly a male thing, with some women but not enough to impinge too much on the consciousness. Even married men lived in more separate spheres from women than men today. This is something we underestimate now, how sex differentiated society was back then.

And they were writing for men, mostly. Not that women didn’t read, but then (as frankly now, except for some side sub-genres) they didn’t read much science fiction. So to an extent it was written and read by men who lived in very male spheres.

They had women in as prizes, as unattainable goddesses, and when they were in they were often brave and valorous. But they were peripheral to the main action.

However to not see the difference between that and the current fiction, which is almost obsessively female centered and keep harping for more and more is sort of like winning lottery and keeping whining that you need more money for a cup of coffee.

The story itself is a rollicking adventure of the sort you might find in any pulp magazine, not deep thought and not pretty words, but entertaining nonetheless. And again, he must have done something right as there were at least four foreign language translations that are easily found, and he’s still read today.

To the extent it is unsatisfying is that it reads, to modern eyes, almost like an outline. There is no exploration of anything, including the setting (actually characters are relatively well fleshed compared to the settings) or the various social pressures. I mean, things are there, but they come at you at such breakneck speed that things kind of fall off, and often you find out what is happening as you’re in the middle of it, and not in a good way. Like you find out they were starving not while they’re looking for food, but after they find it.

I think this is more than anything the result of movies and TV being all prevalent. At the time it was enough — more than enough — to have a movie in your head and for it to move fast and be really interesting.

Nowadays books are a different experience from movies, and we expect more emotion, even if the emotion is suspense and fear in action sequences.

Yet and again, though it might not set the twenty first century apart, Festus Pregnell’s Green Man of Greypec is an eminently enjoyable, or enjoyable enough book. I still read it without getting a need to throw it across the room, and it is still being talked about.

May I be so lucky.

I never much understood April Fools (which existed in Portugal too) in the sense of actually fooling someone.

Look, it’s not even that a lot of them are strictly aimed at a group where it’s a great joke, where everyone else is left wondering if it’s true or if they’re stupid; it’s that some of these are so accepted that they get cited, and people then think that it’s the absolute truth and base other stuff on it, and it pollutes the entire system.

My favorite April first joke is one that you consciously know isn’t true, or one that de-hoaxes itself at the end.

Take for instance the theory of phantom time (Actually this youtube channel does a lot of “ooh, big scary thing” that turns out to not be real, as they explain in the end.): According to a German historian, the year is actually 1724. He says our calendar is a lie and a big chunk of the Middle Ages never happened.

Then there’s completely out there stuff that frankly has mostly turned into a conspiracy to sell t-shirts, like the idea that Birds aren’t real.

My absolute favorite right now is the Tartarian conspiracy.

Frankly, I think there needs to be a lot more you tube videos talking about this extensive empire from the nineteenth century that everyone has forgotten, the memory of it washed away presumably in mud floods.

Also, in light of the recent mumbles about stuff under the pyramids, I think everyone should watch this video.

Of course, we’re finding out a lot of the crazier conspiracies like the idea the US government was funding ESP research…. just happen to be the pure truth.

Of course, none of these compare to the idea that communism has never been tried and that we should break a few million more eggs, in case the utopian omelet finally appears!

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM JAMES YOUNG: On Seas So Crimson: Usurper’s War Collection No. 1 (The Usurper’s War: An Alternative World War II)

“[A]uthor James Young shows himself to be a master of that science fiction sub-genre called ‘Alternate History’.”–Midwest Book Review

Adolf Hitler is dead. Great Britain lies prostrate, subdued under a storm of poison gas and incendiaries that have turned the great city of London into a blazing abattoir. The Royal Family’s whereabouts are unknown, while Heinrich Himmler, new Fuhrer of the victorious Reich, prepares to dictate terms to Lord Halifax’s government.

For RAF Squadron Leader Adam Haynes, London’s destruction is the nightmare outcome of years spent fighting the specter of Fascism. With his own combatant status uncertain, Adam must rush to save as many of his Polish-speaking pilots as he can.

For Lieutenant (j.g.) Eric Cobb, Great Britain’s subjugation has immediate and deadly effects. After his flight leader is murdered by Kriegsmarine anti-aircraft fire, Eric must decide between remaining neutral or helping his British rescuers. His choices will dramatically alter the course of history.

In the Pacific, Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi witnesses firsthand the myriad opportunities that Germany’s victory has provided for Japan. Defeated in China by Soviet forces after the Imperial Army foolishly attached northwards in December 1941, Japan has not only changed governments to a Navy dominated cabinet, but also changed strategies. It is to the south, in the oil rich Dutch East Indies, that Nippon will find her destiny. Yamaguchi, as the new head of the Kido Butai, must develop a plan that prevents American interference while simultaneously husbanding the Imperial Japanese Navy’s strength for a single, great Decisive Battle.

BY MANLY WADE WELLMAN, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY D. JASON FLEMING: Sojarr of Titan (Annotated): The Classic Pulp Planetary Romance

When the spaceship crashed on Saturn’s largest moon, the pilot adventurer died. But his infant son did not. Raising himself in the wilds of an alien world, Sojarr survives, and thrives, discovering a strange tribe of gypsy humans, and battling roving bands of monstrous natives…

Until the day another ship falls from the sky and threatens to throw two worlds into chaos!

• This iktaPOP Media edition contains a new introduction giving the novel genre and historical context.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bar Tabs: A Modern Gods Story

Brief back stories on the characters from the Modern Gods universe.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Bound into the Blood – A Virginian in Elfland (The Hounds of Annwn Book 4)

DISTURBING THE FAMILY SECRETS COULD BRING RUIN TO EVERYTHING HE’S WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is preparing for the birth of his child by exploring the family papers about his parents and their deaths. When his improved relationship with his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, is jeopardized by an unexpected opposition, he finds he must choose between loyalty to family and loyalty to a god.

He discovers he doesn’t know either of them as well as he thought he did. His search for answers takes him to the human world with unsuitable companions.

How will he keep a rock-wight safe from detection, or even teach her the rules of the road? And what will he awaken in the process, bringing disaster back to his family on his own doorstep? What if his loyalty is misplaced? What will be the price of his mistakes?

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS WITH STORIES BY CHRISTOPHER R. DINOTE AND JOSH HILL: Wyrd Warfare (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 49)

“I was born in the late 1970s, which means I grew up in a family that held living memories of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. My generation was exposed to a plethora of culture and entertainment much earlier than we probably should have been. War filled many of those books, comics, games, songs, and films. The historical, the fantastical, what was, might have been, never happened, should have happened, and thanks be to God didn’t happen. World War III was always imminent. War Games and Missile Command reminded us there was no way to win. We expected the end to come like The Day After or The Terminator. Maybe it already happened, maybe we were already dead and just didn’t realize it.
The stories in this anthology draw from a multitude of inspirations: real-life deployments, places, things, people. Monsters. Events. Incidents. Sacrifices. Heroism. Horror.” From the Introduction by Chris DiNote)

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Origin Stories (Chronicles of the Fall Book 11)

Six stories in the Troystvennyy Soyuz on the run up to and during the Fall of the Alliance.

Young people with problems with the brutal society, and all too often their own families. Young men and women reaching for a better future, as everything changes around them.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Flight of Miss Stanhope: A Short and Sweet Regency Romance

Marianne Stanhope is in trouble. Her family is urging her to accept the attentions of a most odious suitor, so she turns to a gentleman of her acquaintance for aid. But Mr. Firth has his own reasons for assisting Miss Stanhope, and it falls to her childhood friend Mr. Killingham to convince her that she’s made a dreadful mistake.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)

Deep in the Colorado Rockies, Kyrie Smith has mastered the art of keeping secrets: like how she turns into a panther at will, or how she’s trying to solve a string of shifter murders while serving up the daily special. But she’s not the only one with something to hide.

Take her coworker Tom Ormson—your typical guy next door, if your typical guy could transform into a dragon and might have accidentally killed someone. Then there’s the lion-shifting cop investigating the murders, a guilt-ridden father, and a trio of dragon shifters hunting for something called the Pearl of Heaven.

As if navigating a world of supernatural intrigue wasn’t complicated enough, Tom’s falling for Kyrie, discovering powers that shouldn’t exist, and learning that trust is a two-way street paved with decades of secrets. In Goldport, Colorado, where the coffee’s always hot and the shifters are always watching, solving a murder might be the easiest part of Kyrie’s day.

Welcome to small-town life where everyone has something to hide—and some of those secrets have scales, claws, and a tendency to roar.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Red Star, Yellow Sign

Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.

It’s 1934, and the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Leningrad’s Communist Party chief, has rocked the Soviet Union. When an up and coming young Party official is assigned to investigate, it looks like an open and shut case.

The further Nikolai Yezhov looks into the case, the stranger things become. Mysterious entities lie beneath the swamps upon which Leningrad was founded. Because he has stumbled upon these secrets older than humanity itself, Yezhov must be eliminated. But first he must be led to commit acts that will ensure that history will forever remember him as a vicious criminal.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: equable

Sorry. We have people over today and tomorrow and the day ran away from me. I meant to do this very early morning, but my body decided this was a good time to be sick as a dog.

So–

Promo post tomorrow. I’ll go to bed early (we have people leaving early, anyway) and hopefully will be more functional.

*I started to write a post in response to a “European right” blogger who says that Trump’s attitude is making it hard on the European right. But it devolved into yelling a lot of swear words, so.
1- I know it’s necessary to join the “orange man bad” wave, particularly in Europe, or you’ll get attacked. I’m not impressed. We’re not going to elect another George W. just to please you.

2- Trump is not showing Europe half the hostility Europe has SHOWN US OVERTLY for the last 100 years.

3- Dear Europeans, we don’t think paying your bills and allowing you to suck sweet, sweet socialist tit while dissing us makes us strong and powerful. We don’t LIKE you there in our basement. MOVE OUT. Get a job. Stop lecturing us.

4- You know what the European right could do? Get off the ground, close their legs, shoot the bastages in the face. If you stop responding to the left’s pressure and insults by lying down and giving them everything they want to stop from being “hurt” it will make a much bigger difference than anything any American does.

5 – The European right is slightly more tolerable, because they’re not (as) internationalist. But they’re still natural enemies of the AMERICAN Right. Hence, this blast from the past. Because we’re not the same.

6- Least it be thought I hate Europe. I don’t hate it. I don’t love it. I love some Europeans, but Europe collectively has a tendency to run off with the occasional Bull(shit.) Okay, so do we. Fair is fair. But when their bullshit consists of blaming all their problems on us, I’m going to get seriously salty.)

So, instead of the post I started which I think was very funny, but also couldn’t be read by anyone under the age of 45 due to profanity, I’m repeating the post below – SAH*

Someone asked me to write this a while back, and I’d completely spaced it until he reminded me on Facebook.

But sometimes, particularly when dealing with multinational twitter mobs, I feel like we’re speaking different languages and terms like “right” and “left” wing get wildly misinterpreted, leading to a certain twit(teriac) for instance saying I hated everyone to the left of Jeb Bush (Hate, no.  Despise their politics, yes.  And I include Jeb Bush and quite a few people nominally to the right of him in that.) while others claimed I was a big Jeb Bush fan because they think that’s what “right wing” means and they’ve self-obviously decided I’m right wing since I hate Marxists.

First, right-left have almost no meaning to where I stand.  I define myself in the authoritarian/non authoritarian axis, which is completely separate, and where I’m just a little shy of the “no government nutters” (I can call them that because, you know, they differ far less from me than the “government in your face” weasels, so I can say they’re totally crazy.)  Round about where the founding fathers were.  Government is a good servant but a bad master, and all that.

Of course, in the American spectrum, uninfected by the European Spectrum, that is indeed what should be called “right wing.”

The problem of course is that the spectrum is NOT uninfected, since we’re in an era of global communications and the meaning of Right Wing in Europe has started to seep in over here, both in leftists minds and in the minds of those who are self-defining as the right.

The other problem is that technically, if you go by the original meaning, the sides should be flipped.

Clear as mud?

Don’t worry, I can confuse it more.

Let’s start with the ever-reliable wikipedia: In France, where the terms originated, the Left has been called “the party of movement” and the Right “the party of order.”^[1][2][3][4] The intermediate stance is called centrism and a person with such a position is a moderate.

Let’s first correct the obvious problem.  If you’re precisely in the center, the position is called “dunderhead” — and this applies to anything, not just politics. That out of the way, if center is defined by “not following an exact party line” I think most of us would be.

OTOH look at that definition again.  “The party of movement” and “the Party of order.”

First of all impossible, since life is movement.  This is where I think the left gets their bright idea reality is leftist, except they’re missing the point of where these definitions originated and what “movement” and “order” really mean.

This was of course in revolutionary France.  Movement had a very specific meaning — mostly towards Madame Guillotine, obviously — in terms of you wanted to change everything, the hours of the day and the names of the days of the week included.  Order, meanwhile was the “not so fast, this structure works.”

So, what that actually means is that left is the side of “let’s change everything” and the right the side of “let’s keep everything as it is.”

If you apply that to the current spectrum in the US (and most of the west) where socialist-like-structures and “leftist” ideas have permeated the political lives of the citizens for far longer than anyone reading this has been alive, the spectrum does a tilt-whirl and suddenly we who are don’t tread on me libertarians and who think the cause of liberty could be justly served by taking everyone from office and putting them in jail become left wingers, in the mold of the ones who shouted “Aristo, aristo, to the lamppost.”  (And since I’ve often felt like shouting that, I empathize.)

BUT that is not really a good picture.  We know how the French revolution ended.  Having dived down that rabbit hole in order to write Through Fire, it became obvious that the French Revolution, the “leftist” movement of our time par excellence, the grandmother of the Russian Revolution and of every other movement that has fed the graveyards of the 20th century was very much a STATIST revolution.  If you ask yourself what the difference between the American and the French revolution was, it would be that in the American revolution the people were set free to pursue happiness and equality before the law, while in the French revolution, both happiness and absolute equality were ENFORCED.  (If you think happiness wasn’t enforced, read some of the trials of people who declared themselves less than ecstatic in post revolutionary times.)

So, left would be best defined as “movement towards an imaginary utopia in which the government grants all sorts of happiness, equality and other boons.”

And the right?

Ah, there we hit on the crux of the problem.  While we’re fairly sure what the left is (and btw, the definition above is why they believe they are the party of the future and they will inevitably win, because in their eschatology any “progress” ends one way, with the government as a sort of smiling goddling dispensing benes to the happy people of Brutopia.) “right” can mean many things.

First let’s dispense with the left-enforced definition of right which ends in Hitler.  To quote a public figure “that’s just retarded, sir.”  Just because Hitler and Stalin had a big tiff and pulled each other’s hair, it doesn’t mean they weren’t both leftist, socialist bastards.  They were just arguing whether socialism — that utopian final stage of the revolution where the state looks after everyone like a mother or a father, depending on your language of origin — should be national or international.  And in this case “international” meant “Russian” — or at least it did in the seventies, and I have no reason to think it changed — while national meant “of the genetically related people.”

(For instance when Bernie Sanders announces he’s a socialist but a nationalist then says he’s not a communist, I believe him.  The appropriate name for his announced ideology is Fascist.)

That fascination of the fascists with nationalism, btw, explains why the left can’t seem to accept national love/pride (i.e. they’re not NATIONAL socialists) and why so much of Europe thinks patriotism is a precursor to war.  Europeans are taught that in school too.  I was.

Okay, so that’s disposed of, now … if the right isn’t National Socialism, what is the right?

If I had to hazard a definition that would fit both Europe and the US I’d say the “right wing” meant “a clinging to the essence of what the nation means and to the nation’s original idea”, as it were.

In Europe, of necessity, right wing means a lot of “our people, our land” and really in its ultimate expression “our king.”  Right wing parties in Europe are often associated with keeping or reviving ancient traditions, with the country’s state-religion and with the “way things have always been done.”  There will almost always be a reflexive xenophobia, for instance, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  It is not racist to say “our land, our customs.  You want to live here, you conform to us.”  (The left’s reflexive oikophobia tends to chew the ground out from what people know they can count on, from language in everyday interactions to things like protection of children and women. It is time the European right learns to say “No, not all cultures are alike.”) If you’re thinking that this is the same as us saying “if you want to live here, speak English and conform to our laws”… not quite.  In Europe an immigrant will never be “of the land, the people, the traditions.”  You could be Yoless from Pratchett’s Johnny Maxwell, and learn Morris dance, and you’d still not be “quite British.”  Assimilation takes generations, and sometimes not even that.  Other things come with that definition as freight.  The right will still prefer to keep women and men in traditional roles, and they’re often shocked half to death by differing sexual personas.

Now if that description sounds familiar, it is because it is what the left assumes the right here is.  And some right wing people, reflexively, will embrace it and claim it.  Just because the left hates it.

But by and large, as someone who has cruised right of center blogs in this country for a very long time, no.  That’s not what right means in the US.

This is why when the leftists (who true to their origins only understand themselves as in opposition to the European right) come cruising in, they’re always shocked when we don’t rise to the bait of “racist, sexist, homophobic.”  They’re always terribly confused a lot of people here in fact are of “non conforming religions” (or none at all) and non-conforming sexual habits, and varying shades of tan.  And the only explanation they can find is “self-hating.”

That is because the left (worldwide, really) since the collapse of their model, the Soviet Union, has gone a little loony and fallen down a time-space-funnel, in which they’re fighting “right wing” in Europe (and probably circa the eighteen hundreds, but never mind that) not in the States.

The right in the US is the side that clings to the origins and the founding.  This is the side that believes ultimately sovereignty rests in the individual and the government should bow and doff its hat to us. We’re the side that believes that no matter what color, size, sex or whomever you decide to sleep with, you’re still an individual, entitled to equal protection under the law.

We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Which means in many ways we’re the horror of the European right.  If it weren’t for the fact that both “rights” are fighting the much greater evil of the Marxist theology unleashed upon the world (and yes, it is more evil than even the European right) we’d be going at it like two equal weight boxers in a ring.

My dad, who is Europe-right (mom weirdly is MOSTLY American-right.  Not fully, because she still thinks morality, etc. should be enforced, but I think that’s a generational thing.  And no, I don’t know how she ended up don’t-tread-on-me in Europe.  She didn’t even read Heinlein) for instance believes it is not only the government’s right but the government’s duty to look after things like health care.  Oh, and if the government periodically shoots the wrong guy, well, that’s the cost of keeping other people safe.  He’s not a bad man, understand — but he’s a man of his time and place.  He draws the line at communism, not just because it’s evil, but because it’s a stranger to his country and enforced from outside.

We’ve gone the full rounds (one of the few times we’ve yelled at each other) because he can’t understand that I don’t view the government as some thing that should “look after” me, but as something that should do the minimum possible to ensure I have the space to look after myself, and anything more than that is a violation of my rights and a thwarting of my duties as a free human being.

And that’s the difference between our right and their right.  I’ve found it easier and far more conducive to familial harmony to pretend there is no difference, and to nod along with their serene belief that “right wing” in America means the same it does there.

Since our left doesn’t see the dividing chasm, they often refer to the “right” as monolithic and what they get in their press (which is to the left of ours) is convenient in obscuring the differences.

No reason to shock mom and dad by letting them know their daughter has become a USAian radical, after all.

BUT the actual meaning is radically different (quite literally RADICALLY different.  We are the “radicals” who turned the world upside down by believing authority flows from the individual up, not from the state down.)  As I hope it shows above.  Though being a word more often defined by opponents and people with the “feels” it has the imprecise quality of a mirage rising from asphalt on a hot day.

One caveat is that the American right wing might never make any sense in Europe.  Culture is something that changes very slowly and often doubles back.  So I restrain my evangelizing impulses there.  They might come to be like us, but it won’t be in my life time.

And the right in Europe only makes upside-down sense in America.  It would be impossible to create a right-wing-in-European-terms country out of the US.  Our multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-racial country couldn’t turn into an European traditional country.  Not for a few hundred years at least.  Which is why all movies that do that are profoundly unconvincing.  And why it’s so weird that the left doesn’t see the difference between the two rights.

It is also, unfortunately, why the sf books from the fifties or so, particularly the ones by Heinlein, which show the whole world unified under the American system are such a pipe dream.

It might have seemed logical and even attainable after WWII but as he himself seems to have realized in Tramp Royale, the real world is too diverse and culture and cultural differences too real for that utopia ever to have been possible.

America is a place in the heart*, and as such it can only be won one heart at a time.

*Note for idiots: not denying we also have a territory that should be defended. But being American necessitates believing in the constitution as its ultimate expression.

So, I should write a post, but I’m feeling downright peculiar. I think I’m coming down with whatever is going around. It’s that or the thyroid meds suddenly stopped working (Honestly, could be either.)

Normally I’d spend till 2 pm writing a post, but we have guests coming this weekend and the house must be useable. Okay, no way the front room is getting done. That’s where I’m unpacking the library. However it is a goal not to put everything that doesn’t fit the rest of the house in there.

Honestly, just dusting, running the vaccuum and sorting laundry is going to be a chore.

So:

1-why is everyone on line suddenly making pictures in the style of Studio Ghibly?

2-Is it a bastardization of the studio’s art?

3- Why is everyone putting it on memes?

4- Can it be taken too far?

5 – OMG Sarah, why?

1- Well, so far this is our best guess:

2- Yes. Absolutely. And? Look at it this way, Studio Ghibli is getting more publicity than it’s had in…. well. than it’s ever had. If it’s somewhat smart, it can make money from this.

3- This is my best guess:

4- oh, Lord, yes.

What if Studio Ghibli directed Lord of the Rings?

I spent $250 in Kling credits and 9 hours re-editing the Fellowship trailer to bring that vision to life—and I’ll show you exactly how I did it 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/IqUeBSH4H0

— PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) March 27, 2025

5- Did you see the thing up top? Right now I’m coming down with something bad. I thought I was just very depressed (had some bad and utterly unexpected health news for someone in birth family. No, not parents. They’re in their nineties bad news is not unexpected.) Then yesterday I found myself just watching endless stupid you tube videos about lost civilizations and catastrophes.

I’ll grant you it’s not so bad as when I spent a 2 months last winter watching videos of someone walking through cemeteries and talking about old graves. But then again, I’m hopefully not as ill as I was back then. I hope. Since that almost put me in the hospital and whacked my thyroid. (Which would explain why my hair is falling out again.)

Instead it was an endless array of “why the CIA is suppressing proof of Atlantis.” (I mean for all I know the CIA thinks it is. I mean, they believed that the Soviet Union was unbeatable!)

But once I realized I was doing that, I decided to Ghibli myself. Which, yes, I do realize is restricted in five states and illegal in New Jersey. But there it is…

The results are …. weird. I mean, it strangely does better at this than at doing a pen and ink sketch of me. It only Ghiblis me alone, though. If I try to use one in which I’m with Dan, it either turns him into a bunny or a giant Pikachu. Why? I DON’T KNOW. Studio Ghibli have something against mathematician?

Anyway, here’s what I got other than the picture above:

The last might be my favorite. I’m fighting an urge to replace my icon with it on all social media, honestly.

Okay. I’m going to quick-clean the house then take a long nap. Maybe when I wake I’ll feel better.

See you after the Ghiblificallypse.

Yesterday some of you mentioned that any act of rebellion, of truth, of standing up to those who would crush us reverberates and gives courage to others who might otherwise be too timid to rebel.

Rebellion is a contagion. A good one.

I missed Earth hour this year. It was three days ago on the 22nd. I’m terribly sad, because every Earth hour I turn every light in the house on, including those in the closet, which can’t be seen, but I think they might be able to tell from the substation.

My goal is to stand and say “We won’t go quietly into that night. We will not surrender without a fight.” Coff. Independence Day Movie. “We will survive. We will stay alive.”

You might think it’s all in my head, that turning lights on matters. And maybe it is.

First, there’s a whole lot of symbology with light. Second, I came from a place where light was rare, expensive, troublesome.

I’m told that there were no longer oil lamps in use at grandma’s house when I was born, but I remember them. I remember it was my older cousin’s job to clean them and trim them.

Now both of these are possible. After all, I know even in my teens, the electricity went down quite often, due to an extremely inadequate power grid. So even when my parents moved away to their house, when I was six, we always had candles on hand, and I tried to ruin my eyes by reading by candle (or moon) light.

Because of that, because the lamps that existed were small, distant, usually hanging from the ceiling a long way off, because winter days were dark and depressing (the area I grew up in has the same climate as London) I craved light. And was always ridiculously impressed by light.

I remember when i was very little, they used to line the tower of the church with white lights for the local feast. In my mind that was almost miraculous, a sign for the ages. (In retrospect, it was probably paltry and dim.)

I loved light in abundance and in all its forms. Abundant light made a bad day better.

To be fair, even without knowing it was Earth hour, there’s a good chance that every light was on in the house. My kid used to joke you could tell our house from orbit. We could tell it from three blocks away, that’s for sure.

And I remember when the Soviet Union was trying to put down the Solidarity rebellion in Poland, we were asked by our priest to put a candle on every balcony to show our support. And we did. Everywhere in the village, there was a candle burning for Poland.

Did it make a difference? Did the Soviets see lights everywhere (we weren’t the only ones) and realize they were losing public opinion?

I don’t know. I know that seeing other people light candles WE realized that the Soviets were losing public opinion. We weren’t alone. Communism was not winning everywhere.

Communism still isn’t winning. And we must not let it win.

It might seem we’re alone, atomized, lost.

I find it telling they try to get us to turn the lights off when lights are the hallmark of civilization. If you fly over communist areas, they’re all dark. the opposite of civilization. Energy is civilization. And energy is light.

Refuse to be kept in the dark. Turn a light on. Speak up. In the measure of possible, refuse to collaborate with the people who want to destroy light and humanity.

Fiat Lux.

*I did not forget Festus Pragnel and the green man of greypec. It’s been a difficult week for reasons beyond my control. I will hopefully do my post on it tomorrow. Friday at the latest – SAH*

Tell the truth and shame the devil. In this house beset by devils and illusions of the mind, this is more important than ever. And more difficult.

Go read this: How To Believe False Things. (And for the tragically x-less.)

This hit me particularly hard, because this is a young man I met personally and whose number I just recently deleted from my phone with a plethora of others from the Denver science fiction community, because … Well, because I’m many many miles away and I thought too that chances were he was so far on the other side that the chances of his ever wishing to speak to me were none.

I don’t exactly regret it, because the chances of his needing to talk to me are still low, considering how far away I am and how disconnected from the community that was once mine. But if he called, I probably would answer.

If you read those links, there are people asking him how it’s possible that he didn’t see in sports that men were very different from women, but I understood. I too can watch games and not see the difference. My visual interpretation is not great.

I can see I might not have noticed the difference if I weren’t lucky enough to have grown up with young men, and to have given birth to boys. As it was, I realized early that boys were stronger than I, but even then, perhaps because for a woman I was freakishly strong (until menopause) and unusually … well, determined is the polite term, I didn’t realize until my younger son — then a strippling — was fourteen, out of shape and skinny easily lifted a 100 lb bag of cement that I, in reasonably good shape, couldn’t even budge that I realized the magic sauce of testosterone.

But before that I’d come to realize while humans can — and should — have equal rights under the law, not all humans are born equal. By which I mean not everyone is the same, nor do we all have the same capabilities.

And the reason I knew was in myself. I couldn’t write on the line until I was ten or so, and I couldn’t write legibly till I was fourteen. My hand and eye didn’t work together (besides my having bad, undiagnosed astigmatism.) Things that people I KNEW were far dumber than I could do easily, I couldn’t. On the other hand, I could learn much more easily than they could.

I had illusions for a while. You have to understand, you could tell the kids whose parents left the village to immigrate. When they came back on vacation they looked… glossy. I suspect we all had malnutrition, in a society without refrigeration and where vegetables were suspect enough mostly you ate them after they’d been boiled grey, and that was only part of it. I was lucky, because my family was … not well off, not in the sense we’d use it, but educated, provident and hoarders of books.

So I reasoned that if the other kids in the school, the ones who were struggled, had some help, if they could borrow my books, if I could have them over for food, if– I figured it would make them like me.

It didn’t make them like me. I mean, in some cases, here and there, it made a big difference. In others, it made no difference whatsoever. But it made none of them like me, not in essentials, because well…. because they weren’t me.

But it took, I think, watching my kids grow up to figure out that everyone is inherently different. Sure, they are worthy of the same chance, capable of greatness in their own way, but people don’t even WANT the same things, and it’s stupid and evil to think that everyone should achieve the same results.

Proscustes bed shortens everyone.

Why did it take me that long? Because we all grew up under the Marxist ethos, where we’re encouraged to think if someone doesn’t do as well, it’s unfair, they’re oppressed, someone is rigging the game.

I’m telling you not only is the game rigged from the get go, but every time we try to unrig it we destroy people.

Seriously, if you read the young man’s tweet above, why would someone think that men and women would be equally strong? Why is being like a man the measure of a woman’s greatness?

Women are intrinsically different than men, from the womb. Yes, there is a spectrum. See where I was freakishly strong until menopause. I could actually fight back against most men. But the spectrum doesn’t mean that statistically, as a group, men and women aren’t different. We are.

One thing we know for instance, is that more men are geniuses. And more men are morons. There are women who are geniuses, sure. And women who are morons. But most women cluster in the middle.

Is that the explanation for the glass ceiling, and the lack of women at the top in business and sciences?

It’s part of it. The other part is that men and women want different things, and are driven to different things. yes, a lot of us will end up running mostly in the world of men, but most women prefer occupations that involve people. And most women aren’t willing to spend the hours in service of impersonal business or by-the-numbers-science. Most women prefer to have personal lives. Sure, most men too, but statistically speaking, more women than men are motivated by things other than emotionless pursuit of success.

The “Success” as society views it is male success. The attempt to erase the differences between men and women has pushed a lot of women into paths in which they are seriously unhappy.

Because, listen to me, women are not men. And why should a man’s measure of success be a woman’s? Women can be powerful in their own way — if you think that’s not true, you never met a matriarch, even in a seriously patriarchal society — and they can set their own goals and have their own success.

Believing that everyone is alike just pushes everyone into a path in which only very few are happy. (And more men than women.)

And the same applies to other differences than the differences between the sexes. It applies to other intrinsic differences. This strange measure of success whereby everyone has to be a corporate executive or one of another handful of “scripted” “Successful” roles leaves no-account artists who can’t hold to that, and can’t even want to, scrambling and feeling maimed and inferior. It leaves people whose main motivator is social or pedagogical feeling like they failed.

A lot of the “capitalism” young people rebel against has absolutely nothing to do with the free market. Instead, it has to do with this expectation that we’re all the same, and we all have to succeed the same way and be happy the same way.

… and this is why even if you’re a woman — it’s much, much harder for us to stand up and stand out from the group — it is very important not to lie.

It’s very important to stand up and tell the truth and shame the devil.

Because even if you’re not a believer, you should know the devil is chaos and destruction and enslavement to paths you don’t wish to be on. That’s a devil you should believe in, because he’s all through our society and eating it from the inside.

I won’t lie to you and tell you that when you tell the truth it will be great for you. It won’t.

Trust me. Going by my experience, when you go against the group, the all-pervasive propaganda and indoctrination that is a tissue of lies, you’ll be considered evil, crazy, untrustworthy.

Heck, the most amusing thing is being told I sold out. I don’t know what they think I sold FOR. There is no money on this side.

Sure, I largely survive, but if I’d stayed on the path and told the lies — and yes, I’m quite smart enough to know which to tell and tell them well — I could have done amazingly well. My kids would have no debts, and we’d have been able to afford everything we desired.

But there are values bigger than personal reward. And maybe that’s the way I’m broken.

However, while around me lies are taking society apart, I couldn’t contribute to the lies. I couldn’t stay quiet, even.

Because there are bigger things than personal achievement. And because I had to look at myself in the mirror.

I know some of you can’t — just can’t — stand up and tell the truth.

But do the measure of what you can. Don’t lie unless you absolutely have to. And when you can?

Tell the truth. Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Because the devil of chaos and destruction is eating the future.

And the future needs the truth.