This is a post from the Assistant, Holly. All is quite well with Sarah, she is off doing stuff with family and friends.

Yesterday: “Holly, can you put up a guest post?” “Oh, sure.”

Today: Tech hates me, and I hate it right back. There will be a quite interesting guest post at some point from our own David Bock, but it won’t happen until I solve tech.

Other than that, please wash your hands extra, there’s a stomach virus going around and I don’t want you all to catch it. I’m not quite clear how the virus transmission over the internet thing works, but I’m suspicious.

We’ve been doing family stuff this week, meaning the whole family got all-hands-on-deck to move some of the family to a new place.

This involved getting together with rarely seen in-laws, people who are not particularly political (though generally non-leftist.) Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember where most Americans who aren’t politically engaged live. Mostly because our ravingly sane cohort here has seen the stuff headed down the pipe from so long ago, that we’re sort of jaded by it now. Take the Lesbian Space Witches of the Star Wars Acolyte (Please. You might be the only one). I’m not a Star Wars fan (Sorry. I’m not much of visual medium fan and it just never did it for me, period. For a while there I wondered if Dan and I would make it. I was Heinlein, he was Star Wars. Anyway…) so this does not affect it with rage for the intricacies of the story and precisely everything they’re violating. Instead I think of all the crazy Lesbians I knew in the seventies, (oh, please. I went to college in Europe. As a liberal arts major. In a college filled mostly with women. Of course I knew Lesbians. Most of them were professors and ten years older than I. My generation had decided we liked boys. But hey!) who piously waited the time they could reproduce by parthenogenesis and do away with men, who were “defective” by not being women. And then I laugh like an hyena. Because you have to have a heart of stone not to. And I think, “Well, of course, these people are now the financiers and senior producers and everything.”

But it’s sometimes refreshing to be with people that still find it strange and outre that the producer of Bridgertons really thinks eighteenth century England had a sort of apartheid system, with black aristocracy and white aristocracy. That she also believes a German queen was “black” and NO ONE EVER MENTIONED IT, and that she believes the Queen was black because she had a “Moorish” ancestor 500 years earlier. I mean, they don’t particularly object to the series as a fantasy — as I don’t — and alternate universe. They just find it strange that not only does the producer think this was real (all based on rumors of a “Moorish” ancestor — more likely to be a redhead than black and FIVE HUNDRED YEARS BACK — and a bad portrait of Queen Charlotte) but also that people who watch this series also believe this is true. (This is our cue to close public education and possibly forbid it. If we can’t graduate people with a better idea of history, biology and … humanity (who wouldn’t gossip about a black queen in Regency England, among the most prolific diarists in history?) the schools are counterproductive.)

This was the same week I caught Jeff Goldstein (late of Protein Wisdom) sighing on Twittex about “must every hero be gay and in an interracial couple?” and I thought “you’ve noticed now?” Five years ago I stopped watching British Mysteries, which are one of my guilty pleasures, because, dear Lord, after a while it became impossible to ignore that every couple — EVERY COUPLE — was mixed race.

Look, I don’t have anything against gay heroes. It would be really funny if I did. While I don’t write legions of gay vampires (rolls eyes) as a friend accused me of doing, I did write A Few Good Men. And I’m writing No Man’s Land. (In which the gay protagonist is possibly the least “abnormal” thing.) Both of those books have gay protagonists because it’s needed for the book (more obviously for NML.) Which is one thing over “every couple we can we make gay” where it’s not even remotely needed.

And some people — mostly insane people, but then again I have a very low respect for American-born perception of race. It’s not race. It’s just insanity — would think Dan and I are in a bi-racial relationship. We even sort of look it, since he’s paler than pale, being a programmer, while I spend considerable portions of time outside bothering plants. So obviously I have nothing against people dating or marrying outside their race.

What I object to is — outside the framework of this is obvious fiction — using demographics to try to play with people’s perception of the world.

I know why leftists do it. The people who tried to levitate the Denver Mint with the power of — ah — their minds, and who believe things like if we abolish the police there will be no more crime are not…. what is the term? sane? in contact with reality? capable of rational thought?

They are so overpowered by their fantasies, that they believe they can wish cast those fantasies onto the world.

You can see that with Biden’s new EPA regulations, which follow the path of Europe meaning, we’ll all be without electricity for long periods of time and have to burn every tree in sight not to freeze in winter. But that’s not really what Biden (or whatever passes for Biden, probably a brain trust of ivy league graduates) thinks will happen. No. These people think they can wish-cast science into happening. (This is another reason to abolish all schooling in its current form, because, seriously, they think that science is something that happens by the power of their pure thoughts and good intentions. The schools have taught them nothing, not even, arguably, how to read.)

They really think that lesbians will look at Star Wars Space Witches, and go “Oh, so that’s how one gets pregnant without a male” and then DO IT. And if you think I’m being silly, no. Not really. They really think that. For years now they’ve been telling us things like “the future is female” and this is what they’re basing it on. Their strong belief that if they believe strongly enough, it will happen.

And that’s the thing behind all heroes are gay and if possible in an interracial relationship. Because, you know? If they show it often enough, most people will become gay and get in interracial relationships. (Forget it, Jack, it’s liberals.) There is this account on Twitter called “The Queer majority” that is like the craziest bits of libsoftictoc, but they really believe it, and it makes me quirk my brow and go “The what now? You what?” I mean if the majority engaged in non-reproductive sex only, the world population would be nosediving in a way no one could avoid seeing. (Yes, it’s possible to define “queer” in such a way that everyone is but that is meaningless. I mean, now they’re adding the ability to tan. No, really.)

And they think if they rewrite history, the past will change, or at least most people will believe in the new past — because apparently they’re going to engage in a written material burn on the scale of Fahrenheit 451 or something — and then the future will be exactly as they scripted, with all couples being interracial and ushering in a new tan race (That’s not how any of this works, and among Ursula LeGuin’s stupid ideas that might be the dumbest. If everyone had the same skin tone, people would pick other things to be tribal about. Heck, if everyone looked exactly alike, you’d start signaling tribe by styling your hair. Seriously. Have leftists EVER met a human being?)

My objection to this stupid idea of storytelling, used as sort of word-spells to change reality is that it’s stupid. It’s cringe. Because it’s impossible, sure. That’s part of it. You can nudge people slightly in one direction, if it doesn’t cost them too much, and the direction is something they were already heading towards.

The fact that for almost a century the left controlled all the mass communication ability in the world gave them the very weird idea that they could control reality. But in fact, it’s just propaganda, which only works if it’s absolutely pervasive, never lets up, and it’s never disproven.

So, you know, you could convince people that Covid 19 was a plague on the scale of the Black Plague…. for a short time. As long as you kept them all locked down and unable to communicate with each other. Once people saw that there were no piles of bodies on street corners and that the people around them were just pretty much normal, the spell broke down and — get this — it’s impossible to cast it again.

More importantly, the words and the fear mongering, and the insane propagandizing didn’t change reality. It allowed them to steal an election, sure, but they know they stole it, we know they stole it, and every day it becomes more obvious they stole it. It’s not a fiction they can maintain.

In reality, all their devout belief and spell casting does nothing but create very cringe art. Which is okay, as it might speed the emergence of new pathways for creativity and distribution of media.

When even people who aren’t as sensitive to cringe as we are have become aware of it, it’s over. The propaganda will never work again.

And the only response we can make to their stompy attempts to make us believe is to laugh like an hyena.

Okay, so, here is where we are: No, I don’t think Trump will “win” in November. I mean I think he will win, if you count voters who are actually alive and can vote. But I don’t think there is a chance to beat the fraud. I will say I will be pleasantly surprised if we do, but I don’t think there’s a chance in a million of its working out.

BUT the other side isn’t sure. They keep panicking at the thought that Trump will win.

Now this might be because the enormity of what they’ve done under their color revolution, of stealing the election and then sitting on it and refusing to even let people question it, is terrifying them.

Sometimes the magnitude of the crime itself is enough to scare the criminal. And frankly, they should be scared. Because what she’s done cries to the heavens for vengeance, really.

They are terrified. Every day I read another article that amounts to the FBI or some other institution gibbering in fear that Trump will win, and thinking that telling us how scared they are means we won’t vote for Trump. (Laughs in “And I did nothing because I was refueling the helicopters.)

But that’s not to say they’re really in danger. “The wicked flee where no man pursues.”

However, I won’t lie, their very panic is working on our side. Yes, it means they will do some truly horrible things, but it also highly magnifies their chance of blowing the whole thing wide open.

More importantly, whether they steal the next election or not, every month they’re in power they’re losing adherents and losing the culture war. Yeah, it doesn’t mean they’re not going to hurt us horribly every month they are in power, because they are. And I hate that. BUT– BUT– They are losing. Incrementally. And much faster than I could expect.

The truth is that holding the institutions while the enemy holds everything else means they’ll lose. And faster than you expect.

What is very important: even if they seemingly seamlessly steal the election so it appears to be fully honest: DO NOT TURN ON YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS AND ASSUME THEY’RE SOCIALIST MORONS.

The fraud is deep. The fraud might be unbeatable. But the amount of socialist morons is negligible, at least once they’re ten years out from graduating from any educational establishment.

The reasons their elected officials are morons or senile is because that is the bulk of the electorate voting for them. Yes, there are also nice, smart people who just don’t pay much attention to politics, don’t understand economics, and believe the MSM.

But that’s it. The bulk of the country is okay. It’s just the fraud.

And that we can deal with, one way or another. Hopefully peacefully.

Americans are okay. The culture is going our way. Every day more masks drop and more people recoil from the horrors beneath.

We’ve got this. Don’t pin all your hopes on a rigged election. And don’t believed rigged results.

Keep calm and build under, build over, build around. We got this.

No, I’m not going to talk about the people who think they’re edgy and dangerous by breaking statues, in the most traditional habit in history, that of damnatio memoriae, where the memories of people who are disapproved of by those currently in power are expunged from public consciousness. The ancient Egyptians did it, for crying in bed. The problem right now is that this generation is so history illiterate they are trying to erase the memory of the entire past, not just a particular person of whose actions they disapprove.

There are several reasons for this, one of them being that, nope, they don’t know history, but more importantly, they don’t understand that history exists: that is, they completely fail to understand and believe, much less internalize the fact that people in the past weren’t exactly like them, didn’t have exactly the same ideas and the same interests, and were driven by different pressures. They never reasoned, for instance, that slavery was all pervasive in the past, not because people in the past were somehow uniformly evil or stupid (as opposed to their enlightened selves) but because there were different pressures on human society before widespread mechanization. That is, to be fair, everyone (but a very privileged few, did an insane amount of work and there was simply work that was too unpleasant and boring for free people to do it, or that it was impossible to pay people enough to do. Slavery — and as far as the impulse to force others to do what one wants, that’s the oldest sin of mankind — filled that niche. What eventually freed the slaves (which to be fair some religious souls always aspired to do, but there is no society in which “if everyone just” worked, so while the religious souls might have freed their own slaves, preached against slavery, that wasn’t going to make it vanish wholesale) was the mechanization of work. In places in the world where mechanization isn’t common, de facto or de jure slavery still exists.

Anyway, taking slavery as an example, one can understand a feeling of disgust at the practice leading young people to want to destroy, say, statues of famous slave traders (there are none that I know of) but they have gone past that to destroying statues of anyone who might have owned slaves, to statues erected by recently freed slaves, to commemorate their freeing.

That’s just wanting to expunge all memory of the past, partly because they assume all the past is somehow tainted, but also and more importantly because they have imbibed deep the Marxist-neo-Rosseunian ethic that if you destroy everything somehow paradise will emerge.

It is also not that ethic, the “everything in the past was wrong and I’m going to destroy it” that I’m going to talk about, but perhaps the comeback from it.

If I’m right, the time we’re entering could rightly be called “A time of iconolasts.”

Except of course, since it’s coming after a time of the iconoclasts themselves being in power and engaging in wholesale condemnation of what came before, it’s going to look very odd.

To understand what is coming you have to understand what the late nineteenth and early twentieth century did. By being the culmination of the industrial revolution, and bringing in mechanization of all processes, and making a lot of things cheaper via mass-manufacturing, it ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity. It also ushered in an era therefore in which many of the rules of the past no longer applied. When technology or economics change and make the previously inescapable rules and necessities optional, it becomes easy and natural to imagine that all rules and all social restraint and all the centuries-old ideas of “how things are done” can also be done away with. And because many can indeed be done away with with little harm or harm that only becomes obvious in retrospect, a lot of things get swept away — like the wholesale breaking of statues just because they’re statues.

This was one of the forces of the 20th century. It was further fed by a popular understanding of Darwinian theory (popular and very wrong) that led people to believe that each generation got better or more enlightened.

The other force, because people need and seek “leaders” and wish to believe their leaders are special, was the odd cult of “experts.” It started fairly early, much earlier than any of us will think, if we don’t know about it. It was fed by the idea that there were many discoveries being made that brilliant people were coming up with amazing things every day in which they were experts. While this was absolutely true — to an extent. Many of those “discoveries” were wrong or partially wrong and didn’t connect easily into the “system of everything” that these people tried to create. But never mind. At the time there were discoveries in astronomy, in physics, in biology, and a discoverer could make a pretty good living of lecturing on it. There were also lectures on what we’d consider “Self help systems” including how to improve your memory (That being the one I remember.) This was going on from the eighteenth century at least, but in the mid twentieth century, it coalesced with the prevalence of mass-manufacturing, and the subsequent concentration of power in big cities and a powerful state apparatus, and fed off the subsidence of churches so rulers couldn’t say they were ruling by the power of G-d. A new vast apparatus of “experts” appeared, culminating in all the governmental departments which are supposedly advised and staffed by “experts” and “trained people” and well… “best men.”

I don’t know if “very capable” “best men” were ever involved in any of that. Personally I doubt it. Having been involved in artistic and scientific endeavors of various kinds, the “expert” who “knows everything about” whatever it is usually turns out to be either a sham or grossly exaggerated. And the number of even middling scientists or artists who are willing to leave their field of endeavor to become government bureaucrats is zero, meaning those associated with government are usually useless.

However by the mid century the press was also centralized, and in service of big government, which could burnish those “experts” and make them seem like supermen.

But that is the culture all of us grew up in. I’m sixty one, and I grew up in this mind set of “ask the experts.” By the 90s, we seemed to have “new experts” with “new theories” coming out every day. Most of them of the “self-help” variety. The “wonks” of the 90s made me roll my eyes, because what they kept coming up with amounted to “a new way to collect pocket lint.” However people piously believed it, and if you paid attention, friends and colleagues would tell you “Actually, research proves the best way to collect pocket lint is to–“

Only, as we’ve found out, as the control of the media escaped those (largely Marxists and neo-leftists) who kept the appearance of infallibility and expertise in place, most “scientific research” is falsified (quite literally most of it) particularly in the soft sciences, and most “experts” are no such thing, and most “new way to” is just a variation on rotating the cat.

Long before the watershed of 2020 people had the uneasy experience that those in control of the ship of state had escaped from the proverbial ship of fools and were just old fools in a new floating vessel.

But the last 4 years have been a mind-blowing demonstration of the falibility, incompetence and sheer ridiculousness of the “experts” and “top men” (not to mention “top women” or “top people who aren’t sure what they are.”)

I don’t think they can recover from this. And of course from such events two courses of results flow. One is that people stop believing in everything. They just devolve to savagery and inability to function. There is some of that, but curiously not as much as you’d expect, and most of it seems to be from that fringe element who would otherwise be mental patients anyway.

What we’re mostly seeing are people who are reaching back, beyond the mid-century and trying to recover what has been lost. People 30 and younger are desperately trying to figure out how things were done, and how things worked.

And yeah, part of it is that tech has changed again, from mass-everything to far more personal, which means what we have doesn’t work and older things might work.

If my feeling is right, the coming era is one at which we dethrone the “experts” and cock a snook at them. (I don’t know what a snook is but I’m itching to cock it.) And instead we try to figure out what used to work, and try it to see if it works. And we study and inform ourselves on whatever we’re trying to do — aided by the internet’s availability of information on everything — and figure out how to do it the best way. Which often is the old way, though perhaps modified for current circumstances.

And if my guess is right it’s going to be glorious.

Sweet Liberty* a blast from the past from September 2011

I have some experience with revolutions, partly because Portugal never believes a thing worth doing is worth doing only once. I get PTSD at the sound of Green Acres because Porto had one reel in its local broadcast station. Green Acres. When Lisbon got cut off, they played it back to back. This meant that someone had taken over the main broadcasting station in Lisbon.

(Okay, here I should explain that Portugal had two broadcast stations. Yes, I had a deprived childhood. [Yes. I spelled that right. I’m quite sure it’s an I.] Only one of them broadcast during the day at all, and that limited hours. So usually my experience was come home from school and watch something on lunch break and… ack… Green Acres. I wonder who is in now.)

For those who wonder why I’m “obsessive about my Portuguese background” – I’m not, but this kind of childhood experiences mark a person. I think this is why I’ve always been fascinated by revolutions. The ones that go right. The ones that go wrong. And the ones that go very wrong.

I read obsessively about the French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, and other, less obvious, revolutions. Like… The industrial revolution, or even the agricultural revolution.

Societies don’t change easily. People don’t change easily. Societies are worse than that. They’re slow to change like dinosaurs whose signal has to travel from head to tail and if it’s in full careen, it’s going to take a while to stop, let alone turn around.

One of the things I’ve noticed, in recent times, is that revolutions have another issue, particularly social revolutions of the non-bloody kind. Knowing you’ve won. Knowing it’s now, not thirty or fifty or seventy years ago.

Often when I’m talking to people, particularly people of an academic bend, I find myself wondering what world they’re talking about. It’s the silly little things, like “Oh, a woman would never dare say/do that,” when I saw women do it just that morning. Or “the neighborhood will get upset if there’s a non married couple” – what, like that one, that one and, oh, yeah, that one?

I will grant you that every once in a while, one comes across a person or persons who seem to be a blast from the stereotypical past, but my kids schools’ have more trouble with unwanted pregnancies than with girls being sent home to put on a longer skirt.

One of these effects of “delayed realization you won” keeps annoying me. Lately there have been any number of women writers complaining that they’re not proportionally represented as science fiction writers. They’re not being taken seriously and this is because they have vaginas. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, I’ve been this field for ten years as a published author. First of all let me get out of the way that there are some prejudices in this field, usually evinced by people you wouldn’t expect. For instance, I was pushed rather strongly fantasyward, in part because I had the v word. (Yes, verve.) And a friend of mine who is a physicist, was told that she should write fantasy, not science fiction, because she was a woman and therefore had the heart of a fantasy writer. (To which Rebecca Lickiss answered that yes, but it was in a locked drawer, and besides the statute of limitations had expired.)

There are other, more subtle prejudices. Some people told me they never read women writers, because they can’t write action. Weirdly, when they read me, they have no problems. I don’t worry about it. I just wait till they come around.

And btw, any male writing in romance or a romance-germane field, like certain forms of urban fantasy gets the opposite pressure, I’m sure. It’s all part of no one having a perfect life, and other people having certain expectations. My husband, for instance, had trouble placing his space opera (still hasn’t) because it’s character development oriented. (Yes, he actually got rejected by someone who told him it read too much like Bujold. No, I’m not joking.)

However, claims that women are discriminated against in fantasy always make me laugh. And claims that women as writers are discriminated against make me laugh even harder. And then there’s the post at MGC two days ago, and the comments – my Lord, the comments. Part of what got to me was seeing my friend Dave Freer getting attacked for making a perfectly reasonable and polite comment. Well, I was brought up to think part of my job was to give voice to those who didn’t have one, whether they be battered women in Portugal or silenced and demonized males in the US.

First let me establish there was a time I called myself a feminist. This is because I believed in the equality of women. I still do.

This doesn’t mean that women should be exactly the same as men. Or that they should behave exactly the same way. In fact, any such notions were pretty much dispelled by the time I came of age in the seventies. The average man and the average woman are very different creatures. And I strenuously object to such things as the fire fighters tests being rewritten so that you don’t need to do a fireman carry to pass. OTOH I heavily endorse any woman who is able to pass non “rewritten” tests being a fire fighter if she so wishes. And that’s because the median of anything is not the only person – there’s also the extremes. For instance, bad as I am at spacial reasoning (sad that) I am miles better than some males (okay, none that I’ve met, but I’m sure there are some. Maybe they were hit really hard on the head.) In fact I pretty much occupy the far outlier extremes of a bunch of categories (and I’m not saying which extreme.) As such, I am sympathetic with outliers. And I think letting people do what best suits them, without judgement, censure or barriers is best for everyone.

I believe in equality before the law not equality of results.

I still believe the same things, but I’m not calling myself a feminist, partly because the word has gotten corrupted. A lot of people seem to think the only way to elevate women is to degrade men. Others seem to be on a permanent hunt for offense, including attacking perfectly innocent words – no, history does NOT mean his-story. Please, study some linguistics.

This is many flavors of wrong, for many reasons, but the main reason is that it leads to a sort of permanent revolution. This reminds me of when the French revolution had got rid of every aristocrat either through beheading or immigration and had started attacking as aristos people who could read. Or people who dressed better than the others. Or people who used the word “roi.”

This is the sign of a revolution that has become its own reason to exist, and which will consume its own partisans, until it all ends in a sea of blood or until it’s stopped at last by a “strong man” of some sort, and suppressed for good. And at that point no one complains, because, frankly, it’s a relief.

Part of what disturbs me about this is that the justification for the “permanent revolution” is that we “could lose all the gains tomorrow.” You know, like if we don’t jump behind the latest harebrained “offense” campaign, next thing you know we’ll end woman suffrage (and good riddance, women have suffered enough! – Yes, yes, it’s a joke. And yes, I’m aware there is no joking in feminism. Another reason I no longer use that word.)

But the advances are fragile in another way. Much as I hate to say this, women’s gains rest on two things – one of them is safe contraceptives. The other is a stable western civilization. (No, I’m not even going to argue that. You want to live anywhere else in the world, be my guest. I wouldn’t, though.) And both of them can be lost more easily than you think.

Western civilization can be demoralized and subverted from within by a contingent of males who feel like women exist to punish them. Males who have been treated as criminals or morons or both from kindergarten on. Males whose education and employment figures, if reversed (i.e. if women had the same stats men have in the US today) would be a real offense and a call for investigations and remedies. Males who, btw, have never discriminated against anyone (most of them, at least) and whose fathers and, for that matter probably grandfathers, never discriminated against anyone.

These males can very easily see how women are treated in the rest of the world and, if pushed enough, form a concerted effort to subvert the current rules of behavior. (And no they haven’t done it yet. They haven’t even THOUGHT of doing it, yet. Again, don’t get me started. I lived in a country that is Western but only just. I know what discrimination is better than most people my age or even slightly older.)

I love the women who say it’s just the way the pendulum is swinging and that it’s right for it to go to far in the direction of privileging women. Let me enlighten you – if this is a pendulum, it’s one that has men as its favorites. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive. Any devolution from civilization to barbarism, or even any prolonged disruption in the economy that, oh, say, interrupts the production of contraceptives, and men will have to be very, very good not to be in charge. And if you’ve been pushing your little pendulum with glee and joy, don’t be surprised if they push it as far as they can the other way, till you’re in a world out of your worst nightmares.

You’ve won the revolution. Do you know what the mark of a GOOD revolutionary is? He knows when to put down his musket and go back to his farm. He knows when to shake hands with his neighbor who was on the other side. He knows when to make his rule so just, so fair that no one would contemplate returning to the former rule.

And he does not look for counter revolutionaries under ever bush and hallucinate that the war is still ongoing. Because then they just lock him up and beg the old regime to take over once more. Or start looking around for a Bonaparte.

Since I and my sons and my potential grandsons and maybe even granddaughters have to live in this world too, I beg you to come to your senses.

*–

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 NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Darkness (Timelines Book 4)

The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Lion in Paradise

At long last, Ariela Rivers Wolff begins her mission to the Simulated Worlds.

As the Martyr of Sardristra, she finds herself in the position of a Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for preaching a sermon of love to a very violent race of . . . blue, four-legged, four-armed, sort-of-horse analogs. Five hundred years later in their history, she finds a totally-reversed welcome as “Saint Ardreyelya” in the country in which she first appeared. Will she be able to prevent the rest of the world from destroying “her” people before she can convert them, too?

As the Goddess of Mahoukai, she finds herself the deity of a world religion in a world governed by magic. And like all worlds with magic, inevitably there is a Demon Lord. She’ll have to deal with that Demon Lord before the world of Mahoukai can be realized into the True Universe . . . but in the event, the Demon Lord is an infiltrated agent of the very enemies she is sworn to fight in the real world. Can The Lion of God take on a Darkness, single-handed? If not, it may spell doom for the inhabitants of Mahoukai – and for herself.

EDITED BY JAMES YOUNG, WITH A STORY BY LEE ALLRED: Hooves, Tracks and Sabers!: Tales of Alternate History (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 29)

Alternate history allows us to explore, in thrilling detail, what might have been. Come with these authors down the untrodden divergences from reality, while still staying close to the possible. Can history be fun? Yes! Be entertained by these stories and find yourself wondering along with the authors. What if…? Cavalry had evolved from hooves, sabers, and tracks in other ways than we know happened.

WITH A STORY BY LAURA MONTGOMERY: Tales of the United States Space Force

TALES OF THE UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE: New fiction and nonfiction focusing on the United States Space Force from top authors.

It has been six decades since mankind first shook off the yoke of gravity and flew into outer space. After cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first fateful trip into the vastness beyond our atmosphere, the Apollo missions landed twelve men on the moon. Since the building of the International Space Station, humankind established a semi-permanent base in space.

But wherever people and their interests go, the military and law must eventually follow. Enter the Space Force!

In an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, the wars of tomorrow may well be fought and won in space. Russia and China have successfully tested anti-satellite missiles. A Russian satellite approached a U.S. government satellite close enough to conduct an attack, forcing evasive maneuvering. Analysts believe the Chinese government has launched a satellite equipped with a robotic arm that could be used to manipulate and disable other satellites. With satellites critical to everything from weather forecasting to disaster response, agriculture to environmental monitoring—pizza delivery tracking to guiding missiles during war—a lot is riding on a safe and secure space program.

Here then, stories and essays of the United States Space Force, the first new United States military service since the establishment of the Air Force in 1947.

With stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Brian Trent, Gregory Benford & James Benford, David Brin, Jody Lynn Nye, Martin L. Shoemaker, M.T. Reiten, Avery Parks, C. Stuart Hardwick, Karl K. Gallagher, Gustavo Bondoni, Liam Hogan, Henry Herz, Marie Vibbert, Laura Montgomery, Sylvie Althoff, and Matt Bille.

Essays by: “Star Wars” program chief space laser engineer William F. Otto, USAF space office Michael Morton (ret.), and C. Stuart Hardwick.

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

FROM LL LOYD: Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B.: Good-bye, Marianna Rose

Unexpected visitors send the Mysterious Guardian Thief J.B. to the phantom planet Fahlon, where he encounters an old love and new danger.

After a surprise attack leaves a dead woman at his feet, J.B. and his partner-in-crime Poe head for Fahlon, a world that can travel between dimensions. It’s a bittersweet return to a place J.B. remembers fondly. Unfortunately Fahlon isn’t the world he left behind. Something has changed it – and that change threatens its destruction. Can the Guardian Thief save Fahlon – and the Marianna Rose – in time?

FROM J. L. CURTIS: The Grey Man- Sunset

Whoever said retirement was quiet never met John Cronin…

The old man may have retired for the final time from the Sheriff’s office, but there are still cows to run, court cases to testify at, and consultation calls to tap decades of experience. And that’s not even counting the cold cases he’s still trying to solve…

With his granddaughter Jesse running the gun store and managing the ranch books, and her husband leaning how to fill Cronin’s shoes on investigations and arrests, John is keeping busy training the next generation, while settling a few old scores!

FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)

AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.

Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.

This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.

The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Pendragon Resurgent (Legends Book 2)

Life is much better when nobody is trying to kill you.

Sara Hawke, now a university professor, has had five years where nobody was trying to kill her…if you don’t count her course load’s grading. Five years of watching over and helping raise orphaned young dragons.

Her comfortable life comes to an end when she’s attacked by Eastern Dragons, once again—this time, though, her attackers aren’t in the ruling elite. She’s in for the fight of her life again, only this time, Mordred is on the other side of the world, and she must first reach his side before they can succeed.

The running fight to survive brings to light old treachery, blackest magic…and new hope and new allies.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Perfect Darkness

What would perfect darkness look like? And what would happen if you saw it?

When Pavlik becomes obsessed with the idea of seeing perfect darkness, it becomes a distraction from the pod’s duty as asteroid miners. Little does he know that danger lies in opening one’s mind to the things that lurk in perfect darkness. Things that endanger his pod-brothers, even all of Briar’s Children.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Recovery Agent

Mike’s nephew Ari was kidnapped and recovered by an unknown man.
Mike helped get the ten-year-old all the way home . . . to find Ari’s father dead, and the relatives circling . . .
The police seem to be more interested in the rescuer than the kidnapping.

Falk was the youngest detective on the investigation, that had just gone sideways, as it seems the boy had been rescued by an infamous assassin. As an important and wealthy man’s relatives fight to control his estate and his only child . . . Falk is starting to realize his own family is entangled in the apparently natural death, the kidnapping . . . and the Recovery Agent.

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: concentrate

Sorry, guys. I’m running a fever, and I have absolutely no idea if it’s a real thing or “just” autoimmune. OTOH the panic attacks of the night before are explained. Not unusual when fever starts to take hold.

One of my ways of wasting time when I feel like I’m not doing anything productive is to play with midjourney. So, have some pretty pictures to look at, use for whatever you want, since I am not going to use them.

First a meme, related to yesterday’s post illustration (and maybe yesterday’s post.):

And that’s it. If one of these sparks an idea for one of you, I’ll be ecstatic.

I’m going to have some tea and maybe nap. The next chapter of NML is insisting on being written, so….

Last night I woke up five times, in a panic. This has happened before, but it was usually from a nightmare. This … was not. And I don’t know what caused the panics. It’s one of those: check everything, see if there was a loud noise.

Anyway, I think metaphorically speaking we need a reality check. We’re sitting here, in the dark, and we scare ourselves. Worse, people are trying to scare us, on purpose or not. In the sense that they think they’re going to do a lot of really bad things, and that intention and their certainty this is achievable can scare the best and most rational of us.

Look, first let’s establish something clearly: we are all poisoned by story.

Every time I see the stupid meme about how in revolutionary times “me and my homies would already be stacking bodies” I want to…. spit. Because seriously, no. The founding fathers were careful, deliberate, spent a lot of time analyzing things and almost killed themselves trying to find a peaceful solution to their dilemma. Benjamin Franklin was in London, looking for a peaceful solution, when war broke out. DESPITE deliberate insults, threats and attacks on them and their property. They were still trying to find a peaceful solution.

But that’s not how it’s portrayed in stories. In stories it’s all wham bam, and now we’re going to war. The refusal of the call (to action) cannot take too long or it’s a dud story, and that’s what we’ve been conditioned to.

This is one version of “poisoned with story” which is why we “know” a lot of things that just ain’t so. Like we know revolutions happen when people are starving. Or we know the government has super powers to stop all communication. Or we know–

Except none of it is true.

The good and bad news is the left is even more poisoned with story than we are. By and large, they are less practical and more people of word text and theory. (Part of it is self selection. The reason they are attracted to the left is that they like self-consistent theories and fail to realize they apply to nothing in reality. Because they work in fields/live in places where they’re not exposed to people who aren’t like them, with the same background and education.)

Do I believe the left is intending to bring us under the heel. Yes, yes I do. Does the left have plans and believe they can fulfill those plans? Yes, yes, they do.

And now I’m going to light this one lamppost sitting here, in the dark forest, guys: Does the left have a chance in hell of bringing their plans to fruition?

No, no they don’t.

Look, sure, they might jail Trump. They might even kill Trump in jail. I think both of them will cause a reaction, and not the one they expect.

What they expect, because it’s the way it would totally work in books or movies, the way of the story, the way we’ve taught our subconscious that things happen, is that “rednecks” a group of will commit terrible acts in protest, preferably indiscriminately killing families to protest this crime against their “leader” (No, they really think Trump is our Svengali and our leader. No. Seriously. Trust me. They think that.) and then the left can stomp down, arrest us all (as if) of us who ever spoke against them, and shut us down effectively and then it will be the reign of a thousand years (it’s either five or a thousand with collectivists. I don’t know why. They’re dumb that way.)

But that’s not what they’ll get. Because the right isn’t collective and the individualists fail to organize. What the individualists do instead if become very very impossible to track down and govern. And things start to happen. Like government vehicles might have a lot of flats. And families of certain three letter agents might just have a heck of a time making friends. And– But you know and I know what can happen, the base level “You smell” rising to the heavens. And for that matter, at a guess, so many whistles will be blown internally, from all the good people still embedded in those places that no one will get anything done for being deaf. And, and and– They have no idea what they’ll unleash, and the truth is neither do we. We just know they will.

How do we know they will? Well, look at all the things they’ve tried to do and which they’ve quiet quit because we ignored them/made fun of them/made them realize they’d reap the whirlwind? Everything from not being able to institute their disinformation ministry to their attempts at gun banning for the last… oh few decades that sure have had a few set backs, but have resulted in each middle class American having enough of an arsenal to obliterate a third world nation. And a majority of states now having constitutional carry. Or look these last few years at their attempt to lock us down again. I mean, if they could they’d never have lifted the lockdowns, but it became untenable. People were just ignoring them.

The truth is, every country is governed with consent of the governed. How that consent is withdrawn isn’t always a dramatic revolution, but slower and more grinding.

Look, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that they planned to arrest us, send us to camps, etc back in 21. Only, you know, even having the national guard in the capital started not working the way they intended. It was supposed to be a show of force, but it really just showed how scared they were. And even the national guard people — there were interviews — who believed this was needed due to a grave threat of insurrection started hating their guts. And–

But more importantly, this template they’ve lifted from stories… well, mostly about the Soviet Union, where they win and everyone falls in line scared of their brutality, and they confiscate all the food, stop food production, starve the parts of the country that disagree with them, etc. etc. etc. … it will never work.

Sure, they’ve managed to skyrocket meat prices, but let’s face it, they’ve skyrocketed most prices. That’s inflation and printing press go brrrrrrt.

Most of their attempts to get American farmers to slaughter their herds have been met with something between “You’ve got to be kidding me” and “Don’t try that in a small town.” Bird flu is not being any more successful. And you know, I’m probably the only one of my friends without chickens. (Mostly because I’m allergic to feathers. And also everything I raise turns to pets. See quail, and they’re younger DIL’s.) Even people in suburbs have chickens since the great egg insanity of 20 and 21.

So, yeah, they could confiscate our food…. if we were a country that has three major cities and a bunch of isolated villages easy to access all in a line. And a disarmed populace.

With all this, the size and variety of this country are the best defense. The orneriness of its people is another.

Sure, what they try to do, particularly if they “dominion” themselves into power again in November, will hurt like a mother. There are a lot of things we foolishly let become centralized, from energy production to transport. And those are the areas they are having the most luck messing with. Not completely, but the ones they are messing with the most. And even that is only affecting certain areas of the country. For the rest we’re… mostly ignoring them.

So some places, some professions, some cities, some areas are going to hurt. Worse than they’re hurting now. The rest of us are just going to get very upset.

Worse for them, and something they never get, is that their actions have consequences beyond what they intend. This for some reason is something they can’t understand in any way, shape or form. So they’re having trouble understanding why the lockdowns caused people to be able to work from home, caused people to be able to move anywhere, caused their favorite cities to become half-depopulated and the tax base in their fiefdoms to fall and…. Oh, yeah, caused a lot more people to homeschool, a lot more families to become close knit, and incidentally caused the demand for oil to fall (fewer commutes) which means the prices haven’t gone up as much as they wanted to.– This was not what they intended at all. And they keep trying to put the toothpaste back in cubeland tubes and not understanding why it doesn’t work.

None of this computes to them. And I’m not sure what their attempts at making us fall into line will do, but I can guarantee it will be the opposite of what they intend. Or a lot of things orthogonal to what they intend that incidentally mars their plotting.

This is because their plans are simple and — always — based on the simplified version of history they want to be true, and they have no real understanding of cultural and geographic differences.

Look, if they could, we’d already all be in camps. If they could, they’d have Hillary in power. If they had that kind of power over us, they would not have needed to scare everyone with a “pandemic” and put the country in house arrest to get the zombie elected.

They can’t. They’re already up against the hard limits of their power. Sure, they can say they moved the polls their way (it was one poll, and let’s say no, it’s not what they claim.) They have lost the consent of the governed. In fact, they never really had it. And they’re too dumb to know that at this point any more attempts to run “WWIII” or “USSR” or “Pandemic” scripts are just going to have less and less effect and more and more contrary side effects.

So, they can make us miserable for a while. And depending on where you are and your state of health, etc, you should make more or less extensive preparations to survive.

But that’s the other thing. Americans are prepared. I swear in 2015 when we were looking at houses everyone already had a “prep room.” I also presume all their guns were lost in a tragic canoe accident. BUT their canning, freeze dried food etc? That was next level. This is something that no other country does to this extent. (Or often to any extent.)

Be not afraid. Yes, their plans are horrific. And if they succeed it will be the first time their plans succeed in all of history.

Let’s not forget the Soviet Union, their beau ideal, the template they try to imitate, was brought down by…. typewriters, which allowed people to disseminate and spread information. And they’re trying to run the script in a country with…. internet, with personal cell phones, with–

Bah. They’re idiots studying to be morons.

They can cause a lot of pain, sure. An idiot with a hammer can break a lot of machinery. But in the end someone grabs the idiot and if the idiot is lucky, the hammer doesn’t get used on his head. If he’s lucky, he’s just locked in a back room were he can’t hurt anyone. People are very resistant to being killed and having their stuff taken away. And the idiots in charge are insistent they should do things people notice.

Move towards the light. The black pill is not your friend. If there were no hope, they wouldn’t be trying to gaslight us so heavily.

Sure, it’s going to take time. It’s not a glorious revolution. (Stop watching movies!) BUT in the end we win and they lose.

And definitely they’re the ones who should be afraid.