Tag: books

The Next Library Serial

Yesterday marked the end of the successful 116-part serialization of Sir Charles Oman’s STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, which ended with an intriguing take on the iconoclastic brilliance of the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley by Sir Oman.

He knew what was expected of him: “I am the Duke of Wellington, and must do as the Duke of Wellington doth”, was one of his touches of sardonic humour. But it was also one more indication of the fact that he regarded an inflexible adherence to his own peculiar code of duty as the highest obligation.

But above all, to thine own self be true,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

In the aftermath of the completion of the STUDIES, we want to know which Library or History book you would like to see serialized next on the Castalia Library substack. Please feel free to share your opinion on the matter by voting for one of the four selections in the next 24 hours. The serialization will be announced and begin tomorrow. And if you haven’t subscribed yet to the substack, you really should consider doing so, since it is free.

Library and History subscribers debate the next serialization.

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Another Reason to Subscribe

Folio Society is celebrating… something.

We want to hear about your LGBTQ+ recommendations

One of the greatest comforts reading can offer is the feeling of being seen, whether in the form of fiction or true stories.

We’d like to do our part in amplifying voices and connecting more readers with stories that have moved them.

So in celebration of Pride month, we’re asking you which LGBTQ+ books and authors you’d like to see as Folio collectibles. Editor’s Pick:

Conundrum

A memoir of identity and belonging, and the pain, joy and discovery that the journey from man to woman entailed.

From the team at Folio, Happy Pride!

I’d very much like to see Folio do an edition of Space Raptor Butt Invasion by award-winning author Chuck Tingle. If any work embodies the spirit of Pride, it’s that epic and inclusive tale of interspecies love in space. But failing that, Moira Greyland’s The Last Closet would be my recommendation.

It’s not going to get any better going forward, because the lunatics aren’t just running the asylum, they literally own it now. If you want to help us defeat the complete convergence and eventual demolition of the deluxe book industry, there are three things you can do:

  1. Subscribe to a Library, History, or Libraria subscription.
  2. Buy a leather book from Arkhaven or NDM Express.
  3. Subscribe to Castalia Library or the forthcoming Signature Society.

Speaking of NDM Express, the first t-shirt of the month has been announced and it is the very handsome Castalia History LEGO ERGO SCIO shirt.

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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE sold out

The Libraria edition, anyhow. The Library edition would be sold out already too, except for the fact that we published 250 additional copies. So, if you’ve been on the fence or if you’re planning to buy someone one for Christmas, you should probably do it soon before the Library edition is also sold out.

Also, if you want to keep up with Castalia Library’s announcements, news, and production updates, I HIGHLY recommend obtaining a free subscription to the Castalia Library substack. As an added bonus, you’ll receive daily serializations of one of Castalia’s works.

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The Rehabilitation of a Pedo

Not only does SFWA resolutely refuse to eject the pedophiles, past and present, convicted and unconvicted, from its midst, but the morally-depraved science fiction community is now even trying to rehabilitate the reputation of confirmed dead lesbian child-abuser Marion Zimmer Bradley, upon whose work the new Star Wars Acolyte is obviously based.

After her death, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter, Moira Greyland accused her not only of aiding and abetting her second husband in child molestation, but in herself molesting their daughter. Since Ms. Greyland made this accusations only after MZB was dead and could no longer defend herself or refute the charges, MZB had no opportunity to go to court and clear her name. Some authors have donated the money earned from sales to Bradley to various child-related charities. Given that she edited Breen’s book, Greek Love, and edited and contributed at least one article to his journal, The International Journal of Greek Love, she had to at least suspected his unhealthy interest in boys. “Greek love” is an old euphemism for male homosexuality, especially the relationship between an older man and a boy or youth. Many who knew her well said they had never seen or suspected anything untoward. However, others believed the accusations. Victor Gollancz, Ltd., the publisher of Bradley’s digital backlist, donated all the profits to the British charity Save the Children. Author Janni Lee Simner donated the money she earned from sales to MZB to the American anti-sexual assault organization Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network. Other writers chose to keep the money they earned…

She was awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000 posthumously.

After her death, she was cremated, and her ashes, appropriately enough were scattered on Glastonbury Tor, in Somerset, England.

Her influence as a writer will last so long as her stories are in print. Her influence as an editor continues to spread, as the writers she mentored are now mentoring a further generations of writers.

Remembering Marion Zimmer Bradley on Her Birthday, SCIFI.RADIO, 3 June 2024

If her influence as a writer continues to bear fruit such as Acolyte, she’ll be completely forgotten, and deservedly so, before the end of the decade. No one reads Darkover anymore and the market for lesbian pedophile space witches isn’t likely to survive Clown World’s collapse.

It’s fascinating to observe how the same freaks who believe and assiduously repeat obviously false information about those of whom they assiduously disapprove will openly deny and attempt to discredit the direct and convincing testimonial evidence of the actual victims of the criminals they are defending.

The dead lesbian pedo Marion Zimmer Bradley has never been disavowed by SFWA, is still recognized as a Hugo and Nebula Award winner, and there are at least two known pedophiles who are honored as SFWA Grand Masters. The real reason the SF community hates me to this day with a white hot passion has nothing to do with Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, my open contempt for their diversity pets, or even my ideological views. It’s because I published this book and they know their attempts to rehabilitate their fallen heroes will never, ever succeed.

There is a perfectly valid argument for separating the art from the artist in many cases. The problem, in the specific case of MZB, is that it is not possible to do so when so much of her art was steeped in her particular wickedness and written with the avowed objective of infecting society with it.

UPDATE: From Wikipedia. It will be interesting to see how many of these SF authors join the rehabilitation efforts going forward. And notice that there is no mention of me being one of the authors who has publicly condemned her.

A number of science fiction authors have publicly condemned Bradley. Among the first was John Scalzi, who within a day of the allegations being made public, described the allegations as “horrific”. Hugo Award winner Jim C. Hines wrote that Bradley’s positive effect on her readers and associates “makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic.” G Willow Wilson, who along with Bradley is a fellow World Fantasy Award winner, said she was “speechless”. Diana L. Paxson, who collaborated with Bradley on a number of novels and who continued to write novels set in the Avalon Series after Bradley’s death, said that she was “shocked and appalled to read Moira Greyland’s posts about her mother… I never personally observed, nor had any reason to suspect, that (Bradley) was abusing either of her children.”

UPDATE: In response to this post, SciFi.radio has memory-holed the article. But the Internet remembers…

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Leather at NDM Express

If you’re not a Castalia Library or Castalia History subscriber, but you’re looking to pick up a single leather book, you can now do so at NDM Express. This includes PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, which is now available in stock, as well as the second edition of THE MISSIONARIES.

Subscribers should continue to buy any additional leather books at the Arkhaven store, as they will be able to apply a subscriber’s discount there.

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MIDNIGHT’S WAR on Amazon

First, the gold-logo backer’s editions arrive at the warehouse today and the tracking numbers should start going out to the backers later this week. This was delayed from when we first finished them because we did a second round of revisions in order to correct some color profiles that had printed a little darker than we preferred. Second, both the hardcover and paperback retail editions are now available direct from the Arkhaven store at NDM Express and on Amazon. All of the editions are printed in the larger 8 x 10.88-inch size we introduced with MY SISTER SUPREMA and GHOST OF THE BADLANDS.

Third, regardless of where you happen to buy the book, or even if you’ve read the comic on Arktoons, it would be good to see some reviews for it up on Amazon.

Nothing beats a good book.

WELCOME TO THE MIDNIGHT WORLD

In the year 8466 of the cainite calendar, in the aftermath of a catastrophic global economic crisis, the vampire tribes came out of the shadows for the first time in more than 2,600 years and revealed themselves to an unsuspecting humanity. With near-complete control of the media, the national governments, the global financial system, and most of the major international institutions, humanity was helpless to resist the vampiric bid for power. A dark world order was established. The global monetary system was replaced with a new currency backed by human blood, and a global tax was introduced to ensure humanity’s new rulers that their endless thirst would never again go unslaked.

The Great Concord of Gomorrah was established to secure the rights and duties of Man and Vampire alike. Under the protection of the Concord, an astonishing array of famous, infamous, and downright notorious figures emerged from the annals of history and were revealed to have survived their apparent deaths through the Rites of Cain. But as an ocean of blood flowed freely through the new global economy, long-dormant vampire rivalries were reborn in new forms.

But not all humans submitted to the Great Concord, and more significantly, not all human blood proved to be palatable to Mankind’s cruel overlords. For some of the ancient legends turned out to be true. Drawing inspiration from the crusading orders of the Middle Ages, twelve young men joined together in a new military order, The Knights of Saint Michael and of the Catacombs of Rome. Armed with little more than their faith and blood that is poison to their enemies, The Knights of Saint Michael wage a desperate war against the vampire lords of the Midnight World.

UPDATE FROM ARKHAVEN SHIPPING:

You know the drill. It’s time to send out the paperback and hardcover omnibus Vol 1-6 to the backers and while we do have an email and the backer number, we have neither names nor mailing addresses. So what I need is for you to respond to the email that will be sent to you later today. The good news here is that we are upping our crowdfund game and it looks like we can integrate our shipping software directly into the crowdfund platform. So while we are still cleaning up the previous crowdfunds, going forward the delivery system should be top notch. That being said, for the time being we will need you to respond to the email sent to you in order to be sent your copy of Midnight’s War.

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Definitely on the List

If I ever go back to Japan, I will be sure to visit the Murakami Library.

Murakami’s writing is known for its combination of the surreal and the mundane, and architect Kengo Kuma designed the Haruki Murakami Library – situated on the campus of the writer’s alma mater – with this in mind. Natural materials are juxtaposed with flowing, futuristic lines to evoke a sense of stepping into the celebrated author’s world.

The Audio Room is where fans can listen to a selection of records once featured at Peter Cat, a Tokyo jazz bar Murakami ran with his wife before finding success as a writer. Next door in the Gallery visitors will find Murakami’s complete works in numerous languages, free to read inside the library.

Upstairs, the Lab offers a peek inside the small recording studio used by Murakami to produce his former radio show, alongside an area for listening to the author’s books in audio format. This floor also houses the Exhibition Room, which features limited-time exhibitions related to themes and motifs from Murakami’s writing, such as architecture and jazz.

The basement floor houses a recreation of the author’s home study and the Orange Cat Café.

One might be a bit wary of the librarian, however…

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An Accurate Review

In which a reviewer of fantasy books tries, and quite understandably fails, to finish reading the award-winning masterworks of one N.K. Jemisin:

I believe that the Broken Earth Trilogy specifically the fifth season which is the first book is so bad
that it’s essentially unreadable. I don’t remember a book that I’ve read that I believe personally is as bad as this one, and it shocks me that not only is this book extremely popular, but every single book in the trilogy won the Hugo award for the best book. This is a beloved series that many people claim
this is the best fantasy series of all time and I could not have a more contrary opinion to my feeling about
this book.

The fact that a third of this book was written in the second person is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing. The second person does not work when it comes to books, it works in some other forms of media, it works in video games, it works quite well in video games where you can picture yourself into the main character and people are talking to you in that way, but in a book it comes off so odd that it’s off-putting and difficult to suck in. There is a reason that virtually no books utilize the second person, and it’s not because they’re not as smart as NK Jemisin that they haven’t been able to pull it off, it’s because it doesn’t work.

I believed, constantly, as I read this book, that Jemisin was trying to be too smart and it came off as ridiculous. The second person is horrible, the way that she writes is atrocious. At times where she uses these italics and bolds and all caps within the text to really drive home a point, to really make this strong emphasis, you shouldn’t have to rely on that to make a really strong point. It comes off as kind of crazy.

I thought the twist that was in this book, and there is a major one, and I still don’t know if it actually occurs because I didn’t finish the book. I got 95 percent of the way through, and I said ‘I cannot bear to finish this book’ but I’m about 100 percent confident that there is a major twist that happens at the end of this book that is so obvious that it becomes one of the most telegraphed and poor choices for a twist that I’ve ever read. I can’t say what it is, but I can say that myself, and I suspect a great many readers figured out what it is within the first 50 or so pages. It’s not so much that the twist is ruined, you know. I’ve figured out twists before and it’s disappointing, it doesn’t happen a lot for me. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, I’m oftentimes the last person to pick up on these things, and I really do like it that way. I prefer to be surprised, I don’t want to figure stuff out, I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to be, you know, the dummy that is the last one to get it, but man, it’s obvious.

The problem is that the way that the book is structured with this bouncing around in a timeline is ruined
because of the twist. It’s a really poor way to tell the story and the story would have been much preferable to be in a more cohesive, clear, linear fashion, and I don’t think that’s true for all books. I think some books that use time jumps and these different point of views and these things can be very very good, some of my favorite books utilize that, but I think the book sacrificed a great deal in quality to do this and it didn’t work. The twist did not achieve its stated goals.

Now when I’ve said this before, I heard a lot of people in the comments say ‘you’re supposed to figure it out.’ No, you’re not! That is a retrospective retelling of the events to try to justify what occurred in this book. Now the last thing I’ll say about a major reason that I disliked this book is the way that characters move on from traumatic events. I think it’s horrible, some horrible things happen in this book, and this book bills itself as being a tear-jerker and just very depressing and these bad things happen, and that
that’s true for the large part, but the characters have these horrible things happen and they reminisce about them for a moment, and they take it in, and then they just move on. That’s crazy, that’s not real life. When horrible things happen people sit with them for great amounts of time, and maybe in later books they reinvestigate this, but in this first book, man, it didn’t work well.

So I can’t say enough negative things about this book and I am absolutely floored at how popular this book and this book series are.

The secret is that the book and the book series are not even remotely popular. By her own admission, N… K… Jemisin can’t making a living off them. This is the problem with manufactured “success”. It simply isn’t real, and no amount of fakery and propping up pets, poster children, and other imposters is going to fool anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about.

And yes, the reviewer is correct. One of the cruelest things I have ever done is inspire the SFWA crowd to demolish their own awards by handing a Best Novel award or two to N… K… Yes, I knew “the indirect backlash and overcorrection” would happen. Yes, it was intentional. But no, I never imagined that they would do it THREE straight years in a row. That really exceeded my expectations.

The only thing that would have been funnier would have been if they’d actually followed through on their rhetoric and given an award to Chuck Tingle. But even that would have been less damaging than what they actually did.

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Clown World’s Best Intellectuals are Retarded

Don’t get me wrong. I LIKE Victor Davis Hanson. A lot. I own several of his books. I genuinely admire his work. But there is no way to escape the obvious. At the end of the day, VDH is totally fucking retarded about the decline and fall of a West that has already been infiltrated, subverted, subjugated, and functionally disarmed by the global satanists:

VDH: I don’t think the average American understands that the Chinese are producing four ships per year to our one ship. Or that if you took any of our $15 billion carriers and you put them in the straits between Taiwan and China, they wouldn’t last more than an hour given the Chinese have developed missile batteries where they could launch 5,000 or 6,000 small missiles that would go about 6 inches above the water and hit the waterline at night. And you couldn’t stop that.

They are building nuclear weapons at a phenomenal rate. They’re working on anti-missile defense. They’re back up to probably 250,000 students in the United States; if 1 percent are engaged in espionage—and the FBI says it’s more than that—you’ve got thousands of people who are appropriating technology.

I don’t think anybody understands that it’s going to take us six years to replenish Javelin stocks and maybe we can’t. North Korea is producing more 155-mm shells than we are. At least they sent 2 million of them to the Russians.

So we are not armed, and yet, our strategic responsibilities, our strategic confidence, our arrogance has not lessened commensurately with our reduced defense capacity.

We’re 40,000 recruits short now in the military—never happened before. And when you analyze who is not joining the military, it’s not blacks, it’s not Latinos, it’s not gays, it’s not women, it’s not trans people, all of those numbers are the same … the largest group are white males from the lower and middle classes whose families fought in Vietnam, first Gulf War, Afghanistan, but this third and fourth generation are not joining up.

And unfortunately, for the military, if you look at the casualty or the fatality rates in Afghanistan and Iraq, that demographic dies at twice their demographics—72 percent to 74 percent of all the dead in Afghanistan, in Iraq are white males from the middle and lower classes.

And yet, this is the very demographic that [retired Gen.] Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and [Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin, in testimonies, have suggested suffer from white rage or white privilege. And the Pentagon was investigating just those kind of slanders about that demographic, and they found, of course, in December, they quietly issued a report, there was no cabal of white supremacists.

But the point is, you can’t really have a successful military when you’re 40,000 recruits short in just a year.

Mr. Bluey: What do you suggest that societies today, including the United States, learn from those historical examples you gave us earlier in the interview to maybe mitigate some of the risks that we might find ourselves in in the future?

VDH: I would not put much confidence in international bodies or even in so-called close allies. The Spartans came all the way up to the Thebans and they heard the Macedonians, they turned right back. On the last day of the existence of Constantinople, they were looking out at the walls at the Hellespont thinking that Venetian galleys en masse would come up and save them.

So … I support NATO.

NATO? NATO is supposed to be the answer to the complete destruction of industrial capacity across the post-Christian West? That’s not a viable strategic analysis by a military historian, that’s Salvador Dali multiplied by Jackson Pollock on mushrooms.

I’ll definitely read his new book. It appears to be ominously relevant, particularly in light of VDH’s own prescriptions.

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