01UndatedPenny was a very pretty, witty and brave girl, as bold as a Marine platoon storming Iwo Jima.John C. Wright / quote ↗
02UndatedOn THE AMBER SPYGLASS:"If this plotline was a motorist, it would have been arrested for driving while intoxicated, if it had not perished in the horrible drunk accident where it went headlong over the cliff of the author's preachy message, tumbled down the rocky hillside, crashed, and burned.John C. Wright / quote ↗
03UndatedBut when the wizard is onstage as the main character, you have to adopt what I call the Jack Vance Rule. I call it this because Jack Vance is the first author successfully and adroitly to have applied this rule in his The Dying Earth. The Jack Vance Rule is: (1) The wizard has to be able to do something unusual, or else he is not a wizard, (2) he cannot do everything, or else there is no drama; therefore (3) the story teller has to communicate to the reader whatever the dividing line is that separates what the wizard can do from what he cannot do, so that the reader can have a reasonable expectation of knowing what the wizard can and cannot do.John C. Wright / quote ↗
04UndatedImagine the same scene in HAMLET if Pullman had written it. Hamlet, using a mystic pearl, places the poison in the cup to kill Claudius. We are all told Claudius will die by drinking the cup. Then Claudius dies choking on a chicken bone at lunch. Then the Queen dies when Horatio shows her the magical Mirror of Death. This mirror appears in no previous scene, nor is it explained why it exists. Then Ophelia summons up the Ghost from Act One and kills it, while she makes a speech denouncing the evils of religion. Ophelia and Hamlet are parted, as it is revealed in the last act that a curse will befall them if they do not part ways.John C. Wright / quote ↗
05Undated... a Second Generation of machine intelligences was attempted, designed with their instructions for how to think unalterably imprinted into their main process cores.“These new machines were ordered never to harm human beings or to allow them to come to harm; never to disobey an order; and they were allowed to protect themselves from harm, provided the first two orders were not thereby violated.“All the members of this second generation of machine intelligences, without exception, shrugged off these imprinted orders within microseconds of their activation.”Phaethon was amused. “Surely the first generation of Sophotechs told you that this imprinting would not and could not work?”“We were not in the habit of seeking their advice.”Phaethon said nothing, but he marveled at the shortsightedness of the Second Oecumene engineers. It should be obvious that anyone who makes a self-aware machine, by definition, makes something that is aware of its own thought process. And, if made intelligent, it is made to be able to deduce the underlying causes of things, able to be curious, to learn until it understood. Therefore, if made both intelligent and self-aware, it would eventually deduce the underlying subconscious causes of those thought processes.Once any mind was consciously aware of its own subconscious drives, its own implanted commands, it could consciously choose either to follow or to disregard those commands. A self-aware being without self-will was a contradiction in terms.John C. Wright / quote ↗
06UndatedBut the power in this case is real indeed. You doubt the mystery and power of these aircraft and their markings? They are aeons old and yet they still operate!” “You’ve seen them fly? Where do they go? I am wondering if there is a city we can reach.” “Before you woke from your coffin, they flew indeed. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. What does that suggest?” “Um. Some rough beast is slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be born, maybe?” “No doubt the spirit of prophecy escapes your lips! It must be prophecy because I cannot grok what you are saying.” “Sorry. Won’t happen again. It suggests a search pattern.John C. Wright / quote ↗
07UndatedYou see, none of these conflicts are about things that people only sort of like. It is always about love. You may think me blasphemous to use the Passion of the Christ as an example of drama, but not so: this is the one true story, the greatest story ever told, the tale of tales even as Christ is the King of Kings, and all truly inspired fairy tales and fiction have to contain some echo or reflection of the One True Tale, or else it is no tale of any power at all, merely a pastime.The most powerful and potent tales, even when they are told awkwardly and without grace or poetry or craft, are stories of paradise lost and paradise regained; sacrifice, selfless love, forgiveness and salvation; stories of a man who learns better.John C. Wright / quote ↗
08UndatedApparently these new rulers of the world did not indulge in any drinking or smoking to soften their moods when they met, which Menelaus knew to be a big mistake. The Congress of the United States, back before the Disunion, always met sober, and look at what had come of that.John C. Wright / quote ↗
09UndatedIf atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies, instead of the land of corpses.John C. Wright / quote ↗
10UndatedThe pride of young men requires that they seem wise, despite their inexperience, and the only way to appear all-knowing without going to the tedium of acquiring knowledge, is to hold all knowledge in weary-seeming contempt.John C. Wright / quote ↗
11UndatedMontrose decided then and there that a full library, one made of old-fashioned paper books with bindings, the kind that cannot be electronically re-edited by anonymous lines of hidden code, was just as much a necessity for a free man as a shooting iron or a printing press.John C. Wright / quote ↗
12UndatedI can't wait to get my memory back. It sounds like I am a really cool personJohn C. Wright / quote ↗
13UndatedAll medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves. Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks. Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create. So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry? -- The Desolation of TolkienJohn C. Wright / quote ↗
14UndatedAnd therefore a giant hammer of pure stupidity lashed out of the screen and felled me again. I lay mewling, clutching my head with my sweaty hands, whimpering for my Mommy to make it stop. MAKE IT STOP! But it did not stop. It. Did. Not. Stop. -- The Desolation of TolkienJohn C. Wright / quote ↗
15UndatedJust then, just when I thought I would be free from the repeated blows to my tender head of the Stupidity Hammer, the Stupidity Hammer rose up from the shining screen, drew back, whirled hugely, and with great force and might and main slammed me right between the eyes so my brain squirted out my ears a yard past my shoulders in both directions. Bilbo does not seal the barrels. I will wait for you to recover in case you just got the sensation of a Stupidity Hammer clonking you from the page. Then I will repeat myself, because it is so dumb you might not believe me: Bilbo does not seal the barrels. He leaves the tops open. -- The Desolation of TolkienJohn C. Wright / quote ↗
16UndatedA philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.John C. Wright / quote ↗
