I must say, that fellow John C. Wright knows how to throw a party. He has just finished the fair draft of his latest book, The Vindication of Man, and this is how he announces the blessed event:
Unlimber the big guns, ring the church bells, release the kraken, remit all executions, free the gladiators, gather the greenskinned Orion dancing girls, decree a clone parade of endless twins, and have the Death Star blow up the peaceful and unarmed planet Alderaan in joyful celebration! Two firkins of water shall be distributed to every Fremen!
In other news:
Earlier today, I received from CreateSpace my printed copy of Sci Phi Journal #2, in which Yr. Obt. Svt. has the honour to be published. It makes a lovely product on paper, with a single caveat: Somewhere in the production process, an extra blank page got added at the beginning, so that all the odd-numbered pages are on the left and even numbers on the right. I am hoping this oversight will be corrected for future printings (if that is the cromulent word for the single-copy print runs of print-on-demand books).
On her Superversive blog, L. Jagi Lamplighter conducts an excellent interview with my Honourable Number One Boss, the publisher/editor of Abyss & Apex, Wendy S. Delmater.
And over on the SuperversiveSF site (my, how that word is getting around!), Jason Rennie (who is also the publisher/editor of Sci Phi Journal) takes a well-aimed shot at the racist and sexist claptrap of K. Tempest Bradford. Yr. obt. svt. is mentioned therein, to his nearly infinite surprise.
On a personal note, tomorrow I am due to see my G.P. for the results of the tests, pictures, pokings, proddings, and siphonings that have been performed on me over the past couple of weeks, in the interest of diagnosing more accurately what is wrong with me and why I cannot concentrate well enough to get any damned work done. My apologies to those among my 3.6 Loyal Readers who have been expecting blog posts and/or fiction from me.
‘Differently abled’ – does that mean you’re sick?
Is it not possible that the white males being disparaged also had physical problems sometime in their lives? And that this improved their empathy?
And we all get old – unless we exit this mortal coil. That should improve our ability to empathize and write good fiction. Is that being ‘differently abled’?
I am confused by the mention on that list.
Hope your tests come back with something completely solvable – or at least improvable, and that you feel better after finding out.
What ‘differently abled’ means, I am told, is that when you lose function in one part of your body (what used to be called a ‘handicap’ or ‘disability’ in the Evil Benighted Days of Old), the Equality Fairy gives you wondrous new abilities that ‘ableists’ have never heard of, just to compensate and make sure that everyone really is equally able; because, you know, it would be very dehumanizing and ‘othering’ to imply that some people are more able than others.
This is why, when you cut off a man’s legs, he magically develops the ability to run marathons just as fast as ever by walking on his hands. For some reason, however, society still owes him wheelchair ramps and ‘accessible’ public buildings and public transportation and so forth, to give him the help getting around that he supposedly doesn’t need. The doublethink inherent in the non-ironic usage of this term is enough to give anybody brain cramps.
As for empathy, it is an article of faith, in the same secular church that invented ‘differently abled’, that white men cannot feel any empathy for anyone unless they are fully initiated members of the church, in which case they are expected to spend all their time grovelling for forgiveness from their betters for the awful crimes of being white and male. These crimes are called ‘intersectional privilege’, and the process of permanent self-abasement is called ‘checking your privilege’. But I am sure you knew these things already.
“Differently abled” is the “preferred term” for disabled nowadays. Don’t ask who prefers it. Some get haughty, and others try to claim the group itself until you press on how this was determined.
Ma’am, the writers being mocked have shown no empathy for anyone not of their tribe – by which of course I mean the Progressive tribe – that I am aware of, and have in fact shown much mockery and hostility to men and women I admire, including one whom I consider a personal friend.