THE FUTURE: CANCELED FOR LACK OF INTEREST June 26, 2009
They’re telling me you don’t want the future. Just as they’ve been
telling me for years — for decades, really — you have no interest in
freedom.
Who are “they”? Practically everyone I am compelled to deal with
in order to do what I do: agents, editors, publishers, booksellers,
critics, other writers, even individuals who run blogs and websites
and tell me to my face what a terrific fellow I am — while saying
behind my back that time has passed me by and that I’m a relic of the
past. Yeah, you …
ATTACK OF THE SCENE-STEALERS June 11, 2009
Over the years, a strange transformation has come over me and my
work.
When I started writing novels, they were all about the Grand Idea.
Everything else, the characters, the settings, the circumstances, was
created to highlight and showcase that set of principles that we call
libertarianism. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, of
course.
I’m not exactly sure when it began to happen, whether it was an
abrupt occurrence or happened gradually — it’s extremely difficult to
tell that kind of thing with your own creations — …
WANNA BUY A FUTURE? June 2, 2009
One of the most important lessons in improving your life consists
of unlearning verbal habits that you may not be aware are holding you
back.
If, every time you made a typo, broke a dish, or pulled the last
shot in an otherwise accurate string, you said something under your
breath — like, “I’m so stupid!”, “I’m a clumsy oaf!”, “I can’t shoot
for sour owlshit!” — that was highly self-denigrating or insulting,
what you said, through repetition, could become a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
What you’d be doing, whether you know …
WHY AN IONOPTER? May 6, 2009
The history of technology is littered with thousands of excellent
ideas — even working devices — that somehow never made it into
civilization’s mainstream, or, once there, failed to hold on and
disappeared.
There are many reasons why inferior technologies sometimes
supplant superior ones. The Stanley brothers, whose steam-driven
auto was better than any contemporary internal combustion vehicle (and
with a few tweaks could compete in today’s market) didn’t believe in
advertising or mass production, both of which they believed were
dishonest.
This proved particularly unfortunate in that their …
THE NEW FOO-FOO FLU May 1, 2009
Pig farmers don’t want it called the Swine Flu. I propose, honoring Penn & Teller, that we call it the _Bullshit! Flu_, instead. Do I hear a second?
THIS ONE’S FOR HOLLY April 30, 2009
Recently, a reader of mine named Holly wrote:
“Can I ask how you made the judgment on which scientists to
believe? I am interested in climate science and just started reading
RealClimate, thanks in part to your post. To be honest, I respect your
literary work and was surprised to hear you, as a science fiction
author, naysay what I thought was serious and substantial scientific
study. So I’d like to know whether you have favorite information
resources to recommend. Thanks!”
Hello, Holly –
My initial doubts about manmade global warming …
THE BADGUYS April 28, 2009
“There are those who insist that nobody ever thinks of himself as
a villain. On the contrary, I think that villains know perfectly well
who they are. Don’t you?”
Chapter Six of my latest novel, _Ceres_, being serialized here at
www.BigHeadpress.com, opens with a question, in the form of an excerpt
from the “Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu”, the protagonists’ great
grandmother, a sort of Laura Ingalls Wilder of the Pallatian frontier.
The chapter, in which we meet some of the villains of the piece, is
entitled “Save the Earth”, which might give …
CASTLES IN THE AIR April 10, 2009
I’ve just finished rereading Chapter Four of my novel _Ceres_,
which will be posted with its predecessors on this website next
Monday. I’m enjoying the process of serializaton and I hope you are,
too.
Doing so, I surprised myself. Earlier chapters have introduced the
reader to young Llyra Ngu — albeit somewhat at arm’s length — the
great grandaughter of Emerson Ngu, who was the viewpoint character of
my earlier novel, _Pallas_, and then to Wilson Ngu, her older brother,
and Adam, her civil engineer father. We met Hortense Blumenfeld, who
manages a …
The Manchurian Lobbyist—Revisited April 3, 2009
Author’s Note: It’s possible that I wrote this essay in its original form as long as 30 years ago. It’s older than the book you’ll find it in, Lever Action, which you can find clicking through on my website “The Webley Page”, and it’s older than _The Libertarian Enterprise_
.
In fact, it’s among the earliest of my “Lever Action Letters”, broadsides that I always had Xeroxed onto colored paper, to make them harder to overlook, and then distributed at gun shows and similar places.
I’m posting a slightly rewritten version here and now because of the numerous incidents of transparently …
PEACE, FREEDOM, PROGRESS, AND PROSPERITY March 25, 2009
By now, it should be pathetically obvious to anyone and everyone
– except the politically brain-dead, and the media — that the cause
of America’s current economic disaster, exactly as it was with the
Depression eighty years ago, is central control and command of the
economy.
It’s very simple: when millions of individuals are free to direct
their own economic lives, some of them will soar, some will only break
even, and some will flub their way back from the boardroom to flipping
burgers.
As human beings, each of …
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