Announcement

On my primary blog I have made an announcement:

As I write this a full moon is setting to the west.

A friend recently suggested that I stand for the office of President of the United States.  After giving the concept some thought I have decided to do so.

My fundamental goal as President will be to restore complete compliance of the Federal Government to the Constitution and the complete sovereignty of our nation with respect to the transnational order.

And I fully look forward to interaction with the Fourth Estate:

Reporter: Mr. Bates, how do you as a Christian Conservative justify your opposition to Social Justice?

Candidate LB: Good question.  Have you thought of asking an actual Christian Conservative?

Reporter: What?

Candidate LB: I stopped believing in the Western Monotheist Tradition over four decades ago.  I have made no secret of my disbelief since that time.  Even when I enlisted in the United States Army during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

In light of this answer the reporter would have to engage in actual thought in order to respond.

Regardless of the outcome I fully expect to have fun.   

I have not had this level of emotional uplift since I uploaded the first issue of The Resister on the talk.politics.guns newsgroup and every bulletin board I could log on to.

This will be one Hell of a run.

Some Old Stuff

Here was something I wrote as part of a Second Civil War Scenario:

Interview with MAJ Ken Biggles, History and Moral Philosophy instructor at the Continental Army Infantry School, Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Aired on the Free America Network, September 2, 2005.

KB: Shouldn't you be talking to Rolve Hemmerding about this?

FAN: We tried, he's off at the front.

KB: Hmmm ... he's usually muttering something about needing to do some more field work ... actually, I think he's probably safer out there.

FAN: Oh?

KB: He has a problem with practitioners of the Kantian theory of driving. He just lost a third car to someone running a red light, all on the same street too.

FAN: Ouch! Getting back to the subject, can you comment on the U.N.'s proposed peace plan.

KB: Sure can, It's a classic example of what George Orwell would call "political language."

FAN: Which is?

KB: Quote, "Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind," close quote.

What the U.N. calls a "peace plan" is in fact a demand for surrender.

FAN: How could they demand surrender? Aren't we supposed to be winning?

KB: We are making gains against the PDA. Of course I can't go into any detail on that ... do you listen to the BBC World Service?

FAN: The Voice of the New World Order? Yes. According to the BBC, the situation as of today is that we have Alaska, and apart from about two thirds of California and the city of St. Louis we control every thing west of the Mississippi. We control all of Minnesota and Wisconsin. All of Michigan apart from Lansing, which is under siege, and Detroit, which is only surrounded. Except for Chicago, Gary, Indianapolis and East St. Louis, which are under siege, we control all of Illinois and Indiana. And we have all of Ohio west of Interstate 71. We also have New Orleans under siege. The BBC is claiming that there are offensive operations in Eastern Ohio and Southern Mississippi and Alabama. They are also claiming that there is significant resistance activity in the rest of the country.

In short, we're winning. Now given that we are winning, isn't it odd that their so-called peace plan calls for giving everything we have gained to the "People's Democracy" who are losing?

KB: No, its insane. But remember, we are dealing with altruists.

WE are the Constitutional government of the United States, we DO NOT share power with a gang of slavers and murderers.

Statement of Fact

In the ninth chapter of my current project I have a character say this:

“Given what I’ve seen and heard so far I would have to conclude that these people do not engage in any thought at all. By themselves they could not have survived the journey to Alpha Centauri. It’s as if their survival were a plot point in a work of fiction.”

That's a bit too obvious, isn't it?

A Bit Of Work

The beginning of the seventh chapter of the current novel:

Did I say that I hate having to supervise from a distance?

We held mock space battles and boarding exercises with the Guardian as the target ship. In each exercise companies of the Ranger battalion would take turns as boarders and defenders.

My Fourth Incarnation was a bit annoyed at my constant presence on the command deck aboard the Eagle.

“Don’t you have a desk on the ground?” He once asked me with a clearly annoyed voice as we observed a boarding exercise.

“Yes.” I replied to him politely.

“You also have a wife.”

I turned to look at him silently. He spoke again.

“Seriously, I remember what happened to our marriage in the first incarnation.”

“Our marriage?”

Number Four took a very annoyed and lecturer tone of voice in his reply.

“Evelyn Boatman Number One and our one and only Susan.”

“Oh yes, I remember.”

“She went back to Earth and it was our fault.”

And she remained on Earth until the end.

I spoke again.

“Our fault?”

Number Four looked forward and lowered his voice.

“Fine, I understand, the language isn’t set up for multiple incarnations of a person to have a conversation, particularly concerning a private matter. The point is that I remember being overworked while building the escape fleet, I remember the divorce, and I remember the subsequent results. And so should you, and I don’t want to see the whole thing happen again.”

“You aren’t married to Cheryl.”

He turned to speak at me again.

“And the way you are pushing yourself right now neither will you. Seriously Number Three, you need to take a break, put on some music group files and dance with her. She’ll love it.”

I silently stared at him.

“Oh come off it!” He said. “Don’t give me the silent stare treatment!”

I broke off the stare and looked about the command deck. Everyone on deck was putting on the appearance of being hardwired and fully dedicated to their work stations.

Number Four spoke again.

“Look, you can call it a rehearsal for the arrival celebration, the point is that you need a break.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not supervising this entire operation, you are.”

“You also want me off of your ship?”

“Yes.” He replied. “Just trust me, we’ll get it right.”

I had no idea how to respond to the argument. So I took a break. I clearly needed it. And Cheryl and I conceived our first daughter.

A Work In Progress

I've already written the epilogue of my current novel project:

Time passes and life continues.

Zoe grew up as a fully human young woman and pursued the man of her dreams. In this case my fourth incarnation, for this I don’t blame her at all, but then I am clearly biased.

The wedding ceremony and celebration was held in Landfall on Zion. A live band played for the event.

Zoe made the first request.

“Could you please play ‘Have You Ever Had It Blue?’”

“My pleasure ma’am.” The lead singer replied.

The fellow actually resembled Paul Weller of The Style Council, even down to the British teeth.

As the happy couple began to dance Cheryl turned to me and asked a question.

“Why don’t we dance that way?”

“Let’s try it.” I replied.

I stood up and took her hand.

Human Life is a joyous and a learning experience.

Live with it.

Unusued Portion

I originally wrote this segment for a novel in progress. I eventually used part of it as dialogue in the second chapter:

So why are we here?

Why did we escape the Solar System and settle on the planets of Alpha Centauri?

The fact is that we live in a dynamic universe. A universe whose internal material components are subject to change by entirely natural means. Life, including human life, is the result of a series of an entirely natural processes. The process of life is also a localized acceleration of the process of entropy, the conversion of matter to energy. Simply by living each of us is accelerating the ultimate decline of the known universe. Please don’t tell the environmentalists.

For simple forms of life survival is simply an accident of nature. For Humanity survival is the result of the function of the active mind. And we will think and do what is necessary to live what is properly a human life.

Believe it or not there were people back on Earth who objected to our escape from extinction and actively worked to prevent it.

I am not kidding.

Some of those people believed that our lives were the result of the will of a being commonly known as God. And that the event that would ultimately destroy all life on Earth was also the will of God. They believed that the extinction event was brought about because of our collective sins. The primary sin being the constant refusal to obey the commands of God as transmitted through his self appointed spokesmen. The vilest of our sins being the persistent habit of actually thinking on the basis of the actual facts of reality. The believers in the God Premise deemed us guilty of these crimes and wanted us to sit down without resistance and die for our sins.

Absolutely not, we decided.

The idea that God could eliminate Mankind at a thought and did not require an actually natural event to kill off our species simply did not enter their minds.

This assumes of course that those who believe in the concept of God had actually functioning minds.

There were also those who believed in the concept of material equality. That everyone had to be materially equal regardless of the actual amount of productive thought and labor. They believed it was unfair for us who could build starships to escape the Solar System. We who could should not do so because it was unfair to those who could not. That the truly fair course of action was to do nothing and for all of us to die together.

This view, which was purely emotional, was clearly wrong.

And finally there were the self-appointed elites. They believed that only they had the best of the collective interests of Mankind in mind. And that only the best and the brightest members of the Human collective, as defined by themselves, should be allowed to escape extinction by the means available.

That the elites have always lived off the thought and labor of those they deemed inferior and invariably made decisions for their own benefit was never, ever, mentioned by them or their willing servants.

The fact was that we would not sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of what was in fact a band of lazy and mindless losers.

The fundamental moral value is life. But human life is not simply physical existence. The human mode of life also requires an active mental existence.

In order to live as human beings we must see things as they are and act as we conceive as necessary.

Live with it.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?

Announcement

The short story TUESDAY is now available on Amazon Kindle.

A rescue mission turns into a nuclear nightmare.

The story is available at this link. (LINK HERE)

Friday

I'm working on a short story. It's a sequel to my story WEEKEND. (Which is available HERE.)

I have no idea when I will be finished.

Attempted First Chapter

Basically I dropped into the show-don't-tell trap and accidentally wrote an outline for a proper novel.

Yes. I'll use it.

If there was one thing I learned in my first incarnation on Earth, if I wanted something done right I had to do it myself.

In this case it was to lead a raid on a native village. These were generally known as pest control operations. Given the very hostile history between human colonists and the stone age natives of the planet this was putting it mildly.

The first starship to reach the Alpha Centauri system was the Mayflower. She was built to order for and operated by Edward and Carl Cook. Their family that had been in the orbital solar energy business for over a century. She was, and remains to this day, the most advanced starship ever designed and launched by humans. She had a crew of two hundred and carried one thousand colonists in cryostasis. She had antimatter rocket engines and was designed to reach half the speed of light and perform the journey to Alpha Centauri in ten years.

During the deceleration phase of the mission Mayflower had released two probes for a fly-through reconnaissance of the system. As a result of the probes two planets were found that were apparently fit for human habitation.

Orbiting Alpha Centauri A was a world that was slightly larger than Earth, had a denser atmosphere, and appeared to have and an advanced biosphere. It was named Eden.

Orbiting Alpha Centauri B was a world that was slightly smaller than Earth, had a thinner atmosphere, and appeared to have a simple biosphere. It was named Zion.

Based on this information the Cook Brothers had decided to explore and possibly settle on the planet Eden.

Based on the orbital survey it appeared that the planet had never been hit by a major asteroid, a K-T impactor rock. Commonly known as a dinosaur killer. And from the initial landings on several continents it appeared the dominant form of animal life were large dinosaurian lizards.

Mammals had never developed on the planet.

The brothers decided to establish their colony on an isolated continent with the smallest dinosaurs.

It was after the infrastructure had been built, some forests had been cleared, and some crops had been planted that it was discovered that the colonists had neighbors.


The new neighbors had simply walked into the colony unannounced. They appeared to be friendly and curious at first.

They were scientifically classified as Reptantis Sapiens Eden. And at the time they were commonly called Repts. They were a bilateral biped reptile species with scales and feathers instead of bare skin and hair. They also had developed basic a basic set of wood and stone hand tools. Some Rept tribes had already developed primitive agriculture and had built villages that should have been seen from orbit.

The tool set included flint tipped spears and arrows. It was at this time the Repts should have seen as a potential problem.

From records recovered decades later it appeared that the Cook Brothers saw the Repts as people who could be uplifted to the status of civilization and as potential customers and employees. They also disregarded suggestions that the Repts were a potential danger to the colony.

The Cook Brothers were Americans. By the time they departed from the Solar System they had no living memory of any aspect of life in a frontier environment. They were also comfortable in their technological superiority. They had dismissed all suggestions that basic security measures, such as building a stockade around the colony or arming all the colonists, should be taken.

Edward and Carl Cook, and the fifteen hundred and twenty seven colonists on the ground with them, paid for their stupidity with their lives.

Of the inhabitants of the Plymouth Colony, only one hundred and twenty eight men, women, and children made it to the landing field during the native assault. They boarded the landing craft and lifted off to the still orbiting Mayflower. There were sixteen crew members aboard to maintain her in operational condition.

It was clear to everyone on board that there was no other place on the planet Eden they could land and resettle. After a long, drawn out, and very well recorded discussion they decided to use their remaining antimatter fuel and transit to the planet Zion.

They never looked back.

Upon arrival they stripped out the ship as thoroughly as possible. Even going as far as to remove the auxiliary fusion power plant and bring it to the surface. They learned to live on the surface of Zion. They learned to domesticate the simple plants and some of the few animals that were found there.

In spite of the small initial population the settlement on Zion was thriving when the second wave of human colonists arrived in the system.

Thsi may end up being a three part novel.

Thought For The Day

I went home with a waitress, the way I always do,
How was I to know, she was with the Cylons too?

Post of the day

I've finished the second chapter of the novel.

http://otherles.livejournal.com/11890.html

First Chapter

I just posted the first chapter of my novel on my Live Journal page.

This is not set in the Official Traveller Universe.

http://otherles.livejournal.com/11664.html

A Literary Demolition Of DORSAI!

Or how not to write a science fiction novel.

As part of my project to write a science fiction novel I am re-reading DORSAI! Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title. This is the first novel in a series of ubermensch fantasies by Gordon R. Dickson. I am reading it with the intent of deconstructing it as an example of military science fiction with mercenaries. My goal as a novelist is to create a depiction of a similar band of mercenaries and show how a rational nation would be deal with them.

Here’s the first paragraph from the chapter titled MERCENARY III:

Returning again up the corridor toward the bow of the ship, Donal allowed himself to wonder, a little wistfully, about this incubus of his own strange difference from other people. He had thought to leave it behind with his cadet uniform. Instead, it seemed, it continued to ride with him, still perched on his shoulders. Always it had been this way. What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, tortuous, and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing trough a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said “enemy” and “friend”; they said “strong” and “weak”–“them” and “us”. They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people–and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient. And if you did this successfully, then the larger, group things came out right.

Can you understand that? Was Dickson an English Literature major at the U of M?

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, the periodical that published this serially in 1959 did pay a penny a word. But this amount of barely incomprehensible verbiage is simply absurd.

Dickson attempts to recreate the European political environment prior to the Treaty Of Westphalia (1648), a time when the use of specifically raised and organized mercenary units was commonplace. Civil wars within what should be sovereign nation states are commonplace. Dickson also creates a moral nightmare. A universe where the Right Of Life is legally negated. An individual may be conscripted by the state and forced to work on another world in trade for another worker with knowledge in another field. Or die as cannon fodder in a foreign war. And the penalty for an individual who broke this so-called contract is death.

Dickson may not have understood the concept of government. But then he was a graduate of the University Of Minnesota.

What is very apparent when reading this and the other works in the series is that Dickson adopted a Platonist metaphysics. What passes for philosophy is a gibberish of Eastern Mysticism and Racial Collectivism along with the open practice of magic. In fact the overall plot of the series, such it was, is completely dependent on the occurrence of magical events. It would more accurate to describe this series as a work of fantasy instead of science fiction. In THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, Dickson actually wrote a scene set on the Platonic World Of Forms. And at the end of the initial novel Dickson has his protagonist literally commanding the antagonist to suffer. And the antagonist magically does so.

If reality is unreal in a fictional universe, why bother to write about it?

Free Literature

I was wring a science fiction novel. At a bit past 42,000 words I decided that two aspects, the extinction event on Earth and the villains where a bit too absurd, So I'm starting over again.

If anyone wants to read the existing MS send me an e-mail.

lesbates_traveller at yahoo dot com