Posted on Takimag, November 13, 2014
Ann Sterzinger has done a nice combination small publishing expose and book review on Takimag. I encourage you to check it out using the link below. She details science-fiction writer Jack Hanson’s struggle to get published, which sounded similar to my own unsuccessful attempts to deal with the liberal female gate keepers of small press and subsidy publishing platforms.
Pay particular attention to her critique of Mister Hanson’s novel, which makes it clear that science-fiction works that are not placed in a Star Trek or Star Wars type of setting have little chance of getting traction with publishing. In 50 years science-fiction has gone from the least to the most politically correct genre in publishing.
I wish Mister Hanson the best and will be checking out his title Cry Havoc the next time my representative in your economy places a book order on my behalf.
Note: Do not use kindle. Make your own e-books. Amazon is already giving much of its kindle inventory out for free. For now the Create Space platform is excellent, and is far superior than publishing through traditional publishers. I get a lower retail price for you and triple the profit for me by selling POD books through Create Space than I do through Paladin Press, and they are one of the good, honest small publishers. Half of the other outfits in the low range are lying scum as described in Ann's article.
“There are so many Star Trek spin-offs that it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that that the Star Trek vision is an accurate vision of the future. Sadly Star Trek does not take into account the stupidity, selfishness and horniness of the average human being.”
-Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future, 1997
It was redeemed though—in the original—by the horniness of Captain James T. Kirk, who even dallied with alien babes!
Star Trek The Next Generation was impossible for me to stomach. There was something to the original as far as story telling goes. But the benign U.N. in space in a universe of Tolkienesque knockoff humanoids, just made me sick when it became Politically Correct, as if Romper Room rewrote The Lord of The Rings. I've been told by other sci-fi writers that I can't possibly do good sci-fi without following the Star Trek model. I think they are right if we redefine it to 'good-selling' sci-fi. In this market if you do not engage the feminist model expect to remain in the ghetto.
We must keep in mind that Star Trek was written by Liberal screenwriters for a Liberal audience. It is the American Leftist wish list of what they want to see in the future. As such Star Trek is a political manifesto as much as it is anything else (Star Wars too for that matter).
Columnist Walter Hudson discusses this in his article: THE FINAL FRONTIER: 10 POLITICAL MESSAGES BEAMED THROUGH “STAR TREK” newsrealblog.com/2010/12/12/the-final-frontier-10-political-messages-beamed-through-star-trek/2. I would add an eleventh message from Star Trek, that American Leftists believe that democracy is actually an obstacle to their transformation agenda. This idea was explored in episode 50 of the original Star Trek series: “Patterns of Force” (1968). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Force_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series). In that episode a federation cultural observer starts a regime mimicking Nazi Germany on a planet experiencing social upheaval because “he believed it to be the most efficient system of government ever devised”. So this is our Leftist Progressives telling us they have a grudging admiration for the “efficient” domestic governance of Nazi Germany. Likewise the American Leftists would like very much to be able to accomplish a similar transformation of their own country (absent the persecution and genocide of the Nazi regime, of course). Like the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascists, American Leftist Progressives and their fellow travelers in the British Fabian Socialist movement always had long term central government plans to remedy every social problem, real or imaginary. This is proclivity is revealed in the Star Trek stories. Democracy and the U.S. constitutional system of government tend to get in the way of imposing sweeping changes of the type imposed on Germany during the short 12 year reign of the Third Reich. Of course, anyone who has really studied the history of the Third Reich is struck by how inefficient the Nazi Government really was. If some things worked well it was mostly due to the natural energy, industry and martial prowess of the German people. Otherwise the National Socialist regime squandered resources, created needless duplication of effort and had numerous government agencies working at cross purposes to each other. Hitler himself, while a gifted politician and orator, proved to be a remarkably lazy and indifferent administrator. The same inefficiencies were present in Germany’s Allies, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Yet the myth that Fascism and National Socialism were efficient persists (“Everyone had a job”, “Mussolini made the trains run on time”).
“Once a plan is made, it is executed. Democracy sacrifices efficiency
-Xu Li, Chinese Official.
“Modern liberalism, for most liberals is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.”
- James Burnham, Suicide of the West, 1985