Positive Masculinity

Our friend Rollo Tommasi, aka Rational Male, has a new book out.

Positive Masculinity is the newest supplemental reading in the Rational Male series designed to give men, not a prescription, but actionable information to build better lives for themselves based on realistic and objective intersexual dynamics between men and women.

The book outlines four key themes: Red Pill Parenting, The Feminine Nature, Social Imperatives and Positive Masculinity.

Free of the pop-psychology pablum about parenting today, Red Pill Parenting is primarily aimed at the fathers (and fathers-to-be) who wanted more in depth information about raising their sons and daughters in a Red Pill aware context. While not an instruction manual, it will give men some insight into how to develop a parenting style based on Red Pill principles as well as what they can expect their kids to encounter from a feminine-primary social order determined to ‘educate’ them.

The Feminine Nature is a collection of essays, revised and curated, that specifically address the most predictable aspects of the female psyche. It outlines and explores both the evolutionary and socialized reasons for women’s most common behaviors and their motives, and how men can build this awareness into a more efficient way of interacting with them.

Social Imperatives details how the female psyche extrapolates into western (and westernizing) cultural narratives, social dictates and legal and political legislation. This is the Feminine Imperative writ large and this section explores how feminism, women’s sexual strategy and primary life goals have molded our society into what we take for granted today. Also detailed is the ‘women’s empowerment’ narrative, and the rise of a blank-slate egalitarian equalism masking as a form of female supremacism that has fundamentally altered western cultures.

The last section, Positive Masculinity, is comprised of essays, reformed and expanded upon, that will give men a better idea of how to define masculinity for themselves from a conventional and rational perspective. In an era when popular culture seeks to dismiss, ridicule, shame and obscure masculinity, this section and this book is intended to raise men’s awareness of how fluid redefinitions of masculinity have been deliberately used to disempower and feminize men by a feminine-primary social order.

It's doing well too, a #1 bestseller in Fatherhood. I haven't read the book yet, but I have read the blog, and so I have no doubt it is full of valuable insight for raising masculine young men.

The Nine Laws

THE NINE LAWS, Ivan Throne's uncompromising philosophical manual, is now available in paperback and casebound hardcover editions.

It is in acceptance of the preposterous nature of existence and appreciation of the inherent nonsense of form, that man rises beyond them both and connects with the infinity of the endless divine.

There is great challenge in understanding this.
There is bottomless absurdity in the form of all things, for they are forms only and not reality. This is known to all faiths, and to all sacred texts, and to all ways of spiritual growth that men have arrayed for themselves in response to the weird and terribly lovely fabric of time and space.

Yet in order to pass through daily life and not fall into a spiraling insanity of gurgling incomprehension, the mind accepts form as reality. We have five fingers on each hand. The sky is blue. Matter has mass, there are nuclear forces, there are mechanical, physical laws we can test and prove.

But this is a simplistic overlay to enable simple living.

Consider the depth of space and time.

The age of the universe is virtually beyond comprehension. Understand the scale of it, the breadth of it, the vast and infinite deep and the tiny, almost instantaneously negligible slice of reality that the presence of humanity represents.

It is preposterous to consider it as real. For with sufficient perspective, even the billions of eons of deep time and the swirling clouds of a billion galaxies that lattice through the visible universe are themselves mere immeasurably brief and ridiculously tiny hiccups within something else.

Where God is infinite and unbounded, how can He have a definitive image in which to create His children?

In the vast and staggering distance and age of the universe, how can there be purpose in such fleeting self-awareness of human beings who think and feel and experience?

How absurd to believe that we are alone in the universe, that the span of time and space are solely for our amusement.

How ludicrous to believe that life arises at all in a universe teeming with sentience but built upon entropic principle where heat death and extinguishment are foregone imperatives!

How can there be reconciliation between the provable operation of Newtonian physics and the weird and bubbling probabilistic froth of quantum foam that creates it?

How can we conceive of division by zero but be unable to approach the impossible answer?

The truth is in acceptance of the preposterous nature of all things. That division by zero results not in error and halted information, but laughter and delight.

It is silly to invest mortal seriousness beyond effective utility.

Preposterousness is the Eighth Law.

Game in literature

Castalia House has published a new novel today, entitled An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity. It's a good book, a funny book, and one well worth reading, but that's not what is of particular interest to me here. What I found noteworthy, in one particular section, was the way that the author, J. Mulrooney, expertly illustrates the hapless ways of the terminally clueless Delta.

The character referenced, Cooper, is not a complete loser. He's not a Gamma, he's not delusional about himself, but he is overly romantic, inclined to pursue more attractive women than his looks and status would tend to merit, and is almost completely unable to correctly read women or see them for who they truly are.

The following passage from the novel is an almost flawless portrayal of the massive difference between ALPHA interactions with women and BETA interactions with them. Dean is the Alpha, Julius is the Beta, Cooper is the Delta, and Thisbe is a very pretty woman in her early thirties who has been in a long-term relationship with Julius, but was Alpha-widowed by Dean.

The issue, Cooper gathered, was that Julius loved Thisbe but Dean was taking Thisbe away. Dean had taken Thisbe away from Julius before. Thisbe belonged with Julius, not with Dean. Thisbe thought she loved Dean, but really she loved Julius. Julius had picked up the pieces of Thisbe’s heart the last time Dean had broken them. Dean was not going to do this again.

This surprised Cooper, who was convinced that Thisbe was rather attracted to him. Just this morning he had been thinking of asking her for a date in the next week or two. He was confused. It was hard to believe that anything Julius was saying could possibly be about the same Thisbe. He became a little indignant. Thisbe shouldn’t have played with his emotions like that, leading him on as she had. It wasn’t right. How could she have had two boyfriends the entire time he had known her?

Cooper had much to think about. Besides his arrest and his run-in with the lawyer, he had been shocked at the things Dean and Julius had said about Thisbe. He had reserved a sentimental and romantic space for her in his mind that was, for the most part, as yet untainted with the cruder sort of sexual fantasy. Now it appeared that, all the time he had been dreaming of holding Thisbe’s hand while walking in the park, she had been trying out the newly expanded revised and updated with all new material edition of the Kama Sutra with both her boss and her boyfriend. Something like that might put things in a different light.

Yet it didn’t. Cooper shook himself, shrugging off his worse instincts in favor of his better. Thisbe was still Thisbe. If she had been foolish, if she had spent her time and her body on men who would never love her as he did, so what? Picking up the formula of a prayer he had learned long ago as a boy, he said to himself that it was not his place to question, but to love. This thought pleased him, and he repeated it: Not to question, but to love.

This is quintessentially Delta. Not to question, but to love. Not to judge, but to accept. The past is never prelude, because the pedestal is intact.

Delta Story One

Act 1

DG (Delta Guy) leads a pretty normal life, but is good at one thing in particular
He has a PG (Pretty Girl) who he really likes, and is on again and off again as he chases her
PG is pretty, not hot, wholesome, and DG comments he really doesn’t deserve her
GE (Great Evil) is introduced and may be led by an evil man but is larger than one person
DG cannot ignore the GE and is called to action

Act 2

DG goes through a series of trials testing his mental and physical limits as he fights the GE
DG worries about PG and they stay in contact throughout He vows to marry her if he gets through it and she remains loyal despite his absence
AL (Alpha Leader) is introduced who the DG admires but is amazed by at times
DG loses a close, personal friend or two in the struggle against GE
DG begins to doubt his cause, his abilities, and is put in tougher situations
DG suffers even more catastrophic losses to himself or friends

Act 3

DG finds the personal strength to fight on
DG is accepted to the inner circle of trusted companions of the AL and leads a few other Deltas mostly by example
DG does his part to defeat the GE, which includes being involved in the Great Battle and events much larger than himself
DG is scarred, but takes solace in a sense of belonging with his lifelong friends, and he wants peace in his life
DG is now brave enough to ask PG to marry him, which she does
DG and PG move to a small house in the country, raise a family, and have many children and grandchildren
Story ends with an old DG and PG sitting on a porch at sunset watching the kids play as he reminisces about his life, struggles, friends, and always being loyal

Gamma Fantasy Novel One

Act 1

GP (Gamma Protagonist) is awkward, unattractive, and misunderstood, but smart and snarky

GP discovers the heart of the misunderstanding is his previously unknown incredible gift

GP enters a whirlwind of an adventure of discovering his gift as people are suddenly after him

GP defeats some minor foes with his gift but doesn’t know how

MV (Male Villain) is introduced, an ass for no reason, is a jock, and good looking

MV has control over seductress Female Villain (FV) The FV is shown not totally responsible for being a villain

Act 2

First confrontation with MV who wants gift to be a bigger asshole, GP escapes

FV sent to seduce GP

GP has the greatest moral victory of all time, he turns down a hot woman with dark hair, and large breasts

FV found GP sincerity and respect for women attractive but must obey the MV

FV killed by MV since she failed and MV captures GP relishes being an asshole, brags about it, and has sex with hot slave women in celebration

Act 3

GP escapes with the help of a spunky, quirky, FR (Female Rogue) who doesn’t realize how pretty she really is

FR helps GP unlock his gift but is better at everything else than the GP and is more intelligent and wise. Effectively the FR has no flaws

FR beds GP unexpectedly and loves GP for his snark, mid-level intelligence, and ignores his stupidly childish antics, weird personality, and total lack of friends

FR and GP team up to beat MV

GP discovers in the final battle that his gift allows him to be powerful as the gods but he’s magnanimous about how he uses it

GP tells the FR a stupid joke at the end, she rolls her eyes, and kisses him

No matter how they crash and burn

No matter how they crash and burn
The feminists will never learn,
That girls are girls and boys are boys
And sluts are nothing but sex toys.
Self-respect can ne'er be gained
From female desire unrestrained.

What's driving this new crop of female antiheroes? Unsworth, 35, who drew on her own friendships for Animals, a gloriously over-the-top account of female friendship, says it's partially a desire for something new.

"There's room for books about getting the guy, and I enjoy reading the good ones, but there need to be alternatives," she says. "I felt as though there weren't many stories that featured women just dicking about, and I also wanted to address the idea that if you keep partying, you're an idiot or a failure – like there's just one way to live, which there isn't."

A similar desire to depict a woman happy to live outside of society's boundaries lay behind Pilger's Eat My Heart Out, with its furious young anti-heroine. "Some reviewers have said Ann-Marie is unlikeable, damaged and lost, but I see her as strong," says 29-year-old Pilger. "She's frustrated at the social facades that make up so much of daily life. If you're a man, you can be a disaffected antihero and have a proper existential crisis, but if your character is female, her concerns are dismissed as the petty stuff of personal life."

She sees her angry protagonist as strong, but everyone else sees her as "unlikeable, damaged and lost". Here's a hint: everyone else is right. It's actually rather remarkable that female novelists have managed to produce a new crop of protagonists that make Bridget Jones look sane and stable by comparison.

And our societal devolution continues....

In the event you were unaware

I have a tendency to assume that most AG readers are also VP readers, and I'm occasionally surprised to learn that this is not only not the case, but there are some readers here who are completely unaware that I even have another blog, let alone write the occasional book. So, I thought the AG-only readers might like to know that two weeks ago, I published a pair of science fiction mysteries, one novel and one novella.

QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted is not a novel that is based on Game, but is rife with human socio-sexual relations that the Game-aware reader will recognize is entirely consistent with the basic precepts of Game. It's a murder mystery set far in the future, in a world where AI personalities are citizens and the military police don't hesitate to enforce the traffic laws with air-to-air missiles. If you enjoy the content here at Alpha Game, there is a better-than-even chance that you will enjoy both the novel and QUANTUM MORTIS: Gravity Kills, a novella that features the same no-holds-barred detective, Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower, MCID-XAR.

Thus endeth the commercial. A regular post will follow later today.

Congratulations, Rollo

Rollo Tomassi announces his first book, The Rational Male:

What you’ll read are a refinement of the core ideas and concepts I’ve formalized on The Rational Male. I began The Rational Male at the request of my readers on various men’s forums and comments on blogs in the ‘manosphere’ in 2011. After the popularity of the blog exploded inside a year it became apparent that a book form of the basic principles was needed for new readers as I moved past them, and built upon the prior concepts.

For the most part I’ve rewritten and edited for publishing the blog posts of the first year at Rational Male. I’ve left in most of the jingoisms and acronyms that are characteristic of the blog and are commonly used in the manosphere, however I’ve made every attempt to define them as I go along.

Furthermore, many of the concepts I explore in this book came from a question by one of my readers. As with most commenters, their anonymity is assumed in the form their online ‘handle’. The important thing to remember is the concept being discussed and not so much the importance of who is proposing or contradicting a concept.

The primary reason I decided to codify the Rational Male into a book came from a reader by the name of Jaquie. Jaquie was an older, married woman, who genuinely took to what I proposed about inter-gender dynamics on Rational Male. Jaquie wasn’t exactly a typical reader for me, but she asked me to help her understand some concepts better so she could help her son who was about to marry a woman whom she knew would be detrimental to his life. Jaquie said,

“I wish you had a book out with all of this stuff in it so I could give it to him. He’s very Beta and whipped, but if I had a book to put in his hands he would read it.”

So it is for the sons of Jaquie’s that I decided to put this book out.

Step by step, the masculine rebellion picks up speed and reclaims ground that was lost to the feminist orcs over the last three generations.

Alpha Mail: missing the point

In which I am implicitly asked why I am not resentful of Dr. Helen's success with her new book:

ask [Dr. Helen] why she doesn't use her husband's last name and if she'll be sharing the profits from the book with bloggers like yourself & heartiste that she "borrowed" from your blogs.

This question was, of course, in reference to Dr. Helen's Ask Me Anything on Reddit yesterday.  And it revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives intellectuals, or at least, some intellectuals.

First, I am very pleased that Dr. Helen to utilize some of the concepts introduced here at Alpha Game, and I strongly suspect that Roissy et al feel the same.  I am much more concerned with the ideas I have articulated becoming popular wisdom than I am about receiving public credit for them; note how my demolition of the religion causes war has entered the mainstream and even scientific journals without credit ever being given to me.  Dr. Helen was very generous and careful to credit her various influences, which is considerably more than I can say for a number of public commenters and scientists.

To the extent she borrowed them, she is welcome to keep them and utilize them to the best of her ability. Die Gedanken sind frei.

Second, ideas are not only free, but modular. I built on Roissy's ideas.  Roissy built on Neil Strauss's. Dr. Helen hasn't necessarily built on them, but she is performing an equally important role in popularizing them and putting them in front of an audience that will never consent to listen to either Roissy or me.  As I've noted with regards to Susan Walsh, it is women who will ultimately bring the truth of Game into the mainstream, not the men who developed its concepts.  In our society, most women simply disregard men's opinions to the extent they are even capable of understanding them, which means that female translators are more or less necessary if any coherent new ideas are going to penetrate the female-dominated mainstream.

Third, I have written nine or ten books.  I never bothered writing a book about Game or the socio-sexual aspects of society because I am more interested in writing other books, such as The Irrational Atheist, The Return of the Great Depression, and A Throne of Bones.  I have published nearly 1,400 pages of fiction in the last year, I am in the middle of writing the second of five 850-page novels, and so I am glad Dr. Helen wrote Men on Strike because, among other things, it means I didn't have to do it.  And I am delighted that her book is meeting with such success because it is an important subject and one of vital interest to millions of men and women across the Western world.

As for Dr. Helen's, I don't even know if that is her actual name or simply her professional name.  Regardless, that's her business, not mine or anyone else's, and I could not care less if she wishes to call herself Dr. Helen Smith or Helen of Troy.  It is the individual who merits one's regard, not the label.

Dr. Helen rocks Fox

It's great to see Dr. Helen doing what the androsphere cannot do, in bringing the revolutionary message of Men on Strike to the mainstream media:

TUCKER CARLSON: That's all true, I agree with that completely, but it still doesn't absolve men of the responsibility to stop complaining about the cards are stacked against them, and man up and become me. Because you don't become a man until you assume responsibility.

DR. HELEN: What man would take such a raw deal?  I don't consider that a man.

TC: Well, it's not, actually, it's not a raw deal.  You derive deep satisfaction, as a man, by taking responsibility for other people.  That's the only place you get deep satisfaction

DH: So, men are supposed to take a really bad deal and sign their rights away, and you call that a good deal?  Look, you don't understand economic reward -

TC: Well, I did!

DH: You did, well, that's good, maybe you have a really good wife, but a lot of men don't feel that way.

OTHER GUY: Why hasn't a man written this book?

DH:  Because men can't speak up. I'm here to speak up because people will actually listen to a woman.  It's really unfortunate, I want the next man, and I'm hoping by this book, that this next man is out there.

She's doing a fantastic job in her interviews and I'll be doing an interview with her about the book and its reception once she finishes her current round of media appearances.  She is, quite literally, giving a voice to the voiceless, because as she knows very well, the media will begrudgingly give her the microphone it will never permit the likes of Roissy, Roosh, or me, still less the men who are incapable of articulating the male case.

Book Review: Men on Strike

MEN ON STRIKE
Dr. Helen Smith
Rating: 8 of 10

With the publication of Men on Strike, Dr. Helen Smith fires an important shot in the ongoing cultural war for the soul, and indeed, the survival, of Western Civilization.  It is a shot she fires in defense of the defenders, in defense of the barricades, in defense of the gates, against the lawless barbarians marching under the banner of the Female Imperative.

If the horror stories and red pill realities she chronicles will not be unfamiliar to those who are regular readers of the androsphere, they are nevertheless particularly effective when presented, largely dispassionately, one after another in succession.  Dr. Helen does an competent job of drawing clear links between a legal regime biased towards women and the fearful behavior of men who no longer see sufficient incentive to perform the roles that society has long expected and required of them.

Men on Strike is particularly effective when pointing out the shameless hypocrisy of feminist activism, and how the voices that are quick to appeal to equality when it benefits women are completely silent when it is the male sex that is getting the short side of the stick.  And it raises what is arguably the most important question of all: how can a society which actively disincentivizes men to marry, father children, and produce the economic surplus required to support women and children expect to survive, let alone thrive?

Dr. Helen begins the book with considering the question of why men are increasingly reluctant to marry, as evidenced by both national statistics and personal anecdotes. She continues with a presentation of the hypocrisy of the present legal approach to children and parenting, then moves on to the recent inversion of the male/female ratio of college attendance.  After considering the way marriage has changed in recent decades, she then explains why these changes matter, and devotes the final chapter to considering whether men are best advised to continue simply opting out of society or attempting to fight back.

While much of the evidence is anecdotal, it must be noted that the anecdotal evidence is largely presented in an explanatory sense and is primarily used to support the statistical evidence.  As such, it is much more valid than anecdotal evidence cited in support of hypothetical trends.

Possibly the best thing about Men on Strike is that at no point does Dr. Helen attempt to speak for men or tell men what they should do.  She is quite clearly cognizant of the fact that she is speaking out in support of men, she is attempting to encourage them to speak out themselves rather than to speak for them.

Unlike other books that purport to be concerned about the societal degradation of men, Dr. Helen's book is not driven by the Female Imperative.  She is aware that the degradation of men is not likely to serve women well in the long run, but she also opposes that legal and social degradation in its own right.  In her words: "I propose that men are autonomous beings who are entitled to justice and equality and the pursuit of their own happiness because they are human beings in a supposedly free society."

Dr. Helen's book is both courageous and important because it is written by a woman. It cannot be dismissed as male whining or a parthian shot by the Patriarchy, and it is rhetorically effective because it breaks the Pink Code of Silence and shames those women who, in the name of equality, have pursued an inequality more oppressive and deadly than has been personally experienced by any woman of the West.  It will be a valuable resource for anyone, male or female, who cares about the fate of men or the fate of Western civilization.

Text sample:  Our society, the media, the government, women, white knights and Uncle Tims have regulated and demanded that any incentives men have for acting like men be taken away and decried masculinity as evil. Now they are seeing the result. Men have been listening to what society has been saying about them for more than forty years; they are perverts, wimps, cowards, assholes, jerks, good-for-nothing, bumbling deadbeats and expendable. Men got the message; now they are acting accordingly. As you sow, so shall you reap.

So now people are surprised when men are heading for the exits? They shouldn’t be surprised. Men have been pushed there for some time. We should actually be surprised that it has taken so long.

The Concordia is just a microcosm of what is happening in our greater society. Men are opting out, bailing out and going on strike in response to the attack on their gender; a society can’t spend more than forty years tearing down almost half of the population and expect them to respond with “give me another” forever. Pretty soon, a lot more men will be taking Captain Schettino’s lead and jumping ship—only it will be on a lot larger scale than a boatload of people. The war on men is suicidal for our society in so many ways, and treating men like the enemy is dangerous, both to men and to the society that needs their positive participation as fathers, husbands, role models and leaders.

NB: In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that in the first chapter of the book, Dr. Helen refers to the socio-sexual hierarchy I developed from Roissy's sexual hierarchy.

Men on Strike and the SSH

A video review of Helen Smith's forthcoming Men on Strike, which I'm told contains some discussion of the socio-sexual hierarchy which Dr. Helen references in her book.

One-Minute Writer's Workshop: sex in SF/F

For those of you who are larval SF authors, I am pleased to offer the Alpha Game One-Minute Writer's Workshop on how to write intersexual relations in science fiction and fantasy.

1.  Determine if you a Male author or a Female Author.

2a. If you are a Male author, the female character should surprise the male protagonist by impaling herself on his sexual organ for no apparent reason. The male protagonist should duly indicate his humble gratitude and undying loyalty to said female character for the rest of the novel, or, in the case of multiple books, series.

2b. If you are a Female author, the female protagonist should rapidly attract the undivided attention of two handsome alpha males with oversized genitalia who are nevertheless different in some nominal manner. She should have ecstatic sex with both of them, separately, with absolutely no consequences to her or anyone else. Due to her inexplicable, but supremely attractive qualities, her inability to choose between her two lovers neither results in any negative consequences beyond some minor emotional drama nor causes either of them to move on to other women. The female protagonist should duly indicate her agony over being unable to decide between the two men while alternately having sex with both of them for the rest of the novel, or, in the case of multiple books, the series.

3. Publish and profit!

Do not worry that the intersexual relations described in your novel(s) bear no similarities to any actual human romantic relations in recorded history.   This is science fiction, after all, and per Dirty Uncle Hugo, your prime literary directive is to portray the world as you think it ought to be.

Free book alert

In case you still haven't read A Magic Broken yet, Hinterlands is making it available as a free download for Kindle again next Monday and Tuesday on Amazon.

Where are the womyn of Middle Earth?

This critic of Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit doesn't appear to have read the books as an adult either:

I did not read The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a child, and I have always felt a bit alienated from the fandom surrounding them. Now I think I know why: Tolkien seems to have wiped women off the face of Middle-earth. I suppose it’s understandable that a story in which the primary activity seems to be chopping off each other’s body parts for no particular reason might be a little heavy on male characters — although it’s not as though Tolkien had to hew to historical accuracy when he created his fantastical world. The problem is one of biological accuracy. Tolkien’s characters defy the basics of reproduction: dwarf fathers beget dwarf sons, hobbit uncles pass rings down to hobbit nephews. If there are any mothers or daughters, aunts or nieces, they make no appearances. Trolls and orcs especially seem to rely on asexual reproduction, breeding whole male populations, which of course come in handy when amassing an army to attack the dwarves and elves.

Perhaps for her next trick, Miz Konigsberg can lament the lack of women in movies based on the Apollo program, the medieval Papacy, and the National Football League.  Personally, I think it is absolutely obnoxious that Jackson, or more accurately, his female co-writer, dared to create characters, male or female, who don't exist in the books.

She doesn't even appear to have seen Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, or she might have noticed Aragorn marrying Arwen, Eowyn pairing up with Faramir, and Samwise marrying Rosey.

The incompetence of third wave fantasy

SF writer John C. Wright takes my previous point concerning the literary need for what is customarily termed sexism and runs with it, introducing the term 'retrophobia' to describe the modernist disease that has infested modern fantasy, ruined most of it, and reduced the genre as a whole to an even less serious, more derivative literary ghetto barely more literate than the third-rate television dramas derived from it.

Modern schoolboys, for a variety of reasons, none of which bear too close an examination for anyone with a queasy stomach, are far more poorly educated than their fathers, and far more indoctrinated into a particularly parochial and past-hating view, which I hereby dub ‘retrophobia.’

The particular quality of retrophobia is that everything about the past is despised. This includes the  remote past, say, AD 50, as well as the near past, say AD 1950.  Some things are despised in  a condescending but admiring way, as one might look upon a child, as they are looked upon as the larval forms of enlightenment which will burgeon into the glorious present day, such as the career of Julian the Apostate, and others are despised in a hostile way, as one would look upon an enemy, or a disease which, after long bouts of fever, one has finally thrown aside, such as the witchhunts of the Reformation Era. The sole exception to the first category is that if the advance toward enlightenment was done by Christians for explicitly Christian reasons, it is either to be ignored, such as the abolition of slavery in the Middle Ages, or is to be used as an example of villainy or absurdity, as the Crusades, in which case its fate is to be not only ignored but misrepresented.

Now, logically, one cannot write fantasy for an audience suffering retrophobia. The painted savages of the Sioux and Apache do not exist in the imagination of the retrophobes, only the kindly Indians, now miscalled Native Americans, such as are portrayed in DANCES WITH WOLVES and Disney’s POCAHONTAS. The modern schoolboy has never read a Norse saga, but he may have seen HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. He has certainly never read any story where a Christian is thrown to the lions by the Romans, but he knows about gladiatorial games from Russell Crowe. Gladiatorial fighting is like a Pokemon match, except with humans!

The second generation of fantasy was not based on history, it was based on Howard and Tolkien and Lovecraft and other authors of the first generation. Those were the images and tropes alive in the imaginations of the audience. Michael Moorcock and Fritz Lieber are still drawing, to some degree, from first generation sources, but Kane of Old Mar is John Carter, and Fafhrd the Barbarian is Conan. Roger Zelanzy inverts the tropes of fantasy in his Amber books by having his main character be a film noir antihero straight out of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, and having him thrust into a multiverse-wide Elizabethan revenge drama.

The third generation, I can say very little about, since it was about this time that I lost interest in fantasy, or it lost interest in me. There are occasional exceptions, like THE SORCERER’S HOUSE by Gene Wolfe, or the “Dresden Files” by Jim Butcher, but, for the most part, I cannot slog through something like the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordon or THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION by Elizabeth Moon, and not because there is anything wrong with the writing or even the world building  (heaven forbid I criticize authors more skilled than I at my chosen vocation!) but only because the cultural and social assumptions and axioms of their worlds are too close the modern axioms, where the assumption has no reason why it could exist. It breaks the spell of the suspension of disbelief.... the Third Wave of Fantasy, as far as I can tell from a distance, do not have imaginations filled with images from real history, as I do, but instead are filled with an earlier generation of fantasy images, Eowyn dressed as Dernhelm riding to her doom, or Red Sonya dressed in a chainmail bikini.

This theory of literary retrophobia explains why so many mediocre writers like Terry Brooks, JK Rowling, and John Scalzi, and even genuinely entertaining writers such as Charles Stross, exhibit such a powerful inclination for rewriting the works of earlier, more original writers, not only mimicking their styles, but downright strip-mining their works for ideas, settings, and even basic plots.

For example, I enjoyed The Sword of Shannara when I was in high school, for example.  Yes, it was a mediocre imitation of Tolkien, but it had its moments and it was a preferable alternative to re-reading The Silmarillion for the third time.  But after struggling through The Elfstones of Shannara and only making it about a chapter into the third book in the series, I gave it up.  I tried again about twenty years later and didn't even make it that far.

The reason, I belatedly realized, was that without the benefit of working from Tolkien's template, Brooks simply didn't know how to write a fantasy tale capable of holding the reader's interest.  He's not a bad writer; his Demon books weren't bad.  But he simply didn't have any of the deep roots in history or myth that the great genre writers of the past did, and the shallowness crippled the quality of his storytelling.

Despite her vast sales success, it must be remembered that Rowling is a largely derivative writer of Wright's third generation.  She simply took the juvenile English boarding school, of which P.G. Wodehouse was a past master, and inserted conventional fantasy magic into it.  There is a reason Harry Potter was rejected so many times by so many publishers; it isn't a very good book and Rowling isn't a very good writer except for her ability to create fairly memorable characters.  She is entirely incapable of building a coherent world, as the rules of Quidditch alone will suffice to demonstrate.  None of that mattered when it came to selling vast quantities of her books, of course, but then, I have yet to hear anyone claim that Katie Price is one of the greatest living authors by virtue of having published more bestsellers than Rowling, including no less than four autobiographies by the age of 34.  The increasingly inept nature of the  Harry Potter series became more and more evident over time, until by the end, the books were virtually unreadable.  This was no surprise to me; I expected as much after slogging through the third book.  As those who read George Martin have learned, the larger the story grows, the more difficult it is for the author to keep under control.

Now, I always enjoy laughing at the antics of John Scalzi, who has been a vocal opponent of ever mine since some of the screechers in the SFWA were having a hissy fit about this WND column in 2005. But that's not the issue here, more important is the way the SFWA president is, almost literally, the poster boy for the inevitable consequences of retrophobia.  Even more than Rowling, he is a quintessential third generation writer, as his works are pale shadows of Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, H. Beam Piper, and now Star Trek, of all things.  He is a stunt writer; attempting to provide clever spin on X is his basic modus operandi.  He doesn't even try to write anything that isn't derivative, presumably because his hopelessly PC ideology and audience combines to prevent him from being able to draw upon any ideas or events from the past that will not pass muster with all of the various activist groups and their highly prejudiced - and often competing - views of history before which he must genuflect.

But whereas Scalzi's mediocrity means that his inability to write original material is no great loss to the genre, what is more troubling is the way retrophobia cripples the careers of genuinely creative talents such as Charles Stross and even Neal Stephenson.  Now, I admire both writers, I own most of their books in hardcover, and I consider them to be among the finest writers of our generation.  I consider myself fortunate if I ever happen to write novels that are as good as I believe many of theirs to be.

And yet, their works are hollow at the core.  There is a pointlessness at the heart of their works that tends to undermine their creative visions, a moral vaccuum that leaves even the most admiring reader feeling somewhat cheated.  No amount of literary pyrotechnics or creative brilliance can entirely obscure this.  They are merely very good and very entertaining when they should be great.  That may be why the works of China Mieville, for all his servile Marxian incoherence, retains a certain depth and power that is more remniscent of the second generation writers than his peers; his moral sense may be warped and he may hide his forbidden influences under a thick veil of New Weird, but he is still connected to the living heart of the genre, pumping life through its mystic connections between the writer and the true myths of history.

"Sexism" is a literary necessity

What passes for "sexism" in the eyes of the equalitarians is absolutely necessary in the historical genre, even in the historical fantasy genre.  Somehow, Dan Wohl manages to completely miss the vital role that verisimilitude plays in historical fiction at The Mary Sue.

I think Game of Thrones is quite successful when it comes to portraying interesting, complicated female characters, and a good many of them, especially in its second season. You could even say that it’s impressive that George R. R. Martin, not to mention the actresses who play them, have managed to make characters like Lady Catelyn, Arya, Daenerys, and the awesome Brienne of Tarth as compelling as they are considering they’re members of a fictional society that is designed to minimize women’s power over the world and themselves. Plenty of less talented people have designed such societies and ended up with female characters that are accordingly marginalized.

What I question is the purpose of creating an imaginary civilization to be this way in the first place. I agree with Becky Chambers when she says that if female characters are pushed to the sidelines in a video game, “‘that’s just how it is in that world’ is not good enough.” I’d say “that’s just how it was in the real historical setting this is based on” is not good enough either—and I don’t see much beyond that when it comes to most sexism in fantasy.

In my opinion this applies to all historical fantasy, including that which turns the “history” dial up a lot higher than Game of Thrones does.

Being the author of a newly published epic fantasy that relies quite heavily on Roman history, (for those AG readers who don't read VP, my new novel, A THRONE OF BONES is now available on Amazon, so do feel free to support AG by picking up a copy), I have given this matter a bit more thought than most.

In Selenoth, human women have even less power over the world and themselves than they do in Westeros.  This is because in Roman society, women had one primary role, which was to produce heirs for the noble families and soldiers for the legions.  And they benefited greatly from being kept to that role, since Rome became vastly wealthy and featured lifespans that were not again witnessed until the last 50 years of the modern scientific era.

By contrast, elven women have considerable autonomy and their societies are demographically dying as a result.  Their long lives and powerful magic help mitigate this, to a degree, but the historical trend is readily apparent to Man and Elf alike.

The problem with what Wohl advocates is that by putting modern views on sexual roles and intersexual relations into the minds, mouths, and worse, structures of an imaginary historical society, it destroys the very structural foundations that make the society historical and the dramatic storylines credible - in some cases, even possible.  It's problem similar to the one faced by secular writers, who wish to simultaneously eliminate religion from their fictional medieval societies, and yet retain the dramatic conflict created by the divine right of kings.  However, it is more severe because the sexual aspect touches upon the most concrete basis of every society: its ability to sustain itself through the propagation of its members.

The "sexism" of which Wohl and many of his commenters complain isn't cultural, it is simply the logical and inevitable consequences of biological and martial imperatives.  It can't possibly be cultural, because the division of male and female roles has been observed in nearly every historical culture; modern equalitarianism is not only a myth, it is a myth made barely credible only by the combination the illusion of societal wealth, technological advancement, and the imposition of relentless propaganda from an early age.  Even so, the imperatives of reality puncture that myth as soon as one stops to consider it.

Take "the awesome Brienne of Tarth", who I found to be simultaneously one of the saddest and most ridiculous characters in A Song of Ice and Fire.  Setting aside the sheer absurdity of her existence; any woman that big would be so slow that the Kingslayer could chop her into bits wielding his sword with his left foot, never mind his left hand.  (We have to excuse Martin this common blunder; he's clearly no athlete and has probably never flattened a female black belt or even punched one in the face.)  Now suppose that Cersei was cut from the Brienne mode.  Let's make just one simple change in favor of the modern equalitarian perspective.  Instead of being a conniving bitch working within the confines of a traditional female role, she's grown up to be a Strong, Independent Warrior Woman every bit as skilled with the sword as her twin and every bit as uninterested in propagating the species in the customary manner.

First, she doesn't marry Robert.  So, no alliance between Baratheon and Lannister.  With two childless children, Tywin's dynastic ambitions now rest on... Tyrion the Dwarf.  He is now concerned with finding an heir for his House, not seating his grandchildren on the throne.  We also lose all of the plot lines related to Cersei's children, so the sadistic relationship between Prince Joffrey and Sansa Stark is gone, as well as the protective one between Sandor Clegane and Sansa.  So too is the entire storyline in Dorne as well as the Dornese machinations with regards to Tommen.

No one cares about the nature of unmarried cat lady Cersei's unusual closeness with her twin anymore, so Jaimie needn't bother throwing Bran Stark from the window.  The conflict between Lannister and Stark doesn't ever erupt; in fact, since no one thinks Jamie's bastard is Robert's heir, no one poisons Jon Arryn, Ned Stark never goes south to King's Landing to serve as Robert's Hand, and neither King Robert nor Jamie and Cersei's incestuous escapades ever come within a hundred miles of Winterfell.

Notice how just changing a single woman from a medieval mother to a modern warrior woman would totally eviscerate the entire series and eliminate its raison d'etre.  Cersei would have to be one astonishingly compelling warrior woman to provide a storyline capable of compensating for all of the intertwining storylines that her equalitarian independence requires sacrificing.  And this specific example serves as a sound analogy for what attempting to remove the historical roles from women will do to most of the drama presently found in literature.

Do you want massive battles between civilized cultures?  Then most women had better be at home raising large families capable of providing the men for the armies and the societal wealth to support them.  Do you want dynastic conflict?  Then you need mothers married to powerful men producing those dynasties.  Do you seek the dramatic tension of forbidden love?  Then someone had better possess the authority to credibly forbid it.

The assertion may seem a little extreme at first, but if you contemplate the matter, it should rapidly become obvious that the insertion of modern equalitarianism into quasi-medieval fantasy is less credible and more dramatically devastating than giving the occasional knight an M16A4 assault rifle.  The assault rifle is merely ridiculous whereas the equalitarianism undermines the logical basis for the vast majority of most historical conflict.  And while there are ways to work around these issues, (the knight with the assault rifle is a time traveler, strong independent warrior women drop large litters of children by the roadside that are gathered by good-hearted monks and mature in six months), the point is that if they are not addressed in an intellectually competent matter - and they usually aren't - the result is doomed to be an incoherent, illogical mess that will have to be very well-written to even pass for mediocre.

One commenter, seemingly reasonable, states: "The way I see it – if I’m supposed to suspend my disbelief enough to believe in dragons, then I’m pretty sure it can extend to equal positions for female characters."

That sounds superficially credible, but it really isn't.  The absence of dragons is not significant to our lives today.  If they appeared tomorrow in their conventional fantasy form, most of our lives would be little different.  Intersexual relations are central, on the other hand, hence the interest in this and other Game blogs.  The difference can be seen in the way in which those inferior writers who blithely ignore the unavoidable consequences of "equal positions for female characters" refuse to address them in anything approaching a sensible way.  If an author wants warrior women and sizable societies, why not have her women simply drop children like puppies who can fend for themselves after a month?  Because that small change from observable biological norms would too severely violate the necessary suspension of disbelief, even for readers who are observably stupid enough to fail to realize that a medieval-era society featuring strong, independent, and equal women is unsustainable and would be wiped out in less than three generations.

Review request

As those of you who also read VP know, yesterday I published a novella and announced a forthcoming novel.  Since I know that not everyone here follows economics, religion, and politics, and because I'd like to see a few more reviews posted at Amazon, I am offering a free review copy of the novella to the first 15 AG readers who are interested in reading it and meet the following criteria:

1. You are a regular reader of fantasy fiction
2. You have the time to read a 50-page novella this week
3. You are willing and able to commit to posting a review on Amazon by the end of the day on Friday.

If this happens to describe you, please an email to vday(AT)wnd(DOT)com and I'll send a copy of the epub to the first 15 respondents.  I'm afraid there is little in the way of Game per se in the novella, on the other hand, she does look beautiful in chains....

Review: The Married Man Sex Life Primer

The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011by Athol Kay
CreateSpace (344 pages, $14.99/9.99 ebook, April 2011)

The Married Man Sex Life Primer is, without a doubt, one of the more eye-opening and alarmingly informative books one is ever likely to read. Athol Kay is one of the foremost theoreticians of practical Game, with a particular focus on its application to married life. His background as a male nurse is significant, not only in relation to his highly developed ability to communicate with women, but in his frighteningly clinical ability to write more freely about bodily fluids and body parts than anyone since Galen or possibly the Marquis de Sade.

And if ever a book should come with a warning label, it is this one. Kay has arguably been remiss in not attaching a large sticker shrieking TMI in bright red letters. I, for one, am not entirely certain I could bear to face either Kay or his superlatively obliging wife, Jennifer, should I ever encounter either of them. On the other hand, it is eminently clear that the man is clearly doing something very right indeed.

The most significant aspect of Married Man Sex Life is the way it focuses on what married men can actually do to improve their marital sex lives as opposed to waiting for things that their wives should - but probably will not - do. Kay's thinking is based on the combination of a basic logical conclusion, (the only actions that will reliably be performed are those which can be performed by the change-seeking actor) with an important observation, (women like to follow their husband's lead).

Kay views things through the conventional Game perspective of Sex Rank, in which individuals are rated from one to ten with regards to their sexual appeal to the opposite sex. Given the observed human behavior which indicates that both men and women regularly desire sex with those of a higher sex rank, Kay concludes that the primary non-medical reason for a lack of sex within a marriage is a relative decline in sex rank on the part of the husband. His solution is both logical and straightforward. To improve your sex life, improve your sex rank. Much of the book is dedicated to various practical, tactical measures of doing precisely that. Kay doesn't merely tell the reader he will have to become a better, more desirable man, he provides him with some detailed instructions for doing so.

Kay freely confesses that he is neither a pick-up artist nor an ALPHA with a encyclopedic history of sexual conquests, he is by nature a BETA. But counterintuitively, it is precisely this that makes his book so valuable, first because his ALPHA behaviors are learned and therefore articulated, second because he has a much more sophisticated and nuanced approach to dealing with sexual disappointment and/or rejection than the ALPHA's instinctive resort of moving immediately on to another woman.

The Married Man Sex Life Primer is realistic. It doesn't promise miracles and it is forthright about the possibility that even a man who follows Kay's advice and improves his Sex Rank will still not be able to interest his wife in improving their marriage. He can be brutally explicit about the possible consequences of a man's long-term failure to improve himself and is not gentle to either sex with regards to their common failure to meet the opposite sex's marital needs.

Text Sample: Men who are highly attractive have firsthand knowledge that women are definitely not the moral angels that they may like to present themselves as. The good girl image is nothing more than the social equivalent of the biological concealed ovulation strategy which was covered in the Body Agenda chapter. Women very much like sex with men they find attractive and can be exceptionally devious and insistent on getting it.

It is extremely politically incorrect to say so, but all women have a component of slut in their makeup. The trick is not to fear it, seek to sanction it, or flee it, but to adapt to the presence of the slut in your woman and harness it for your mutual enjoyment. But if you don’t pay her active attention to account for her slut influence, you might find that it gets up to all sorts of mischief.

The Married Man Sex Life Primer isn't merely for those who languish in miserable marriages, or even for men who are already married. As Kay states with regards to the purpose of his book, it is for both men and women who wish to improve what is, after all, the core bedrock of every marriage. I highly recommend it, albeit with the requisite warning that it is sufficiently explicit to make Japanese tentacle porn look conservative.