Thread by @EveKeneinan

I recently found this anthology of anti-PC science fiction.

Forbidden Thoughts amazon.com/dp/0994516347/… via @amazon

@amazon Like all anthologies, it is a mixed bag, but an anthology is a success if it has many very good stories.

This one does.

I’m going to give something of a review.

@amazon The foreword is by Milo Yiannopoulos.

It’s well-written, but a bit long in my estimation—although there’s no need to read the foreword to an anthology of short stories, so read it or not, or as much of it or not as you like.

I agree with some reviewers who have questioned some of the editorial decisions.

Namely, some of the weaker stories are front-loaded, so if you read the book from beginning to end (as I did), you’ll have to get 4 or 5 stories in before things pick up.

The first story “Safe Space Suit” is solid and humorous. It has a lot of in-jokes that wear lost on me, but still holds up for a reader who doesn’t get them.

It plays out the idea of what diversity hiring to the exclusion of competence would look like in a serious fields where life and death depend on competence, such as engineering and piloting.

I give it an A-

Next up we have “Auto America” by E. J. Shumak. It’s only about two pages long, which is a mercy, because it is the weakest entry in the collection.

I can’t give it better than a C+

Next is “A Place for Everyone,” an exploration of the idea of what the world would look like if jobs and where one lives were based SOLELY on diversity quotas.

It’s entertaining enough to get a B+

Then we get “The Code” by Matthew Ward, which describes a possible hellscape that isn’t as impossible as one might think (judging by California), in which sexual relations are governed by a heavy-handed consent code that require complicated legalese.

B+

Now we reach the fifth story, Joshua M. Young’s “The Secret History of the World.” This is an A. This is a really good story, one I’ll both remember and re-read periodically.

Classic tale of “a barbarian amongst ‘civilized’ people.”

Next we get “The Social Construct” by David Hallquist, which explores the idea of “designer” child.

What would happen in a world where parents can manipulate their children to be exactly as they want them?

The story contains the following exchange, which is just right in revealing the incoherence of much of contemporary gender ideology, in which gender is necessarily both completely fluid and yet essential or “who you really are”, and the “unselfishness” of parents:

I give the story an A-

It’s pretty good, but suffers from contrast to the next story, A. M. Freeman’s “At the Edge of Detachment,” which is thematically very similar, but much more disturbing.

An A to Freeman’s story.

Next we have a non-fiction “History of the Sad Puppies” by Larry Correia and Brad R. Trogersen. If you are interested in the Sad Puppies Affair at the Hugos, this will interest you. As it happens, I was interested, so I appreciated it.

It’s not short story, so you can skip it.

Next is “If You Were a Hamburger, My Love” by Ray Blank. I don’t really know what to make of this, because it is a parody of “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” which is, apparently, a ridiculous piece of writing that got critical acclaim, because critics are like that.

No rating.

Pierce Oka’s “Imagine” is a rather forgettable piece to which I’d give a B.

“Graduation Day” by Chrome Oxide (over the top pen name much?) is a bit stronger, with a B+. It’s a successful, if predictable, send up of Campus Political Correctness. The college is called “The Karl Marx Safe Space Educational Gulag.” That should probably tell you enough.

It’s about as over-the-top as you’d expect from someone who writes under the name “Chrome Oxide.”

But over-the-top can be amusing sometimes.

We are now about 2/3rds into the book, and we hit our stride.

“Hymns of the Mothers” by Brad R. Torgersen is excellent, clearly an A. This is just damn good writing.

“Hymns of the Mothers” describes a possible future which might happen if radical feminists—the ones who want to “cull” the male population down or put them in camps (e.g. Sarah Miller Gearhart, Mary Daly, Julie Bindel)—got their way.

Finally we reach John C. Wright’s “By His Cockle Hat and Staff.”

This is an A+

This story would make the anthology worth the price and the read JUST BY ITSELF.

I know John C. Wright because I sometimes read his blog.

His epic take down of The Last Jedi was, well, epic.

I’m almost glad The Last Jedi exists, just because I got to read him take it apart so brutally and humorously: scifiwright.com/category/revie…

I read much more non-fiction than fiction, and sci-fi isn’t my usual fiction genre, so I haven’t read much of John C. Wright’s work. This is actually my first encounter with his fiction.

And damn, was I impressed.

“By His Cockle Hat and Staff” has a fantastic premise:

There are many parallel worlds with alternate histories, and some have discovered a way to travel between these worlds by possessing the bodies of their counterparts in those other worlds.

The world in which the means of cross-world travel is discovered is a world totally dominated by Social Justice.

So of course Social Justice World appoints itself the task of “fixing” all the other parallel worlds, which are not “Socially Just.”

Which, of course, is just what SJWs *would* do. They would think it perfectly within their rights to FUCK WITH an entirely different REALITY.

They won’t leave anyone alone.

Anyway, no spoilers, but do by all means read this story by John C. Wright, “By His Cockle Hat and Staff.”

A+

As my students know, I don’t give A+’s often or lightly.

I was going to tag Mr. Wright, but he wisely does not use Twitter, so here’s this instead:

[ASIDE: a lot of online atheists like to drag Max Kolbe/Dean Esmay and Red Pill Religion—they sometimes accuse me of *being* Max 🙄—but the Wednesday talks between Max and John C. Wright are always interesting and thoughtful, e.g. ]

[ASIDE 2: Back on 2016, George R. R. Martin wrote a “Response to John C. Wright.”

The Twitter responses are HILARIOUS. 99% of them amount to “STFU, George, and FINISH THE GODDAMN BOOK!”

And this was 2016! 😂

https://twitter.com/grrmspeaking/status/726962376310837248?lang=en

Back to the Forbidden Thoughts anthology. Wright’s story is the high point, but we still have lots of good stuff to go!

After Wright’s story, we have “The Rules of Racism” a non-fiction, somewhat satirical commentary on the different “rules” that contemporary Leftists and Rightists use to understand “racism”—and how the Left’s version is incoherent, and, in fact, racist.

I didn’t find it very interesting, but it isn’t fiction, so I’m not assigning a grade. Your mileage may vary.

Past that threshold, we’re solid from here on out.

We next get the moving “World Ablaze” by Jane Lebak. It’s an A. I found it powerful and affecting. It deals with being a Christian in a time in which it is illegal to be so, a time the West will reach if it doesn’t correct.

Next we have “Amazon Gambit” by Vox Day.

It is the sort of story you should expect Vox Day to write for an anthology called Forbidden Thoughts.

It’s well written and pulls off the twist at the end very effectively.

If you’re like me, you’ll fall over laughing at the end.

A

Next we have “Elegy for the Locust” by Brian Niemeier. I also give this is an A. It’s a mediation on the nature identity and most of all envy, more fantasy than sci fi.

Next we have L. Jagi Lamplighter’s “Test of the Prophet.”

The more I think about this story, the more I’m inclined to give it an A+ also.

And I am thinking more about it, because I find it a story that is sticking with me.

I do not think it will disappoint you.

Here’s what L. Jagi Lamplighter said about it on her blog:

"My mom immediately worried that it would get me shot, and my atheist Liberal friend called it hateful. But, my Muslim friend loved it and took it home to Pakistan to show her parents."

And last we have Sarah A. Hoyt’s “Flight to Egypt,” a sci fi meditation on a future in which “racial justice” demands segregation—as it must, when “races” are taken to be moral agents or “deserving” things, as opposed to human beings.

I think it is an A, but I was inclined to an A- at first, but this may be because it seems weaker than it is, coming right on the heels of Lamplighter’s story.

So I can HIGHLY RECOMMEND the anthology overall. It is worth it just for Wright’s story, or Lamplighter’s.

Editorially, I would have arranged things differently (led with Young’s, put Wright’s in the center, and ended with Lamplighter’s) but it is what it is.