No ChatGPT here!
ChatGPT is the latest proof of the collapse in public literacy. The proof is that some so-called “publishers” are using ChatGPT to write “books” and the public is buying them. ChatGPT can never write original quality literary fiction. I offer $1,000 to anyone who can prove that any AI program at all has written a novel of fiction equivalent in quality to mine including original plot and characters and in my writing style. Will never happen.
Language Lovers
I am giving a new byline to Equus: “Books for Language Lovers” since that is more in tune with the real substance of the books that I write and my writing style. My books are about language, its beauty and its poetry and are not really aimed at a particular audience. As I often say, my books should be read aloud since the sound and meter of the language is part of the message. If one is reading rapidly then s/he is missing much of the book. Unlike most people today, I am not focused on the image of the moment, or videos, or media, but I am “perpetually floating on a sea of script”, on meaning as revealed by scrawls on parchment.
[Update: I went back to styling Equus as “Books for Men”. Not because I am going back on my comments about language, but due to the fact that most publishers, big and small, are of, by, and for women, from conception to style. I have found that most women simply have little interest in my books, and in fact rarely comprehend them. They take a glance, see there is no sex or romance, or very little in the first few chapters, and they promptly put my books aside. Equus Books are satirical, scientific, or heroic. There is some romance, but that’s really not my thing. This is why, I suppose, my best reviews have come from men, not women. Women for the most part seem simply not to understand them.]
The Thing with Slogans
I am constantly amazed at how Americans seem to judge everything by first impressions. On occasion I hear people comment about clothing, for instance someone might see a T-Shirt that says Astros and they immediately assume that one supports the Astros. Or they see a hat with a big A on it and assume one supports the Atlanta Braves. I have zero interest in organized sports and I was only barely aware that the Astros were a baseball team or that an A signifies the Atlanta Braves or that the Braves have anything to do with baseball until people waved and smiled or yelled “Go Atlanta!” Is the “Braves” even correct? I’m not sure. To me, these are just a T-shirt and a hat which I change often with no regard for what is printed on them.
Same with usernames online. I find that people often completely misinterpret online names, assuming they mean something when usually they don’t mean anything at all having been randomly selected. I once selected a username that sounded a bit like marijuana and people would–mysteriously to me–leap to the conclusion that I must smoke pot. I don’t. Now it has become almost impossible to tell a joke online. People often miss the joke entirely and conclude that the statement was serious and that I was trying to insult someone and they go berserk. Very puzzling to me since I never deliberately insult anyone and certainly not online.
Visual impressions are also typically wrong. If people see a person in a wheelchair, they often conclude that the person is crippled and cannot walk. Movies often use this as a trope where the person in the wheelchair suddenly gets up and stands and the audience is supposed to be surprised and realise that the person was completely normal and doesn’t need the wheelchair. Whereas in real life there is rarely such a thing as someone who is so disabled that s/he cannot take a single step and from what I have learned over the years is people in wheelchairs just need assistance and can often walk for short distances. There is nothing deceptive about this at all, only the short-sightedness and ignorance of observers.
Now to books. I have seen books that advertise that by reading the book one can reliably come to conclusions about people from a single glance, like Blink. This is total nonsense! It only reinforces the tangle of misimpressions that unthinking people have. I have read so-called ‘reviews’ of books that are themselves genuine works of art and when I looked at the book itself I discover that the book is trash written by the equivalent of a six year old. Perhaps Equus should publish a collection of reviews that were written better than the books ostensibly reviewed.
Book covers are the same. The most beautiful book covers I find typically camouflage trashy books. Plain vanilla covers often cover intelligent, well-written ones. Why don’t book readers take the extra step and go to Amazon and click on the Look Inside button before they buy? They would immediately see that reviews and covers may be irrelevant. I knew a novice writer of little talent who threw together a Kindle in a couple of weeks, put on a sexy cover, and sold large numbers of his ‘book’ for .99 each. He made a lot of money, tho he did have to pay a lot more to a team of promoters who talked up his ‘book’ on FB. More fake reviews, which paired with the fake cover, tricked many into buying his product. Who will read such after he dies? Or even next month? How has he contributed anything to civilization with his Kindle?
Slogans suffer from the same defect. Given the small ability that most people seem to have in perceiving value or facts, and their tendency to focus on short slogans of little meaning, the voting public seems obsessed with slogans and respond to them as if they were responding to a new-colored toilet cleaner. Programmed to buy something bright and shiny, they are always disappointed when the election is over.
Update on Confessions
I have finished the section on Central Asia. Some events I recall clearly even after 33 years. Many I have completely forgotten. I rely on my journal to describe those events. Many more events coming up, including a train trip across Ukraine which, like my entire trip, I undertook alone.
Updates on ‘Confessions of a CIA Spy’
My stay in the Soviet Union was back in 1990. I had just finished a Master’s degree at an Ivy League University in Russian-Muslim relations and I was in a hurry to expand my Russian language and go to the Soviet Union since it was clear to me that it was on the verge of collapse, contrary to what my academic advisors thought. My chief advisor, now long dead, told me that the SU would last centuries, slowly declining like the Ottoman Empire. I could not persuade him otherwise. This was probably because he was a devout class-war Marxist so he could not see the problems. It was like he had blinders on. Although he taught me Russian history, he himself had never been to Russia, which was something I found odd.
He also tried to persuade me to abandon my study of Arabic. “They speak Uzbek in Uzbekistan, not Arabic,” he insisted. I tried to inform him that all places within the Islamic cultural zone had pious Muslims who would absolutely know classical Quranic Arabic. Again I could not persuade him of this. He did not know that I had applied to the CIA and had been recommended for employment. This was only due to my specialty in the history of Russian-Muslim relations which was virtually unknown at the time there being almost no specialists in the US on this topic. My goal in the SU was not only to do graduate research on this topic but to make contact with pious Muslims and ascertain what they thought and what their plans for the future may be.
Writing the book is bringing back many old memories. Today’s youth have little understanding of what the SU was and how Russians in the SU lived. Few Americans did in 1990, even fewer now. If my advisor on Russian history did not know, how could the general public? This book details my daily interactions with Russians and their Soviet institutions. It was quite an eye-opener. Readers who buy the book will likely find it equally informative. This book is proving very easy to write. While I was in Russia I kept a daily journal which I am using.
I also spent time in Kiev where I came to learn much about how Ukrainians regarded Russians. This too is informative on current events there. More updates later.
More Bad English
Instructional and some pet peeves.
There are many subtle differences in English, both as written and when spoken, which not only foreigners don’t know but many native English speakers get wrong. For instance, lay versus lie: one lies down but one lays an egg. Yesterday I lay down while my chicken lay an egg. Both are correct.
Foreigners often confuse “mean”. For example, “I think you mean to say” intends to say “I think you intend to say”, but “I think you are mean” changes the meaning entirely. This says “I think you are a bad person.” Foreigners often get insulted when one says “I think you mean to say”, when one only is trying to say “I think your intent is something different than what you are saying” and no insult is intended.
“Hold” and “held” is also confusing to foreigners. “Holding up” means raising something or being restricted in some way. A “hold up”, OTOH, is a robbery. While “being held up” can be either being lifted upward or being restricted in some sense but does not imply that any robbery occurred.
Even English speakers often don’t seem to know the difference between “laser” and “lazar”. Lazar is a name with emphasis on the second syllable. But a laser is an intense beam of light. I can only infer that many young people today are functionally illiterate since they often don’t know the difference.
“Who’s” is not the same as “whose”. “Who’s” is a contraction of “Who is”. “Whose” refers to ownership.
I have also seen people confuse arrogant with ignorant. True, some people are both. But arrogant means unjustifiably proud while ignorant is not knowing what most educated people know.
Then there is “counsel” versus “council”. To counsel someone is to give advice. A council is an official collection of persons. A counselor is a lawyer or similar; a councilor is someone who sits in a council. But in Britain I think a councilor or councillor may also counsel. I’m not sure.
Foreigners often don’t realize that “have” in the sense of possession is pronounced H-A-V. While “have” in the sense of “one must” is spelled exactly the same but pronounced differently: H-A-F. As in “I have to do this”.
Similarly, “they’re” means “they are”, while “their” is possessive, but “there” refers to a location. All are pronounced the same.
Many also confuse “revise” with “review”. To revise something is to change it; to review something is to inspect it before revising it. But in Britain “to revise” may also mean “to review”. Again I am not certain. Maybe someone could enlighten me.
Then we have “homogeneous” versus “homogenous”. Homogenous refers to milk. Emphasis is on the second syllable. Homogeneous refers to people. Emphasis is on the third syllable. Even very educated people often confuse these two.
Educated people also often confuse “prescribed” with “proscribed”. Doctors prescribe prescriptions for medicine. Governments proscribe criminals from voting, which means prohibiting them from voting.
Technically, “per cent” is more correct than “percent” but everyone writes it as percent anyway.
Just as technically, the correct way to pronounce “Armageddon” is to emphasize the third syllable, but sometimes informed people will pronounce it as Ar-MAG-eddon, emphasis on the second syllable. The latter way is equally correct but will likely trigger someone to “correct” the pronunciation to the third syllable.
And “pronunciation” is correct while “pronounciation” is not. I often hear even educated people say “pronounciation” which is never correct.
Bad Remakes
Most young people today do not realize that much, or most, of what they see in the form of music and movies is in fact remakes of earlier–and better–versions. What happens is that a very good movie comes out and makes a lot of money and is popular. Then a few years later a remake is issued to try to connect to the same audience and extract more money. . .only it turns out that the new movie is nothing than a poorly made remake. But a new generation is unaware that a better version exists, a version that gets dumped into the memory hole and may entirely vanish, becoming unavailable.
Classic example: in 1938 or thereabouts a movie called Beau Geste was issued. It was quite good, starring Ray Milland, Gary Cooper, and Robert Preston. The idea was from a 1924 novel about English volunteers in the French Foreign Legion in Algeria. The key scene was when all the legionnaires die and their bodies are propped up one by one in their remote fort to give the attacking Arabs the impression that they were still alive and defending the fort. When the cavalry finally come to the rescue no one is left alive but the Arabs never took the fort.
Beau Geste was remade 3 more times, each time worse than the previous movie. Finally in the 1970s a movie came out called The Last Remake of Beau Geste, a comedy version. Now, of course, Arabs can no longer be the universally acknowledged civilizational enemy, so we’ll never see another “Beau Geste”, but I’m quite sure the plot has been reemployed in other shows.
The same thing has happened to all the old Tarzan movies. Young people today have no idea that in the 1950s there were a slew of Tarzan movies set in Africa in “Jungle Theater” or “Dark Continent Theater” on Saturday mornings. Olympic swimming gold medalist Johnny Weismuller starred in the most successful and best-made Tarzan movies in the 1930s. These were the core of Jungle Theater. When he got too old to wear a loincloth, he became Jungle Jim. The Tarzan movies were also remade repeatedly until they had their last gasp in the 1980s. By then it was no longer possible to show African blacks in a subservient role to whites, so the entire genre disappeared, including dozens if not hundreds of movies. The Tarzan books also have been tossed in the dustbin of history, including perhaps 24 Tarzan novels by the great Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the 1920s and 1930s, Tarzan books were a staple reading matter for all young American boys. I still have a complete collection including my father’s collection.
ERB also wrote a dozen Martian sci-fi novels, which were simply great, in fact better than his Tarzan novels. None were ever made into movies until John Carter of Mars. Needless to say, the movie completely ruined the story, transforming an original sci-fi tale into a Cultic anti-white propaganda screed. In this case, the “remake” was trash from the beginning.
Young folks don’t realize that much of their favorite music is also merely remakes of popular–and better–tunes that appeared decades ago. Hollywood simply adds a disco beat to the original tune and re-issues the music to an ignorant public. Pure trash.
And books are not immune to this bad treatment. Older and better books are being systematically removed from Amazon and from libraries or even rewritten. Young people remain entirely unaware that the “classic” they are reading has been bowdlerized, i.e., censored. How would they know since Amazon arbitrarily places impossibly high prices on the original versions and they are nowhere else to be found?
THE SAGA OF JIHAD BUBBA
Jihad Bubba has finally been published by Equus Publishing on Amazon. It has been a long struggle. See below for a series of updates.
NEWS ON EVADING THE CENSORS: After two years of attempting to find some way of evading the censorship imposed by outside organizations, the prior publisher Arktos, after purchasing the rights to JIHAD BUBBA, editing the manuscript, commissioning original artwork for the cover, and after being subjected to still more pressure to censor the book by Ingram, a giant of the publishing industry — reluctantly decided that it cannot publish JIHAD BUBBA after all, not even with the new, innocuous title of Red Pill Bubba. So the censors have won for now. Equus Publishing will publish the book soon with the same cover which Arktos sold to me. Arktos was actually the second publisher of JB; the first publisher wanted to publish it but finally declined on the grounds that “jihad” in the title might get all of their books banned. I did not believe them but that turned out to be prophetic.
NEWS: Several more websites have banned JIHAD BUBBA, but after extensive discussions with Amazon, Amazon has finally approved JIHAD BUBBA by Equus Publishing for sale on its website. The version of JIHAD BUBBA currently on Amazon, however, is from the previous publisher Arktos which reluctantly transferred all rights to JB back to me many months ago. Please do not purchase JIHAD BUBBA until the publisher info on Amazon is corrected to Equus Publishing LLC, ISBN 979-8-9875537-0-1, otherwise you will be buying it from a publisher that no longer owns the title and did not post the page.
LATEST: After several delays, Amazon now says that JB by Equus Publishing will be correctly posted by Feb 27, 2023, and will then be available for purchase with all the correct information. We shall see. . .
Feb 27: Nope, it is still not available and Amazon has now thrown up a new set of obstacles which were not required for any of the many other Equus books on Amazon. No new posting date has been proposed. . .
THE CENSORSHIP SAGA CONTINUES: Yes, as of 3-5-23 Amazon has finally posted JIHAD BUBBA for sale by Equus Publishing. However, Amazon has found yet another way to undermine the book–by continuing to offer an illegal version at a lesser price on an “orphan” page that the prior publisher Arktos did NOT post. Needless to say, Equus sales will be small as long as Amazon continues to offer for sale another version at a lesser price, even though Arktos halted all sales over 14 months ago.
MORE: Amazon categorically states that it will NOT remove the prior publisher’s orphan page, even tho the prior publisher Arktos has unequivocally stated that it did not post this page and will not fill any orders. And even tho Amazon is openly violating my copyright by leaving the orphan page in place. This is illegal, but that is what happens when monopolies take over–there is no legal way to enforce one’s rights when dealing with a monopoly.
INTERMEDIATE NEWS: The prior publisher Arktos has publicly announced that the monopoly distributor Ingram has banned ALL of Arktos’ books due to its publication of JIHAD BUBBA. Now that Arktos has publicly announced its banning I am now free to name Arktos as the previous publisher. Of course we know that Ingram was simply looking for an excuse and JB was the excuse they happened to seize upon. IOW, JIHAD BUBBA was the proximate cause of 340 conservative books by Arktos being banned by Ingram. That is CENSORSHIP in capital letters.
LATEST: March 8: Amazon requested that I submit several pages of detailed information showing that I am the exclusive owner of all rights to JB. I did so, twice now. Amazon stated they would reply within 2 business days.
March 14: It’s been 6 days and no reply from Amazon and the orphan page for JB is still up on Amazon and still offering illegal versions of JB at a low discounted price. I can only suppose that this is similar to “shadow” banning on places like Twitter and other Cultish websites. Underhanded and illegal, an indirect form of censorship, much like YT does when they ban someone but allow third parties to post commercial videos using the banned person’s voice and image. That too is illegal, but good luck trying to get YT to halt the practice. I have emailed Amazon politely reminding them that they said they would reply within 2 days regarding the infringement of my copyright. . .
March 15: Amazon still hasn’t replied. Instead they reduced the asking price for the illegal copy of JB even more, to half the legitimate price, further undermining legitimate sales. I could of course file a lawsuit and win it, which I could do for free since I am an attorney, but the result would be for all my books to be removed. Monopolies like Amazon are like City Hall. One can’t fight City Hall, even if one wins, one still loses.
March 16: After “pulling teeth” and politely lecturing Amazon on their need to comply with copyright law, they have finally conceded and completely removed the “orphan” page which Arktos could not remove because they did not post it. Arktos BTW has been tremendously cooperative and helpful in this matter and I have only the highest respect for them. But after all the struggle and debating, I can’t give Amazon high marks for doing the right thing but at least they did finally comply. The only version of JB posted on Amazon as of today is the Equus version, which is the correct legal version. Considering the widespread online censorship, I wonder how long Amazon will keep it on their site? After all, Ingram banned all of Arktos’ 340 books simply due to offering JB for sale. . .
Prequel to Maalstrom / Selk King is finished
NEWS: I have recently completed the Prequel to Maalstrom, titled Temple of the Double-Sun, a novella of 34,000 words. This work tells the story of the original colonists from Earth as they land on the virgin uninhabited planet Maalstrom with instructions to colonize the planet. Needless to say, things go very wrong. For readers of Maalstrom and The Selk King who were wondering how it all started and why there are occasional remnants of a prior technical civilization, the story Temple of the Double-Sun will answer all your questions.
I expect to shop Temple to sci/fi fantasy magazines. If anything develops–keeping in mind that as a writer I have a certain reputation as an irreverent heretic–I will post the news here. Publishers in the past have signed contracts with me and proceeded to publish several of my books, like Arktos, only to cave to outside pressure and cancel the contracts.
Still, for the full story of my books Maalstrom and The Selk King, it is essential to first read Temple of the Double-Sun when it comes available.
Books I Am Reading & Writing
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY WRITING:
I have begun writing the story that will serve as the first book in my Maalstrom Series. As yet untitled, the story shows how Earth colonists arrived on the alien planet Maalstrom and what happened to them when faced with the almost indescribable impact that the planet has their DNA. For readers of Maalstrom and its sequel, The Selk King, who are looking for the sci-fi element and an explanation of how the later mostly medieval society on Maalstrom evolved from the original Earth colonists, the story I am writing will answer every question. The colonists called themselves Mok-sa.
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING:
The Iliad, trans. Alexander Pope (in English). Needs no commentary. If you are not familiar with The Iliad, you are missing one of the main roots of Western Civilization.
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. A disappointment. Nothing happens. The most boring story I have read since Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, where again nothing happens. Both are a total waste of time.
Travels With Charley, by Ernest Hemingway (no). Not as much of a disappointment as Huckleberry Finn, but still reads like he just wanted to make some extra money. (My mistake: it was written by John Steinbeck, not Hemingway. Their style is similar and they were both alcoholics, so the mistake was easy. I’m still reading it.)
Empire of the Ants, by Bernard Werber. Rather a tall tale but entertaining and imaginative.
The Lost Centuries, by John Bagot Glubb. Fluent in modern and medieval Arabic, Sir Glubb formerly commanded the Arab Legion of Jordan.
Imperium, by F. P. Yockey. Yockey was “suicided” while under arrest by the FBI in 1960.
Progenie, by Mack Little. A well-written vampire novel.
The Heart of Orthodox Mystery, by William Bush. A convert to Orthodox Christianity. That life is not for me, but it’s a pleasure to see that a life of devotion to faith and mysticism can still happen.
Mussolini’s Intellectuals, by A. James Gregor. A widely neglected aspect of Fascism.
I am also reading an assortment of not-too-difficult stories in Standard Literary Arabic.
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