Anthony Sacramone is a friend of this blog, proprietor of the Strange Herring blog (where he’s posting again, happily), and an editor of the Intercollegiate Review. The IR has just released a new issue, and I thought I’d pass along Anthony’s pitch:

The Spring 2015 issue of the Intercollegiate Review has arrived. I don’t know how. It’s like a miracle.

Live on IRO are essays by Peter Thiel on “The Competition Myth” and Daniel Hannan on “The Privilege of Freedom.”

Soon to go live is Mary Eberstadt’s takedown of college bullying and its effects on the religious commitments of students (“From Campus Bullies to Empty Churches”) and an assessment of JRR Tolkien’s politics (“Lord of the Permanent Things”).

Also in the lineup is my own “The 12 Funniest Books Ever Written,” which, of course, was the only reason to publish this d*mn thing in the first place. There’s also an apologia for smoking, one of our counterintuitive reports on longevity, entitled “You’ve Lived Long Enough Now Please Move Along.”

Our friend Michael Medved also wrote the God on the Quad department this issue: “Vital Lessons in Vile Smears.”

You can find our entire TOC as well as the digital edition of the IR here.

As we’re trying to reach as many young minds as humanly possible in order to undo some of the damage done by their filthy communist atheist nihilist indoctrinators, I would appreciate it if you would share these links with every single person you know. I will be eternally grateful–within strict limits, of course.

I thank you. And America thanks you.

Anthony

Short notice, but I just found out myself. I’ll be interviewed this afternoon, at 4:30 p.m. on the Issues, Etc. radio program. We’ll be discussing the story of the new heathen Norse temple in Iceland.

You can listen live at the web site, and I believe you can also listen to an archived version if you miss it.

You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”

Growing interest in long-form storytelling has encouraged Hollywood bloodsuckers to ask more novelists to help them. They want story and backstory for these eight-episode or longer stories the kids like these days.

One agent said, “We are selling more intellectual property to television than ever before. What you’re finding in both television and film now is a recognition that a great storyteller is a great storyteller, regardless of the medium.”

For example, PW points to Gillian Flynn, “who bargained to stay on as the screenwriter of the film adaptation of Gone Girl when it was optioned. Flynn is now signed on to write an adaptation of the British series Utopia for HBO, as well as a planned feature adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.”

Speaking about a screenplay for Strangers on a Train, Raymond Chandler said this:

When you read a story, you accept its implausibilities and extravagances, because they are no more fantastic than the conventions of the medium itself. But when you look at real people, moving against a real background, and hear them speaking real words, your imagination is anaesthetized. You accept what you see and hear, but you do not complement it from the resources of your own imagination. The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.

Thoughts thought this week:



Somebody mentioned androids — those all-but-human robots we see so often in modern science fiction — on Facebook.

I don’t think we’re likely ever to see androids.

Not because the technology is too complex (though it may be). But because the technology will probably be unnecessary.

We already have a source of perfect humanoid organisms that we can exploit as servants and slaves.

In time it will probably be possible to alter their brains to render them compliant, and no more intelligent than we want them to be.

The organisms I mean are unborn human beings. Aborted babies.

Legally, they have no standing as persons. So technically, it would not be illegal to enslave them. Is it very unlikely that in a utilitarian future, aborted babies will not be disposed of, as they are now, but recycled, as labor-saving devices?

Seems almost inevitable to me, unless our hearts are changed.

I’ve thought about working this idea into a story, but it’s too Science Fiction for me to handle properly.

Somebody’s probably already done it anyway.