The Monster Hunter Series

As a tender lad I had nightmares fueled by a combination of 1960s Cold War hysteria and Evangelical apocalypse preaching. The end-of-the-world nightmares were particularly frightening because the ground would crumble beneath my feet. I feared falling into the abyss.

Until I learned that I could fly in dreams. And then ground crumbling beneath my feet became an annoyance. That's what I told my kids. Just learn to fly. But my daughter dreamed of monsters and I told her to dream up a gun to shoot it. There are not that many problems in my dreams that cannot be solved with a sufficiently large calibre gun.



I don't know whether Larry Correia learned to destroy the terror of nightmares this way, but he writes like it. I've read four of his novels, and reviewed them. And I decided I should create a single place where you can link them:

• Monster Hunters International
• Monster Hunter Vendetta
• Monster Hunter Alpha
• Monster Hunter Legion

I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I did.

The Christmas Chair

It was 1980 and I was working for the government and my bride of less than six months, Mary, was working for WRBS doing the morning drive-time on-air shift. We had just moved from West Michigan to Laurel, Maryland.

All family was several hours away and we were on our own. It was a good time as we found our own solutions to the nuts and bolts of living and we established new rituals for the holidays with neither parents nor kids to distract us. It was a good time.

I had discovered just a little while earlier that I was a Puritan and thus I felt a need to reinterpret and reexamine all the things that I had taken for granted—for instance, Christmas. That first Christmas far from home, making a home, was the time and place to reinterpret the holiday.

Let’s recap. Christmas occurs on the 25th day of December and we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on this day. Thus you might reasonable expect Jesus to have a birthday of 12/25/00 or some such, but this is not the case. Contemporary Christian scholarship now says Jesus was born a few years earlier. Moreover, we also think Jesus was born in a different season than winter. (Else the shepherds would not be out in their fields watching their flocks by night.)

So where did this December 25th business come from? It came from Pope Julius I. In 350AD he declared Christ’s birth should be celebrated on this day. Why this day? Lots of European Pagans celebrated on December 25th, which is close to the Winter Solstice. I figured Pope Julius I intended to glom onto the pagans’ holiday and make it his own--typical Roman syncretism, baptizing a pagan holiday and declaring it to be Christian. A quick review of the Pagan religions operating in Europe during this period will turn up a fair number of coincidences between Rome’s rituals and pagan ones. As a good Calvinist I wasn’t going to participate in any of that Roman Catholic—Pagan syncretism.

This extended to the Pagan practice of bringing an evergreen tree into one’s house. Animism believes that spirits inhabit things. And the spirit of the tree is strong enough to overcome the spirit of winter, as evidenced by the tree’s ability to remain green through the winter. This notion of spirits in trees is why one knocks on wood. It is to invoke the spirit of the tree to ward off misfortune.

That is just Animist thinking, and I was no Animist then and I am not one now.

Thus I decided there would be no Christmas tree in my house. You can keep your Roman syncretism and Pagan Animism. I would have nothing to do with it.

And thus the trap was laid.

The weeks leading up to Christmas came and I did not buy any Christmas tree or decorations. I would see trees on sale at the shopping center, and I’d summon my will to walk past.

Mary and I planned to fly back to Michigan the day after Christmas to see our families. I had the week between Christmas and New Years off, but Mary had to work at the radio station on Christmas morning. This meant that she got up at oh-dark-thirty and left for work hours before I rolled out of bed.

Christmas morning dawned and I awoke alone in the apartment. Padding around in bare feet, I looked around. There was no Christmas tree.

Someone had stolen Christmas, and that someone was ME.

Something snapped and I had to do something. I scrounged around the apartment looking for materials. We were just married so we didn’t have a lot of extras. I found a broom, a sheet, a kitchen chair and a table lamp. The kitchen chair had a cheesy green Naugahyde upholstery seat and the sheet was a pastel green color. I set the chair in the corner with the table lamp sitting on it. Then I fed the broom handle through the back of the chair and placed the sheet over it. It looked like a chair covered with a sheet. Then I took some books (I’ve always had plenty of those.) and put them around the perimeter of the sheet, pulling it out to give the assembly a sort of lumpy conical shape. The lamp beneath gave off a sick pastel light.

It was the best I could do and it sucked.

Eventually Mary came home from work. I don’t know what she thought of the Christmas Chair, but we sat on the couch that Christmas evening in its muted glow. It was good to be together.

The next day, we flew back to Grand Rapids and enjoyed our families with their real Christmas trees for a few days.

The first thing after we got back, Mary and I went to the Big-T Lumberland and found the biggest artificial Christmas tree they sold. It was 60% off.

We still use it decades later. It has gotten threadbare in places. I've patched broken parts and Mary suggested getting a new one last year.

I wouldn't think of it.

Monster Hunter Legion

If you like guns, and dislike the old horror-movie trope of "our bullets have no effect on the monster," then you should check out the Monster Hunter International series of novels by Larry Correia.

The latest Monster Hunter novel is "Monster Hunter Legion." It continues the series reprising the roles of most of the characters you've gotten a chance to meet in the previous novels. What's cool about this novel is the unique way Correia has found to recycle some well-loved characters from previous novels.

Monster Hunter Legion goes to Vegas, baby. The challenge our monster hunters face is making sure that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

The premise of the story is that during WW2, both the Allies and the Axis powers pursued wonder weapons programs using physics and metaphysics. And at least one metaphysical weapon developed at Los Alamos were about twice as dangerous as the nuclear bomb. Scared, our boffins buried it and hoped it would stay that way. Of course, it doesn't.

A theme running through all the Monster Hunter books is the notion that the government is a mindless behemoth that blunders along pursuing policies that have a great deal of collateral harm. In Legion, government policy decisions move from indifferent to malevolent as we see bureaucrats vie for power using innocent citizens and monster hunters as cannon fodder.

I think the good news is that government is as stupid when run by Santa Claus as it is when run by nice Mormon millionaires.

Larry Correia loves guns and he knows lots of first-responders. If Godzilla were to try to eat Detroit, he knows the sort of fellas who'd take the call. And of course, his monster hunters would be listening on their police scanners so they could show up to blow daylight through that Japanese import.

In a series of novels like Monster Hunter, the characters take on the life of their own. You read about them and when a new novel comes out, you get to visit with some old friends. That's one of the pleasures of a series of books. I don't really think Dirk Pitt as Matthew McConaughey, or Al Giordino as Steve Zahn, because I got to know them long before the movie came out by reading all the early Clive Cussler novels. Same goes for Jack Ryan who really isn't Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, or Ben Affleck, because I read all the early Tom Clancy novels. The difficulty as a series goes on is that these characters tend to wear out. The smart author thus has multiple characters to whom he can pass the torch.

This means each novel should introduce new heroes and villains at a pace commensurate with the rate at which they are being killed off. And every novel should kill off at least someone significant. If you always kill off someone who's just been introduced, your audience notices and begins looking for Red Shirts. This is why villain design is very important. If the hero must defeat the villain in each novel, then your really-good-at-evil villain must either fake his own death at the end, or die.

Maybe I should write a novel where the villain goes to prison, becomes rehabilitated and spends the rest of the novel trying to repay his debt to society while "heroes" are trying to kill him off, thinking his humanitarian efforts are just nefarious schemes.

Larry Correia knows how to kill off good guys as well as bad guys. And if you like those good guys, then you miss them. In Monster Hunter Legion, the good guys get an assist from the ghosts of lost compadres.

Monster Hunter Legion does a good job of introducing some new good guys, disclosing some more of force of evil who's pulling the strings. Some of the story-questions that remained partially understood at the end of Monster Hunter International are elaborated upon here. Mr. Correia is very good at raising a story question, then answering it in part. He's also very good at the incomplete infodump. Perhaps you've seen the Thin Man movie where the detective gets a call from an informant, and as he's taking down the information, a gunshot rings out killing the informant mid-infodump. There's no such phone calls, but there is a very satisfying interview with Management that illustrates this.

I can go on, but I won't. Just get Monster Hunter Legion and find out for yourself. 5 stars of 5.

Free Will And Madmen

This world sees violent, evil acts by murderous individuals.

When the evil is particularly heinous we seek to assign blame. Someones flew airplanes into buildings? Someone shoots up a school? Never let a crisis go to waste.

A headline crystallized my thinking: "What if nobody or nothing is to blame for ...?" (I take pains never to utter the name of anti-martyrs, lest the repetition of these nobody's names encourage like-minded losers.) When a crime is sufficiently horrendous, the mind recoils and we think, "surely, the perpetrator must be mad."

Maybe, or maybe not. I have no desire to understand evil as much I have a desire to eschew it, punish it, and prevent it where possible. Then kill it.

The notion which stuck in my craw is "blame." If we believe that men are mere automata set into motion by forces outside themselves, then those forces which bring about criminal acts are to blame. But if we think that men are free moral agents, and if we hold men responsible for their criminal acts, then "blame" rests on the shoulders of the perpetrator.

We can never say, "nothing or nobody is to blame," because we can ALWAYS say the perpetrator is to blame. Even when the perpetrator is a madman.

Driving Miss Manuscript

#37 Read like a Writer.

I write and I read. I started writing after spending a few decades reading. Now I read differently.

When I was a tender lad, I'd ride in my car with my dad driving. Mom didn't drive. We'd go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house. I'd look out the window and take in the scenery, the neighbors, the golfers when the weather was warm, the birds, and an occasional deer back away from the road. Or, as often as not, I'd have my nose in a book blissfully unaware of anything save the occasional bump in the road.

I might look at the radio to find out what station was playing, but I seldom looked at the dashboard. I didn't notice whether the speedometer was 35 or 70 mph. I didn't notice whether any of the gauges for oil pressure or temperature. And I didn't pay much attention to the road conditions, traffic, or signage.

Then I took driver's ed and got a driver's license.

The trip to Grandmother's house changed. We were in the same car with the same parents and the same siblings driving the same road.

But I noticed that Dad would cut the corner when he turned left onto our street. That wasn't how I was taught. And I noticed that I was watching more than just how he turn, but how he solved the navigation problem of where to turn. All those things I did not pay attention to heretofore were now getting noticed.

It is a different thing for a non-driver to be a passenger than it is for a driver to be a passenger. Every so often I'll go up in an airplane with my friend Scott. He is a pilot. I am a passenger. If I ever get my ticket, flying will change, too.

I hope you've experienced something like this yourself. You've had some activity where you've transitioned from mere spectator to participant.

If you write, you should take a fresh look at how you read. When you read, do you notice how the other guy turned a phrase?
Do you notice how characters move through the story?
Do you notice whether they have realistic motivations for their story goals and actions?
Do you see how the various "rules" (or mantras) of writing are obeyed, broken, or played against one another?
Do you recognize the problems the other guy faced in putting his story into words and can you learn from how s/he solved them?
Maybe this is too much work, or it takes the fun out of reading. That's fair and I understand.

You don't have to read like a writer every time, but I'll wager your writing will improve if you read like a writer at least part of the time.

A Few Bad Men

I've griped about how I think Dr. Who and BBC Sherlock failed when it came time to depict their protagonists' nemesis. In the case of Dr. Who, it is another Time Lord called "The Master," and in Sherlock Holmes's case it is Professor Moriarty. Every Batman needs his Joker and every Superman needs his Lex Luthor.

Thinking through your antagonist is as important as your protagonist and his/her love interest.

My complaint with BBC Sherlock is that Professor Moriarty seemed exactly like The Master who seemed like a nasty schoolboy. True, nasty schoolboys personify evil, but they needn't be taken that seriously. (Unless putting one over your knee and spanking him is not an option.) I guess that's my complaint: If the villain is just like someone you've spanked, s/he falls short of being taken seriously.

Likewise, fellas with monocles and long-haired cats don't work for me. But instead of enumerating what's wrong with other villains, I'd like to say what I think is right with one. I seek a Specification for Antagonist Design.

In one sense, anything that's to your hero's advantage should have a corresponding advantage in your villain. The Doctor is special because he's a Time Lord. Then the Master is a Time Lord, too. Sherlock has mad deductive skillz. So does Moriarty. But they needn't be the same sorts of advantages. They can be formidable, but different. Maybe your villain cannot shoot webs from his wrists, but he has robotic arms coming out of his back instead.

In World War II, the Japanese Zero was a superior aircraft in several key aspects. Nevertheless, the Americans learned how to avoid its strengths and exploit its weaknesses. Avoid a turning fight against a Zero, and if you can't, get outta Dodge. That's how conflicts work in real life and that's how your stories should work.

Stories without conflict suck. And where conflict is concerned, it takes two to Tango. Thus you want to think carefully about your protagonist's dance partner(s). The best villains have several admirable qualities about them. Sure, Gabbar Singh is evil, but he's got a sense of humor and irony and he loves to laugh--before he shoots them. Darth Vader was a sensitive soul easily disturbed by his co-workers' lack of faith--before he choked the life out of them. The Operative was motivated by his faith.

Most Westerners share a cultural heritage of the Greek/Persian conflicts of antiquity. We relate to the independent-minded Greek hoplites who are vastly outnumbered by a host of Persian slaves, but win because they are free men who can seize the initiative on the battlefield while their opponents await the commands of their masters. Thus your story will resonate better with Western audiences if you have a feisty band of Rebels outmaneuvering the giant Empire.

The circumstances needn't be martial. You can write the same conflict between Preston Tucker versus the Big Three automakers with the same asymmetry.

Because companies are generally larger than readers, it's common to make some Corporate Type the villain. Given the amorality of common corporate governance, this is not a stretch. But Big Labor and Big Government work just as well in the role of Persians waging a war of attrition. And since the only good politicians in Washington are Whigs (and long dead) you can show bipartisan villainy. If you want to make Big Religion the villain, choose one that is not in the habit of chopping people's heads off.

That's where I'm at right now. I'm putting together a villain who's motivation is money. He won't blow up the world, because that would destroy all the shops where he spends money. He won't kill everyone, because then there would be no one left to be minions. He doesn't feed his minions to sharks, because it reduces minion-morale. However, his minions are well paid, they have full health insurance with dental, and a generous 401k matching plan.

In other words, he's exactly like me, but with a few billion dollars.

Well, he's different from me in one regard: I'd waste time in the third act gloating about the details of how my nefarious plan works. This villain would just kill the hero and move on to the next item on his Things To Do Today list.

Solzhenitsyn said the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. This means you should show the stuff on the good side of the line in the villain's character. Once upon a time, that might have meant being a pious, church-going man, but the Hollywood stupid tax has made religion a telltale of villainy.  In choosing the good you put into a villain, you risk making him more sympathetic than your hero.

So, what good attributes do you think should inhere within the character of a villain?

My timing is either Really Good or Really Bad

Did I say how something about buying ebooks from Baen?


Let's pause for a moment to remember who we're talking about when we're dealing with Baen Books. These guys sell Science Fiction books, and the market for science fiction books include a disproportionate number of geeks like me. Geeks like me were the early adopters of ebooks. Yes, I own a SONY Reader--one of the first ebook readers that came out when the Kindle first did. And yes, I paid way too much for it.

Moreover, Baen has been one of the best publishers to embrace the hacker ethics of anti-DRM and giving away the titles that would otherwise go out of print.

It's a great loss-leader to have a series of N books with a give away of the first half of the series. We'll just give you a taste, a sample, to get you hooked. Baen learned this way back when.

Put all these factors together and it made sense for Baen to put together a book-selling-and-giving-away operation that was independent of Amazon's Kindle site.

But not playing nice with Amazon had its downside as I discussed above. Sure, I can follow the procedure outlined in that note, but it's a lot easier to push the Buy-Now-With-1-Click button. For an early adopter like me, the procedure I used to buy Sarah Hoyt's Darkship novels makes a lot of sense.

Nevertheless, the world of ebooks and ereaders has evolved from us early-adopters to the mainstream. In the years that have elapsed, Amazon has dropped its DRM requirement, so the hacker ethic is now OK with buying ebooks from Amazon's Kindle store.

This morning I read here that Baen and Amazon are getting in bed together. My post about buying ebooks then and now is soon to be obsolete. You want a Baen book, just click on Buy-Now...

The downside, if there is one, is that Baen cannot give away books for free or charge $6.00 for titles that would otherwise go for $9.99.

So, if you know of any Baen titles you want to buy at $6.00 or snag for free, you'd better move fast before Baen's agreement with Amazon goes into force.