Baen Finally owns up to being Right-Wing (and not in a good way)

Baen Books has long had a reputation for being a bit right wing. It's not entirely unwarranted, given their massive love for all things Heinlein (king of sci-fi libertarianism). Still, they also publish a number of authors (in particular Eric Flint) who are definitely not right wing. However unfortunately, they then turn around and publish something like this:

http://www.webscription.net/p-1153-taxpayers-tea-party.aspx

The book's called Taxpayer's Tea Party by Sharon Cooper and Chuck Asay. It's a reprint of a book published in the 90's during the Republicans' big revolt against Clinton. As one might imagine it's aimed at the Teabagger and their friends. The book doesn't entirely raise one's hope about its contents, proudly proclaiming it's dual forewords by Newt Gringrich and Rush Limbaugh. Yes it has the support of a Republican who resigned from office due to corruption charges and, well, Rush freaking Limbaugh, they guy who has his face next to the dictionary definition of 'Right-Wing Jackass' (For added humour, their website's preview of Taxpayer's Teaparty contains no actual book, just the two forewords and a cartoon I had to keep reminding myself wasn't satire). It's also possibly the sign that Baen's finally fallen down the rabbit hole they've been can-canning around for the last decade or so.

The thing is, Baen is a Science Fiction and Fantasy label. That's not to knock them. They publish dozens of truly excellent books every year and I'm a big fan of several writers (the aforementioned Eric Flint and David Weber in particular). They've also got a few books in the catalogue which are non-fiction works on the science involved in Sci-Fi. What they aren't however, is a political publisher. They publish entertainment, not education.

Still, to be honest, I'm really not surprised that Baen's finally taken the plunge into publishing right-wing populism. They've been doing it for years in stealth. I first noticed Baen's rightward lean when they published Tom Kratman's unpleasant screed, A State of Disorder. Anyone who can read the book's prologue alone and claim that it's completely balanced deserves a medal. The book itself is even worse, with possibly the most grotesque parody of Hillary Clinton ever written (Let's just say she starts off as a narcissistic closet lesbian who was actively involved in the death of her first running mate and that she gets worse), while the book's conclusion, a series of constitutional amendments rammed through by the good guys, is likely to provoke sheer horror in anyone left of Limbaugh (the amendment banning abortion alone is awe-inspiringly clueless and offensive). To be honest, my first response to ASOD was sheer horror, but now it's almost a nodding acceptance. This is what Baen does these days.

The years after ASOD haven't been good years either. Kratman's continued to write a handful of books, none of which can be really considered fair or balanced. His Caliphate might just have to considered one of the most incredibly racist science fiction novels ever. His Legion El Cid novels are a incredibly unpleasant screed about how Kratman 'would' fight the War on Terror, with a disturbing obsession with brutality. Kratman's books brim with right-wing anger and paranoia. He constantly casts all liberals as the enemy, with vehemence particularly reserved for the media (which he sees as terrorist supporters, let alone enablers) and 'transnationalists' (a weird right-wing fantasy about an illuminati of liberals looking to reintroduce Soviet style aristocracy). About the only thing that can be said for his books is that they so quickly accelerate past the suspension of disbelief as to at no time can you take the books for anything to do with reality.

No mention of Kratman would be done without mention his frequent collaborator, John Ringo. Mr Ringo is one of Baen's biggest authors, but unfortunately that seems to have only magnified his tendency towards the more ridiculous end of the political statement. Ghost is probably the best starting point. Ghost tells the story of a ex-Navy Seal who finds himself getting into multiple encounters with various Islamic terrorists while also meeting a bevy of beautiful girls. Think of it as the right-wing bastard child of Jack Bauer and James Bond. The book and its sequels are incredibly right-wing, attributing all failures in the War on Terror to either Clinton or political correctness. They're also incredibly over-sexed, frequently in directions that are incredibly tasteless and unforgivably vile (Any possible good feeling I felt for the main character disappeared by the end of Ghost, where he hires and rapes a prostitute, a scene written with far more detail than necessary).

As bad as Ghost and its sequels were, the true cherry on the top has to be The Last Centurion. If you want a full description, look at the review below. Here's its suffice to say that LTC is a book with only one real purpose: blame every ill in the world on liberals and suggest that right-wing solutions are the only way to fix the mess that the world is in. The first ten chapters of the book are little more than an extended, poorly thought out rant as to the failings of an imaginary female Democrat President (see a pattern here? Baen seems to have its hate on for Hillary), with her every move being exactly opposite to the logical path mapped out by the author. What makes the book so thoroughly objectionable was that it was published in late 2008, in a transparent attempt to be out before the presidential election (a decision presumably made when every one thought Hillary was a shoe-in for nominee).

Still, much of Ringo's work shines before his collaborations with Kratman. A Watch On The Rhine may just take the cup for most incredibly wacko book ever published by Baen. Again, see my review below for details, but in a nutshell, the SS save Germany from invading aliens. I'm going to repeat that, in case your mind instinctively wiped the idea from your head, the SS save Germany from invading aliens. The book is an ode to the SS' ruthless strength and epically manages to make the liberal villains less sympathetic than the cannibalistic aliens. Their other collaboration, Yellow Eyes, is an improvement, but only by a little. The story's relatively forgiveable and is frankly the best story to come from Kratman's pen, but it all falls over at the end. Kratman sees fit to include an afterword about some of the book's themes and the results are well, memorable. He offers a weird little rant about Transnationalists and their goals, vis-a-vis the International Court and warcrimes prosecution. Being, well, Kratman, he misses the point in style and comes to the conclusion that everything is an effort to hamstring the common soldier with the fear of prosecution. It's the kind of pap he pumps out on a regular basis, secure in his little happy place, uncaring as to the realities of the world.

I honestly don't mind some of the right-wing books published by Baen. I greatly enjoyed reading Freehold by Michael Z Williamson, even if I think the libertarian country at the centre of the story is a laughable fantasy. I'm also hugely tempted by Monster Hunter International by Larry Correria, a book with a notable anti-government theme. What I do mind is where the author can't put his politics behind the needs of the story. Many of the above books by Ringo and Kratman would be far better if they'd restrained their urges.

In all honesty, I feel much of my complaints about the above stories would be improved if their editors had restrained them. I can't imagine Yellow Eyes would have done worse without its repugnant afterword. Nor can I imagine A State of Disorder doing worse with its ridiculous liberal bashing excised. To be honest, I can't imagine any amount of editing fixing some of their other works (Watch On The Rhine). Honestly, I find it hard not to imagine an editor handing most of Ghost and Caliphate back to their respective authors with a message along the lines 'start again, less ick'. Quite frankly, there seems to be a decision by the editorial staff not to remove the more offensive lines of their right-wing authors, instead letting them run rampant.

This decision leads almost inexorably towards publishing something like Taxpayer's Teaparty. Baen already lends succour to the extreme right-wing by publishing fantasies of Liberal treachery and Conservative victory, so why shouldn't it directly help by publishing a blueprint to protest? It's hard to say exactly what Baen's lost here, but legitimacy is probably the best word to start with. The argument that Baen isn't a conservative company, with a distinct bias in a given direction has fallen over, probably forever. By publishing Taxpayer's Teaparty they've lost forever the right to claim that they are misrepresented.

It's possible that one day someone's going to look back at the history of Baen Books and directly trace it's decline to Taxpayer's Teaparty. It's definitely not a positive sign for the company, clearly trying to cash in on the conservative zeitgeist and it's going to backfire. Baen's already garnered an amazing amount of ill will with readers like myself, who don't enjoy having asinine politics shoved down our throats. The only reason I look at their site at the moment is to keep up with the latest books by David Weber and Eric Flint, as well as seeing if they've got any new authors that might catch my eye. As soon as those two leave Baen's fold, I'm gone as well.

A Watch On The Rhine

Author: Tom Kratman and John Ringo

Publisher: Baen Books

Quick Synopsis: Germany is forced to reform the SS to stave off alien invasion

Quick Review: An idea with potential mutilated by the wrong author

I have to admit that the idea behind A Watch on the Rhine is an original one: can the German SS really be redeemed? Are they the monsters of history, or are they misunderstood, patriots fighting for an evil regime? Unfortunately, the authors don't really manage to answer these questions. They go into the book with their own preconceived notions and don't manage to make them convincing. Worse, they let their own prejudices colour the story, further damaging their efforts by trying to score cheap points with hollow characterisation and weakarguments.

Plot: Set in John Ringo's Legacy of Aldenata universe, the book follows Germany's defence against the Posleen hordes (an alien species that considers all animal life food, up to and including their own dead and young). Aware that their army stands little chance, their government decides to rebuild the SS, using alien technology to regenerate the few survivors and give them fresh recruits to train (Just to be clear, by SS, I mean the Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary force within Nazi Germany infamous for running the concentration camps as well as several other atrocities). While the intention is to use the new units up in the coming conflict, they prove far more useful than that.

It's a measure of AWOTR that I'm still unsure on the central theme of whether or not the reputation of the SS can be redeemed. Quite simply, there is very little of the book devoted to this argument. Those few characters who make the argument that they are irredeemable and that Germany shouldn't resurrect them, regardless of the alien threat, are generally classed as at best misguided or at worse, villains (indeed the primary opposition is from one of the book's biggest villains). Kratman (Ringo appears to have been very hands-off on the novel, going from the authorial afterword included with the book) ultimately seems uninterested in this argument, consistently portraying every SS character as mostly apolitical, with little interest in any aspect of Nazi ideology (the exception would have to be the vile Kreuger, who openly celebrates his service in the Totenkopf brigades, those parts of SS who served in the concentration camps). Most memorably, this occurs early on in the novel, when one of the old SS encounters an Israeli army officer. It is the Israeli who is portrayed as being out-of-line, not the SS officer who barely seems to care. The few references to the SS's crimes are simply waved away with either a distinction of the Totenkopf's responsibility or the excuse of 'everyone did the same thing', an argument best saved for the schoolyard. To be blunt, Kratman simply doesn't care about the SS's crimes, paying mere lip-service to the pain that they have caused.

Unfortunately, if a mere inability to make a decent argument was the biggest problem with AWOTR that probably wouldn't have made the book as bad as it is. No what really picks the book up and slaps it out of the park is Kratman's political axe-grinding on top of the sensitive subject matter. Remember that villain I mentioned above, the one opposed to the resurrection of the SS? He is the leader of a cabal of left-wing and green (he's the leader of the Greens in the Bundestag)politicians who assist in an alien conspiracy to weaken Germany's defences in before the invasion, in an effort to ensure humanity's downfall. His explanation for this when confronted? He's 'protecting' the Earth by using the Posleen to wipe out the excess population, planning to return with his evacuated family and do things 'right' after the Posleen have been eradicated. The entire speech where this is admitted is gloriously over-the-top and ridiculous, sounding as if he's ad-libbing the villain from Moonraker. What of course makes this all the more laughable is that the Posleen are known for destroying the worlds they conquer, breaking out into nuclear infighting as their population spirals out of control. The protests he organises earlier on are just as ridiculous, with SS characters musing about the hypocrisies evident within the crowds and the protesters being portrayed as brain-washed and clueless(crowning this is the protester who is so impressed by the SS riot police that he immediately goes off to a recruiting station). Most disturbingly, this gives a creepy moment in one scene, where the German chancellor orders the SS to arrest all of the members of the conspiracy to weaken the defences, implying to the reader that the SS are occupying the same quasi-political position they had in the Third Reich, acting as the muscle for those hunting 'enemies of the state'.One cannot help, but get the feeling that Kratman views the liberal characters as more evil than the Posleen, who are often treated with more empathy than the humans (please note that these are the aliens who make use of human shields and make a quilt of human hair during the course of the book).

These issues unfortunately overshadow the book's actual plot. Not that that isn't a good thing. There's very little coherence to the book's set up and Kratman is very bad at setting the scene for all of the action sequences. The narrative is spread over about five years, covering the preparation for the first and then second waves of invasion as well as the battles fought during them, but there seems to be little development during the time-skips (most notably, the few 'new' SS characters don't seem to receive any sort of promotions during the book, despite being veterans of the first wave). The book is also achingly non-canonical, frequently violating many of the setting's rules (Ringo constructed an alien force for which the best counter is infantry supported with artillery, while Kratman instead plants the SS forces in supertanks). Perhaps worse is the actual reason given for the necessity of resurrecting the SS. The stated rational is that Germany needs everything it can get, that its own military lacks the training cadre needed for the massive expansion necessary. It all rings a little hollow. Kratman consistently portrays the regular German army as weak and cowardly, crippled by political correctness. The SS are necessary because Kratman makes them necessary, effectively writing them in by authorial fiat. There's little consideration given to the repercussions, nor are the German opposition portrayed as anything other than clueless. Grotesquely, the book's epilogue has the surviving characters engaging in what is implied to be genocide in the future, deliberately attacking a planet of the alien species which has been playing the Posleen against the humans with the intention of destroying their entire species.

Most laughable is Kratman's big theme of 'Survival overrides programming'. He tries to make the argument that the modern military is not ruthless enough and that modern sensibilities are to blame. Unfortunately, the theme is shoehorned into the book, primarily with a French woman who is a liberal stereotype as only Kratman can write them, ie clueless. In a poorly thought out scene near the end, her son fails to demolish a crucial bridge during battle. Kratman would like you to believe that it his liberal 'programming' that is to blame, but unfortunately that's about the last conclusion the reader is likely to draw. The boy in question is a child soldier in his first battle, who's placed in a position of utmost importance. The bridge in question is packed with human refugees at the time, being used by the Posleen as human shields. As far as can be seen, Kratman decides that mere human compassion is an obstacle that can be blamed on liberalism. Disturbingly, his authorial afterword suggests that he considers this to be a major problem in the War on Terror.

Watch on the Rhine is not a good book. The arguments made within are hollow and self-serving, the story is instantly forgettable and the characters are weak. Kratman seems to think that the SS's talent for ruthlessness forgives all of their sins, when he is not drawing false equivalences between their crimes and the Allies'. His personal politics colour the narrative, with left-wing politics being made out to be the biggest threat to the cast. This is unfortunate, given that he is essentially writing in support of one of the greatest right-wing perversions in history. Watch on the Rhine is at its core a poorly thought out polemic which, given its sensitive subject matter, is all the more appalling. One of the worst books I've ever read.

Legend

I kind of promised myself I wasn't going to review John Ringo's 'Kildar' series. Thankfully I found this and there is no way I can top it:

Hradzka is awesome.

money quote:

Also, to take care of the trainers' needs, he brings in whores.

LOOK, I TOLD YOU. HE ADOPTS THEM. LIKE CATS.

The Last Centurion

Author: John Ringo

Publisher: Baen Books

Quick Sketch: Narrator overcomes political stupidity while surviving an end-of-the-world near-miss

Quick Review: Avoid like the plague, unless you're an American conservative (actually not even then)

It's not often I walk away from a book swearing. It's even less often it'll make me do it within the first ten chapters. That's what happened with me when I read the preview of The Last Centurion on Baen Books' website (www.baen.com) in the summer of '08. It actually took me two goes to read the nine chapters available and I'll be honest: I finished it in a morbid desire to see just how bad it could get. I then (not very) quietly steamed to my friends about it and did my level best to forget about it. Nine months of denial later (with muchous venting), I downloaded the full version (legally). My opinion fell even further. I not just disliked the plot and ideas, I actually found the entire thing to be mind-numbingly bad from almost every viewpoint.

Let's start with a statement: I am not a conservative, especially not the American version of the same. I'm a liberal. In the last few elections I've found myself leaning towards Liberal Democrat, but I haven't made my mind up who I'm voting for in the next election (David Cameron has made a positive impression on me, but then again so has Nick Clegg). As such, I am not TLC's target audience. I am not supposed to like this book.

The Last Centurion is written in an autobiographical/ blog style. It recounts the main character(Bandit Six as he calls himself)'s experiences during what he delightfully terms 'The Time of Suckage'. This is around 2019, when bird flu goes pandemic (the Plague) and global cooling (the Big Chill) thrashes the world's eco-system. The damage (30%-60% of the world's population, see later) is further exacerbated by the titanic failures of the Democratic US President. Bandit Six recounts his story of being abandoned in the Middle East and fighting his way back home, only to have to fix the US when he gets there.

Ringo's biggest failing here is writ large across the whole book. Quite simply, he can't do the first person perspective. Only three characters leap off the page at you: Samad, the leader of the Nepalese troops Bandit Six ends up with, President Warrick, the Democratic President who is simply stunning in her outright caricature of Hillary Clinton (it verges on libel, to be blunt), and of course Bandit Six himself. Unfortunately, this isn't to suggest that they're good characters. Samad comes of as a confused British Empire copycat, Warrick is one-dimensionally insane and Bandit Six is a hyper partisan know-it-all. Every other character is barely named and little more than a cipher (his entire chain of command is reduced to their ranks and Bandit Six's opinion of them).

This is one of the real irritants of TLC: Bandit Six. I can to be frank, kinda of ignore his screaming partisanship, but his know-it-all nature just drags and drags and drags. TLC is divided into three books. In book one, he explains (in nine chapters of progressively more irritating detail) how the world and the US collapses, via his knowledge of farming (he's the son of a farmer). Book two details his experiences of in the Middle East as it all collapses. Book Three finishes with his exploits in the US as he rebuilds the agricultural system and then deals with some of the worst hit areas.

Problem is, he comes off as somewhere between Superman, Einstein and God. During the course of the book he lays the ground work for an independent Kurdistan and a Persian nation allied to the US, creates two hyper-popular TV shows, saves the US agricultural system, saves Detroit from Islamic servitude and shatters the US media's liberal bias. He constantly dumps massive amounts of information at you, all of which seems to have passed the government by. The book comes of as a massive amount of 'I-love-me' which is just shocking. By the end you're waiting for Bandit Six to pull another massive save out of his ass.

Another element that just falls over is his TV show 'The Centurions'. Basically, as Bandit Six is passing through Baghdad, Rupert Murdoch (humourously, Ringo seems not to have noticed that A) Murdoch is Australian, and B) he also owns Fox), in an attempt to up his ratings, drops a camera crew on him to get some real info on what he's up to (Bandit Six's unit having become a bit of a cause celebre by now, thanks to being abandoned). Bandit Six then forces them to show what he's really doing, rather than being the usual liberally-biased media. It becomes a smash hit almost over night.

Ringo writes TLC as if the reader is familiar with the TV show. This simply does not work. A particularly good example is an episode called 'Cam(P)ing' which Bandit Six describes how funny it is to watch afterwards but how steamed he was at the time. Problem is, you never get told why he was so steamed (All you know is that the Nepalese manage to accidentally blow up one of his support vehicles). 'Cam(P)ing' is referred to several times, but it's never actually explained what happens. Thus you are left with this confused question in your head for the rest of the book.

The political bias within TLC is frankly stunning. Every chance Ringo gets, he blames one of three groups: The liberals, the media or the State Department (though mostly the liberals). He cheerfully details case studies, which show liberals being less able to deal with difficult situations (during this he just devolves to calling them tofu-eating grasshoppers. I hate Tofu, by the way), being less competent and more selfish. Whenever the sensible option isn't available, it's the fault of one of the three. It's plot by numbers, giving you the feeling the book was sponsored by the Republican National committee or the NRA.

This bias comes across most blatantly with President Warrick. He characterises her from the beginning as ideologically bound, clueless and a micro-manager. In fact she's so incompetent, I just kept thinking she was inspired by Bush, but even he's not that bad (A particular favourite of mine is the emergency powers act her mindless Congress passes which allows for the removal of habeus corpus. Remind me again which President and party actually did that in the last decade?). What bothers me the most here is that this book was release in July '08. This book was clearly intend to influence the election as Warrick is very obviously Hilary Clinton. There's one bit where Bandit Six is discussing the 'temporary king' concept of presidential power and he mentions the 'Bush, Warrick, Bush, Warrick' dynasty. Given that the time line (TLC starts in 2019) makes the above set up impossible: there's only two elections between now and then with you needing to some how fit in four elections, even assuming three single term presidencies, the only real conclusion is that he's really referring to 'Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton'.

It doesn't help that Bandit Six rabidly hates her (he generally refers to her as 'The Bitch'). There's one bit when he's detailing the messed up vaccination plan for the US and he describes the transcribed meeting between her and her advisors. She sides with her female (civilian)advisers, not her male (military) advisers. Ringo characterises this as militant feminism with the strident phrase 'Men had testicles and therefore were Wrong' (direct quote).

A final issue is the huge hammer aspect of the book. Nothing is subtle. His examples of media bias are more reminiscent of Soviet propaganda (near the end, he talks about a news report about civilians massacred where CNN has carefully avoided recording the manacles that held them in place while the bad guys used them as a human shield. Did I mention the media blames the US military?). Ringo has a huge problem in this respect. He simply doesn't seem to grasp convergence or individual bias. Instead, he constantly ascribes a sense of conspiracy to everything.

Frankly, I could go on and on about the sheer awfulness of The Last Centurion. There are dozens of other points I could make like his shilling for Bush, his yen for made up statements and some decidedly questionable racial statements. The ending makes the usual USA-USA hollywood movie ending look well written and original (it's less of a send-off and more an embarrassing rant), the book is disjointed and poorly plotted and the characterisation is paper-thin. Ringo has always allowed his politics to influence his writing, but this book simply removes the veneer of his usually excellent ideas, characters and laugh out loud dialogue. In its place we get a masterclass in how not to write in the first person and a sperm-soaked display of Conservative masturbation.

A final note: The Last Centurion most reminds me of the excellent Max Brooks novel World War Z. It's written in similar style (WWZ is a collection of interviews with survivors) and details the global collapse under the pressure of incoming apocalypse (due to a zombie invasion) and civilization's gradual resurgence. Problem is, WWZ is more believable. And it has zombies.