The Long View

On May 30, 2012, my friend John J. Reilly passed from this vale of tears after a sudden illness. John and I never met in person, but we exchanged emails and forum posts for nearly ten years, so I feel that I knew him in a way. John was one of the 3 contemporary writers who have influenced me the most, along with Steve Sailer and Jerry Pournelle. Much of what you see here is due to John.

John was one of the most reasonable people I have ever known. He had a remarkable tendency to see things in the best possible light, but in a way that was firmly grounded in truth. I suspect this was due to an unshakable belief in providence. He managed to collect an usual grouping of regular forum posters at his site. I have never met such a disparate group in my life, and perhaps never will again. After John suddenly stopped posting on his site in April 2012, the group continued apace for a bit, but gradually we came the realization that it was John, and his remarkable character, that had brought us together. Without him, the forum regulars didn't have any reason to go on, and we slowly drifted away.

The last thing that I posted on John's forum was that I had run a backup of everything on John's website using wget [a shout-out to my friend Sacha for helping me get that running right]. I knew it was only a matter of time before whatever hosting service John used would close his account, and everything he had written would waft into the ether.

Of course, this isn't completely true. The Internet Wayback Machine keeps everything in a fancy database so that you can access any version of John's site at any date, but that isn't a well-known service. There are other, similar internet archiving sites, but I decided to simply host a mirror here, as a tribute to John.

Here is John's copyright notice, formerly published at http://www.johnreilly.info/iln.htm

John J. Reilly retains all rights in the material set out on the pages defined by the URL sequences:

http://www.johnreilly.info/etc.
http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/etc.
http://pages.prodigy.com/VBDS39A/etc.

The individual articles on these pages appear with their publishing histories and copyright notices. The copyright notices refer to the time of their appearance on these pages.

Readers are invited to download this material for their own use.

Persons wishing to repost it on the Internet may do so if they include my copyright notice.

Persons wishing to republish it in any other medium must seek my permission.

All material copyright John J. Reilly is republished here with the permission of his estate.

The Long View Topic Archives

The Long View Alternative History

When I first encountered Alternative History (also known as Alternate History, or Althis, or AH), it was an obscure interest, scarcely a recognized genre. Now it threatens to engulf science fiction, and indeed historical fiction. You should have no trouble finding resources online. Let me now just s…

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View Eschatology

I have done a comparative study of the end of the world, rather along the lines of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” You can find information about it here: The Perennial Apocalypse How the End of the World Shapes History Here are some of the shorter things I have

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View History

This subject can include the whole world, and I am afraid that I have done little to narrow the scope of the matter. I am particularly interested in three classes of history: models of history (theories that explain how history is supposed to work), world history (with particular relevance to

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View Literature

I might almost have called this section “Just About Everything Else.” Here is where I discuss a few of the novels, nonfiction, films, and other works that do not fall into any of the other categories. There is some literary criticism here. There is even some fiction by me. Deliberate

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View Polemical Writings

2011 The Triumph of Consciousness III (Charles Reich was right.) After America (Mark Steyn explains that things are as bad as they seem.) Red Capitalism (Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howie describe the fragile financial system of China.) 2010 The Overton Window (Glenn Beck reveals the dange…

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View Religion

I am what is known as an “orthodox” Roman Catholic. This means that, while my views are conservative, I do not think I am any more Catholic than the Pope. This is an important point Readers who have looked under the other headings of this Web site will have noticed

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View Science and Cosmology

I suppose it is hard to have a broader interest than “cosmology.” For some reason, I have always believed it to be a virtue to resist limiting my curiosity to things I might actually be able to understand. In any event, here are some pieces I have done about really,

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View Spelling Reform

Theodore Roosevelt and the Great Spelling Reform Initiative of 1906 August 27, 1906: On this date, President Theodore Roosevelt directed Charles A. Stillings, the Public Printer of the United States, to use 300 simplified spellings in all the executive-branch documents printed by his office. The do…

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

The Long View World Government

This topic grew on its own. World government is a theme that plays a large role in many eschatological scenarios. It is also often touched on in foreign policy these days, at least obliquely. 2011 How Civilizations Die (David Goldman, also known as “Spengler,” gives us another Demographic Dreadfu…

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

John J. Reilly’s Curriculum Vitae

This is an archive of John J. Reilly’s CV from his website. I have preserved it as a testament to a life well-lived, and a marker to articles that John wrote that did not appear on his website, and because of that I do not have specific permission to re-print them.

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

John J. Reilly’s Books

In his lifetime, John Reilly published four books. Spengler’s Future was first published by Millennium Publications in 1993, and re-published by With Both Hands Publishing in 2023. This projection of the future into the 27th century uses a simple computer program and even simpler interpretations of the Oswald Spengler’s Decline

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen

Spengler’s Future

An Outline of the Next Seven Centuries of Western History, as Suggested by Comparison with the Life Cycles of Four Other Civilizations

With Both HandsBenjamin Espen