A new anthology would not appear to bode well for the future of right-wing authors at Baen Books who are not named “John” or “Larry”:
I finished the anthology SHATTERED SHIELDS. Supposedly a “military fantasy” anthology though there was precious little military anything about it. Two stories blatantly homosexual. Robin Wayne Bailey has a spunky warrior women sorceress who is also a lesbian.
James L. Sutter had a story of an “elite” legion of 100 pairs of homosexual lovers who fight as pairs in battles. Total bullshit on the fighting…. A Jennifer Brozek co-edited the anthology. An overweight red head from her picture. Edited a book called CHICKS DIG GAMING, a non-fiction book on how females love gaming. Ever hear of her before? She also wrote a Valdemar story for one of antholgies of stories set in Mercedes Lackey’s horse world.
I have no idea who Bryan Thomas Schmidt is.
Take home point: convergence is taking place at Baen. SJWs are infiltrating there. Nowhere is safe with the big publishers. I notice women seem to like the anthology at Goodreads. Some of this stuff manages to make Joe Abercrombie look good in comparison.
I was wondering how long it would take SJWs to go after military science fiction once Kameron Hurley won the Hugo for her ahistorical and risibly stupid blog post “We Have Always Fought”. After all, there is nothing to stop them from turning Mil-SF into converged Romance the way they did to science fiction proper, especially in the era of She-Rangers and infantrymen in red heels. Now we know. At least the Sacred Band of Thebes really existed, although I find it moderately amusing that they now appear in practically every historical fantasy for either bathetic or virtue-signaling purposes.
Baen has always been uniquely at risk of SJW entryism for two reasons. One, it is 25-percent owned by Tor Books. Two, many of its authors are libertarians who are fairly sound on the economic and political fronts, but are more than a little prone to virtue-signaling on the cultural side. It’s one thing to have the occasional gay character – but when you have more gay characters than Catholics or Baptists appearing in your work, it’s readily apparent that you are, at best, virtue-signaling for the SJWs.
And when you make a point of bragging about how your protagonists are diverse in one way or another, well, it’s not exactly hard to predict which way you’re going to bend when the cultural winds blow. Or the road you’re going to walk in the future.
aliceination @frumiouslyalice
@saladinahmed just finished your book! excited for the next one but wondering – any chance of some more explicitly lgbt+ chars in future?Saladin Ahmed @saladinahmed
yes. A 100% chance.
Despite what many SJWs think, Baen is not actually on our side, rather, Baen is the No Man’s Land between the SJW and the Right. I suspect we’ll know Baen has fully converged when it abandons its garish trademark covers in favor of the washed-out faux literary style favored by Tor. Not that there is anything right about one or wrong about the other, but SJWs always have the need to let everyone know they have taken control, and that would be the most public way of making it clear to all and sundry.
Anyhow, should Baen eventually go the way of its big brother, Castalia will be here
to assist any of its authors who prefer to align with the Alt and Traditional Rights rather
than with the cultural Marxists.
The minor hubbub over Judith Merril and the long, sordid history of the Left’s baleful influence in science fiction makes it clear what a unique opportunity is being presented today by the confluence of technology and events. No wonder they call us Nazis. No wonder they are terrified.
They should be.