It’s so terrible to see the way that the science fiction community is full of hatred and discriminates against Hispanics. Mike Glyer of File 770 actually apologized for running a basic convention report about the recent World Fantasy Convention that just happened to be written by a gentleman of Hispanic descent.
How can I run a review by Paul Weimer and a week later post something by Jon Del Arroz, a writer who’s persecuted him? (Or ever?) That was a terrible choice. I apologize. And how can I do that to Cat Eldridge, who is closely associated with this blog but was completely blindsided by the post. He works with Paul all the time and absolutely would not want us to be hosting JDA. I apologize to Cat, too.
A good apology would stop there, I think. Which I say because some people want to know why I did this in the first place. And an explanation at this point in an apology is usually a backdoor justification which makes the apology worthless. All I can say is the explanation is part of my contrition.
File 770 doesn’t have that many commenters, so it often feels like I do a lot of work and all that matters is if I mention someone’s hot button topic they will jump in to reprimand me for failing their purity test. Most of the time my skin is not so thin that I react. Sometimes it is. Resentment is the issue that drives most of the problems I have in life, and when I yield to it bad things happen.
I was going through just such a season of feeling picked on when Jon Del Arroz sent me his convention report. I combed through it expecting to find takes I would refuse to publish but it was rather vanilla. Nothing to object to but the byline.
This is obviously nothing more than pure anti-Hispanic racism on the part of Mr. Glyer. There was literally nothing to object to but a Hispanic name in the byline; it was a simple and straightforward news report devoid of any political content whatsoever, as you can see for for yourself.
World Fantasy Con 2026 Friday Review
Posted on October 24, 2026 by Mike Glyer
By Jon Del Arroz: World Fantasy Convention opened Thursday at the Oakland MarriottCity Center, and Friday, the first full day, delivered the small, personal kind of gathering the convention is known for. I wasn’t able to attend Thursday because of having to get work done. Robert Silverberg was the main draw for me, and he did not disappoint.
The convention is a fraction of Worldcon’s size. Programming runs two or three panels at a time, the dealer room is modest, and the convention space is compact. Organizers have been citing 775 members on Facebook. At peak times on Friday the halls held roughly 200. The staff has the operation running smoothly and were all super nice and helpful, from the info desk to programming to the dealer room, and attendees I passed all seemed to be having a good time.
The morning opened with a panel on the changing publishing world. The lineup was Silverberg, Josh Wilson from The Fabulous magazine, Teresa DeLucchi, director of marketing at Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press, Betsy Wollheim, and Stephen Jones.
The panelists agreed that everything in the business is up in the air and very different than ever. They discussed the trend toward sprayed edges on books that began in the pandemic, and cited that they thought the trend had peaked, which I find entertaining and think look great and add a lot to the presentation of books. They also said physical books are staging a bigger comeback because ebooks have become so prevalent and normalized, so people want something physical and cool to hold. That matches what I see in the market: readers want premium deluxe editions, and more publishers are making them.
AI produced the panel’s one real disagreement. Jones called it inevitable and asked why anyone bothers fighting it. DeLucchi argued people should not be using it. Jones has the better of that argument. AI is not going away, and people will not stop using it. It cleans up typos fast, and it has plenty of uses that never touch the creative work. He believes eventually AI will replace editors entirely for the most part.
The AI exchange led Silverberg to talk of copy editors, and he did not hold back. He once had a copy editor “fix” a sentence he had deliberately left unfinished, and he had to get it changed back. His verdict: “I hate copy editors because I know what I’m doing.” He added that Harlan Ellison once had a copy editor change a pile of his text wholesale, and that it did not go well for the copy editor.
He also talked about meeting John W. Campbell. The business used to be personal, he said, and now it is detached and run by email. The panel noted that unlike the days of building relationships with editors to buy stories, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld buys stories only through open submissions, not by soliciting authors, so a relationship with the editor doesn’t get you a sale. Everyone goes through the same slush process. Silverberg described walking into Campbell’s office as being like going to church and meeting God. When he got to call Campbell by his first name, he thought the roof would fall in.
The dealer’s hall was modest but with a lot of cool stuff. Tachyon Publishing had a big presence there with a lot of works that were tempting, especially form Peter Beagle’s catalog. Cross Genre Books, a Portland dealer, had a deep rare-book stock: signed Jack Vance, signed Harlan Ellison, Poul Anderson, Anne McCaffrey, and plenty of Heinlein. I spoke with Anthony Eichenlaub, vice president of SFWA, who had a table in the room. Artist John Picacio also set up there, and he kept a line most of the time I passed, with fans buying prints.
In the afternoon I went to a reading with Bruce McAllister, Charlie Jane Anders, and Caroline Yoachim. McAllister is a long time writer who has done wonderful work and does not get enough credit in the field these days despite plenty of award nominations for his work. Anders really worked the room before reading from a forthcoming publication in 2027 that involves vampires and time travel, thanking the moderator and the audience and getting everyone applauding, and the crowd responded in kind.
What’s great is how many of the attendees are there just as fans and not a full slate of scheduled speaking. I ran into Robin Hobb and Tad Williams, among other big names. Peter Beagle held a small meetup that filled before I could sign up, and I hope to catch him another way before Sunday. A bookbinding workshop, where attendees bound their own books, also looked good, and I missed it for scheduling reasons.
Friday night also holds a mass autographing session. Silverberg and Jones are expected to unveil an anthology there, with advance review copies on hand. Saturday brings Silverberg’s interview panel, which I expect to be a highlight of the con as well. The World Fantasy Awards banquet is Sunday to cap everything off.
All in all, it was an excellent Friday, and World Fantasy Convention delivered.
Now, I have zero interest in any future accommodation with the SF-SJWs, not because they quite rightly hate and fear me, but because they are such a collection of irrelevant mediocrities that there isn’t a single one of them that I would ever deem worthy of publishing in ebook, let alone in fine deluxe leather. When Castalia House is publishing excellent authors like Eiji Yoshikawa, Benito Perez Galdos, Zenaide Fleuriot, Unno Juza, and Nomura Kido in English for the first time, what do we care about these sub-trivial SF/F wannabes who don’t even understand what science fiction is and what it is not.
Unfortunately, Mike Glyer has forgotten that his proper role is that of a historian, not a racial gatekeeper, and while it’s understandable that he would eventually fold under the hateful pressure of the yapping SJWs, it is a mistake on his part. Because, as a very kind and gentle dark lord once said, an apology is nothing more than a guilty plea in their beady little eyes.
And they are irrelevant. Despite their best efforts, Castalia House already publishes more and better titles than Tor or Baen. I will not be surprised if within three years, Castalia House is the biggest science fiction-related publisher in the world not named “Amazon”.
Sign up for Castalia Unlimited to find out why.