Author: VD

How Wikipedia determines reliability

Even I didn’t realize things were this bad at Wikipedia:

In the modern world, bigoted oddballs who are over-familiar with the internet can wield tremendous power — and this potty-mouthed man is a case in point. For when he’s not posting obscene images or racist sentiments, Cockram is a regular editor of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where (according to multiple posts on his Facebook feed) he operates under the alias ‘Hillbillyholiday’.

Last month, ‘Hillbillyholiday’ was the architect of a cynical PR stunt which saw this newspaper publicly smeared by damning its journalism ‘unreliable’. He and 52 like-minded anti-Press zealots, almost all of whom remain anonymous, collaborated in a vote which persuaded Wikipedia, the sixth most popular website in the world, that it ought to ban the Daily Mail.

The move by the online encyclopedia — which was founded in 2001 and has in a few short years become a hugely influential source of information — was revealed in the pages of the Left-wing Guardian newspaper. It reported that Wikipedia’s editors had decided, in a democratic ballot, that the Mail’s journalism cannot be trusted.

No statistics were offered in support of this claim, which, incidentally, came days before the Mail won Sports Newspaper Of The Year for an unprecedented fourth straight time, and was shortlisted for 15 awards at the British Press Awards, the news industry’s Oscars. (Indeed, as we shall see, the Mail has an enviable record on accuracy.)

Neither did Wikipedia, nor The Guardian, bother to shed much light on how this decision was reached. If they had, then it would have become apparent to readers that this supposed exercise in democracy took place in virtual secrecy, and that Wikipedia’s decision to censor the Mail — the only major news outlet on the face of the Earth to be so censored — was supported by a mere 53 of its editors, or 0.00018 per cent of the site’s 30 million total, plus five ‘administrators’.

Five thought police plus 53 editors is enough to permanently nuke a source for “reliability”. This fact alone is sufficient cause to justify, if not demand, the creation of Infogalactic.

Amazon rejects Pink SF

A first start at it, anyhow. Amazon tells Romance authors – and publishers – to stop inflicting their romances on the readers of other genres, starting with Science Fiction & Fantasy:

Do not add books from any Romance category to these categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children’s.

PRAISES BE TO THE GODS! Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. I’ve been complaining about this sort of thing ever since Twilight got crammed into my horror genre.  :'(

Romance is a separate genre from sci-fi and fantasy. And I don’t care how much authors argue otherwise, no, your book cannot be both. You can’t serve two (or three) masters.

A romance, at its root, specifically focuses on romantic love between two people, with an emotionally satisfying ending (usually, happily ever after, or HEA). In a romance, the relationship itself is the most important and driving motivator of the plot.

A fantasy, at its root, specifically focuses on magic and the supernatural as the primary motivators of the plot, presented within a self-contained world. In a fantasy, the presence of magic and the supernatural is the driving motivator of the plot.

A sci-fi, at its root, specifically focuses on fantastic but logically plausible creatures and technological developments while looking at the consequences of such developments. It is generally defined as writing rationally about alternative possibilities.

The fundamental problem is that too many authors neither understand nor respect the meaning and function of genre categories. Genres exist to help READERS find the type of stories they want. As others have said, I can’t use Amazon to search for fantasy or sci-fi anymore because half the search results come up as romances.  Your romance might be set in a futuristic setting, but that doesn’t mean you are serving the needs of the science fiction genre. Just because the hero in your romance is a werewolf doesn’t mean it is a fantasy. It just means you took your romance and gave it a paranormal cosmetic makeover.

This is particularly frustrating since Amazon DOES, in fact, have rather substantial sub-categories that can call out your fantasy-leaning or futuristic leaning romances. There is zero reason to take a romance novel and shove it into a non-romance category.

Of course, the romance authors trying to game the system by putting their wereseal erotica in science fiction are whining up a storm. But the fact is, it is a massive turnoff to readers of military science fiction to see their bestseller lists infested by My Secret SpecOps Lover and whatnot.

Bullshit like The Quantum Rose isn’t science fiction any more than Taken by the T-Rex is. It’s just romance in space. Amazon should have done this a long time ago. It would be good to see them add this restriction to Western and Military categories as well.

Now, there is nothing wrong with writing, or reading, romance in space if that’s what floats your boat. But stop pretending it is science fiction! And stop pretending elf erotica is high fantasy! As one author, Edwin M. Grant, commented, Taken by the Alien Alpha Barbarian is not Military SF just because it’s set in space and the barbarian beats up a few people.

And as for those books that cross both genres, the obvious answer is to throw them in Romance. The Romance readers won’t mind, since they’re happy as long as there is a female protagonist pursued by two alpha males between whom she must choose. They don’t care if the alpha males are men, vampires, wereseals, elves, angels, or artificial intelligences. Most of the SF readers will mind.

It’s rather amusing. All the authors who understand what Amazon is doing and support it have a wide variety of book covers indicating various genres beneath their posts. All the authors who can’t understand it and think it is unfair and wrong have book covers that feature either a) women in poofy dresses or b) headless male torsos with abs underneath theirs.

You’re fucking romance writers. Now shut up and go away.

The fall of the house of Tor

It begins….

Now, obviously I am not going to reveal my sources, but I believe I can safely observe that one result of last year’s anti-PNH campaign is that I happened to make a few contacts in the publishing world aside from the obvious ones at Simon & Schuster and Random House. Some of you have probably noticed that we were among the first independent publishers to make use of Pronoun, which may have surprised those who were under the impression that we were anti-Macmillan, but that was never the case.

Anyhow, I understand that we can look forward to hearing that a number of Tor authors are going to suddenly develop newfound respect for the art of self-publishing. And, moreover, this harrowing of the authors is, at least in part, the result of the failure of a major new book from a top author upon whom the publisher was counting to produce significant revenue in a timely manner.

You see, when a Castalia author is late, it doesn’t harm us in the slightest. But when a big book from Tor Books slips, or worse, doesn’t produce, or even worse, slips and then doesn’t produce, that inflicts serious harm on their financial flows. And, contrary to the impression created by their sizable revenues, the big publishing houses tend to get by on relatively small margins, so even a moderate financial shortfall often has to be addressed by slashing books and contracts and authors.

So, keep your eyes open. We should learn exactly where the cuts have been made in the relatively near future.

Tor delenda est.

Pro trolls are the majority

This is why I don’t hesitate to nuke commenters who show even modest signs of possibly being hasbara, or, in the vernacular, paid trolls:

A majority of online and social media defenders of Obamacare are professionals who are “paid to post,” according to a digital expert.

“Sixty percent of all the posts were made from 100 profiles, posting between the hours of 9 and 5 Pacific Time,” said Michael Brown. “They were paid to post.”

He began investigating it after his criticism of the former president’s health insurance program posted on the Obamacare Facebook page. He was hit hard by digital activists pretending to be regular people. She reports that he evaluated 226,000 pro-Obamacare posts made by 40,000 Facebook profiles.

“Digital activists are paid employees; their purpose is to attack anyone who’s posting something contrary to the view of the page owner wants expressed,” he told Attkisson. “Sixty percent of all the posts were made from 100 profiles, posting between the hours of 9 and 5 Pacific Time.”

Translation: a paid troll will produce 1,356 comments on a single subject. One reason why we don’t see very much of that nonsense here is because the moderators and I operate on the principle that it is better to take out an honest critic than to permit a troll to comment freely.

No charges for BasedStickman

This is good news. The lesson here is that even in left-liberal strongholds, where the authorities are SJW-amenable, it is both legal and prudent to prepare oneself for violent confrontation with antifa and Black Bloc. As long as your preparations are primarily defensive, and your actions are in response to the Left’s violence, there is a reasonable chance that the authorities will refrain from doing more than attempting to put a brief scare into you. So hit back twice as hard.

Their reasoning is pretty simple, I suspect. If people cannot defend themselves with open, obvious, and limited means, they are going to start defending themselves with concealable and lethal means, and if they are prevented from doing that, there is a very good chance they will start engaging in reprisals that are considerably less easy to witness or prevent.

US society is observably on the decline towards primitive and tribal standards. One common aspect of primitive societies is ritual limited violence. This would appear to be a natural step towards that, in line with tattooing and body-decorating.

Almost indescribably good

People occasionally ask me why I am such a Babymetal enthusiast. All I have to say is that they are, quite literally, one of the very best bands in the world, from technical and songwriting perspectives, even if one ignores the awesome Japanese theatrical elements. They’re uniformly excellent.

One thing I like about twentyone pilots is the way they can move effortlessly between musical lanes. What most people don’t realize is that Babymetal’s range is even greater. It’s not just the signature combination of J-Pop and power metal of Doki Doki Morning, or even the big chord, big chorus metal of Karate, that is chiefly of note in this regard, but the fact that Babymetal has the ability to do everything from X-metal-tribute power ballads to metal-infused Deep Forest. This is what you can do when you assemble exceptional talent under a unique vision; I view it in some ways as a conceptual model for Castalia House.

Consider the heavily emotional No Rain, No Rainbow, which features a guitar solo that reminds me more than a little of my favorite anthem, My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade. Su-metal is absolutely no joke as a vocalist, and I love the fitting, if uncharacteristic, restraint of the Kami band here.


English speakers will probably not understand why Su-metal is on the edge of crying at the end, so a translation might help.

Even the despair becomes the light.
Though an endless rain continues to fall.
Even the despair becomes the light.
A sad rain throws a rainbow far far away.


We shall never meet again,
But I want not to forget you forever.
If the dream continues, I wish I’ll never wake up from it.


An endless rain fills my heart forever.

However, my favorite Babymetal song is one of the less well-known songs from Metal Resistance, From Dusk Till Dawn. Some compare it to Enigma on steroids, but I think Deep Forest is the more accurate comparison. It really shows off Koba-metal’s skill as a producer.

And if you don’t believe these guys can do anything they want musically, and do it better than most, have a listen to the Kari band, which is the fusion jazz project of three of the Kami band members.

News is Conspiracy Theory +15

Spacebunny joked yesterday that she was old enough to remember when Echelon was conspiracy theory. It has now become readily apparent that what used to be derided as “conspiracy theory” is nothing more than the news, 15 years early. Consider a few historical references from this blog.

The Patriot Act and the IAO are constitutional abominations. The War on Terror is being used exactly in the same way that the War on Drugs has been used for decades – to provide the federal government with the ability to infringe upon the liberty of the American people. Your house can get stormed with a no-knock raid if an anonymous telephone call accuses you of the wrong sort of botany project, and soon the same thing will be the case if you happen to visit the wrong web sites or use dangerous terminology in your emails. Echelon is still out there transcribing American faxes, emails and telephone calls, after all.
– October 22, 2003

The US government sees fit to eavesdrop on everyone inside and outside the United States with its Echelon system, but unlike a parent trying to raise a child, that level of oversight is necessary. Terrorists, don’t you know. Why, without it, we wouldn’t have caught bin Laden and prevented the 9/11 attacks….
– December 10, 2004

Arrived too late, the act has been done.
The wind was against them, letters intercepted on their way.
The conspirators were nine of a party.
By Caesar the Younger shall these enterprises be undertaken.

Echelon and the Bush administration’s spying on Americans will be defended by the Supreme Court, should it ever get that far. Most likely, they’ll do so by refusing to hear a challenge against it.
– January 3, 2006

CIALeaks proves, once and for all, that Edward Snowden is one of the greatest heroes in American history. One hopes that the God-Emperor will recognize this and offer him a pardon; it is the CIA that is far more of an enemy to the President and the American people than the Russians these days.

Even better, President Trump should appoint Snowden to be the head of the NSA and charge him with turning it into a government agency that is entirely compatible with the U.S. Constitution and rule by the people. #SnowdenForNSA

“We’re winning!” he cried, as the ship went down

This is an almost remarkably stupid post by an SF-SJW who clearly has not been paying much attention to developments over the last two years or so.

The puppies’ experiences as nerd-fuhrers may well come to define their adult lives but their flirtations with moral entrepreneurship failed to secure them the kind of following that might provide access to the lucrative world of conservative cultural commentary. Even worse, their attempts to cultivate a right-wing alternative to the stuttering multiculturalism of mainstream genre spaces appears to have resulted in little more than a handful of underwhelming blogs supporting the work of a few self-publishing authors.

Let’s see. VP is now the biggest, most well-trafficked blog of any science fiction writer. The Castalia House blog is seeing record traffic and already has more comments and commenters per post than Black Gate. Castalia House publishing continues to grow at a rate of 100+ percent year-on-year in both January and February. Larry Correia continues to sell vast quantities of books.

And a novel we published as an in-house joke is ranked much higher on Amazon than the current Hugo Award winner. On preorder.

Of course we’re not weighing in heavily on the Hugos this year. The Dread Ilk decided not to do so last year, even before the rules changes were ratified. Instead, we used those resources to build Infogalactic and Infogalactic News, which already have more traffic than VP does. Gab is going gangbusters, Crypto.Fashion is doing extremely well – speaking of Rabid Puppies – and there are a whole host of other projects in various stages of development, some of which will directly affect the SF/F book publishing world.

And the God-Emperor now rules. Still. Not. Tired.

But let’s not tell the secret kings on their sinking ships any of that. It’s going to be vastly amusing to watch them panic and scurry once they realize that their Great and Powerful SF Establishment is not only full of holes and taking on water, it is on the verge of having to slash contracts and writers on a scale that we have never seen before.

Amazon has realized that the Pink SF invasion is not good for sales. The converged publishing houses that still haven’t figured that out are going to die, and soon.

“Warning: Do not add books from any Romance category to these categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children’s.”

So, it’s tomorrow…

Indigo March 06, 2017 4:00 PM
Check back tomorrow for a more accurate ranking comparison.

The Corroding Empire
#30 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera


The Collapsing Empire
#166 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera