Author: VD

There is no escape

Just when the central bankers think they’re out, economic reality keeps pulling them back in:

Since the crisis began, there have been several apparent economic springs, prompting the Fed to cease asset purchases, only to be forced back to the printing press again when the economy flagged. What may be different this time is that central bankers as a breed are losing their nerve in the pursuit of unconventional monetary policy. Some now openly question its effectiveness in stimulating the real economy. Others worry about its distributional consequences, with debtors favoured at the expense of savers. Still others worry about the re-emergence, in the hunt for yield, of asset price bubbles. They also worry about loss of independence, with QE now quite widely seen as a form of government financing. In almost all cases, there is growing concern about the sheer scale of balance sheet expansion.

Are these worries well founded? Most certainly. But are they enough to justify a return to a more normal interest rate environment? Not as long as deflation and a weak economy remain the primary risks for many advanced economies.

Central banks seem caught on a treadmill of money printing, where even the merest hint of exit threatens another financial crisis. This, in turn, would require a further dose of money printing to blow away the consequent economic fallout. There’s no escape.

Well, there are two, to be precise.  Ice and fire.  Inflation or deflation.  I hope to return to the subject next week; this is a rather busy one for me.  But it is interesting to see mainstream reports about central bankers losing faith in the effectiveness of Neo-Keynesian stimulation.

The Gatekeepers know the gates are crumbling

One of the chief beneficiaries of the crumbling system, James Patterson, makes a ludicrous pitch for a bailout of the publishing industry that is quite rightly ripped apart by Kenton Kilgore:

Recently, mega-author James Patterson took out an ad in the New York Times Book Review asking for the government to bail out libraries and the book publishing/selling industry….  In his ad, Patterson asks, “If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature?  Who will discover and mentor new writers?  Who will publish our important books?”

So, the three-headed serpent that is Big Authors + Big Publishing + Big Distributors–the same serpent that made Patterson and his partners rich by cranking out about 10 of his books every year–is eating itself.  Well, we can’t have that!  What would be our society be without the ”important books” that Patterson lists in his ad–as well as his splatterfests named after lines from nursery rhymes (Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, Pop Goes the Weasel)?  And what about Twilight?  And the collected masterpieces of Danielle Steel?

It’s more than a little amusing to me that while a brilliant businessman – if shameless literary hack – like Patterson can see what is taking place in the publishing world, the idiot parasites who have taken over the SFWA remain totally clueless about those changes and are more concerned about chainmail bikinis and the fact that Mike Resnick and Barry Malzburg referred to a woman they knew forty years ago as a “lady” rather than as an editor in the SFWA Bulletin. 

(Believe it or not, that is the urgent DEFCON 1 situation to which Rapey McRaperson was referring and pledging his name, fame, and fortune to address this weekend.  That’s right; the SFWA is going to deal with its “problem” of the old guard by silencing them and ensuring that no new dissenting voices are permitted to arise.  You will RESPECT fat old women writing dreadful books about warrior women and necrobestial love triangles or you will be SILENT!)

It is going to be so much fun to watch these awful people shriek and scream as the cold equations of the publishing business gradually penetrate their thick, empty skulls.  I’ve been asked, on occasion, why I remain a member of the SFWA considering that only about ten percent of the active membership appears to share my perspective on the ongoing developments and the majority of the membership can’t stand me or the intellectual liberty for which I stand.  To which I can only respond: “Give up my front row seat to the auto-bonfire of the witches?  Are you mad?”

Simply reading the litany of sob stories and complaints that make up the greater part of the SFWA Forum makes for a pure and unadulterated pleasure for anyone with a sense of either justice or humor. And it is only going to get more entertaining as the economy implodes and the more publishers go the way of Night Shade Books. It will be a delight to see proud editor/authors forced to resort to the very independent publishing they once scorned as being intrinsically inferior… and then watch them flounder and fail as they belatedly discover that their “popularity” was artificial and mostly the result of superior access to the chief distribution channel.

As one who was briefly permitted entry by the gatekeepers through a side entrance, I perhaps have a more accurate perspective on the situation than most who are either purely insiders or outsiders.  I still have access to a number of executives at several major publishers, although, as it happens, none at the genre publishers.  And I can testify that the mainstream executives understand very well that their conventional business appears to be terminal, as increasing ebook sales at steadily falling prices are not be able to make up for the combination of a) declining print sales, b) vanishing print outlets, c) competition from independents.  It should get very interesting indeed when Barnes & Noble either files for bankruptcy or is acquired by Amazon.

The Gatekeepers are desperate because they are standing on walls that are turning to sand beneath their feet.  But do not miss the confession that is implicit in Patterson’s corrupt appeal; without their structural advantages, “serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors” cannot compete on a level playing field with independents writing books of which they do not approve.

Note, in particular, the adjectives “dedicated” and “idealistic”.  Dedicated to what ideals?  Patterson’s plea is an implicit admission of the very bias that Standout Authors such as Sarah Hoyt and Larry Correia have been describing, and which those who have benefited from it have so staunchly denied.

When A GAME OF THRONES was great

Although we bitch and moan about GRR Martin, and deservedly so, I think it is important to remember how very, very good Martin was in his first three novels.  Let’s face it, the reason we complain – or write successor works – is due to the intensity of our disappointment with the last two works in light of the previous three.  It is enlightening to see The Red Wedding again through the eyes of someone who is not familiar with the books:

What’s most interesting to me as this third season of Game of Thrones bleeds out all around us is the way its creators — Martin, certainly, as well as his able adaptors, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — are playing with more than just television storytelling conventions. They’re playing with storytelling itself. Robb and his family aren’t just cursed for believing in fairy tales — disembowled dreams like justice and happy endings — they themselves are fairy tales. Robb was the young prince boosted by righteousness and romance. Sansa was the beautiful innocent with visions of love and lemon cakes dancing in her pretty, untroubled head. And Arya — so painfully close to her family, thankfully not quite close enough to die alongside them — was the stereotypical tomboy who dreams of becoming a warrior. Once again it fell to the Hound to disabuse a Stark of her idyllic prentensions. Arya’s idea of a “real” killer isn’t a scarred pragmatist like Sandor Clegane — who, despite the little lady’s constant proclamations, has always struck me as a pretty nice guy, all things considered! — it’s a fantasy fulfillment machine like Jaqen H’ghar. You remember him, right? He’s the face-changing Lothario who granted Arya three wishes last year then vanished in a puff of smoke. That’s not a real killer. That’s a genie. Can you imagine Martin’s version of Snow White? The wicked Queen would reign supreme while the heroine would wind up crucified in Littlefinger’s brothel.

Fans of Westeros can, and should, be critical of Martin. But they should not forget the reason they became fans in the first place.  Whether you like what he does or not, no one has done it better.  My own Arts of Dark and Light are neither a ripoff of Martin nor a homage, but they are quite obviously influenced by him.

And who knows, perhaps he’ll pull a dragon or two out of a hat and The Winds of Winter will be more akin to the earlier books.  At least until it is published, we can hope.

Obama administration caught lying

Not just a lame duck, but a lying lame duck.  The plot, she thickens:

Interviews with IRS employees have established that the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service was engaged in targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for unfair levels of scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

Rep. Darrel lssa, chairman of powerful House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, made that startling announcement on CNN Sunday morning.

‘As late as last week,’ he said, ‘the [Obama] administration was still trying to say the [IRS targeting scandal] was from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington.’

‘Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for the search [for tea party groups], any more context?’ one IRS witness was asked in a closed-door interview.

‘He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,’ came the reply.

The employee, who said he or she was evaluating 40 such applications for tax-exempt status from conservative organizations at the time, said ‘some went to Washington. D.C. … I sent seven.’

With Tom Brokaw, of all people, making noises about Attorney General Eric Holder having to go, the IRS scandal is just beginning to heat up.

Mailvox: they want to disbelieve

Obvious challenges my statement about introducing 16-bit color and 3D graphics hardware to the game industry:

Oh, you did? Which game was that? Do you have anything at all that backs that up?

Yes, I did. Concerning the hardware, see Computer Gaming World’s 1994 article on the 3GA and its reference to my title as “Trans-Dimensional Evangelist”.  Concerning 16-bit color, I direct your attention to the September 1997 Computer Gaming World review of Rebel Moon Rising.

“Rebel Moon Rising makes use of Intel’s new MMX technology. Fenris Wolf used MMX to gain a reasonable frame rate at high resolutions with 16-bit color. This let them create dynamic lighting effects that could change on the fly and even move with the different characters.  For example, a moving orange glow might indicate a nearby enemy jump trooper.

Another new technology feature is voice recognition. One early Windows 95 game, ACES OF THE DEEP, used speech recognition, but the implementation was very limited.  In Rebel Moon Rising, the list of usable words is quite large.  While you can actually give orders to AI squad mates in a limited way, it’s mostly used to communicate with other players in multiplayer games. You can speak into the microphone to chat, rather than having to hunt for keyboard commands – something especially handy for Internet play, which the game also supports.”

Now, none of this proves the feature we are going to introduce to the game industry in our upcoming announcement of our forthcoming game is going to make that game successful.  And it demonstrates that even if we are the first to introduce it, we will not necessarily be the primary beneficiaries of it, or be generally known to have introduced it.  I have, in fact, repeatedly expressed my belief that every game company is going to follow our example very quickly; that is the primary reason the innovation is going to be significant. The mere fact that people like Obvious see fit to doubt what was once known by literally everyone involved suffices to prove that credit primarily tends to be given to those who are both innovative and massively successful.  And sometimes only the latter.

But Jensen Huang, Hock Leow, Steve Mosher, Chris Taylor, Marc Rein, John Carmack, Andy Grove, and those who were executives at companies like Intel, Rendition, 3D Labs, Diamond, and Hercules, all know what happened.  And thanks to Mike Weksler at CGW, it’s a matter of public, if obscure, record.

This is another fundamental difference between Right and Left.  The Right is mostly indifferent to the various successes of the Left, whereas the Left is desperate to not only deprive the Right of any opportunity to succeed, but also to deny every last vestige of whatever success was already achieved.  Obvious’s petty desire to disbelieve one minor chapter in the history of the game industry is the goblin to the ideologically censorious behavior of the SF/F publishing ogre lords.

The epic flop of Windows 8

Karl Denninger suspects it is even worse than is being reported:

There is another interesting batch of numbers here as well in the desktop figures:
SunOS         0.01%
FreeBSD         0.04%
Windows 98    0.12%
ChromeOS/Linux    0.14%
BB Playbook    0.15%
WinXP/64         0.69%
Linux         4.09%
Windows 8    4.52%
Apple iPad    8.10%
Vista/Win2008    8.28%
MacOS         14.75%
WinXP         17.88%
Windows 7    41.25%

Note carefully those Windows 8 figures.  4.5%, or less than Vista?!  In addition note all the people still running XP — there are a hell of a lot of them!  In fact those desktop machines identifying themselves as Linux machines compares favorably with those running Windows 8!

I would say Microsoft has flopped the Win8 release in a big way — far worse than is being reported.

Worse than Vista?  Yowzers, that’s pathetic! Blogger doesn’t report in this kind of detail, but I do find it interesting to note that the Android percentage, at 12%, presently exceeds that of iPhone and iPad combined at 11%.

The new Dawn rising

Golden Dawn and Movimento 5 Stelle look to be the first Nationalist parties to take back control of their countries from governments under the control of the global fascists:

It wasn’t just that their symbols looked like swastikas. Or that thousands of Greek flags filled the marble square beneath the Acropolis. Or that they were marking the 560th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople.

It was that there were so many of them. Angry men and angry women furiously screaming “Greece belongs to Greeks” in the heart of ancient Athens, as tourists – some befuddled, some shocked – looked on or fled at the sight of neo-Nazis coming to town.

“Now we are in the thousands,” thundered Nikos Michaloliakos, the bespectacled mathematician who leads Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party. “Long live victory!”

Like the soldiers on whom they model themselves, the Greeks who subscribe to the ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist dogma of Golden Dawn are the first to say they are at war. This week, as Antonis Samaras’s coalition government struggled to contain an escalating crisis over efforts to curb the extremists, it was they who appeared to be winning that war.

There is going to be war.  In Europe, it will be the European nationalists against the globalists and their African and Muslim jannisaries.  In the USA, it is going to be a confusing affair, with shifting alliances between the Black, Brown, Red, and White Americas, with Black, Brown, and Red America serving the interests of the globalists.

Of course, to say “there is going to be war” is somewhat misleading.  The war actually began in 1965; the first invasion soon after.  This nationalist response is a belated one, and is the result of the various nations finding themselves backed into a corner from which there is no other escape.

The globalists are going to try to crack down and keep the nationalists out of power, but the resulting exposure of what has always been their anti-democratic nature is going to completely eliminate their ability to claim any moral superiority over the nationalists.

This doesn’t mean Golden Dawn or the other nationalist parties are full of well-meaning angels.  Make no mistake about it, they are simply the lesser evil of the two options on offer.

The dangerous vision of the SFWA

I posted a pair of comments that were in line with my post yesterday on the SFWA Forum.  (Forum posts are private and one is not allowed to quote them elsewhere, otherwise I would quote the posts to which I was responding.) This resulted in numerous complaints to the moderator, a warning for “abusive behavior”, the deletion of the following posts, and a temporary removal of my posting abilities there by a creature with the unlikely Warrior Woman name of Cat Rambo.
Not that it will likely make a
difference, but I don’t see how “Moahr Titz” is going to
improve the Bulletin. As for more diversity, that’s a fantastic idea
if you want to render the Bulletin of absolutely no interest to
anyone except women who derive vicarious pleasure from listening to
other people moan about the travails of life. If this was the
Organization for Respecting Women and not the SFWA, hey, these
various suggestions are fine. But they have absolutely nothing to do
with science fiction. Consider: it will be a pretty hollow victory to
claim that everyone in professional science fiction is finally
respecting women, minorities, dwarves, and fairies in the desired
manner if in the process you manage to drive away three-quarters of
the science fiction readership.
The Bulletin absolutely should have
scantily clad women being rescued by manly men from bug-eyed aliens
on the cover from time to time. It should have robots and spaceships
too. Whether you find that offensive or not, that’s part of what
science fiction was, and is. Science fiction is supposed to be the
literature of dangerous ideas, not safe and inoffensive and
respectful and politically correct ones.
And if you can’t handle that
concept, then you should get the hell out of the field and the
organization. You don’t belong in either of them.
I therefore encourage every member
of the SFWA who is offended by the Dialogues or the Bulletin covers
to follow e. Catherine Tobler’s excellent example and resign from the
organization. Because regardless of your literary talents and
interests, you are clearly not fit to be a science fiction writer.
Science fiction isn’t about respect, equality, or inoffensiveness, it
is about science and the future.

I also addressed the idea that the Dialogues column between Mike Resnick and Barry Salzberg should be forcibly retired with alacrity.

How about a regular column by women
writers complaining about sexism in [science
fiction/fantasy/horror/publishing/games] and how there are not enough
female [fill-in-the-blank]. That would be totally new and different
and impossible to find anywhere else!
Maybe every four issues we could
change it up with a column by a black writer complaining about racism
in [science fiction/fantasy/horror/publishing/games] and how there
are not enough black [fill-in-the-blank].
Who wants to read about the history
of yucky old science fiction by some old white guys of whom nobody
has ever heard anyway?

So, praising the decision of a member to quit, expressing the opinion that others of similarly delicate minds would do well to follow her example, and noting that women are inordinately inclined to be easily offended, speech-controlling fascists resulted immediately in fascistic, speech-repressing activity by an offended woman.  In the eyes of the present SFWA, criticism equals abuse.

And you thought the Sports Guy was joking.  Women really do ruin everything. Even for themselves. Perhaps especially for themselves.

No wonder a number of SFWA members refuse to post on the Forum and stubbornly stick with the old ones on SFF.net.  The SFWA Forum doesn’t just stifle discourse, it actively eliminates it altogether.

Harlan Ellison wept.

Generation X Aptitude Test

Khyron creates the GXAT:

1. Do you want to change the world?

A. Yes, and I’m proud to say we did it, man. We changed the world. Just look around you!

B.
Yes, absolutely, and I promise I will get back to doing that just as
soon as interest rates return to where they’re supposed to be.

C.
Omigod, omigod, changing the world and helping people is, like, totally
important to me! I worked in a soup kitchen once and it was so sad but
the poor people there had so much dignity!

D. That question is so stupid and absurd that there is obviously no reason to continue this pointless exercise.

If you answered D, you are Generation X.   Thus endeth the GXAT.

Women Ruin Everything: SFWA edition

A female writer quits the SFWA because she believes it isn’t sufficiently feminized:

It began with issue #200 of the Bulletin—all right, #199 if we want to get technical. It began with the Resnick and Malzberg
Dialogues, a long-time feature of the publication. It began when two
men sat down to have a dialogue about editors and writers of the female
gender. How fantastic, I thought, because I, being a writer and an
editor and female, had a keen interest in such things. I love reading
anthologies such as Women of Wonder (and its sequel) and seeing
how women impacted and contributed to this forward-looking and -thinking
genre I love. I hoped they might include the women who inspired me and
introduce me to many I hadn’t yet discovered.

That’s not what I found. I found a dialogue that seemed more focused
on how these “lady editors” and “lady writers” looked in bathing suits,
and that they were “beauty pageant beautiful” or a “knock out.” I am
certain no condescension was intended with the use of “lady,” but as the
dialogues went on, I felt the word carried a certain tone—perhaps that
was a fiction of my own making. As I listened to these two men talk
about lady editors and writers they had known, I grew uneasy. Something
wasn’t right…..

And now, apparently, we who voiced complaint are having another finger leveled toward us, saying how dare we?
How dare we voice a contrary opinion—surely we want to silence all
thoughts that are unlike our own! Surely we want to strike these men and
their dated notions from all records!

Because we ask to be respected and have our point of view respected
does not mean we wish to obliterate the point of view of another. Because we ask to be treated with the same thought you would give a
person of your own gender, a person of a different gender, a person of a
different religion, a person of your own religion, a person of your own
race, a person of a different race, does not mean we seek to tear down
anything you believe, follow, or espouse.

This woman isn’t content with the ruination of both the organization and most of the science fiction publishing houses, now she wants to put limits on the opinions expressed by the old lions of the field, eliminate the very sort of artwork that helped make the old SF publications popular in the first place, and be held immune from criticism for her fascism.

She is, plain and simply, lying.  She clearly wants to silence all thoughts that she finds insufficiently respectful.  She does wish to obliterate a masculine point of view that she finds offensive. It is women like her, and their gamma male allies, who have devastated science fiction, who have driven most of its male readers away from books and toward games, and who are responsible for the genre’s declining sales and inability to replace the classics of previous decades.  This is little more than an attempt to silence the remnants of the SFWA’s old guard.

As we learned yesterday, I am unpublishable by the present standards in the publishing industry.  But I am far from the only one, very far from it.  I am no Heinlein or Herbert, perhaps more akin to a Resnick or Malzberg, but it should be abundantly clear that none of these four men could get break into publication today, that their perspectives are intrinsically offensive, and none of them would be able to successfully navigate the maze of scalzied manboobs and feminist fascists who have infiltrated the genre and now control the editorial gates at the professional magazines and publishing houses.

Neither should it be any surprise to observe that the genre is dying, just like every other male-dominated endeavor that permits, or is forced, to allow the “equal opportunity” that somehow always ends with women telling men what they are allowed to think, say, and do.  It is the same pattern we have seen play out again and again and again. But I think Ms Tobler is to be congratulated for leaving the SFWA and I think her action shows that she is an admirable role model for many SFWA members. 


Dear Ms Tobler,


Congratulations on quitting the SFWA.  I’m sure it was a real shock to learn that the old lions of the field are not inclined to immediately adjust their thinking to your liking upon demand and I’m sorry you had to experience such palpable horror.


Now, if you will please take the rest of the feminist fascists who believe romance novels in space, necrobestiality, and rehashed Regency romances are science fiction with you, thus permitting the real SF writers to get on with the business of writing actual science fiction for readers who enjoy it, you will do a great service to both SFWA and the field of science fiction.


Best regards,
Vox