I am writing to demand a retraction and apology for the libelous article posted Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:00pm by Mike VanHelder. Mr. VanHelder wrote:
“Big winner Vox Day is an outspoken white supremacist and campaigner against women’s education and suffrage, who is on the record as supporting the Taliban’s attempt to assassinate Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousifazi, finding it “scientifically justifiable.””
I am not a white supremacist. This is flat-out false. Also, I am a Native American with Mexican heritage.
I am not a campaigner against women’s education. I am not an activist. I have never campaigned against it.
I am not a campaigner against suffrage. I am not an activist. I have never campaigned against it.
I am not against women’s suffrage. I support direct democracy for all, including women.
I am not on the record supporting the Taliban’s attempt to assassinate Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousifazi. This is an absolutely outrageous accusation and utterly false.
All of these statements are false, provably and demonstrably false, and appear to be malicious. Therefore, I am requesting an immediate retraction of this error-ridden article as well as a published apology to me. Some of these additional errors include:
Gamergate is not anti-feminist.
Neither Sad Puppies nor Rabid Puppies courted any assistance from GamerGate.
The extent of the collaboration between the THREE groups, (not two, as in the article) is not difficult to quantify. There are precisely two GamerGaters who are also Rabid Puppies, myself and Daddy Warpig.
It is false to claim “No nominated author has ever before withdrawn their work after making it onto the Hugo ballot.” It is actually not uncommon for an author to withdraw one of his works after getting more than one nominated in a category. To give a few examples, Harlan Ellison withdrew his Hugo nomination in 1968. Jack Gaughan withdrew his nomination in 1968. Fritz Leiber withdrew his nomination in 1971, as did Robert Silverberg in 1972.
Therefore, the action of withdrawing a nomination is not “unprecedented”.
I will appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
NB: If you would like to add your voice to this call for a retraction and apology, this is the editor’s email: letters@popsci.com
Politicians who begged Scotland to stay in the Union should not complain if the SNP calls the shots at Westminster after the election, Nicola Sturgeon said last night. Polling last night showed that the nationalists are extending their lead – threatening to all but wipe out Labour north of the border.
But Ed Miliband yesterday refused four times to rule out going into a power-sharing agreement with the SNP if its MPs hold the balance of power for the first time. Yesterday she said: ‘During the referendum campaign last year, we were told repeatedly by politicians who were trying to persuade Scotland to vote no – and they succeeded – that Scotland was an integral part of the UK, that our view mattered,’ Miss Sturgeon said.
‘It’s completely unacceptable now for those politicians to say, when Scotland is perhaps going to make its view heard by voting SNP, to say your voice can’t be heard in the UK.’
She said her MPs – who could number as many as 50 after May 7 – would vote to roll back reform of the NHS in England. Traditionally, Scottish nationalists have not voted on health and matters that do not affect their constituents, since they are controlled in Scotland by the Holyrood parliament.
That’s some quality black knighting right there. The English shot down Scottish independence, so there is no reason that the Scottish MPs shouldn’t wreak havoc in Westminster.
Early this morning, Fan Expo Canada banned Honey Badger Brigade (HBB) from the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo (CalEx). Security staff approached the HBB booth, ordered us to leave, and refused to state the reason why unless Alison Tieman agreed to speak to them away from the other members of the group, without recording. They informed Alison that they had received complaints on social media, including 25 allegations of harassment. No evidence was presented, no request was made for information from HBB, and no specific incident was cited until further questions were asked of security.
Upon further questioning, security mentioned the Women in Comics panel discussion from the previous day, where Alison was given permission to speak. Alison spoke briefly in relation to a topic brought up by the panelists. Accusers, however, claimed that Alison derailed the conversation. Alison and myself were in attendance, and you can listen to Alison’s statement in the panel here on YouTube. You can hear Alison, myself and indeed the entire panel in the full discussion record.
As you will hear, there was no harrassment. Expo staff and mob rule, in their crusade for ending harassment against women, harassed the Honey Badgers despite having no evidence of any policy violation.
This is what we are up against. This is why I will never back down, why I will never ever apologize for thinking, speaking, and writing freely. This is why I am the Leader of #GamerGate and why you should be too.
The real crime of the Honey Badger Brigade, for which they were successfully attacked, was not “reportedly disrupting panels”, but rather “associating with GamerGate”.
Think about it. A group of women were just harassed and driven out of a convention for being guilty by association. And the SJWs claim that we are the intolerant ones, we are the uncivil ones, we are the ones harassing women, we are the ones trying to drive others from the public discourse. Meanwhile, the moderates claim that the problem is our tone, that we’re simply not being nice enough, that if only we didn’t express our “problematic” views but kept them quietly to ourselves, everything would be all right.
Horseshit. Absolute and unadulterated horseshit.
Notice that they wanted to isolate Alison, and speak to her away from the others and without recording. Sound familiar? Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that I am an arrogant, cruel, and ruthless badthinker who eminently deserves every “shitbag” “asshat” “jackass” “dipshit” insult and every denigrating and disqualifying “mentally unbalanced” “racist” “misogynist” “sexist” “anti-Semitic” “homophobic” “Nazi” “white supremacist” description that has been hurled my way by SJWs from New York City to New Zealand for the last 10 years. Even if all of those accusations were perfectly true, how would that explain the coordinated assault on the Honey Badger Brigade?
Did that take place in response to me? If I was just a little nicer, if my rhetoric dripped with pure honey rather than pure contempt, if I lovingly laved Teresa Nielsen-Hayden’s warty folds with my tongue and dutifully nominated John Scalzi and Charles Stross and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden for awards so those three giants of modern science fiction could add to their collective total of 39 Hugo nominations (only 8 more than Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke combined), would that have somehow prevented the Honey Badgers from being attacked by SJWs and expelled from Calgary Expo?
Several tweets from this morning suggested one of the exhibitors was proudly demonstrating banners and shirts for GamerGate. It was quickly revealed this was The Honey Badger Brigade…. Calgary Expo has been actively responding to comments and criticisms about its decision on Twitter, expressing it had no desire to allow a GamerGate-themed booth onto the show floor.
This is a cultural war, everyone. And if you’re not fighting it, you’re losing it.
The reason the SJWs went after the Honey Badger Brigade instead of #GamerGate is the same reason they went after Sad Puppies instead of Rabid Puppies. The more publicly acceptable the face of their opposition, the more they are determined to silence and separate it from their most implacable opponents.
It didn’t work with Larry and Brad. It won’t work with the Honey Badgers either. #GamerGate will not abandon them. What do you say, Rabid Puppies? What do you say, Dread Ilk?
Support the Honey Badgers and join the #GamerGate email campaign against the sponsors of Calgary Expo. Send one email, just one polite little email, to start. I have. That’s all it takes… because we are legion.
Jerry Pournelle’s There Will Be War series is returning to print. All nine volumes will be reissued by Castalia House in ebook and two-volume omnibus hardcovers.
I’m glad to see that Dr. Pournelle, who I have now known over 40 years, will have his iconic titles back on the market.
Jerry commented on the project’s history for File 770:
I am very pleased that we were able to revive, in both hardbound and eBook, the There Will Be War anthology series. The series was conceived during the Cold War, but most of the stories take place in other eras. I am not astonished that they hold up well long after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended that conflict. We will be releasing the original 9 volumes over the next year and revive the series after that. However much international politics may change, it remains likely that There Will Be War.
There is more, so read the rest there. As you can imagine, I am a tremendous fan of the anthology series, and indeed, Riding the Red Horse was created in conscious imitation of its ground-breaking blend of fact and fiction. Volume I is already ready to go and we are just putting the final touches on Volume II, after which we will release both of them. If you’re not subscribing to the Castalia House New Release mailing list yet, you’re probably going to want to do so soon because we will be announcing a very good new release offer in the next newsletter. There Will Be War was a tremendous influence on my own intellectual development, and not only are the books not conceptually outdated, they often feel remarkably prescient despite the end of the Cold War and the passing of the events upon which they are nominally focused. The reality is that the forces leading to war run much deeper than any of the national or societal differences that are usually blamed for it, which is why Dr. Pournelle is correct to observe that history has not ended, the secular utopia has not arrived, and there will indeed be war. I have highly recommended the books for decades, which is why getting them back into print was one of my top priorities for Castalia House.
We will publish the Volume I and II ebooks before the end of this month. Later this year, we will publish Volumes III and IV in ebook, and Volumes I and II together in an omnibus hardcover edition. We expect to publish all nine volumes, as well as the new tenth volume, before the end of 2016.
John C. Wright burst onto the science fiction scene in 2002 with his astonishing The Golden Age. Published by Tor Books, Amazon.com declared it to be “the most ambitious and impressive science fiction novel since China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. Amazingly, it is John C. Wright’s debut novel.”
Publishers Weekly wrote: “It’s already clear, however, that Wright may be this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent.”
A record-setting five of those works were nominated for the 2015 Hugo Awards in three categories. A sixth work was also nominated for Best Novelette, but was subsequently ruled ineligible by Sasquan. All four of the Hugo-nominated short fiction works, as well as an essay from Transhuman, are included in this special release, which is available for free from Castalia House in both Epub and Mobi (Kindle) formats and will also be available in the Hugo packet.
Let me be perfectly clear: Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen (who really seems to more or less have tagged along on Larry’s coattails) are not in the same league as Theodore Beale. Larry and Brad are frightened, well fed little puppies sitting on top of a large pile of meaty bones and snarling because there are one or two they can’t have, and feeling justified in their fear because some skinny kittens have managed to slip away with a few of the bones and gnaw on them in peace.
Theodore Beale, on the other hand, is Cerberus sitting on top of the bone pile breathing fire and wreaking mayhem for the joy and the attention of upsetting everyone, puppies and kitties alike. I’ve been searching for ten years now and have not found a single redeeming characteristic in Beale. He’s a vile person with vile opinions, and he’s an absolutely atrocious writer. If it weren’t for the fact that he was raised with money and privilege, he would almost certainly be serving twenty to life somewhere, because he either acted on or got caught acting on his beliefs. He is someone outside the scope of psychotherapy. If you were to ask him, he would tell you there is nothing wrong with him, he’s just fine the way he is – and that is why he is outside the scope of therapy.
He doesn’t need to be saved, society needs to be protected from him – and then maybe someone (not me) can work on saving him. And I speak as someone who works with violent people, entitled people, people who abuse, on a regular basis. If he were free to act on his impulses with impunity, people would suffer. I can only be grateful he’s not particularly impulsive.
Right now, it serves Theodore Beale very well to borrow the Sad Puppy meme and create his own offshoot, the Rabid Puppies. He is getting attention and hate, and he thrives on that. It’s what he lives for. For now, while they serve his purposes, he is keeping the Sad Puppies protected from his fire – until they no longer serve his purposes.
And I suspect Correia and Torgersen know it. They are very careful to walk the line between distancing themselves from him and not distancing themselves too much. They have only recently acknowledged that it wasn’t the Sad Puppy slate that swept the Hugo nominations this year, it was the Rabid Puppy slate. They haven’t admitted (at least publicly) that it was Beale’s invitation of Gamergaters – people who are perfectly willing to commit illegal acts including doxxing and making rape and murder threats (and in at least one case, an attempt) – to exclude specifically women, and specifically minority women, from their own particular fandom (video games).
And yet (Correia and Torgersen claim) it is not about sexism. It is not about racism. It is about fighting against ideological purity. To borrow a meme, it is about ethics in gamer journalism.
Here’s the final, worst piece of all of this. By now, the Sad Puppies have realized what they have unleashed. They realize (at least privately) that they overreacted, that they were the bad actors against an opponent that only existed in their heads – but they can never publicly admit it, not without having the hell hound they unleashed turn on them. If they distance themselves from Beale too much, they risk being slapped by the same forces that they opened the door to theHugosfor. They might be subject to doxxing and threats and actions. They will have Beale’s venom spewed over them.
Yeah, somehow I doubt Larry and Brad are shaking in their boots that I am going to attack them. I know the SJWs would love it if I would do so. But that’s not going to happen. I didn’t fall for the divide-and-conquer tactics when they tried to get me to disavow Roosh and Roissy, and I’m not about to fall for it now.
You don’t need to be best friends to be allies. You only need to be shooting in the same direction. The weakness of the moderates, and the reason they are so reliably ineffective, is that they would much rather shoot at their allies than at their enemies.
The amusing thing is the way the “psychotherapist” tries to turn a very real enemy into something that is supposedly existing only in our heads… even as that enemy has been shrieking in full-throated outrage against us for the last two week. And then, she turns around and blames everything on #GamerGate, when there are only two confirmed #GamerGaters in Rabid Puppies, myself and Daddy Warpig.
The lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie.
Let them shriek. It won’t be the last time. Cerberus has a LOT more bones to crack.
Why are these murderous invaders being permitted to enter the West at all? Who is under any illusion that they will behave any differently once they possess the sort of power they presently have in the lands they are trying to escape?
Muslims who were among migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy in a boat this week threw 12 fellow passengers overboard — killing them — because the 12 were Christians, Italian police said Thursday. Italian authorities have arrested 15 people on suspicion of murdering the Christians at sea, police in Palermo, Sicily, said.
If the first ten invading ships had been sunk, none of this would be happening now. There are problems that will go away in time. This is not one of them. This is the sort that is absolutely guaranteed to get worse, the longer it goes unaddressed.
1. “Diversity is not publishing the one story. It’s publishing multiple stories from people of diverse backgrounds.” —Karissa Chen
2. “My main characters are not always black.” —Sophfronia Scott
3. “Read less straight white men.” —Natalie Eilbert
4. “We read. (And buy books.)” —Lisa Lucas
5. “Get over it.” —Susan Orlean
6. “Be honest.” —Yahdon Israel
7. “Listen.” —Lauren Hilger
8. “We owe you nothing.” —Amanda Bullock
9. “Grow up.” —Roxane Gay
10. “Look out the window.” —Jane Ciabattari
11. “Sit down and let us abolish you.” —Franny Choi
12. “Ain’t nobody got time for that!?!” —Ru Freeman
13. “Chill.” —Morgan Parker
14. “Asian American author with an Asian American editor. —Matthew Salesses
15. “She’s coming for you.” —Emily Bell and Amelia Gray
16. “Plz stop.” —Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and T Kira Madden
17. “We are not tokens. —Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and T Kira Madden
18. “You have not doomed us. You’ve doomed yourselves.” —Saeed Jones
19. “Pay attention to the world. (—Susan Sontag)” —Jynne Dilling Martin
20. “Hire women. Diversity makes you strong.” —Annelies Zijderveld
21. “We don’t need you.” —Jayson P. Smith
22. “Take a vacation (a long one). —Chelsea Reimann and Meg Day
23. “Don’t assume that you are at the center.” —Cheryl Strayed
Are you still buying the “oh, we are just poor homeless writers who only want to join the discourse and find a place at the table” propaganda? They are fascists, they want control, and any publisher who was foolish enough to permit these entryists a place at the table will soon find that he’s been pushed to the side, if he hasn’t been already.
Diversity is self-destruction, because a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Meanwhile, publishing is actually 74 percent female and rising. As recently as 2010, the industry was 70 percent female.
It’s no secret that lots of women work in publishing. But just how many more women work in publishing than men? In PW’s recent Salary Survey (Aug. 2) one statistic stuck out: 85% of publishing employees with less than three years of experience are women.
Total Responses: 1,584 70% Female 30% Male
Under 3 Years Experience: 164 85% Female 15% Male
3 to 6 Years Experience: 388 82% Female 18% Male
That was then. This is now: “Women accounted for 74% of the publishing workforce and men only 26%.”
Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, Vox Day, and all of the other “Puppies” supporters set out to demonstrate that the Hugo process was politicized and broken. They said that if authors were nominated who didn’t “fit the mold,” who weren’t approved by the ruling faction, they would be blacklisted, ostracized, insulted, and deliberately voted dead last, regardless of what they had written or how well it was done. Their predictions have come true, and they have proven their point admirably.
Libertarians, and especially science fiction fans with libertarian leanings, should pay particular attention to the Puppies campaigns. Like last year’s Gamersgate controversy, the Puppies drew a line in the sand–a stopping point in the ongoing culture war between individualists and statists, between the people who believe in freedom of expression and the mindless drones who believe in political correctness.
Brad Torgerson makes the point perfectly:
Folks, until or unless political correctness is given the boot, this kind of stuff isn’t going to stop. It won’t be just me getting the torch. It will be you too. You other authors, and you other fans. Political correctness has a bottomless stomach, and is red in tooth and claw. Even if you try to appease the beast, it will eat you eventually anyway.
The rage of the Left is considerable, but it is to be expected. And celebrated, because they are only smiling when the Right is going down to its customary Noble Defeat.
They will point-and-shriek, they will bluff and bully, and they will play divide-and-conquer. They’ve been trying to isolate me, a Sigma, for ten years now. (Oh no, a briar patch!) Now they’re back at it again, little realizing that giving me more freedom of movement is not exactly something I regard as a problem. We are so far ahead of them in the OODA loop that it will likely astonish you once the next stages become apparent.
The most important thing to keep in mind is this: if they’re not shrieking, we’re not winning. And speaking of Brad, he has an excellent post up highlighting what both Larry and I have already said. He is not me. He is not responsible for me. He does not answer for me. And I can only smile to see the cowards of the other side desperately trying to get them to take me on because they are afraid to do it themselves.
The Sad Puppies are not Rabid. We are. And of course, as this comment shows, the other side has very good reason to be afraid:
After seeing last nights events I really started losing heart. I feel a little better today, but it’s just too much pain to deal with over the last month to really put any effort into looking far enough ahead to the possibility of light somewhere, someday. It was bad enough when it was Damien Walter, the HuffPo and Daily Kos spreading the disinformation, lies and character assassination, but when Davidson, Willis, GRRM, and others that are supposed to be some of the TOP PROFESSIONALS OF THEIR FIELD do it I have a hard time seeing the hope. All I can see right now is that Vox wins, no matter what. His slate of nominees win: he wins. The SJWs get enough votes together to burn it down this year with No Award and Vox wins. Worse, if that happens, Vox gets enough followers together next year, and possibly decades afterwards and No Award takes all the categories going forward.
Imagine that. A professional game designer, an elite wargamer who specializes in one of the most complex wargames ever developed, a student and editor of two of the finest strategic minds on the planet, might be able to construct a Xanatos Gambit? You don’t say.
Let them lie. Let them disinform. Let them assassinate my character for, what is it now, the 7,436th time? After all, are we not reliably informed that what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger. And again. And again.
It will take a long time, but trust me, if you thought this exploit was even remotely amusing, you’re going to love what is coming down the pike in the 2017 timeframe. There are some pieces that still need to come together – the execution is always in the details – but if it works as designed, it will be beyond epic.
And if you’re not part of the Rabid Puppy pack yet, join Sasquan before July. Whether Jim Butcher or John Wright or Noah Ward walks off with the plastic rockets, you’ll want to say that you were there for Rabid Puppy 2015: the Ravening.
I backed this kickstarter today from Autarch, The Sinister Stone of Sakkara. For the gamers here, you should check it out. They do quality stuff that isn’t generic:
The default setting of ACKS, the Auran Empire, was also designed to support the player characters’ advancement from adventurer to king. The Auran Empire setting was inspired by the collapsing empires of earth’s Late Antiquity (250 – 750 AD), a turbulent era in which ancient glories were drowned in a torrent of violence. However, in the Auran Empire setting, the horror of civilization’s imminent collapse is worsened by the existence of nightmarish evils lurking in the world’s dark places, threatening to strike mankind at its weakest moment. The established leadership is too preoccupied by the empire’s political and military downfall to take these shadowy threats seriously, leaving them to be handled by adventurers, fortune-hunters, and would-be heroes. The adventurers’ success in dealing with such threats is, however, what garners them the fame, wealth, and strength they need to take power and restore order. Of course, the adventurers are not certain to win; indeed, the odds are stacked against them.
The premises underlying ACKS’ setting are evident throughout The Sinister Stone of Sakkara, most notably in its backstory. The adventure begins with local hamlets and villages suffering from beastman raids because the troops that ought to be protecting them have been sent to stem an invasion at another border. With the local military barely able to garrison its strongholds, it falls to the adventurers to deal with the monstrous threat.
The setting premises are also evident in the design of the dungeon itself. The upper level of the dungeon was inspired by real-world ancient architecture, and the brigands and beastly barbarians that populate it would not be unfamiliar to any Late Roman centurion (albeit the barbarians who menaced Rome were only figuratively beastly). Conversely, the lower level of the dungeon is a warren of weird horror wherein lurks an insidious evil that is far more threatening than mere beastmen. The dungeon thus represents the Auran Empire setting in microcosm – visibly endangered by mundane threats, appallingly imperiled by hidden horrors.
What I like about ACKS is the way it incorporates a military aspect into the role-playing. The world isn’t all random events, and you get the sense that things happen for a reason there, even if you have no idea what that reason is.
