Category: Uncategorized

Running the literary Internet

A list of 35 writers of whom (with the exception of Neil Gaiman and William Gibson) neither you nor I have ever heard, are supposedly the Internet’s Most Influential Writers. Amusingly enough, one of them isn’t even a writer and another admittedly has no Internet presence at all.

The debate as to whether the Internet is good or bad for literature doesn’t seem any closer to resolution now than when it began, years ago, but the fact remains that some people in the literary world are excellent at using Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and even Instagram or Pinterest to communicate with readers and get people interested in what they’re writing…. Whatever it is they do on the Internet, these 35 people do it better than anybody else in the book world, and that’s why they help steer literary conversations and tastes.

This comment following the piece was funny, if not entirely accurate. “haha i just checked vox day has more followers than any of these. larry coriea gets more hits with one post than the plonkers.”

The list also made Cedar Sanderson scratch her head:

Someone put together a list of the 35 Writers who Run the Internet that had a bunch of us scratching our heads in puzzlement. We’d collectively heard of two or three of them, and most of us are very well read online, keeping up with the changes in the industry. So I challenged several disparate groups of people to nominate influential voices in literature. Who do we listen to?

  1. Larry Correia
  2. Hugh Howey
  3. Sarah A. Hoyt
  4. JA Konrath
  5. John C. Wright
  6. Jerry Pournelle
  7. Brad Torgerson
  8. Kris Rusch
  9. Neil Gaiman
  10. Vox Day
  11. Mike Resnick
  12. Cory Doctorow
  13. Dean Wesley Smith
  14. Kevin J Anderson
  15. Laura Resnick

This isn’t her exact list; I omitted the group blogs for what should be the obvious reason that this was being compared to a list of writers, not blogs. And who is missing?

In my opinion, Instapundit is the most egregious exception, closely followed by John Scalzi, who still merits a significant place on the list even though no one on the Right reads his blog anymore since he outed himself as a rabid Left Democrat. Whatever has lost nearly two-thirds of its former audience, but that still puts him well above the average and he’s mostly active on Twitter these days anyhow. These days, I’d put Instapundit at #2 behind Howey and Scalzi around #6 or #7. Charles Stross should be in the top 25. There are probably two or three at Tor.com that would bear mention, but I wouldn’t know who they are. And John O’Neill of Black Gate absolutely merits top ten status in my book; don’t forget he also launched the SF Site.

I’m surprised to see Mr. Correia at the top; he’s certainly number one where book sales, displacement, and sheer awesomeness are concerned, but let’s face it, for all that he’s been driving the Hugo discourse for two years there aren’t THAT many writers interested in painting miniatures. Hugh Howey would be my personal top pick; what he’s doing with Amazon analysis is both groundbreaking and important. I’m both surprised and delighted to see John C. Wright so well-regarded; his blog is always my first stop every morning as it is always a pleasure to read anything the man has to write, and even when I disagree with him I know there will be substantive food for thought on offer. Kris Rusch, like Howey, does a great job of sharing her wealth of knowledge with the writerly world.

Sadly missing is Our Friend Damien, who will probably be weeping and cutting himself upon learning that not even a platform on a major international newspaper was enough to help him make either list. Which is somewhat of a pity, because for all that he’s a suicidal leftie on anti-depressants who views me as the very evilist of the Evil League of Evil, his views on the changes taking place in the publishing world are far more relevant and sane than Scalzi’s or those of the people running SFWA.

One more thing. Don’t be surprised if in a year or two, you see Jeffro and/or Daniel from the Castalia blog making such lists. Their literary posts are among the most substantive I’ve seen that are not written by Matthew David Surridge.

Last call for charity

As I mentioned when we announced the book, a substantial portion of the first month’s sales revenues (approximately half), will be donated to Stillbrave, the children’s cancer charity. An estimated $1,350+ has been raised for Stillbrave to date. Today is the final day of the release month, so if you are interested in supporting either Mr. Wright or Stillbrave, I encourage you to buy it now, either from the Castalia House store (EPUB format) or from Amazon (Kindle format).

If you have not read the reviews, of which there are now 22 averaging a 4.7 rating, I hope you will not mind if I happen to share a few of the newer ones with you. And to those of you who have already purchased the book, thank you very much for all your support.

Review 1: I, or my other timeline self, really enjoyed this. I have to admit, I like this better than Awake in the Night Land. I mean, it has a time travelling gumshoe, who can’t like that? The twists and turns of chrono-based events was fun. If I ever ran into anything that was even remotely difficult to understand, I just went with it, knowing that my other self on a different timeline would understand it. Or maybe I didn’t. Well, never mind…. Good book. Go with it. You or your other timeline self will enjoy it.

Review 2: Time travel has been a staple of science fiction for decades, as has the
usual paradoxes. But Wright has tried a new twist – the morality of
time travel. What is right and wrong when you can go back in time,
rerun the past, and create the future? And what horrors can you
conceal? Wright tells these stories with an elegant phrasing rarely
seen today. Highly recommended.

Review 3: This is the third book of John C. Wright I have read this year. I was introduced to Wright’s writing with his book “Awake in the Nightland,” published by Castalia House. The second was “Count to a Trillion,” published by Tor. This third book, “City Beyond Time,” is published by Castalia House. “City Beyond Time” is alongs the same vein as “Awake in the Nightland.” Both are a collection of short stories within the same setting…. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves time travel science fiction. It is better then most time travel books that are linear in style and movement. It is by no means predictable and keeps you reading for more. I hope Wright writes more stories about Mr. Fontino in the future, perhaps even give him his own novel series.

A negative indicator

Some of you may recall my observations concerning the worsening Spanish economy after seeing attractive girls who looked like normal college students working the streets in Spain. That indicator is why this story about a petty prostitution arrest made me even more suspicious about the state of the US economy than the recent GDP surprise to the downside. While this pair of North Carolina twins do have more than a hint of the methhead about them, they are also rather more attractive than one would normally expect to see in the employ of a black hustler. Fortunately, they are enough of a news item that it would appear they are not yet the norm, although it could be the twin aspect that caused them to make the national media.

Regardless, if we see more prostitution arrests being made of younger, whiter, more slender, and more attractive women, this will be a reliable indicator that a new level of economic depression has been reached. Just in case any was needed, in light of this unemployment chart from Zerohedge.

The Facets of False Rhetoric

Something I’ve noticed over nearly 15 years of being involved in polemics on various subjects is that a certain rhetorical pattern reliably emerges on the side that has the weaker case, especially when it has the benefit of mainstream endorsement. I’ve named the elements of this pattern the Facets of False Rhetoric.

  1. It tends to refrain from specifically mentioning the advocates, adherents, and works of the other side.
  2. When it does mention them, it is primarily in an effort to disqualify them in some way rather than substantively addressing them.
  3. It fails to directly address the relevant points raised, and instead tends to mischaracterize them.
  4. It regularly sets up straw men and attacks them in lieu of the actual arguments presented. It often resorts to bait-and-switches and hides behind ambiguity.
  5. It falsely claims the other side is ignorant or misguided on the basis of petty irrelevancies and ignores the fact that the other side is discussing substantive matters in sufficient detail to belie any such charges.
  6. The other side is declared to be “dangerous” for reasons that are seldom specified or substantiated.

I’ve seen this pattern at work in the American political discourse. I’ve seen it in the atheism discourse. I’ve seen it in the Theorum of Evolution by Natural Selection and Various Other Means discourse. I’ve seen it in the global warming discourse. I’ve seen it in the economic discourse. I’ve seen it in the EU discourse. I’ve even seen it in what passes for the science fiction and fantasy discourse.

And every single time, it has been the behavior exhibited by the side that I consider to have the observably inferior case. In fact, it has reached the point that when I witness such behavior on the part of an advocate, I now consider it a reliable indicator of being fundamentally wrong even when I don’t know the subject.

For reasons that will eventually become clear, I have been reading up on what is known among military theorists as 4th Generation War. This is a highly relevant topic these days, as both the undeclared wars in Ukraine and Gaza are direct examples of 4th Generation asymmetric wars between a state actor and a non-state actor. Even the media headlines appear to be ripped out of articles on 4th Gen theory, such as the New York Times piece today: “Israel Is Facing Difficult Choice in Gaza Conflict”.

So, it was with some initial puzzlement, followed by a growing sense of recognition, that I read Antulio Echevarria’s Fourth-Generation Warfare and Other Myths, published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College.  Consider the boxes checked.

1. There are eleven references in 17 pages to mysterious “proponents”. Not until we get to the footnotes at the end is there a mention of William S. Lind, the most well-known proponent of 4GW, or of Keith Nightengale, John F. Schmitt, Joseph W. Sutton, and Gary I. Wilson, his co-authors of the seminal 1989 article in the Marine Corps Gazette. Col Thomas Hammes merits a pair of mentions in a single paragraph, only to set up checkbox number two.

2. From the Foreword: “He argues that the proponents of 4GW undermine their own credibility by subscribing to this bankrupt theory.”

“However, the tool that [Hammes] employs undermines his credibility. In fact, the theory of 4GW only undermines the credibility of anyone who employs it….”

“The proponents of 4GW failed to perceive this particular flaw in their reasoning because they did not review their theory critically….”

“this new incarnation repeats many of the theory’s old errors, some of which we have not yet discussed.”

“it is rather curious that the history and analyses that 4GW theorists hang on current insurgencies should be so deeply flawed.”

3. The author goes on at length about the nonexistence of nontrinitarian warfare and what he calls “the myth of Westphalia”, neither of which have anything substantive to do with 4GW theory. Westphalia merely serves as a useful starting point from which the state began claiming a monopoly on warfare, it’s completely irrelevant otherwise. I was astonished to observe that the author never even mentions what the four generations of 4GW are, let alone attempts to explain why they are a myth.

4. The fact that the Germans never formally incorporated the blitzkrieg
concept into their military doctrine doesn’t change the observable fact
that the Germans did, in fact, adopt a maneuver-and-initiative based
model to replace the centralized steel-on-target, command-and-control
French model to which the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force still
subscribe.

5.  “The fact that 4GW theorists are not aware of this work, or at least do not acknowledge it, should give us pause indeed. They have not kept up with the scholarship on unconventional wars, nor with changes in the historical interpretations of conventional wars. Their logic is too narrowly focused and irredeemably flawed. In any case, the wheel they have been reinventing will never turn.”

6.  “the theory has several fundamental flaws that need to be exposed before they
can cause harm to U.S. operational and strategic thinking.”

“despite a number of profound and incurable flaws, the theory’s proponents continue to push it, an activity that only saps intellectual energy badly needed
elsewhere.”

I am not a military expert, but one doesn’t have to be one to recognize the way in which this critic is setting off a smokescreen rather than engaging in a substantive critique, let alone presenting a conclusive rebuttal.

(NB: for future reference, the first cretin to say “Link?” is going in the spam file. If you can’t figure out how to use bloody Google, then immediately stop reading this blog and never, ever attempt to comment here again. Google or don’t Google for confirmation as you see fit, believe that I am accurately quoting the subject matter or not as you like, but do not EVER ask me for a “Link?” It’s obnoxious and the answer is always “No”.)

That being said, William S. Lind wrote a response to Echevarria’s article, which I did not read until after writing this post above. Compare the checkboxes ticked in the article compared to Lind’s response. From literally the first paragraph, the differences are observable.

Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria, II is a Director at the
Strategic Studies Institute, the U.S. Army War College’s think tank,
and the author of an excellent book, After Clausewitz: German Military
Thinkers before the Great War. It was therefore both a surprise
and a disappointment to find that his recent paper, Fourth-Generation
War and Other Myths, is really, really ugly. Far from being a sober,
scholarly appraisal, it is a rant, a screed, a red herring seemingly
written to convince people not to think about 4GW at all. It is built
from a series of straw men, so many that in the end it amounts to a
straw giant.

I suspect it would be useful to further develop this pattern of critical observation, add additional checkboxes, and see how reliable it is across disciplines and subject matters. If anyone has any insights into this, I’d be interested in hearing them. I feel this may be Vox’s Third Law of Critical Dynamics taking shape, but I have not yet articulated it in a form I find both succinct and satisfying.

First Law: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.
Second Law: If I can imagine it, it must be assumed
true. If you can’t conclusively prove it, it must be assumed false.
Third Law (first draft): The probability of a position’s falsehood increases with the number of applicable facets of false rhetoric.

What was he waiting for?

Texas governor Rick Perry finally deploys the Texas National Guard:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is expected Monday to announce the deployment of up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the border following an incident in which members of Mexican drug cartels allegedly fired shots from a .50-caliber machine gun from the Mexican side of the border into Texas, sending U.S. Border Patrol guards scurrying for cover.

Following the shooting incident Friday night, Texas state Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat, told the Associated Press he was briefed by his staff on Sunday after a conference call with the governor’s office, Texas National Guard and the state Department of Public Safety. Perry is scheduled to make the announcement Monday at 2 p.m. Central Time.

More than 3,000 Border Patrol agents now work in South Texas, and Perry has repeatedly asked President Obama to send the National Guard to the border. At the same time, Perry has come under growing pressure from the conservative wing of his own party to act on his own under Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. This clause gives states the right to declare an ‘imminent danger’…and to call up the National Guard.

Conservative politicians don’t seem to understand that the days of “calling for” this and “fighting for” that are over. Do something or shut up. Why was Perry asking Obama to do his job for him? It’s this sort of political tone-deafness that allowed a very vulnerable Romney to steamroll him during the 2012 nomination.

And why only 1,000 National Guardsmen? That’s not enough to control the border. It looks as if Perry is only acting in order to appear he is doing something.

The pinkshirts are trembling

And it’s not merely Amazon that is scaring them. What’s amusing about this is that the truth is finally beginning to dawn on Damien… that he and all his weird little friends are in the minority. Their little freakshow extravaganza of diversity and left-wing ideology only existed thanks to the gatekeepers and now they’re getting blown out of the water by people like Larry Correia, Tom Kratman, John Wright, Sarah Hoyt, the Mad Geniuses and hundreds of other ambitious writers who don’t have to kowtow to their ridiculous demands or respect their absurd dogma any longer.

One noticeable difference between John Scalzi and Damien Walter is that McRapey is a master of self-marketing who always understood that there were as many, if not more, people on the right side of the ideological fence as the left. And Scalzi was, in the past, assiduously careful to maintain good relations with the other side, until he lost his temper and let the mask slip too egregiously. Damien, on the other hand, simply doesn’t grasp that Fox News is not an outlier, it is an indicator. He simply cannot fathom that there are far more people who, if forced to choose, will genuinely prefer what I stand for, sanity and civilization, over his diverse band of deviants, weirdos, race hustlers, and outright sex criminals.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
Vox has a core of a few hundred regular readers. They may be sad losers, but they’re enough to effect a small Hugo voter pool.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter @mareinna Vox Day is a racist rightwing nutjob. He gathers in his umbra, many of the same. This isn’t really surprising.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
Exactly why letting this clique have a platform within the niche SF community is a very bad idea. @E_M_Edwards @mareinna

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter @mareinna I don’t see how they threaten SF -as a community; outside of their circle, they’re routinely laughed at & despised.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter @mareinna And SF has a not insignificant share of (historically and currently) rightwing, racist, nutjob writers & readers.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter @mareinna They have a platform because, unfortunately, they represent a portion of the human spectrum.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter @mareinna A portion that is pretty awful, even by human standards, but I don’t understand why VD creates such a stir.

Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
@damiengwalter @E_M_Edwards @mareinna I’d be happy if they stuck to their own little niche, but they want to take over the genre.

Martin McGrath ‏@martinmcgrath
@damiengwalter So why would you tweet links to their hateful words?

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna That’s not going to happen though.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter 2h
Only because at this point he’s been allowed a platform. Kick him off that platform and there’s no problem.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna And I fear it’s wishful thinking to consider racism & fascist tendencies a ‘niche’ in SF.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@martinmcgrath Because he’s already got himself a Hugo nomination. Ignoring the issue became moot at that point.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Certainly from a historical point of view, it is a recognizable thread in genre. As it is in the world

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards If that as the case I would leave the community. It’s a *tiny* minority, but vocal.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna I think you have to support a more diverse SF community because you’ll not ever stamp it out.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna But I’m less sure you’ll ever snip it out of the overall pattern. It will remain, and reappear.

Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
@E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna I was lucky that my early exposure was via bookstore which kept fascist books off their shelves.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna And I’m not saying that out of some ‘free speech’ argument.

Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
@damiengwalter @E_M_Edwards @mareinna Whenever these jerks spew their crap again, I feel like leaving.

who needs words @mareinna
@E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter maybe because he kerps writing tirades against writers who in turn give him publicity by defending themselves?

Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
@E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna The SFF community is getting more diverse, that’s why these folks are furious.

Arthur Wyatt ‏@arthurwyatt
@damiengwalter I’m pretty sure it’s not people who have actually read his stuff you need to worry about.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter You’re an idealist. I don’t see VDs values as those of a tiny minority. He’s just more visible.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter In no small measure, I suspect, because it is a part – and I dread this phrase- of his personal brand.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards If you prove to be correct, I’ll leave the community. In an instant.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Agreed. There is always a push back by groups who have had more of a majority share, when it shrinks.

Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
@E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna VD is the radical fringe. IMO the Correias, Kratmans, Ringos, Hoyts are the bigger problem.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna But that doesn’t mean they’re going to disappear. Which is why diversity best use of energy, I feel.

Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert 2h
@E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna Cause they pretend to be the reasonable mainstream and silent majority.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter Your choice, OC. But why? Better to add your weight to the counterbalance then throw out your toys.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Again, I agree, mostly. Though I suspect some of their ‘moderate’ stance is just as calculated.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards Why? If SF is mostly bigots and racists it can go fuck itself. But, it isn’t, you’re wrong on this.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Which doesn’t mean they disagree with people like VD. But they’re rather he be the lightning rod.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter I don’t believe it is however, a ‘tiny’ minority. Or even a radical fringe.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards If it was even a substantial minority. It isn’t. @CoraBuhlert @mareinna

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter Is VD radical within it? Likely yes. Both personally and due to his positioning, but a black swan? No.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards Again, if you prove to be right, I’ll leave it. No point repeating this again.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter OK. I can hear you don’t want it to be. It would be more useful perhaps, to have real figures.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter Which I don’t have either, so I’m not saying you have to have them to have an opinion.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter But I’m not swayed by your conviction, without them.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards Do you think VD deserve a Hugo award? You’re derailing on to an irrelevancy here.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter I hope not. Even if we don’t agree on much. I’d rather you were out there in it than VD

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter Which sounds like weaker praise than it is meant. 😉

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter I’m hard pressed to think of anyone I’d rather have active in SF than VD. Likely they’re out there.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards I’ll happily go back to ignoring the idiot when the SF community stops letting him hijack it as a platform for his bile.

E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
@damiengwalter And if he does or doesn’t, how exactly – considering the limits & flaws of the Hugo – prove a point?

@damiengwalter I’m not sure that will happen. We make our own platforms these days and the margins are very porous.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
@E_M_Edwards Given the small number of votes required, and coordination with other cons, it seems possible.

Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert
If he or Correia win, the Hugos will have become a complete joke.

Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
Actually, these people are a big part of the reason I’m not going to Loncon.

TL;DR: We’re winning. Already.

First of all, it is, as usual, amusing to see them still failing to understand that this blog is considerably better trafficked than the blog that was celebrated and respected for years as the biggest blog in science fiction. Prior to the SFWA’s decision to purge me, the blogs were running just over one million pageviews per month. They’re now running at 1.4 million per month, a 40 percent increase in only one year. No one is “letting me have a platform” and SFWA has already tried to kick me off it. How did that go for them?

Second, I don’t have a core of a few hundred regular readers. I have a core of a few thousand regular readers and a hard core of a few hundred Dread Ilk. I don’t lead them and they don’t follow me. If I quit tomorrow, a dozen would take my place, some of them smarter and more articulate than me.

Third, to quote the Real Slim Shady: “I have been sent here to destroy you.
And there’s a million of us just like me, who cuss like me; who just don’t give a fuck like me. Who dress like me; walk, talk and act like me.”

Every day. Literally EVERY SINGLE DAY, I get emails from people who thank me for speaking out, who tell me how glad they are that someone is finally standing up to the freaks and deviants and pedophiles, who let me know that they are reading SF again for the first time in years, who send Castalia submissions saying how glad they are to know they will get a fair shake and an impartial reading that isn’t based on political correctness and diversity checkboxes.

E.M. Edwards is more right than he knows. Damien reminds me of the troll, Andrew Marston, who once said that it made him feel suicidal to know that I had over 200 Twitter followers. Well, Damien should throw in the towel and quit right now, today, because the sane, civilized, and traditional side of SF/F is not only bigger than he knows, it is bigger than he fears. And it is going to grow bigger still.

The pinkshirts are hoping the worst has passed and yet we have barely even begun to get started. They have no idea, none, about what is coming down the pipeline. Just wait until there are ten bestselling Correias and 20 outspoken VDs and even more young right wing radicals who make Tom Kratman look soft and have less sympathy for the pinkshirts than we do.

Baen is kicking ass. Castalia is exceeding every expectation. The selfies and indies are eviscerating the gatekeepers as Amazon crushes the Big Five. Read those frightened tweets and smile, because we are only now beginning to light the fires that will engulf them.

UPDATE: Now Damien is demonstrating, again, that he can’t comprehend what he reads. This lack of reading comprehension may be related to his dearth of literary success:

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
You see, this is what happens when you let racists on your award ballot. Hugos utterly discredited at this point.

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
“So who are the Hugo noms this year?” “Oh you know, some Hard SF, some Fantasy…and a man who advocates acid attacks on women.” +

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
+ Do you see where that departs the usual “Hugos are broken” narrative?

The fact that I can understand and even articulate a logical case for acid attacks on women when challenged to do so does not mean that I endorse or advocate it. Damien is reduced to trying to score cheap rhetorical points; he hasn’t learned yet that if you want any credibility in the public commentary game, you simply cannot fold, spindle, or mutilate the object of your criticism’s words.

In any event, it’s not as if the Hugos could further discredit themselves after awarding Best Novel to Redshirts, a mediocre one-joke derivative of a previous parody of Star Trek. And has he read “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”? Ye cats.

Call people “fucking cowards” and whatever other names you want, Damien. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. Your nightmare is just beginning.

Divergence

I always find it interesting to learn what people actively hate about about a book or story. Here are two reviews of two award-nominated stories that illustrate the vast divide in the SF/F community today. First, Scooter reviews “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”:

There comes a point in the evolution of any intelligent species where it develops the ability to destroy itself. Mankind arrived at this danger point in 1945 with the invention of the atomic bomb. The science-fiction and fantasy community has now reached the same apocalyptic milestone with Rachel Swirsky’s invention of the dino-porn revenge fantasy tale.  While nukes can merely bomb mankind back to the stone age, “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” threatens to blast the credibility of the fantasy genre all the way back to the Cretaceous. 

The story itself, however, never takes us to a place so exotic. Instead, the narrator of this 966-word Hugo-nominated flash fiction story has an extended monologue imagining her husband as a five foot ten T-Rex who becomes a Broadway singer and hangs out in pool halls. From this description, and the ridiculous title, one might expect the piece to be a parody of the inter-species romance trope found primarily in fan-fic. In a way, that’s exactly what we get.  In overwrought pseudo-poetic prose, the narrator envisions feeding her lizard-lover a live-goat, serenading him with lullabies, and jealousy presiding at his wedding to a genetically engineered dino.  At one point the narrator even inexplicably transforms into a flower. 

Underlying all the silliness is an attempt at profundity so inept that Swisky manages to unintentionally exploit the silliness of the premise and deliver on the chuckles. The titular therapod of the story turns out to be a paleontologist who was beaten into a coma by a bunch of generic bigots shouting generic epithets for generic reasons. The narrator is reimagining her weak hubbie as an alpha dinosaur with the carnivorous capability to enact revenge against his attackers.    

“If you were a dinosaur, my love, I’d teach you the scents of those men. I’d lead you to them quietly, oh so quietly. Still, they would see you. They’d run. Your nostrils would flare as you inhaled the night and then, with the suddenness of a predator, you’d strike. I’d watch as you decanted their lives—the flood of red; the spill of glistening, coiled things—and I’d laugh, laugh, laugh.”

The power of short fiction hinges primarily on a strong ending:  a good punchline, a sudden reversal, or anything that packs an emotional wallop. In that respect, Swirsky does not disappoint. Her climax finally answers the two questions the reader has been asking since the beginning:  how in the hell is this considered a fantasy story, and why has it been nominated for a Hugo? The answer is that Swirsky has redefined the entire fantasy genre. Fantasy does not need to have internal consistency; the only requirement is that it be set in “a world of magic where anything [is] possible”. In other words, it doesn’t have to make a lick of sense. 

Forget world-building. Forget character development. Forget that limitations make a story more interesting. Now a Hugo-nominated fantasy story can just be someone’s weird daydream – about anything whatsoever – so long as it contains clichés that fit into the culturally approved narrative. To her credit, the bestiality in the story is – if not impossible – at least dimly recognized as unideal. But it’s her new insight – that details are not important to storytelling – which promises to be the pink sci-fi/fantasy equivalent of the atomic bomb. Perhaps Swirsky will one day look upon the devastation wrought upon the genre’s readership, and like Oppenheimer, misquote the Baghavad Gita:  “I am become Dinosaur Porn, Destroyer of Fantasy Worlds.”

On the other hand, Justin A. Bacon thinks just as poorly of “Opera Vita Aeterna”:

Easily one of the worst pieces of fiction I’ve read lately. The “world-building” consists of thinly veiling the Catholic Church by inconsistently swapping out the names and terminology and then slapping in some magic-wielding elves. (You might think that magic-wielding elves would have some sort of meaningful impact on the beliefs or teachings of the Church, but they don’t.) The “plot” would be stretched thin on a very short story, but it takes a truly prodigious amount of “talent” to stretch it over the length of a novelette: An elf shows up at a not-Catholic monastery and says, “I killed your missionary. Now I’d like to stay here and study your God.” He decides to stay for several decades while he single-handedly illuminates an entire copy of the not-Bible by himself. This is interrupted by a single scene in which he asks the head of the monastery a question about his religious faith, prompting the head of the monastery to respond by literally cribbing Thomas Aquinas at interminable length. No one in the monastery has their faith or their lives remotely affected by the elf. The elf leaves for a bit and everyone in the monastery is brutally killed by some other elves. Then the elf yells at a statue of not-Jesus Christ.

It’s not so much a story as it is a train wreck of bad writing, bad plotting, bad world-building, and bad characterization.

Both reviewers have clearly read the stories they are reviewing; these are not fake reviews. But what is interesting is that both of them think so poorly of stories that others think very well of. Are the differences purely ideological or is there more to it? I tend to suspect the latter; it might be informative to know what Mr. Bacon thinks of “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” and what Scooter thinks of “Opera Vita Aeterna”.

NB: I don’t think it is fair to criticize Bacon’s lack of awareness of the impact of the magic-wielding elves on the beliefs of the Church since he clearly hasn’t read Summa Elvetica and what is actually there in “Opera” is pretty subtle. On the other hand, it is fair to observe that if he thinks everyone in the monastery was killed by “some other elves”, he was not reading very closely.

Pedophiles in power

This network explains why known pedophiles like Jimmy Savile and Member of Parliament Cyril Smith were protected despite numerous complaints about them.

A former social services official has said his warnings about the threat of a Westminster-based paedophile network were ignored because “there were too many of them over there”.

David Tombs, who ran Hereford and Worcester social services, said he warned the government after the arrest of paedophile Peter Righton in 1992. Two inquiries have been launched into historical claims of child abuse. Mr Tombs, who in charge of social services in his area for 20 years, claims that when Righton was arrested in 1992, he became aware of information through the police investigation that suggested a paedophilic network was operating.

He said what he learned would have been of “national concern” and told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It was coming across to me at the time that there were names there that were linked into the establishment, if you like. I had no particular names, but that was the impression I was getting.”

He said when he alerted Department of Health representatives, he was told by civil servants that he was “probably wasting [his] time” because there were “too many of them over there”.

The Westminster pedophile ring may even explain the murder of reporter Jill Dando:

Murdered Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando tried to get BBC bosses to investigate an alleged paedophile ring in the corporation, it has today been claimed. A former friend and retired BBC worker has claimed that the television host was told that ‘big name stars’ and BBC staff were involved in abuse. But when she tried to get her superiors to investigate, and handed a file to senior management, no action was taken, the source claims.

The former staff member, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Daily Star Sunday that she raised the claims with management in the mid 1990s.The source said that the names were ‘surprisingly big’…. Miss Dando, 37, was gunned down outside her home in Fulham, west London, on April 26, 1999, moments after stepping out of her car.

One notes that this protection of child abusers in Westminster may also explain the obvious reluctance of SFWA to investigate the problem of pedophiles in the science fiction community despite the revelations that have come to light concerning Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ed Kramer, and Samuel Delany.

Mailvox: a request

An academic researcher from Stony Brook has a favor to ask of you all, namely, taking a survey:

I came across Vox Popoli recently, and really enjoyed some of the recent posts.  In particular, today’s post about the NYPD is spot on (as someone who has spent plenty of time in the city).  You hear stories like this far more often than you should, not only in NYC, and as you say rarely is anyone ever called to task for it.  I also found your reactions to Elizabeth Warren’s list of progressive tenets to be very insightful.

In any case, my colleagues and I are conducting a national survey and I was hoping that you would be interested in helping us.  After spending some time on your site, I think that your readership would be perfect for inclusion in the study.  The survey we are conducting is interested in how people’s personal characteristics and beliefs shape their understanding of other people and American society. Conservatives tend to be underrepresented in surveys, their opinions aren’t heard as a result and we don’t get an accurate picture of what Americans think about their society.  Right now, we desperately need conservative responses to the survey, as liberal responses currently outnumber conservatives about 2 to 1.

The authors at a few other blogs recently helped us out (BrothersJudd and PJ Media to name a few), and I was hoping you might do the same by posting the link to this survey on your site and encourage your readers to participate.  The survey takes roughly 15-20 minutes to complete. All survey responses will be completely confidential, and all identifying information will be stripped by the survey collection software.

One certainly can’t fault his manners; there are a lot of people who could learn from his example. I checked out the survey and it’s harmless enough. I think it’s attempting to measure if your ideology helps or hinders your ability to read other people, but I could be wrong. I will say they would benefit from using higher resolution images; I recognized some of them from previous surveys. Anyhow, if you’re amenable, go play a little multiple choice.

Keep in mind that the scenario questions intentionally don’t have enough information to make a reasonable judgment; the purpose is to see what you deduce from the insufficient information provided.

A hand overplayed

I think we can safely say that the world is now officially holocausted out, as more and more people across the West are unwilling to give Jews the benefit of the doubt when they cry anti-semite:

A new, unofficial report indicates that a Jewish doctor who claimed she was the victim of an antisemitic when she was thrown off of a JetBlue flight earlier this month was actually the aggressor in the mid-air dispute with a Palestinian woman who she said was a ‘murderer’ and that she probably had explosives in her bag.

The new report, which WPBF says it did not receive from the airline, Queens Doctor Lisa Rosenberg ‘accused customer 9C of being a Palestinian murderer, and that her people were all murderers and that they murder children,’ the station reported on Wednesday.

At the time of her getting escorted off the flight, on July 7, at an airport in Florida, Rosenberg told a local news outlet that she was called a ‘Zionist pig’ by the woman seated next to her.

In a phone interview with WPBF, the airline said that Rosenberg’s version of events ‘in no way reflects the report that we have.’ In the unofficial report, a flight attendant described how Rosenberg ‘went even further to suggest 9C had explosives in her bag and it would bring the aircraft down.’

In similar fashion, I noticed that both the French and British press have exposed Jews as the aggressors in the recent “street battles” in Paris, although you won’t see this reported in any of the American newspapers, which inaccurately described the demonstrations as attacks and the subsequent attack of the demonstrators as a defense of the synagogue. But no synagogues were attacked that day; the various claims that two and three of them were attacked were confirmed to be false and there is video to prove it.

A group of 150 Jewish men were seen brandishing iron bars and cans of pepper spray as they clashed with Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Paris. Video footage of the clashes show the group chanting racist slogans as they roamed the streets. It came as President Francois Hollande warned that he did not want to see ‘the Israeli-Palestinian conflict imported into France’.

A still taken from the video shows dozens of men in Paris walking down the streets armed with chairs and other weapons, before clashing with pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Around 150 mainly young men were seen carrying weapons, like chairs, and chanting racist slogans as they went on the rampage. French Jewish groups have complained about an increase in anti-Semitism in recent months, with many accusing Muslim youths of targeting them.

But a video shot close to the Place de la Bastille on Sunday, and verified by police before being posted on YouTube, appears to show pro-Israel groups are also actively involved in clashes. In Paris, CRS riot police did not arrest any of the group, thought to be linked to the Jewish Defence League, despite them openly fighting in broad daylight. In the video, those amongst the group can be heard chanting ‘**** you Palestine’ as they smash up chairs and metal tables to be used as missiles….

Alexis Bachelay, a Paris MP for the ruling Socialist party, said: ‘There has evidently been a media manipulation about who really got assaulted. These are extremely serious facts that need to be investigated thoroughly by the police. It is not the first time that young French people of Muslim origin are stigmatised by the media. French people of Muslim origin should be protected by the law when demonstrating. They should not be attacked by radical groups like the LDJ’.

Having been falsely accused many times of anti-semitism myself for nothing more than refusing to assume that all Jews are innocent angels at all times and devoid of all human failings (and I’m probably one of the very few individuals who has been personally cleared of the charge by the Jewish Defense League itself), I have learned to be extremely skeptical of all assertions of anti-semitism presented without evidence. As with women with sexism and blacks with racism, crying anti-semitism has become the first resort of any Jew caught with his hand in a cookie jar.

That doesn’t mean anti-semitism doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who wish to kill Jews for any number of reasons. That doesn’t mean that every last synagogue in France isn’t going to be burned to the ground. But it does mean that one should no more accept the word of a Jew on the matter than one should accept the word of a woman that she has been raped.

I am a Zionist because I am a nationalist. The Jews have a right to their homeland, Israel. They also have a right to invade Gaza because they were being attacked; hundreds of rocket launches is a legitimate casus belli. But they have no more right to Paris than the Arabs do, and the French would be wise to repatriate all of these bold defenders of their various homelands to let them fight it out there rather than in the heart of their capital city. Because it is patently obvious that neither side gives a damn about France.