#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Great result for the USA, if they can beat Ghana today. Germany’s destruction of Portugal, complete with a red card and an injury, has Portugal reeling and should set the USA up nicely… if they can get at least one point from Ghana.
YOWZERS! 31 seconds in and Clint Dempsey nutmegs a defender, manages to pull the ball along with him, and slides it home off the post! 1-0 USA.
The Taurans had dedicated three hundred sorties to a pre-landing preparation of the island. That was not small change, those roughly two thousand tons. But, it was generally agreed, the Taurans had to do their business and leave before the Zhong reached within two kilometers of the beaches. Otherwise, the world, fate, God, Murphy (who, it was well known, had emigrated to Terra Nova in the first wave), or the Emperor Mong, whom the Zhong and Anglians both disowned, would fuck somebody.
With the ovals and circles at sea straightening now into deadly arrows, pointed not-quite-straight at the beaches, the Taurans half darkened the sky. They lashed down not only at the landing beaches, but at half a dozen others as heavily, and eleven more a bit more lightly, for the deception value. Known, or believed to be known, artillery positions got a special pasting.
Generally speaking, Wallenstein was surprised at the fury of the Tauran assault.
My cousins have apparently got a few grudges from the five minute bomber raids.
The Zhong and Taurans had, if anything, been overly cautious about the use of the latters’ airpower in proximity to the formers’ unarmored Marines. While the first wave of landing craft were eight hundred meters offshore, the last of the Tauran strikers was flying east toward their bases in Santa Josefina.
To smoke was now added a considerable cloud of dust raised by the bombs. Most of the island could not be seen with the naked eye or unaided camera.
“Switching to thermal imaging,” Khan announced. The screen went blank, then red, then to a mix of stark black and red. It took a bit of time for both mind and eyes to adjust.
“Narrow focus on the island and the leading wave,” Wallenstein commanded. “Order Harmony to bring the skimmer in lower, and have them prep another in case we lose this one.”
“Aye, aye, High Admiral,” said one of the communications boffins. Communication was nearly instantaneous, while the skimmer was close in any case. The focus of the crew and their commander narrowed considerably as the first waves of the Zhong Marines splashed ashore
“What’s that?” Wallenstein asked, as the skimmer approached a tilted triple turret.
“We’ve got lasing!” a petty officer announced. “Lasing from the whole northern coast. Lasing from the balloons. Lasing from Hill 287. Lasing…”
The room shook with an inarticulate cry of despair from the Zhong Empress. She saw what Khan saw, and had divined the meaning just as quickly
“It’s a gun; I’d guess an eighteen centimeter gun,” Khan said, his voice heavy with defeat. “On a railway carriage. It came from one of the ammunition bunkers we didn’t attack. I think…I think there are going to be a lot of them. And they’re not lasing for its own sake.”
Tonelessly, hopelessly, he added, “Empress, you should tell the Zhong Fleet to retreat… High Admiral, tell her.” Khan’s chin sank onto his chest. “But, of course, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”
By now, I expect you know the drill. I have three review copies of Tom Kratman’s The Rods and the Axe to send out to the first three readers willing to read it, then write a review and send it to me before June 25th. If you’re interested, send me an email with AXE in the subject. We have the necessary reviewers now, thank you.
Overturning centuries of English Common Law, false representation is now legal in the United States.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) won dismissal of a suit over $450 million in residential mortgage-backed securities, with a New York judge saying that the firms that bought the bonds should have done more research beforehand.
State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos dismissed the claims against Goldman Sachs today, saying the investors only reviewed data presented in offering documents for the securities and never asked to review files for the underlying loans.
“The true nature of the risk being assumed could, admittedly, have been ascertained from reviewing these loan files and plaintiffs never asked for them,” Ramos wrote.
In other words, it’s perfectly legal to present someone with a fraudulent document claiming to be selling them a pig in the poke, because if they don’t actually look in the sack to see that there is a dead rat, and not a live pig in there, it’s their own fault. This is another sign of the continued collapse of the rule of law in the USA.
Congratulations, Justice Ramos. You may have just destroyed the securitization market. Who in their right minds will ever purchase a loan security again? If you were going to review each and every loan and ascertain the risks involved, you would already be a mortgage bank.
Fortunately for Goldman Sachs, there should be enough con artists out there for the apex con artist to continue preying upon. But what sane and honest individual would ever choose to do business with them in light of their behavior here? And can you imagine if this standard were applied across the board? No one would ever dare to buy something in a box or order anything off the Internet ever again.
In keeping with the argument presented by Tim Atkinson, I encourage left-liberal science fiction writers to not “give house room” to known child molesters and rapists. Atkinson writes:
Now, there’s a conversation to be had about how and whether to read authors with detestable views. I’m not pro-censorship, I’m pro-context. But putting someone prone to racist outbursts on a conservative voting slate for the shortlist for the prestigious Hugo Awards – that sends a entirely different message to the one I think you hoped it would.
Would Beale have gotten onto the shortlist for Best Novella – which he succeeded in doing – if he hadn’t had this kind of support? We’ll probably never know. But the point is that the Beale-boosting contaminated by association the conservatives-and-libertarians-overlooked-in-SF position the slate was intended at least in part to raise.
Correia mounts a mainly art-for-arts-sake defence for the inclusion of Beale on his slate (it’s a long post so I’d suggest scrolling or searching for it). Unfortunately, he presses onto deny both the racism of Beale’s statement and of the man himself, which seems at best naïve and at worst disingenuous in light of his public record….
I have been clear, I hope, that Correia is not supporting Beale over and
above putting him on his Hugos slate and is on the record that he
himself is not racist. My key point is that putting forward such a
divisive, controversial figure (to put it mildly and in terms you might
find acceptable) risks contaminating by implication
conservative/libertarian positions in science-fiction.
I find Mr. Atkinson’s concern about messages and contamination to be fascinating. Mr. Atkinson claims my comments made in response to a woman lying about me and repeatedly attacking me are “controversial” and risk “contaminating by implication
conservative/libertarian positions in science-fiction” while completely ignoring the fact that, by the same metric, the liberal/left position in science fiction has undeniably been contaminated for 15 years by the documented public evidence that Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the most influential and celebrated feminist authors that Pink SF/F has ever had, was an abusive, sexually aberrant child molester and incestuous rapist.
Marion Zimmer Bradley was convicted on a federal child pornography charge prior to her marrying the homosexual child molester Walter Breen and editing one of his books defending pedophilia. Bradley’s own daughter has publicly stated that her mother raped her on more than one occasion. One of Bradley’s lesbian lovers testified in a 1998 legal deposition that she was aware Marion Zimmer Bradley sexually harassed and tortured her own daughter, and raped her own son as well.
SFWA purged me from its ranks for a single tweet, but has not yet seen fit to purge Marion Zimmer Bradley despite her many sex-related crimes dating back to the 1950s. They have not revoked the two Nebula nominations given to a known child molester and a magazine named after her. SFWA still features an RIP notice for Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as a listing for Bradley’s literary estate and the agent for that estate on its Internet site. (However, it is interesting to note that SFWA never awarded her any distinction as a Grand Master or Author Emeritus whereas she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention in 2000, which suggests that some SFWA officers were probably aware of her problematic history.) But SFWA’s Nebula-winning members and former officers are still writing and publishing laudatory articles about the confirmed child abuser, some as recently as last week.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the 47 SFWA members who called for my expulsion and none of the 8 SFWA Board members who voted for it have ever openly condemned Marion Zimmer Bradley or called for the revoking of all awards and recognition given to her by various science fiction and fantasy organizations even though knowledge of her crimes has been a literal matter of public record for more than a decade. By the Left’s own transitive logic of contamination-by-association, until they do, it must be assumed that Steven Gould, Rachel Swirsky, Lee Martindale, Matthew Johnson, Bud Sparhawk, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (a self-described racist), John Scalzi (a self-described rapist), the Toad of Tor, Jim Hines, Jo Walton, Deborah Ross, Amal El-Mohtar, and dozens of other left-leaning science fiction and fantasy writers are morally degenerate individuals who celebrate homosexuality, torture, child abuse, child molestation, incest, and rape.
It appears not to be a coincidence that their books are so often packed with sexual perversions and crimes. It is beyond irony, and well into dark parody, to discover that this inclusive and tolerant crowd has long included, tolerated, celebrated, and even honored a felonious feminist child molester. In light of these facts, I sent the following letter to Steven Gould, the President of SFWA, yesterday:
Dear Mr. Gould and the SFWA Board
I have three questions in light of the recent public statements that
Marion Zimmer Bradley raped her daughter, and the legal depositions of Ms Bradley and Elizabeth Waters which are posted on SFF.net and indicate Marion Zimmer Bradley:
First, as a tolerant and inclusive organization, does the
behavior which SFWA tolerates include abnormal sexual behavior
such as homosexuality, child abuse, torture, and incestuous rape by its
members? Second, will the SFWA Board be purging Marion Zimmer
Bradley from SFWA’s historical membership list and removing all
references to her, her estate, and her estate’s agent from the
SFWA web site? Third, will the SFWA Board be retroactively
expunging from the Nebula Awards list Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1976
Best Novel nomination for The Heritage of Hastur and
Mary C. Aldridge’s 1990 Best Short Story nomination for “The
Adinkra Cloth”, published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy
Magazine.
As a former life member of SFWA expelled by the current SFWA
Board for a tweet deemed inappropriate, I should be very interested to hear SFWA’s formal position
on homosexuality, child molestation, torture and incestuous rape by its
members. I look forward to reading your response.
Sincerely,
Vox Day
Some may find it shocking to learn that even after learning about the extent of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s crimes, members of the SFWA are still defending the woman and her work. I can’t say I’m even surprised.
In addition to the lives she harmed, MZB’s works saved the lives of
other people by speaking to them when other works and other people would
not and/or did not.Truly.
Rachel E. Holmen, who worked as an editor for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine said about Marion: “When she visited cons, ten or twenty young women an hour would stop by
with stories along the lines of “Your books saved my life.””There are other writers being published now who may speak to those
same hearts, but if MZB is still the author that would help them, then I
think it’s important that her work be available to do so. This doesn’t
diminish her very real (and very severe) failings.Rachel’s quote points out why we need diverse books by diverse writers that speak to diverse audiences.
Additionally, MZB gave a start to a lot of women writers—a higher
percentage than anyone else in the genre at the time. Those writers
helped pave the way for even more female voices in the genre.
Keep in mind that the SF/F Left openly states that science fiction needs books by child molesters and rapists. Because diversity. And equality. And it remains enthusiastic about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s depraved legacy.
“Great to see MZB’s Legacy Continue!”
– Jim Hines, Hugo Award-winning SFWA member
I certainly wouldn’t say so. Would you? The Left always claims the Right is a collection of racist white supremacists. But how seriously can you take the accusations made by collection of child-molesting perverts? The only rape culture to be found in science fiction and fantasy is on the SF/F Left.
UPDATE: Deidre clarifies her position on Marion Zimmer Bradley and makes it clear that she is NOT defending the woman.
The entire reason I posted about Marion Zimmer Bradley at all is that
she did unconscionable things and enabled unconscionable things and
Tor.com was whitewashing that. Full stop.Even if you disagree
with me about almost everything else, we probably agree that suicide, in
general, is a sad loss of life. There are a lot of people who’ve had
rough childhoods who feel suicidal and who have attempted suicide. If
MZB’s books help keep a few of them living long enough to get through
that dark patch, then I think that is a good thing.It does not change the fact that I think she belonged in prison.
Now, I think she’s wrong as I do not believe the child molester’s books saved a single life, the various claims of attention-seeking drama queens notwithstanding. But regardless, it is clear that she is not defending Marion Zimmer Bradley, she is not claiming that the woman’s actions are justified by the impact of her books, and she should not be criticized for doing so. To the contrary, she should be lauded for calling out the ghastly MZB-glorifying actions of Tor.com and others.
I’m enjoying the results to date. Here is hoping that the doughty Swiss can continue the theme. Hopp Schwiiz!
I didn’t actually think the English were bad, and Sterling is clearly a player to watch. But they simply weren’t strong enough to break through the Italian catenaccio-style defending. Some may find it boring to watch, but I’ve played with Italians long enough that I’ve come to respect the defense-first philosophy.
And Pirlo… what can you say about a playmaker still playing at this level at 35? It’s unbelievable. Remember, those midfielders are covering the equivalent of up to three 5k races in only 90 minutes, with only one break in the middle. Calcio isn’t as violent as MMA, NHL, or the NFL, but it is a brutal sport in its own way. There is a reason why even superlatively great players like Brazil’s Kaká are done as internationals at 32 and there is talk of England’s Rooney being washed up at 28.
UPDATE: Switzerland was robbed of one game-winning goal (seriously, what is it with these terrible assistant referees and their dreadful offsides calls?) but a PHENOMENAL slide tackle to stop a dangerous shot in the area, followed by a GREAT advantage call by the referee, led to a long counterattack and goal with 14 seconds left in injury time. 2-1 Switzerland!
First, a review of Larry Correia’s Hugo-nominated WARBOUND from an honest critic:
Larry Correia can spin one hell of a yarn! He writes a cool
alternate-history world with fantastic settings, from a superhero prison
to a walled-off Berlin filled with zombies. His pacing is good and his
action scenes are riveting. I kept turning pages when I knew I really
should be doing something else, which a mark of a good book. He does
dead-pan humor extremely well, I laughed out loud several times. It’s
exactly over-the-top enough to be a great ride, and very entertaining.
When he sticks to doing what he does well he writes great fiction!The book does have two major failings.
First, it falls into the Superman trap that many superhero stories
stumble into. The primary actor in any scene has exactly the right
amount of power to just barely overcome their obstacles. It doesn’t
matter what the power-level of the threat is. If it’s a stab to the
chest, they’ll barely survive. If it’s an army of goons they’ll suddenly
be impervious to bullets and wade through them to get to the boss, and
then barely survive the city-block-exploding powers of the boss. And
they always have just the powers they need to make it through, which
leads to things like Superman’s Brick-Laying Vision and that starts to take the tension out of things when you catch on.
I can’t disagree with that in the slightest from a plausibility perspective, although the fact that so many very successful books repeatedly utilize the “it was the nearest-run thing you ever saw” (cough, Jim Butcher, cough) tends to indicate that plausibility is wildly overrated in this regard. I try very hard to keep my action and military sequences entirely coherent and plausible, (a certain tunnel-digging sequence notwithstanding) and my books are considerably less successful in terms of unit sales than those of Messrs. Correia and Butcher. That may not be the only reason, of course, but it does tend to indicate that most readers not only don’t mind, but actually prefer what the critic describes as “the Superman trap”.
However, I think the critic goes a little off the rails in his response to Larry’s reaction to his initial review:
There were people who didn’t
feel the need to impose their will on the women they cared for back
then, even if they weren’t as common as they are now. I would prefer for
my heroes to be of that type, similar to how I would prefer for the
heroes I read in colonial-era fiction to not be slave owners and view it
as distasteful.Larry (I gather) views this sort of attitude as something that can be
admired. He’s not a bad person or anything, but I disagree with him on
that. He views it as protecting the ones you love. I don’t consider
menacing the people my daughter loves to be protecting. (full disclosure
– I don’t actually have a daughter) And likewise, I don’t consider it
protecting someone to take away their choices (which is what was done to
Hammer when she was excluded without being given the choice to help
save mankind). I can see both of these things as character flaws that
make up a multi-faceted character. Especially in Sullivan’s case, given
his recent loss of Delila. But in that case those actions would be
portrayed as flawed actions, whereas in Warbound they seemed to be
presented as positive things.This is the same reason I found the joy in violence distasteful. I
love violence in my fiction. 🙂 I enjoyed the violence in Warbound.
Morgan’s Altered Carbon is one of my favorite books, in part because Kovacs is such a stone-cold badass throughout. Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold is
brutal and bloody and I actually bought a physical copy, it was that
awesome. However my heroes never enjoy the violence they inflict. They
are good at it, and they use it as a tool to get what they want, but
there is never joy in it. Desperation maybe, or rage, or even just cold
calculation. I don’t know if that makes me a hypocrite. Maybe that joy
really is somewhere deep inside, the vicious pride of triumphing over
one’s enemies, of seeing them driven before you, etc. Maybe it’s only lip-service we pay to civility by pretending it doesn’t excite us on a primal level. But dammit, these are heroes. They are the idealized man, that we want to model ourselves after, and our ideals really shouldn’t act like they enjoy violence, even if they secretly do.
I find this response somewhat hypocritical. To laud Abercrombie and condemn Correia for joy taken in violence is like criticizing George W. Bush for his budget deficits and then giving Obama a pass. Abercrombie’s anti-heroes are twisted and sick individuals; some are downright sadists. Correia’s heroes, on the other hand, are normal human beings with superhuman abilities who enjoy their enhanced capabilities. To find one “awesome” and the other “distasteful” is incoherent at best.
I also find the take on enjoying violence to be even more ignorant than the critic confessed he happened to be concerning FDR’s historical behavior. The only people who don’t find joy in violence are those who have never committed it or those who have suffered too much from it. The adrenaline rush that one feels when one feels a bone crack beneath one’s fist, sees a head snapping back, or stands over a physically defeated opponent is second only to a sexual rush for most men. It is one of the greatest pleasures in life; there is a reason that so many killers find the temptation to kill almost irresistible despite the risks and penalties involved and why brawlers seek out stupid and risky fights with strangers in bars. The pleasure that is to be found in violence is the very reason that civilization is dependent upon its members learning to restrain man’s natural instinct to pursue that short-term pleasure.
The idealized man who doesn’t enjoy violence isn’t a man at all, he is a robot devoid of natural humanity. The idealized man is more akin to Larry’s heroes, who may take pleasure in violence, but are careful to ensure that the violence they commit is discriminate, justified, and in performed solely the interests of those they are sworn to defend. That justified violence most definitely includes menacing the potential threats to one’s family and loved ones. Indeed, that is one of the primary responsibilities of every father.
That being said, the critic has to be lauded for giving WARBOUND a fair shake and expressing his opinion honestly. One can disagree with an aspect or two of a review without thinking less of the reviewer. I hope more reviewers of the various Hugo-nominated works will follow his example.
John C. Wright kindly lends the aid of his formidable intellect to his overmatched opponents, in the hopes that they may be able to, finally, present a coherent argument in defense of their philosophy:
My patience, albeit legendary, has finally burst all bounds of reason. Fortunately, this time, patience bursts these bounds inward into the very interior of reason.
In a spirit then of noblest military courtesy to fallen foes, and, in this case, foe unable to mount steed and couch lance, allow me to instruct the Materialist how to frame his argument.
First and foremost, one should define one’s terms.
Materialism, or, to call it by a more precise but less well-recognized name, Panphysicalism, is the position that there no substance exists aside from matter. Anything that seems at first to be made of some other substance, such as spiritual or mental entities or qualities or qualia, can be ultimately resolved to a material substrate.
The word ‘exist’ has several shades of meaning. While, it is a true statement to say that ‘Hamlet exists in Shakespeare’s imagination’ or to say ‘Hamlet exists as a great play’ or even to say ‘Hamlet exists as a word of six letters’, none of those statements would be true if Earth had never brought forth human life. For the purpose of this discussion, we are only speaking of literal, unqualified, or objective existence, that is, existence that does not depend on human imagination or convention.
The word ‘matter’ here does not mean matter as opposed to energy. Here, we mean matter as opposed to spirit. We are not using the definition from the physical sciences of matter, but the philosophical definition.
If the term confuses the undereducated or overeducated dunderhead, we may use the term ‘physical substance.’
More precisely, matter means an entity or the properties of an entity which is extensional and sensible. Extensional means occupying specific points in the three dimensions of space and occupying specific moments of time. Sensible made of something that can be apprehended by the five physical senses either directly or indirectly. For the purpose of this conversation, we can take these two definitions as interchangeable. If there are extensional entities not theoretically sensible, or sensible entities lacking extension and duration, we do not call those ‘matter’.
The term ‘substance’ is a technical term of philosophy that refers to the persistent foundational or fundamental being of reality, that is, some being that cannot be resolved into a more foundational being, some being that is not a manifestation or a side effect of any deeper being.
Second, one should state one’s position precisely.
No Materialist of my acquaintance has ever bothered to do so. Stated precisely, then, the Panphysicalist position is that ‘Nothing save physical substance exists’ or, in other words, ‘All is Matter.’
Third, one should know what manner of statement one is making and defending.
The statement ‘All is Matter’ is an a priori statement, that is, a statement used to interpret sense impression experiences but being logically prior to any particular experience. Ergo it is not an a posteriori statement, that is, a statement deduced from sense impression experiences and logically anterior to them.
The idea held by most, if not all, the Materialists of my acquaintance that Panphysicalism is a deduction of the natural sciences, or a conclusion of physics, or can be proved by experience or disproved by experience, is a sad confession of their utter paucity of understanding their own position.
The results of physical experiments cannot be used to attack or defend metaphysical conjectures or deductions, any more than music theory can be used to attack or defend a theory of astronomy.
It should be too obvious to mention that empirical experiments are always conditional in their findings, that is, under such-and-such conditions, so-and-so is seen to be the result. The statement that ‘All is Matter’ is a universal, applying to everything in existence, microscopic and macroscopic, near and far, past and present and otherwise.
No possible experiment can examine each and every object in reality past and present and hold it before our eyes, and neither our eyes nor any other sense would tell us if the foundational or fundamental being creating the sense impression is physical matter as opposed to something else — the deceptions of Maya, for example, the illusions of the Matrix, or the delirium induced by a the deceptive demon invented by Descartes or the Demiurge by the Gnostics.
Therefore the statement ‘All is Matter’ cannot possibly be a conclusion of an experiment in physics. Therefore appeals to empirical evidence to confirm or deny Panphysicalism are vain.
Fourth and finally, one should actually make an argument, that is, a set of statements resting upon a shared starting assumption, logically related to each other as antecedent and consequent leading to the conclusion one is defending.
To defend the statement ‘All is Matter’ it must be shown that the idea of a non-material something is incoherent; it must be shown that an insubstantial substance is a contradiction in terms; it must be shown to be something that cannot exist.
Read the whole thing, as Mr. Wright proceeds to present, not one, but three, arguments, on behalf of panphysical philosophy. One could consider them strawmen, as they are arguments that the rational materialists have not actually presented and Mr. Wright has previously and preemptively rebutted all three of them, except for the fact that these straw-arguments are considerably more substantial than anything the rational materialists have shown themselves able to construct on their own.
Fans of Mr. Wright might also be interested in his interview concerning TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN on the SciPhi show.
I like Italy here, even without Buffon. I don’t think England is the first-rate team the English are so firmly convinced that it is. I don’t think Italy has it to win the Cup, but they should win the group.
We had our year-end 9×9 tournament today. What a disaster. I repeatedly felt like Lens watching Robben taking on two defenders and the goalie instead of simply passing the ball to the guy standing in front of the empty net. The important difference being that my teammates aren’t Robben and we scored only one goal in four games.
I put it down to too much World Cup watching. Everyone suddenly thinks they’re considerably better than they are. In any event, this would be your open World Cup post.
It may surprise some to hear it, but my primary influence as a columnist was probably George Will. Mostly due to his ability to deliver methodical bitchslappings of the sort he provides to a few senatorial critics. The old guy still has it:
I have received your letter of June 12, and I am puzzled. You say my statistics “fly in the face of everything we know about this issue.” You do not mention which statistics, but those I used come from the Obama administration, and from simple arithmetic involving publicly available reports on campus sexual assaults.
The administration asserts that only 12 percent of college sexual assaults are reported. Note well: I did not question this statistic. Rather, I used it.
I cited one of the calculations based on it that Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute has performed {link}. So, I think your complaint is with the conclusion that arithmetic dictates, based on the administration’s statistic. The inescapable conclusion is that another administration statistic that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college is insupportable and might call for tempering your rhetoric about “the scourge of sexual assault.”
As for what you call my “ancient beliefs,” which you think derive from an “antiquated” and “counterintuitive” culture, allow me to tell you something really counterintuitive: I think I take sexual assault much more seriously than you do. Which is why I worry about definitions of that category of crime that might, by their breadth, tend to trivialize it. And why I think sexual assault is a felony that should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, and not be adjudicated by improvised campus processes.
If there was one thing I learned from Will, it was this: always check their numbers. Con artists always get the math wrong.
I was sent this link to why the Babylon 5 guy quit SFWA:
I resigned SFWA (back before it became SFFWA) for the reasons you
cite, and over the whole Dramatic Nebula issue, which was for me the
defining moment and the proverbial straw across the equally
proverbial camel’s back. A number of us — me, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Mike Cassutt,
Harlan, others — attempted to get SFWA to restore the Dramatic
Nebula, which had been dropped for a number of years. In the course
of this, I received more abusive, vitriolic, hateful pieces of mail
and email than I can begin to describe to you. It rivals or exceeds
*anything* ever sent to me in any flame war. All from other SFWA
members. One quote I remember vividly is emblematic of the whole: “I
work my ass off writing for pennies a word, while all you hacks in TV
churn out crap for thousands of dollars a page. You and your LA
buddies will never get a Dramatic Nebula as long as I’m alive.”And that was the nicest letter I got. It was explained to me, in mail, email and the SFWA journal, that
scriptwriting wasn’t really *writing*, it was just typing. That TV
writers weren’t really writers. That you can’t read a script unless
you’re trained, so you can’t vote on it. That since TV/film is often
a collaborative form, you don’t know who contributed what, so how can
you give a nebula? And there’s George Martin’s argument, that SFWA
should give Dramatic Nebulas to scriptwriters when WGA allows prose
writers to join.And the responses to this…it *is* writing, you *can* read the
script easily, it’s just the margins that are different. Editors
often contribute structure and ideas and other material to the books
they edit, but I don’t see that stopping regular nebulas. And SFWA
was built around a particular *genre*, anything in that genre is or
should be acceptable; WGA is built around *form*, the script, and any
genre within that form is acceptable. We’re talking apples and
oranges here.I was even willing to remove myself from all future DN consideration
to remove the notion that I was doing this to get one myself. It was
the principle, for one vital reason:At that time, SFWA allowed scripts to qualify you for membership in
SFWA. Scripts were fine as far as SFWA was concerned as long as it
brought in more in the way of membership dues. If it brought money
INTO SFWA, then it was writing, and qualified script writers to join
SFWA. But when it came time to give out the dramatic nebula…nope,
suddenly it ain’t writing no more.It was a clear contradiction, and a bald-faced double-standard.
Hypocrisy at its most blatant. So finally, when the move to restore the Dramatic Nebula was vetoed,
I quit. The final irony being this: over the 10 years or so I’d been
a member, I’d written maybe 7 or 8 letters to be published in the
SFWA Journal, which appears quarterly or monthly, I forget now.
There were (and are) people who had something in almost every issue,
often for pages at a time. I sent my letter of resignation to the
Journal, and it has never to this day been printed. Because once it
became clear that I was no longer going to continue paying dues
(though I was still a member at the time of the letter, and for
several months thereafter, until my prior payment ran out), they
really had no interest in hearing anything from a scriptwriter. They
later tried the excuse that it was too long, but it was exactly the
same length as the majority of letters that appeared in the Journal.In fighting for the rights of script-members of SFWA on the DN
issue, and the perception of scriptwriters in general, I was
insulted, abused, targeted, slandered, ridiculed, threatened and
harrassed. While there are many fine individuals who belong to the
group, as an organization is is provincial and small minded and
insecure and jealous. Any John Norman GOR novel would theoretically
be eligible for a Nebula, but 12 Monkeys would not. If an SF novel
sells 35,000 copies, it’s a great thing; 100,000 is a *terrific*
thing, much ballyhooed by the SF establishment. B5 has a hardcore
audience of between 10 and 15 *million* people.So bottom-line…yeah, I left SFWA because I got tired of the
contempt the organization and many of its members held (and still
hold) for scriptwriters. When it came time to accept the Science
Fiction Weekly’s award for “The Coming of Shadows,” I stepped into
the SFFWA suite (where they were to be given out) just long enough to
find the guys involved, and get out again. And the award was
presented out in the hallway, because I didn’t want it to happen
there. As I told the organizer, I wouldn’t go into the SFFWA suite
for this if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free
chemotherapy at the door.
And here I thought I was supposed to be the first SFWA member to ever attack another member in an official SFWA channel. In any event, the organization is clearly not a place for people with principles. And how typical is it of the cowardly little freaks that they didn’t print his letter of resignation. They still haven’t announced my expulsion either.
Now the freaks aren’t being snobbish about scriptwriters; they’re too busy trying to become scriptwriters themselves. They content themselves now with trying to look down on self-publishers, who they also insist are not real writers.