Category: Uncategorized

Am I a racist?

Back when I first responded to NK Jemisin’s various attacks and lies in my inimitably calm and factual manner, the SFWA writers reacted with much the same combination of outrage and vitriol with which the Pink SF/Fers have met the news of the nomination of one of my works for the Hugo Award. However, when I invited them to attempt to prove that anything I said was a) false, or, b) racist, every single one of them tucked tail and ran away. Every single one of them.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden was nothing but talk. John Scalzi was nothing but talk. Stephen Gould was nothing but talk. Jason Sanford was nothing but talk. Teresa Nielsen Hayden was nothing but talk. Charles Stross was nothing but talk. Every single one of these self-proclaimed champions of the marginalized and the oppressed fell silent rather than defend their supposed principles.

This may be because they were afraid that I could make my case, or perhaps they simply feared to have their own secret racism exposed to their peers. It’s even possible they were sufficiently self-aware to realize how silly they would look if they attempted to define racism down to  “being insufficiently obsequious to an individual of predominantly sub-Saharan descent.”

So, perhaps the larger community of fen is capable of doing what the SFWA community was not, which is actually proving the truth of their oft-repeated charges. I’m therefore extending an invitation to publicly make the case for my supposed racism to anyone who has asserted that I am a racist on the basis of my statements concerning “the educated, but ignorant half-savage” NK Jemisin.

If you truly believe what you are asserting about me, then I invite you to demonstrate the truth of your beliefs here. It should be easy, after all, right? If my statements are so blatantly racist as you claim them to be, how could you not show it to all and sundry. I will not only post your argument here in its entirety, but am willing to honestly answer any questions you might have, without evasion, with the sole requirement that you must agree to honestly answer my questions, without evasion, until we mutually agree that no further discussion is possible.

And if no one steps forward, well, everyone will then know that these accusations of racism are spurious, those making them don’t truly believe what they are saying, and none of the accusers have the courage of their supposedly anti-racist convictions. The black community will know that for all their talk of inclusiveness and equality, not a single white individual in SF/F was willing to stand up and defend them. And let’s face it, if every single anti-racist in the community is afraid to publicly confront racists, then it should be readily apparent that the racists are going to win in the end.

Mailvox: The Greatest American Author

Nate poses the question:

Faulkner?  Hemingway?  Poe?  Some other? Go. I lean towards Faulkner myself… but I am an inveterate southron rebel.. and so I confess bias.  That doesn’t mean I’m not correct.

I have to admit that I admire Faulkner, for his attitude towards publishers and prizes if nothing else. But I am not especially fond of his work.  Hemingway I find to be considerably overrated, more a product of his self-promotion than anything else. His lean, stripped-down prose was innovative and influential, but I think it has had a seriously deleterious effect on literature. One has only to read John C. Wright to lament the world of rich and expansive prose that we have lost.

We are all the children of Hemingway and we are the worse off for it.

I am strongly partial to Edgar Allen Poe, but I am concerned that may be more due to my inclination for the morbid than anything else. Before I cast my vote for him, perhaps we should cast a broader net.

There is John Updike. No, he is too self-conscious, too inclined towards literary posturing. Everything reads as if he is looking expectantly at the readers and anticipating their approval: “look, Ma, I’s writin’!” John Irving has a way with words, but he wrote essentially the same book over and over, and I found his petty, exaggerated absurdities to be insulting. Saul Bellow is boring and tedious. Philip Roth is perverted, self-absorbed, and tedious.

There is O. Henry, whose short stories are among the best ever written, but there is more to literary greatness than tight plotting and clever twist endings.

Neal Stephenson merits being at least mentioned, as I would consider his Reamde to be a legitimate candidate for a Great American Novel. But his grasp of the human condition, to say nothing of his difficulty with endings, is too shaky in comparison with the other greats. Ray Bradbury is the most sentimental American author, and I would argue that Dandelion Wine is the most perfect portrait of the traditional America to which every sane American would like to return, but, like Stephenson, the mere inclusion on the list is sufficient. I would say that Bradbury is the greatest American SF author, however.

I am an F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, but his work is too little and too light to merit serious consideration. I have not read Thomas Pynchon, and I seriously hope that no one would so foolish as to propose David Foster Wallace with a straight face. Tom Wolfe’s novels have always struck me as cartoons, insightful and observant cartoons, to be sure, but cartoons nevertheless. Kurt Vonnegut is an unfunny clown; I put him below Stephen King. Hell, I’d put him below Stephanie Miller and Laurell K. Hamilton. Jack London might be the quintessentially American writer, but his style was far too limited to merit serious consideration.

At the end of the day, I don’t see how it is possible to go with anyone but Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain himself. He had the complete package, prose, plot, characters, and commentary on the human condition, in addition to fully representing the American spirit.

A fair playing field

It is, I think, important to distinguish between the rabbits who are doing their usual rabbiting and the people at the organization that gives out the Hugo Awards. There may be some ideological overlap, but it is quite clear from everything that I have experienced and observed that the WorldCon people take their responsibilities seriously and have every intention of remaining above the fray. Kevin Standlee, who is one of the site administrators for thehugoawards.org, comments on the matter:

I have not seen any serious proposals to attempt to limit eligibility for the Awards based on the content of the works. What I have seen are “right-wing” people saying that they’re sure that “left-wing” people will show up and pass rules prohibiting “those people” (whoever they are) from being on the ballot. These are the sort of oppression fantasy that both the left and right are prone to embracing, and they won’t happen. Even if someone would be so foolish as to try to introduce such a tom-fool motion, I predict it would be shot out of the water faster than you can say “Object to Consideration!”

I mean this. The regular attendees of the WSFS Business Meeting are a fractious lot who disagree profoundly over many things (there are many people posting here who can probably substantiate this, starting with Our Gracious Hosts), but I’ve seen the meeting’s members stand together as nearly one when this class of proposal comes before the meeting. Indeed, one particular fugghead proposed four bonehead proposals naming an individual and attempting to do something similar to trying to disqualify individuals for the Hugo Awards (albeit it was about Site Selection rather than the Hugos). The four proposals were killed within four minutes. And the fool was naming someone who was not particularly well-liked and was a notorious gadfly. WSFS will stomp on such things, and the entire governance process of the society makes it so difficult to change the rules without being able to get a broad consensus in two widely differing locations (London and Spokane, in the current case) that I dismiss talk of trying to regulate the content of Hugo nominees (as opposed to their technical form) as delusions.

Every communication I have received from the Hugo Packet Administration from the moment they informed me of OVA’s nomination has been professional and polite. “Opera Vita Aeterna” will be in the packet along with the other nominated works, including all 14 volumes of The Wheel of Time, so it’s actually an astonishingly good deal for the $40 price of a supporting membership. And, if you recall, even when the nominations were announced, they were announced by the LonCon representatives in a level and impartial manner.

My impression is that the Awards people are primarily concerned that everyone follows the rules appropriately. Since Larry and I both did so, they have no inherent problem with our nominations nor do they have any desire to sabotage their own system merely because a few people on the Left don’t happen to be overly enamored of us. Indeed, they seemed to be pleased to announce the fact that a record number of nominating ballots were cast and I have heard they are anticipating a record number of votes for the awards. Supporting membership sales are also up. All three things are historical feathers in LonCon’s cap.

So, I strongly suggest leaving the Awards people out of it. Many of you have argued that it is important to separate the professional from the personal and the political, and they appear to be doing precisely that, regardless of what their personal sympathies and political inclinations may happen to be. For which, I would think they are to be congratulated, not condemned.

Now to speak of an unfair playing field. One of the site administrators of Making Light, Abi Sutherland declared:

(You know what I would love? adore? enjoy the heck out of? A genuine Larry Correia fan coming here and enthusing about the work. Taking about what it is, not what it is not; talking about why they love it rather than why they hate Librul SF and the Libruls who read it. And that is the difference between Correia and Day, in my view. I can’t picture a Day fan doing that and making it work.)

I think she’s wrong. In fact, I think my fans are every bit as capable of explaining why they love what they love in a positive manner as Larry’s fans. So, if you are inclined to enthuse about one of my works, talk about what it is rather than what it is not, and explain why you love it, I would encourage you to go there and do so. But I will caution you that you will be attacked, ridiculed, insulted, disbelieved, and most likely, disemvoweled by the Toad of Tor, so don’t even think about doing it unless you can remain calm and resist the temptation to respond in kind. Remember, you’re never going to convince the closed minds of the sort that will respond to you, but you can convince the larger numbers of more reasonable people who read in silence.

Did she hear the song?

It would seem so:

There have been 13 senior financial services executives deaths around the world this year, but the most notable thing about the sad suicide of the 14th, a 52-year-old banker at France’s Bred-Banque-Populaire, is she is the first female. As Le Parisien reports, Lydia (no surname given) jumped from the bank’s Paris headquarter’s 14th floor shortly before 10am.

However, this one looks considerably less suspicious than some of the others.

Larry wins

As the Torlings double down to concede his point. Lest any of you Hugo voters feel any need to be objective, or to avoid downgrading authors for their political views or being published by Tor, consider the publicly expressed perspective of one of the larger Torlings, Tor editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Here’s the deal for me:

Why should I vote to tell the rest of the world that SF is a place where the only difference between James White and Vox Day is their commercially published texts?

The awards we give out are are a giant signal saying “This is what we love, this is what we value, this is what we think is important.”

Why the hell am I supposed to lie about what those things are?

Why have I not been flaming hairless people who refer to the bizarre text-only voting protocol they’re trying to push on me as “honest”? It’s obvious they’re suggesting that doing anything else is dishonest.

The way they want me to vote is not honest. It’s not how I think. Nor is it how I’ve ever voted. Nor is it how most of fandom has thought, or how it’s voted, year after year, for many decades.

The Toad of Tor could not have underlined Larry’s point more clearly: the Hugo awards are nothing but a giant signal. Voting based on literary merit is not only unnecessary, it is entirely irrelevant. To even suggest people should vote based on literary merit is “not honest”. She openly claims “the artist’s work can’t be divided from the artist’s politics.”

How very Marxian of her. Forget the personal. The professional is the political.

Very well. So those are the rules. Now you have to ask yourself what is important to you? A lady astronaut on Mars? The truth of feelings? Or a work of eternal life? What do you value, courage and camaraderie and the triumph of well-armed good over evil, a vast and meandering morass of moral equivalency, or parasitism? What do you love, the humble faith of a beleaguered chaplain or ersatz horses or the feminist retellings of fairy tales?

You have Tor’s blessing to send them an unmistakable signal. If Tor publishes it, it goes below No Award.

Lion’s Den: Witchfinder 2

RW provides a second review of WITCHFINDER, by Sarah Hoyt:

3 parts Fantasy
2 parts Fairy Tale
1 splash of Science Fiction
1 dash of Mythology

Mix ingredients thoroughly with magic. Garnish with a slice of Romance.

Sarah A. Hoyt has ambitiously attempted to tie together fantasy, fairy tale, and a bit of romance; and for the most part she pulls it off brilliantly.  It is a difficult work to review without being a spoiler since part of the enjoyment of reading this book is watching how she develops the worlds in the multi-verse and how she incorporates many elements from well-known stories from fairy tales and mythology, with an occasional nod to religion, into a coherent whole.

CHARACTERS: Hoyt does an exceptional job bringing her characters to life.  She uses a formulaic approach to how most of them are developed throughout the story, where she describes them in three stages of growth.  The first stage is she portrays them as they seem to be to others or how they believe that they have to act.  The second stage occurs as they interact with each other and start to learn each other’s secrets and true selves.  For the final stage Hoyt shows the characters starting to understand what they really need to be in order to fulfill their destiny.  In lesser hands this template approach would seem two-dimensional, but Hoyt uses this approach to good effect aligning the character development within the scope of the overall story. (8/10)

PROSE: Hoyt’s prose is hard to describe; in some places it is fluid and conversational, but in other places it borders on being poetic.  Her ability to create word pictures aids in her development of new worlds as she masterfully describes exotic places, Fairyland in particular.  She mentioned in her write-up that the story was written as blog postings over many months, and there is a slow evolution in the use of punctuation and grammar as the story progresses.  Similarly, there were quite a few typos, but she has already claimed these too. (7/10)

PLOT: [Warning: this section contains a few spoilers, so if you plan on reading the book I suggest skipping down to the IDEAS paragraph.] The general structure holds nicely as she develops a modern-day fairy tale of a young lady coming to terms with the fact that she is a princess in another world.  Simultaneously Hoyt creates a concurrent plot about a family of world-jumping witches, closer to the fantasy genre.  The stories intertwine early, with heavy doses of mystery and suspense as the Duke of Darkwater realizes that he is being targeted; and all of the characters begin to question the motives of each other, even their closest family members.

However, there are a few items that weaken the story in my opinion.  The first is relatively minor: the character of the matriarch, the dowager duchess Ainsling, is very interesting and plays a large role in the early part of the story, but then she disappears for most of the second half, making a brief cameo at the end.   The second is that the novel’s climatic showdowns don’t quite live up to the promise of the escalation of the conflicts.  The third issue might be related to Hoyt’s stated goal that she was writing more of a romantic work to lure female fantasy readers. The issue I had is that there are discussions of cross-species relationships, necrophilia, child prostitution, and a heavy dose of homosexuality.  The cross-species relationships is understandable given that the book is somewhere between fantasy and fairytale, but the other items seemed somewhat forced.  My reason for bringing this up is that with the exception of these items, along with maybe two or three unnecessary expletives, I would have liked to pass the book along to my young adolescent daughter to read, as I’m sure she would enjoy the story.  If the author feels that the homosexual relationship is integral to the story, then I’d suggest that she continue to use vague references and hints, as she used earlier in the book where she was modeling it after Regency romances. (6/10)

IDEAS: I thought that the most creative aspect of Hoyt’s universe is that all of the worlds have their own versions of legends and fairytales based on actual happenings, mainly in either Avalon or Fairyland.  As with any fairytale, there are a couple of morals to conclude the story: lead when called upon, and be a servant-leader, not a tyrant. (5/10)

TOTAL: (6.5/10)  In truth I liked Witchfinder better than that score indicates, mainly because it equally weighs all four of the elements above.  This book is the first of Hoyt’s works that I have read, and I found it enjoyable enough that I expect that I’ll soon be reading other books from her.  Men concerned about the “romance” label need not be scared away since the love story is in the background through most of the book.  If Hoyt were to address the issues mentioned above, then I would give this book a high recommendation to young readers as well.

A correction

It appears I unfairly lumped Alan Heuer in with the rest of the spineless Torlings yesterday. He commented:

I see that one of my Tor.com posts is quoted in this post. It seems that my post is being lumped in with the posts of people who are declaring that they will vote against certain works because of the political views of their authors. This is not my stance at all.

My post states that I will be voting “No Award” ahead of THE WHEEL OF TIME in the Best Novel category. I know nothing of what Robert Jordan’s politics were or what Brandon Sanderson’s politics are. I simply think it is ridiculous that a 14-book series published over the span of 23 years is being allowed to compete for a Hugo for best novel of the YEAR. I do not see it as a legitimate nominee.

This will be my 41st consecutive year of Hugo voting and, as always, I will judge the works, not the authors.

I don’t agree with Mr. Heuer’s perspective, since the fact that the rules may be ridiculous is not sufficient to make THE WHEEL OF TIME’s nomination illegitimate, but it is a perfectly reasonable and defensible one. Not that I will be voting for THE WHEEL OF TIME myself, as Rand al’Thor is the most loathsome protagonist I have ever encountered in fantasy, I lost interest in both the story and the characters, and I wound up failing to make it past the fifth or sixth book in the series.

I have removed Mr. Heuer’s comment from the post and I apologize to him for the erroneous implication that he lacks integrity in the manner of the other quoted individuals.

And speaking of the Hugos, at the Castalia blog Daniel Eness has a post comparing past Best Novel winners in which he shows that there is a long tradition of a) forgettable works beating out superior ones, and, b) ludicrous No Award votes.

Amateur hour

I haven’t written much about the prospective war in Ukraine because it is mostly a military farce:

Standing on the hood of an armored personnel carrier as his ashen-faced
paratroopers slumped behind him, Col. Alexander Shvets of Ukraine’s
25th Airborne reported back to command on a cheap cell phone.

“We’ve been taken captive. They used dirty tricks,” he said. The
hundreds of local residents and ragtag militiamen that had surrounded
his column of 13 APCs throughout Wednesday bayed. “Look,” he continued,
losing his patience. “I’ve been surrounded by a human shield of 500
people all day. You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.”

As the sun set, Shvets and his men — many of whom were reservists
called up to help Ukraine regain control of the eastern province of
Donetsk from anti-government rebel groups — were allowed to drive back
to their base in neighboring Dnipropetrovsk. The day they spent here
outside the small town of Kramatorsk, hemmed in by angry residents, was
emblematic of the Ukrainian central government’s withering attempt to
assert control in the East, now in tatters….

Ukraine’s “anti-terrorist operation” against
anti-government rebels has proved a spectacular debacle. Soldiers
refused to move in on rebel-held positions. The rebels captured six
APCs, drove the soldiers into Slovyansk flying the Russian flag, and
sent them back on dingy buses, dejected, disarmed, and defeated.
Self-appointed “self-defense” commanders who couldn’t even agree on
which one of them was in charge disarmed and defeated Ukraine’s army.

This government ineptitude is a common theme of late. An elderly rancher forced hundreds of federal agents into retreat. A few hundred civilians captured multiple armored personal carriers. The USA has been pursuing an obviously futile occupation in Afghanistan for 13 years now to little purpose and no avail. Mexico is a failed state where cartels rule entire regions.

The central governments are exhausted and bankrupt. They’re turning up the tax and regulatory heat around the world even as their corruption becomes ever more apparent. Meanwhile, they are afraid to utilize their heavily militarized agencies because they fear the inevitable backlash that will threaten to destabilize their pretenses to legitimacy. The people over which they nominally rule are fat, decadent, weak, and fearful.

Fraud and empty gestures are the order of the day. A battalion of troops have been sent to Poland, of all places? A whole battalion to intimidate the Russians, who sent both Napoleon and Hitler running? This would be comical if it wasn’t an obvious harbinger of much more difficult times to come.

The nominees speak

Brad Torgersen, 2x 2014 Hugo nominee for Best Novella and Best Novelette, weighs in on the Hugo kerfluffle:

As has often been the case when I observe these kinds of things, I remain puzzled that the group which dubs itself “fandom” (in the parlance of the original Worldcons of yore) and which is always self-analyzing so as to determine how it can bring in more young fans, more diverse fans, and more energetic fans, could react so poorly to Larry Correia bringing Monster Hunter Nation to the Hugo nominations — as if the state of New York were aghast that the state of Texas showed up for a national party caucus during the run-up to a major election.

Isn’t bringing new people into old-school fandom part of the point of Worldcon?

But it wasn’t just Monster Hunter Nation that had certain people in fandom riled up. Wheel of Time fans managed to get the entire series (Jordan/Sanderson) on the ballot too — for Best Novel Hugo. Which is not precisely against the rules of the nomination process, but Wheel of Time is a massive series that is almost 30 years old. Seeing it in the Best Novel category alongside the other books for 2014 is highly unusual to say the least. So unusual, in fact, that some people in fandom have chosen to get upset about it; to the same degree those individuals in fandom are upset about Monster Hunter Nation getting the third installment in Larry Correia’s Hard Magic series onto the ballot, with Warbound: Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles.

My response to the plaintiffs is: why not?

As does Larry Correia, 2014 Hugo nominee for Best Novel:

Allow me to explain why the presence of my slate on the Hugo
nominations is so controversial. This is complicated and your time is
valuable, so short explanation first, longer explanation if you care
after.

Short Version:

  1. I said a chunk of the Hugo voters are biased toward the left, and
    put the author’s politics far ahead of the quality of the work. Those
    openly on the right are sabotaged. This was denied.
  2. So I got some right wingers on the ballot.
  3. The biased voters immediately got all outraged and mobilized to do exactly what I said they’d do.
  4. Point made.

I’ve said for a long time that the awards are biased against authors
because of their personal beliefs. Authors can either cheer lead for
left wing causes, or they can keep their mouth shut. Open disagreement
is not tolerated and will result in being sabotaged and slandered.
Message or identity politics has become far more important than
entertainment or quality. I was attacked for saying this. I knew that
when an admitted right winger got in they would be maligned and
politicked against, not for the quality of their art but rather for
their unacceptable beliefs.

If one of us outspoken types got nominated, the inevitable backlash,
outrage, and plans for their sabotage would be very visible. So I
decided to prove this bias and launched a campaign I called Sad Puppies
(because boring message fiction is the leading cause of Puppy Related
Sadness).

The Hugos are supposed to be about honoring the best works,
and many of the voters still take this responsibility very seriously. I
thank them for this. But basically the Hugos are a popularity contest
decided by the attendees of WorldCon. I am a popular writer, however my
fans aren’t typical WorldCon attendees. Anyone who pays to purchase a
WorldCon membership is allowed to vote. Other writers, bloggers, and
even publishing houses have encouraged their fans to get involved in the
nomination process before. I simply did the same thing. This
controversy arises only because my fans are the wrong kind of fans.

It’s interesting to see how much more sane and reasonable both men sound than the Torlings and the shrieking pinkshirts offended that their little SF/F sanctum has been invaded by the ideologically impure. In any event, there is considerably more to both posts than the small portions I posted here, so don’t hesitate to click through.

Castalia House Store

Ladies and gentlemen, Dread Ilk, casual fans, rubberneckers, anklebiters, and fellow Hugo Award nominees, I am very pleased indeed to announce to you that the Castalia House online store is now open for business.

Our selection is somewhat scanty at present, as the participation of certain books in Amazon’s Kindle Select program precludes them from being offered at the Castalia store for now. You will look in vain for Lt. Col Tom Kratman. You will offer no sacrifices on any Altars of Hate. Der Verstand werden Sie nicht finden. E li, i ragazzi piangono mai.

What you will find in the Fantasy section is four fine works of fiction, including AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND by John C. Wright. All of them are also DRM-free, in EPUB format. What you will find in the Science Fiction section are two tales of the future, both involving Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower, MCID-XAR. And, most importantly, what you will find in the Homeschool section are the four books that make up the ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS curriculum by Dr. Sarah Salviander. They are also DRM-free, but are in PDF format for easy printing.

While we have not yet officially announced the curriculum, as we are in the process of having the curriculum reviewed by a number of homeschool sites, I wanted to make it available to VP readers as soon as possible, as I know that there are many homeschoolers here who are presently preparing their coursework for the autumn. It has been declared to be “a top-notch astronomy
curriculum” by Laurie Bluedorn of Trivium Pursuit fame, and is literally serving as the model for other Castalia House curricula, including Physics, Economics, and Military History.

And don’t forget that the Castalia House blog is active too. Today Mascaro reviews Fearless, the second book in the Lost Fleet series.