Category: Uncategorized

The Torlings scheme

So much for the idea of moving on. In the squalid semi-aquatic home of the Nielsen-Haydens, the Torlings have taken their cue from Mr. Scalzi and are planning their Hugo voting strategy accordingly:

TOR editor PNH: On stories from Tor.com making up over one-third of the short-fiction finalists: LOUD CRIES OF WOO HOO. And congratulations to Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (“Wakulla Springs,” best novella), Charles Stross (“Equoid,” best novella), Mary Robinette Kowal (“The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” best novelette), Thomas Olde Heuvelt (“The Ink Readers of Doi Saket,” best short story), and Viable Paradise alumnus John Chu (“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” best short story).

#25 ::: Andrew Plotkin ::: April 20, 2014, 05:43 PM:

You made this coy statement in the open thread as well, and I confess that I still don’t know whether you’re referring to the Jordan/Sanderson or the Correia. Or something in one of the other categories.

#27 ::: Xopher Halftongue ::: April 20, 2014, 06:25 PM:

Andrew, I was referring to the Novelette category, where one of the items is by someone who calls himself “Ibk Qnl” (rot13’d so his egoscan won’t find this thread so easily) (and yes, he means what that sounds like he means by it) aka Gurnqber Ornyr, also known as “the RSHD” (for Racist, Sexist, Homophobic Dipshit – not rot13’d because if he’s searching for himself by that name, well, haha, RSHD). I see no reason to read his work and judge it on its merits. He would not do that for my work, or for any work by a woman or person of color.

#59 ::: Alan Braggins ::: April 21, 2014, 10:22 AM:

Charlie Stross has said he will be ranking “No Award” above “Anthem” in the retro-Hugos. I suspect he will not be alone in that.

#175 ::: Xopher Halftongue ::: April 24, 2014, 02:47 AM:

As for Vox Day, I propose that the gang of idiots who do the bidding of that racist, sexist, homophobic dipshit be henceforth called “snotlings” (I got this from a card/board game I played years ago). They’re not even up to the level of trolls. They’re just little runny noses with legs, and they can be annoying to clean up after, but not seriously damaging, because they’re so pathetic.

Since the Torlings have decided to so thoroughly politicize the Hugo Awards vote this year, it seems to me that one would be absolutely remiss if one failed to follow their example by voting NO AWARD above every single work published by Tor and every nominated Tor editor this year. After all, since there are so few of us and we are not seriously damaging, it can’t possibly matter what we do. Just a thing for you to keep in mind when voting time rolls around, for no particular reason at all.

A few more examples of Torling strategery in action:

tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden
I look forward to record levels of “5. No Award. 6. Vox Day” in the Best Novelette category.

John Scalzi on Whatever
Apropos of nothing in particular, however, I will note that in every category it is possible to rank a nominated work below “No Award” if, after reading the work in question and giving it fair and serious consideration, you decide that it doesn’t deserve to be on the ballot and, say, that its presence on the ballot is basically a stunt by a bunch of nominators who were more interested in trolling the awards than anything else. Just a thing for you to keep in mind when voting time rolls around.

John Scalzi on Whatever
I’ve seen rumblings of people suggesting they’ll put everyone on the Correia/Day slate below “no award” no matter what

Charlie Stross @cstross Apr 19
I won’t comment on current nominees, but the dead are fair game: I’ll be ranking “no award” above “Anthem” in the retros.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 19
No: it would be inappropriate for me, as a nominee, to attack other nominees. I shall reserve comment until after the award.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 19
No, it means Vox Day’s troll posse esteem Vox Day more than you. I’d call that a badge of honor, if I were you.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 19
I doubt VD can afford to buy the award vote. Buying nominations is a much, much cheaper kind of shit-stirring.

Charlie Stross ‏@cstross Apr 23
I
find no inaccuracies in this RationalWiki page except that it ranks the
subject with other, *real* pundits:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale …

Ian Sales ‏@ian_sales
@PrinceJvstin the reasonable response to the Hugo farrago is to put “no award” above the Axis of Evil works

Djibril al-Ayad ‏@thefuturefire
I am looking forward to ranking “No Award” higher than Vox Day, Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, Dan Wells, Steve Diamond, & Toni Weisskopf.

XoScarab Halftongue ‏@Halftongue
Well, look at this. A Hugo nom that ended up AFTER “No Award” on the final ballot. http://www.nesfa.org/data/LL/Hugos/hugos1987.html

Christophe ‏@Xof
@jacobian A quick moment to remind Hugo voters that ranking a particular work behind “No Award” is an option in the final voting.

Just F-ing Keftastic ‏@Keffy
A propos of y’know whatever, remember that the Hugo ballot has a lovely No Award option that you can place at any point in your ranking. 🙂

Andrew Hickey ‏@stealthmunchkin
Didn’t vote in Hugos last couple of years because Hugo Packet PDF rather than proper epub. May have to this year,to put “no award” above Day

James Davis Nicoll
Monday April 21, 2014 05:15pm EDT on Tor.com
Happily, the Hugos not only allow one to rate an undeserving work below all the others, it also allows one to rate said undeserving work below No Award.

Kate Nepveu
I feel under no obligation to read Vox Day’s work, under the guise of fairness or anything else, and neither should you. 

Mailvox: irritated by atheists

DB has a tough time maintaining an even keel when arguing with atheists:

How do you maintain your temper when arguing with atheists. I cannot. I find myself so angry that I cannot take anything they say at face value. God has spoken to me and told me to stop arguing with atheists. I can still witness but under no circumstances may I argue. I am directed to pity them and pray for their salvation.

Do you ever wonder if you are helping them or if you are getting through at all? I feel a visceral anger at them and the damage they have caused our society. I am no longer going to be arguing on the internet or in person. How can they be anything but enemies of all that is good?

Since good is defined by God and since atheists are, by definition, active disbelievers in God, logic dictates that atheists are enemies of God and all that is good. This logic is confirmed by observation; examine any evil and the chances are high that atheists are disproportionately caught up in it, or at the very least are overt advocates.

But that doesn’t mean you should get angry with them when they start arguing dishonestly, attempting to pass off rhetoric as dialectic, moving the goalposts, holding you to standards they don’t hold themselves, offering repeated bait-and-switches, and falling silent rather than admitting defeat. To the contrary, such behaviors indicate that they know they are losing the argument.

The reason I never get even a little upset by the atheist with whom I am debating is because I know they are not my intended audience. I don’t care if they cling stubbornly to their erroneous beliefs nor do I care what they do in order to preserve them. To me they are little more than a stage prop, a straight man, a feeder of lines. The worse my interlocutor’s behavior becomes, the more convincing my arguments are perceived by the audience. In fact, for me the difficulty is not maintaining my equanimity, but rather, avoiding the temptation to intentionally trigger the bad behavior and thereby winning a rhetorical battle rather than a comprehensive dialectical one.

(NB: this is precisely why atheists go out of their way to be so offensive and to upset the Christian. It is an attempt to win the rhetorical battle by making you lose your temper.)

So, if you are a Christian who finds that atheists tend to make your temperature rise, apologetic debate is probably not for you. Serve the Kingdom in another role; pray for them. Pick them up when they fall down. Help them when they need assistance. More souls have been won for Jesus Christ by kindness than by words.

But atheists are prouder, more intelligent, and less emotional than the norm, and are therefore less convinced by deeds than words. So, many of them require their pride in their intelligence to be broken before they can reach a state of mind that permits them to hear the Good News and contemplate it rationally. And this is where people like me can open up their minds, by forcing them to acknowledge the myriad flaws in their arguments and by making them question their previously unquestioned assumptions. I know that I am getting through to at least some of them, because they have let me know that has been the case.

It’s rewarding and inspiring to see atheists transform from bitter enemies of God to fearless servants of Jesus Christ. If you keep in mind that the next arrogant, irritating, and slippery-tongued atheist you meet may be the larval form of a John C. Wright or an Apostle Paul, I suspect you will be able to find some charity in your heart for them.

A vile taste in her mouth

Oh my. Anyhow, I found the angst of a fellow Hugo nominee who professes to oppose “award campaigns” to be somewhat amusing:

Let me be clear: Vox Day is a despicable person whose repeated racist, sexist, and homophobic behavior towards specific members of the genre community as well as the community as a whole should make all decent human beings recoil from his presence.  That I received my first Hugo nomination on the same ballot that bears his name leaves a vile taste in my mouth.  That the rest of the fiction ballot feels, as several people have noted, as if it’s recapitulating the culture wars only makes this nomination worse, and confirms me in my feeling that the only people who benefit from award campaigns are those with large and devoted fanbases–whether those fanbases are motivated by love of a particular writer, or the desire to stick it to the lefties (or, as is most likely, both).
– Abigail Nussbaum, April 20

Or at least, she opposes them when she isn’t successfully running one of her own, or pimping out the “dozens” of others by various would-be nominees:

Even as the award eligibility phenomenon gains steam (and respectability), more and more people are also using the internet to create a more broadly informed voter base.  Dozens of people are posting their Hugo ballots and recommendations (to take a by no means exhaustive sample: Nina Allan, Thea and Ana at The Book Smugglers, Liz Bourke (1, 2, 3, 4), the bloggers of LadyBusiness, Justin Landon, Martin Lewis, Jonathan McCalmont (1, 2), Aidan Moher, Mari Ness, Ian Sales, Jared Shurin, Rachel Swirsky (1, 2, 3), Adam Whitehead).  Blogs like Hugo Award Eligible Art(ists) seek to inform people (like myself) who have little grounding in the category, and make them acquainted with worthwhile nominees.  Existing projects like Writertopia’s Campbell award eligibility page collate information that makes it easier to nominate for an award whose eligibility requirements can seem tricky even if you’re an old hand at this Hugo stuff.  If you’re someone who is interested in voting as more than a single author’s fan, it has never been easier to gain a broad appreciation of the field and its practitioners, even the ones who aren’t superstars.

I still don’t know whether award eligibility posts are part of the problem or simply a ineffective distraction.  I do think that the efforts I’ve been seeing in the last two months have a real chance of being part of the solution, and I mean to join in.  In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting my own Hugo ballot, a few categories at a time.  (I’ll also be posting links to works that I consider worthwhile on my twitter account.)
– Abigail Nussbaum, March 6

The ironic thing about the complaints that Larry and I somehow bought our nominations is that while my massive and energetic campaign consisted of a single and straightforward post, a blogger at Tor.com actively waged a successful cheerleading effort on behalf of the Tor-published Wheel of Time series:

Therefore, O my Peeps, I exhort you: if you can and will, please
consider nominating the Wheel of Time series as a whole for the Hugo
Award for Best Novel, and spread the word so that others might do the
same…. So go! Join! Nominate! Vote! Participate! And maybe help make Hugo
history, eh? I can think of worse things to do with your time!

Of course, the Dread Ilk know my actual position on liberals giving awards to each other:

Everyone has different goals. Rabbits need the group affirmation that
these sorts of political awards offer them. Not-rabbits don’t.
Psykosonik once beat out Prince for Best Dance Record at the Minnesota
Music Awards for a song I wrote; I didn’t know we’d won until months
later because not only did I not bother going to the ceremony, my bandmates who attended didn’t even see fit to mention that we won because they knew I didn’t care. I
didn’t even know I had been a three-time Billboard top 40 recording
artist for about 16 years until I looked it up a few months ago when I
was pointing out the dirty laundry of  the “New York Times bestselling”
authors.

When you are fortunate enough to experience success, you learn to value
certain aspects of it and to disvalue others.  My objective is to write a
great epic fantasy series that is capable of creating the same feeling
in its readers that Dune once created in me. That’s why I simply laugh
when people claim I’m jealous of McRapey, or I’m imitating George
Martin, or my feelings are wounded that A Throne of Bones wasn’t
nominated for any awards.*  Because in the game I’m playing, those things
don’t even enter into it. They’re not relevant to my metric for
success.

That being said, I have thoroughly enjoyed being nominated for the Hugo this year and I sincerely hope that this is merely the first of many such nominations for me and other fine writers upon whom the rabbits gaze upon in terror. I am very much looking forward to attending WorldCon this year and spending lots of quality time with my fellow Hugo nominees there, such as Mr. Charles Stross, who writes: “As a matter of policy I do not talk down/diss Hugo nominees when I myself am on the shortlist. But I shall be waiting for Vox Day in the Hugo Losers Party wearing a
kilt and a shit-eating grin, with a bottle of 90-proof distilled
schadenfreude that’s got his name on it.”

I don’t know. Sounds a little rape-culturey to me. For a nice roundup of the rabbits striking various poses and feeling the heat, check out Far Beyond Reality. And since it’s starting to get boring, I think that’s enough about the Hugo Awards for now until I’m able to read through the packet and decide for whom I’ll be voting.

*As it happens, the book was nominated for the 2013 Clive Staples Award.

I blame the anti-vaxxers

More benefits of vibrant immigration in the modern age:

E’ mistero sui circa quaranta ipotetici casi di Ebola registrati nella nostra Nazione. Il virus, diffuso soprattutto nel Continente africano – i casi “ufficiali” sono stati registrati in Senegal, Mali e Ghana – potrebbe essere arrivato il Italia “grazie” al massiccio esodo di immigrati sulle nostre coste. Un primo “campanello” d’ allarme era stato lanciato da Lampedusa. Secondo una notizia comparsa in rete (e subito rimossa per motivi di “sicurezza nazionale”) infatti, lo scorso 16 aprile sarebbe stato registrato un episodio epidemico sull’ isola, mai confermato, nè smentito dal nostro Ministero della Salute.

Un nuovo “SOS” circa la propagazione del virus dell’ Ebola nel Bel Paese viene, questa volta, dalla Toscana. Mezzo di diffusione della notizia choc è sempre la rete: blog, social network, siti dedicati hanno evidenziato il “curioso caso di San Rossore”, centro di accoglienza sito a Pisa, chiuso al pubblico a causa della presenza, all’ interno di esso, di quaranta cittadini extracomunitari che presenterebbero degli strani sintomi. Sandra Capuzzi, Assessore alle Politiche Sociali del Comune di Pisa, avrebbe liquidato gli allarmismi dei suoi concittadini, classificando le condizioni di salute dei profughi presenti nella struttura in questi termini: “Hanno solo un pò di febbre, causata dalle stressanti condizioni di viaggio alle quali i ragazzi sono stati sottoposti”. Sarà davvero così?

“It is a mystery concerning about 40 hypothetical cases of Ebola recorded in our Nation. The virus, mostly spread throughout the African continent – the official cases are recorded in Senegal, Mali, and Ghana – might have arrived in Italy thanks to the massive exodus of immigrants landing on our coast. A first alarm bell was sounded in Lampedusa. According to a news release that was quickly suppressed for national security reasons, on the 16th of April an episode of the epidemic was recorded on the island, although it was not confirmed or admitted by our Minister of Health.


“A new SOS concerning the propagation of the Ebola virus in the Beautiful Country then came, this time, out of Tuscany. The news spread through the Internet with evidence of “the curious case of San Rossore” the center of a housing site in Pisa closed to the public due to the presence of strange internal and external symptoms exhibited among 40 foreign nationals. Sandra Capuzzi, the Social Policy Director of the City of Pisa, tried to quench alarmism among the Pisan citizenry, classifying the condition of the health of the 40 foreigners in these terms: “They only have a little fever caused by the stressful conditions of their travel and living arragnements.” Is that really the case?”

I haven’t seen anything about it in the newspapers, although there is some whispering among the more conspiracy-minded sites. The rumor is that the failure of quarantine happened because the virus is a varient of the usual one that sometimes shows up as a false negative. One hopes this will turn out to be the usual nothing; it’s been a few days since this alarming report on containment being lost.

The outbreak of Ebola Virus in seven west African countries has broken through all containment efforts and is spreading like wildfire.  According to Christian Relief groups working in Guinea and Liberia, the number of confirmed infections jumped 15% in just the last 24 hours. In addition, 40 illegal alien migrant workers from the outbreak area, who came ashore in Pisa, Italy, are showing signs of Ebola infection and are being isolated in Pisa Italy because of fever and “conjunctivitis” (bloody around the eyes).  According to the World Health Organization, this strain of Ebola is entirely new and although it is close to the Zaire strain, it is different, thus accounting for false-negative test results . . . . . for weeks!

If only Jenny McCarthy hadn’t successfully convinced so many people not to get their ebola vaccinations! Forget Putin. Clearly she is the Hitler of our day.

Sterilizing tomorrow’s mothers

This comment from an Alpha Game reader should suffice to explain why all the efforts to push girls into technology careers are destined to fail:

Recently had an opportunity to observe an event specifically designed to expose high school girls to programming and coding. The event had corporate sponsors and top flight IT professionals. Workshops were designated for Code Divas and Design Duchesses.

A team of 20something women – ostensibly there to either relate and demonstrate how STEMMY girls wound up being successful or serve just to serve as relatable emotional conduit for the girls – were on hand. They primarily passed the time on phones checking Facebook or whispering about how living arrangements with Mr. So-and-So were frustrating them. Or so I overheard.

The high school girls with high SMV followed the basic directions in the workshop assignments, played with their hair, and generally looked bored. A couple of achiever girls actually thought outside the box and did some coding options that didn’t need hand-holding by the instructor.

When visiting information kiosks set up by local colleges and universities, the institutional reps asked the girls what their plans were for college. Of those I heard one-third didn’t know, one-third were entering health care (i.e. nursing), and one-third wanted to start their own business. Out of 60+ girls, less than 3 were actively interested pursuing anything programming or coding.

What could be taken from this event? The young women enjoyed the day, learned a few things, took the free stuff laid out to them, and less than 1% of them will become programmers or coders.

An effective use of resources, no doubt. The planners could probably get better results by recruiting from the stoners smoking behind the trash bins. The college plans indicate that 90 percent of these young women would be happiest becoming wives and mothers, as its the one profession that combines nursing with entrepreneurial activity. It’s interesting to see that teaching, which was once a young woman’s preferred form of ersatz motherhood, has become less popular as the schools become ever more vibrant.

This sick thing about our society is that we are actively dissuading these young women from doing what they want to do, what they are designed to do, and what society needs them to do, in favor of trying to coerce them into doing what they don’t want to do, what they’re not very good at, and what society has absolutely no need of them doing.

We’re seeing more women, like the policewomen in the UK and the female marine in the USA, angrily pointing out that they were set up for failure. And that is exactly what is happening to these “Code Divas” and “Design Duchesses”. Pushing careers they don’t want on them isn’t a way to empower or liberate women, it is a cruel means of turning them from the domestic queens they were meant to be into sterile, sub-par worker bees chiefly employed as office sex toys.

More fun with fake reviews

Dave O’Neill is just tired of all those “sorcerer in a monastery discussing theology” books that so permeate SF/F today:

Overwritten and felt derivative
To be fair, I was interested because of the Hugo nomination and was
curious about the general worlds involved. I made it about 5% into this
on my Kindle before grinding to a halt. Nothing was all that
interesting and didn’t drive me to read more. If you’re looking for
something to read while waiting for more George RR Martin, keep looking
would be my advice really.

I suggest that if you’re looking for something to read while waiting for more George RR Martin, perhaps it would make more sense to try the 854-page A THRONE OF BONES rather than a Hugo-nominated novelette. Good or bad, it’s just not going to take long, not even if you move your lips when you read. What I find amusing about all these hit reviews is that they know they need a few descriptors to justify the one-star rating, but they are seldom smart enough to choose any that actually sound relevant.

So far we’ve seen “incoherent and unconvincing non-story” as well as “adolescent theology”. And now “derivative”. Derivative of what? The Name of the Rose? A Canticle for Leibowitz? Monk literature isn’t what one would call a massive subgenre. What’s next, complaints about how lame the sex scenes are?

You can read better fake fake reviews right here on this blog. Consider Kyle’s: “Why can’t these critics at least be competent enough to complain about
this story in a manner that, while not necessarily hitting the mark, at
least lands in the same galaxy as the dartboard? If I was going to
criticize this (excellent) story then I’d whine about how it was maudlin
and sentimental, a fantasy Thomas Kincade painting, exposing the evil
crimethink purveyor Vox Day as actually being a sentimental wimp hiding
beneath his grandiose bravado projected on the blog.”

A few of my favorite tweets

Some of the more amusing examples of the open minds on the Left:

Adam Roberts ?@arrroberts
I’ve never been nominated for a Hugo. Vox Day has been nominated for a Hugo. SF esteems Vox Day more than me. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

What can I say? SF likes me! It really likes me!

James Worrad ?@jimworrad
Larry Correia?!? Vox Day? The Tango & Cash of stupid have bust outta jail! #hugoawards

Let’s get this straight. I am pronounced a die-hard racist and white supremacist, among other things, for the crime of labeling an African-American author a half-savage, but it is acceptable to call two Hispanic authors stupid criminals? I’m just trying to figure out the rules here.

Luis Vazquez @luisishere
So many of my favorite works and people nominated for the #HugoAwards this year, but the Vox Day nomination ruins it for me.

So much for the White myth of solidarity between People of Color.

Charles Stross@cstross
Novelette: WTF is Vox Day doing on the shortlist?!?

I might ask the same question concerning him. He’s been a fine author in the past, and indeed, I nominated him for several Nebula awards in the past, but the observable fact is that his work has been in modest decline since the halcyon days of “A Colder War” and Accelerando.


I’m really glad I’m not eligible to vote – it’s just depressing to me to see RSHD on a ballot anywhere. Not just because I think he’s a terrible human being, but because I think he’s a terrible writer. But because I do think he’s a terrible human being, it’s depressing to see him on a ballot. It feels like a victory for the bad guys. And even a small victory for him is a victory too many.

Not a tweet, just a comment at Whatever that amused me. Perhaps I am a terrible writer. Or perhaps not. It’s not for me to say. But it never seems to occur to these sad and depressed critics that perhaps one reason why my work continues to become more popular over time is that it contains something that appeals to people, something that they are clearly unable to see.

As noted, given my experience of his writing I’m not expecting great things, but you never do know and I’m willing to be surprised. However, I also acknowledge a personal dislike of the fellow — I think as a human being he’s a contemptible piece of shit — and I would be lying if I didn’t believe that will have an effect on how I approach the work.

I thought this was remarkable; for once we are given a glimpse past the John Scalzi mask and its false expression of permanent amusement. For my part, I simply happen to think that he is a fraud and a bit of a con man. Given that I’ve pointed out a few of his self-serving fictions, one would hardly expect him to be pleased with me.

And then there are the various people who have accused me of the unspeakable crime of being white. Their confusion is understandable, given my fair skin, but also indicative of a failure to grasp human genetics. The news would certainly surprise a number of families on my mother’s side, whose names, were I to disclose them, are not what one would describe as indicative of European descent. But it is reassuring to learn how many white progressives take their duties as Race Police so seriously.

I was also invited to speak my piece by Harlan Ellison:

HEED, IF YOU WILL: I have now received two (2) actual letters (avec postage stamps) and
four (4) phone calls, and even one (1) E.Mail concerning someone whose
name I had never heard, of whose existence I was blissfully unaware, who aparently has (I was informed) a voluble,
busy “blogsite.” Said person goes by the nom-de-plume “Vox Day.”

Apparently, said personage has (in the words of at least three (3) of my
communicants, who have won MULTIPLE Hugos, Nebulas, Edgars, and on and
on) “gamed the Hugo system” and gotten via the tagalong-gang of the
website-wad, a chance at, or the actual nomination for, a Hugo.

I do not know this “Vox Day,” at least under that name. I do not know
what story is under consideration, nor its value or depth of its
artistry. I have no dog in this hunt.

Nonetheless, superior writers with creds that would chocke a chimpanzee
seem to have their fur bristling. THEY tell ME this ain’t a good thing,
that it appears to be an electronic end-run to get somebody with a
fan-base into contention with others who may or may not be doing “the
job” better.

I dunno. I report what is conveyed to me. It ain’t my fight, and if
wannabes and the entrenched desire to unfurl banners and lob chain-link
cannonballs at one another…heh heh heh…I’m a SFWA Grand Master with 4
Writers Guild Best awards, 102 books, 81/2 Hugos, 5 Nebulas, 2 Edgars and more junk metal and Lucite awards
than you could cram into ten cells of a psycho ward…(have you noticed,
even at age buttin’up’to 80, I don’t do humility very well)…if
there’s a fight, and Big Writers think “Vox Day” is not playing fair,
this is a reasoned, smart, informed and rational podium, this site, and I
urge strongarm demand cozen and inveigle one and all, including the eye
of the storm him/or/herself (hashtag-pseudoinyms are such bullshit) to
avail themselves of this forum.

TO WHICH I RESPONDED ON HIS SITE:

 Thank you for the kind invitation, Mr. Ellison. Let it be known that I
categorically deny all accusations of ballot-stuffing, cheating, gaming
the system, and indeed, not playing fair, with regards to the 2014 Hugo
nomination for Best Novelette.

I am a professional game designer with millions of games sold. Rest
assured that had I wished to game the system, I would have also been
nominated for best novel, best novella, and best short story this year,
as I had eligible works published in all four categories.

As you can see from my web site, I also have a popular pair of blogs
which average 1.3 million Google pageviews a month. A few – a very small
percentage – of my regular readers responded to a post in which I
mentioned which works Larry Correia, the popular New York Times
bestselling author, was recommending, and added a few recommendations of
my own. That was the extent of my “campaign”. My understanding that
these actions were no different than various other authors have done in
the past and well within the zone of fair play.

I believe what is in the process of happening here is very similar to
what happened in the news media when Fox News was first launched. The
USA is roughly divided in half ideologically between left and right. But
the preponderance of the news media product and the current SF/F
product is produced to appeal to the left. So, it should be entirely
obvious that products which appeal to the right will tend to be
considerably more popular, on average, than products which appeal to the
left.

For example, my fellow nominee Charles Stross released a novel in 2012,
as did I. He is well-known and well-regarded in the SF/F community; I am
not. And yet, while THE APOCALYPSE CODEX has 96 reviews and a 4.3
ranking, A THRONE OF BONES, published a few months later, has 142
reviews, and a 4.2 ranking. The relevant difference is that until
recently, very few of my readers knew, or cared, what a “Hugo” was.

Most of the outrage is the simple result of a bunch of old white people
who inclined to the left being in denial about the fact that a pair of
Hispanic writers who lean right are just as popular as some of the
writers they prefer.

The inevitability of segregation

Even the biggest champions of postracial fantasy are beginning to recognize the failure of desegregation:

To the extent that the word “desegregation” remains in our vocabulary, it describes an antique principle, not a current priority. Today, we are more likely to talk of diversity—but diversification and desegregation are not the same undertaking. To speak of diversity, in light of this country’s history of racial recidivism, is to focus on bringing ethnic variety to largely white institutions, rather than dismantling the structures that made them so white to begin with.

And so, sixty years after Brown, it is clear that the notion of segregation as a discrete phenomenon, an evil that could be flipped, like a switch, from on to off, by judicial edict, was deeply naïve. The intervening decades have shown, in large measure, the limits of what political efforts directed at desegregation alone could achieve, and the crumbling of both elements of “separate but equal” has left us at an ambivalent juncture. To the extent that desegregation becomes, once again, a pressing concern—and even that may be too grand a hope—it will have to involve the tax code, the minimum wage, and other efforts to redress income inequality. For the tragedy of this moment is not that black students still go to overwhelmingly black schools, long after segregation was banished by law, but that they do so for so many of the same reasons as in the days before Brown.

One hopes it won’t take another 60 years for them to figure out that diversity is inevitably doomed to failure too. The reason segregation is inevitable is because diversity+proximity=war. And the fact that it is inevitable is based on sound and impeccable logic.

All these diverse groups came from somewhere, right? And, for the most part, they once belonged to the same population group, right? So, the process of separation and eventual segregation occurred naturally and spontaneously through a combination of factors such as free association, sexual selection, and tribal mobility.

The current diversity and multiculturalism fad is nothing more than a short-term artificial artifact of wealth, peace, cheap international travel, and anti-national governments. Take away just one of those four supports and the entire edifice collapses in violence and bloodshed.

To talk about being pro-segregation or anti-segregation is a category error. It’s no different than claiming to be pro-biology or anti-gravity. It’s a normal human dynamic, and as such, it can be resisted with effort, but only for a short time from the historical perspective.

The darkness comprehendeth it not

Damien Walter, the Guardian contributor who wrote the hit piece about Larry Correia’s blog post without linking to it, and who has never professionally published a novel, reviews “Opera Vita Aeterna” and it says considerably more about the reviewer than the work reviewed.

I have judged the work not the man, and found it to be an incoherent rant disguised as an unconvincing non-story.

Because I am cruel by nature, I found this amusing. Because I am human, I found it tragic as well. Consider the perspective from which he reads:

I was 30 and, by any measure, deeply unhappy. I’d been pushing down a
lot of horrible emotions from a damaging childhood, grief from many
losses, and had trapped myself in a life I didn’t fit in to from a
desperate need to fit somewhere, anywhere. I had no kind of spiritual
practice at all. I was a standard issue atheist, and any encounter I had
with religion was edged with inherited and unexamined scorn.
Consequentially, I really had no tools to process the pain I was
feeling. Today, my argument with the radical atheist rhetoric of people
like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett – both of whom I had read
heavily at university – is that it leaves the bulk of its believers
utterly amputated from their own emotional reality. It certainly had me.
I was miserable, and in trying to escape from the causes of the misery
I’d driven myself, repeatedly, to the borders of emotional collapse
where I had, at long last, collapsed.

Unfortunately, his behavior makes it readily apparent that he has not yet found his way out of his emotional mire. As I pointed out in my tweet to him in response: “Given your deep unhappiness, Damien, it’s not surprising that you found a story about PHILIA incoherent and unconvincing.”

“Opera Vita Aeterna” is a story about love. The love of a friend, the love of knowledge, and the love of God. It should surprise absolutely no one that damaged and deeply unhappy people, who are by their own admission “utterly amputated from their own emotional reality”, cannot relate to it. They cannot even recognize it as a coherent story.

Of course they find it incoherent and unconvincing! Of course they find it a non-story! For they are lost in misery, their hearts are empty, and they cannot see by the light that comes from within. Regardless of what he may think of the literary quality of the story, I hope that one day Damien will at least be able to comprehend what the story is about.

Castalia House Goes Live!

One of our long-term goals for Castalia House is to make it the premier intellectual driving force in SF/F. That means more than simply publishing intelligent entertaining books by the likes of John C. Wright, Tom Kratman, and Rolf Nelson, and more than the publication of various educational curricula on subjects ranging from Astrophysics to Military History, but also reviewing the current state of the literary sub-genres.

So, we’re pleased to announce that the Castalia House blog has gone live with its first three daily bloggers. We’ll be adding a few more presently, but these three alone will ensure that the Castalia blog becomes a daily destination for everyone interested in science fiction and fantasy.  From Anson, a book review:

REVIEW: The Martian by Andy Weir

The last few decades have seen a decline in the genre, as the good
material has surrendered its space in the bookstores, and foot by foot,
rack by rack, has been replaced by bi-curious tattooed lyncanthrope bike
chicks, Victorian ladies in steampunk goggles (Victorian only in
breeding and couture, sadly), endless Star Trek novelizations, and other
varieties of crap.

(The last 30 years have not been entirely dark – we’ve been blessed
with some of the best space opera ever from the pen of Ian Banks,
stunning Weird Fantasy from China Mieville, amazing stuff in multiple
genres from Neal Stephenson, and more…but bright spots aside, the hot
white hot center, the default worldview of science fiction has dimmed
and become less magical, more mundane, and – yes – simultaneously more
tacky, more banal, and more despair inducing.)

I was thrilled to come across a new novel recently that broke from
this downward trend. It’s not the perfect novel (but then again, what
is?)

And from Daniel Eness, The Secret to Science Fiction:

H. Beam Piper — a man so versed in science he could sketch out, on a napkin, an engineering model of Sputnik the day it was announced, and explain it to a table of science enthusiasts — quit near-future science fiction. He did it because the scientific advances of the 1950s were coming so quickly that much of the knowledge he used for his stories felt obsolete to him by the time the magazines went to print. He was fed up with his guesses going bad so quickly like so much produce. That was 60 years ago. Has the world slowed down since then?

Jeff Sutton’s Apollo at Go suffered the opposite fate: because the NASA missions were so heavily engineered, and Sutton an engineer doing work for NASA…his 1965 “science fiction” book about the first moon landing that would happen in real life four years later now reads more like alternate history, and only a slight alternate at that.

Also, in case you haven’t read it yet, THE LAST WITCHKING, which contains the Hugo-nominated novelette “Opera Vita Aeterna”, is a free download today from Amazon.

And finally, due to the inability to sell pre-formatted PDF files through either Amazon or Smashwords, (yes, we know Smashwords sells PDFs, but they have to be submitted in Word format), we found it necessary to create our own online store. So, if you would like to support us by purchasing epubs directly, you can now do so at the Castalia House Store. Not everything is available there now, due to the limitations of the Kindle Select program, but you can expect the selections there to grow over time.