Category: Uncategorized

File 770 Discriminates Against Hispanics

It’s so terrible to see the way that the science fiction community is full of hatred and discriminates against Hispanics. Mike Glyer of File 770 actually apologized for running a basic convention report about the recent World Fantasy Convention that just happened to be written by a gentleman of Hispanic descent.

How can I run a review by Paul Weimer and a week later post something by Jon Del Arroz, a writer who’s persecuted him? (Or ever?) That was a terrible choice. I apologize. And how can I do that to Cat Eldridge, who is closely associated with this blog but was completely blindsided by the post. He works with Paul all the time and absolutely would not want us to be hosting JDA. I apologize to Cat, too.

A good apology would stop there, I think. Which I say because some people want to know why I did this in the first place. And an explanation at this point in an apology is usually a backdoor justification which makes the apology worthless. All I can say is the explanation is part of my contrition.

File 770 doesn’t have that many commenters, so it often feels like I do a lot of work and all that matters is if I mention someone’s hot button topic they will jump in to reprimand me for failing their purity test. Most of the time my skin is not so thin that I react. Sometimes it is. Resentment is the issue that drives most of the problems I have in life, and when I yield to it bad things happen.

I was going through just such a season of feeling picked on when Jon Del Arroz sent me his convention report. I combed through it expecting to find takes I would refuse to publish but it was rather vanilla. Nothing to object to but the byline.

This is obviously nothing more than pure anti-Hispanic racism on the part of Mr. Glyer. There was literally nothing to object to but a Hispanic name in the byline; it was a simple and straightforward news report devoid of any political content whatsoever, as you can see for for yourself.

World Fantasy Con 2026 Friday Review
Posted on October 24, 2026 by Mike Glyer

By Jon Del Arroz: World Fantasy Convention opened Thursday at the Oakland MarriottCity Center, and Friday, the first full day, delivered the small, personal kind of gathering the convention is known for. I wasn’t able to attend Thursday because of having to get work done. Robert Silverberg was the main draw for me, and he did not disappoint.

The convention is a fraction of Worldcon’s size. Programming runs two or three panels at a time, the dealer room is modest, and the convention space is compact. Organizers have been citing 775 members on Facebook. At peak times on Friday the halls held roughly 200. The staff has the operation running smoothly and were all super nice and helpful, from the info desk to programming to the dealer room, and attendees I passed all seemed to be having a good time.

The morning opened with a panel on the changing publishing world. The lineup was Silverberg, Josh Wilson from The Fabulous magazine, Teresa DeLucchi, director of marketing at Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press, Betsy Wollheim, and Stephen Jones.

The panelists agreed that everything in the business is up in the air and very different than ever. They discussed the trend toward sprayed edges on books that began in the pandemic, and cited that they thought the trend had peaked, which I find entertaining and think look great and add a lot to the presentation of books. They also said physical books are staging a bigger comeback because ebooks have become so prevalent and normalized, so people want something physical and cool to hold. That matches what I see in the market: readers want premium deluxe editions, and more publishers are making them.

AI produced the panel’s one real disagreement. Jones called it inevitable and asked why anyone bothers fighting it. DeLucchi argued people should not be using it. Jones has the better of that argument. AI is not going away, and people will not stop using it. It cleans up typos fast, and it has plenty of uses that never touch the creative work. He believes eventually AI will replace editors entirely for the most part.

The AI exchange led Silverberg to talk of copy editors, and he did not hold back. He once had a copy editor “fix” a sentence he had deliberately left unfinished, and he had to get it changed back. His verdict: “I hate copy editors because I know what I’m doing.” He added that Harlan Ellison once had a copy editor change a pile of his text wholesale, and that it did not go well for the copy editor.

He also talked about meeting John W. Campbell. The business used to be personal, he said, and now it is detached and run by email. The panel noted that unlike the days of building relationships with editors to buy stories, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld buys stories only through open submissions, not by soliciting authors, so a relationship with the editor doesn’t get you a sale. Everyone goes through the same slush process. Silverberg described walking into Campbell’s office as being like going to church and meeting God. When he got to call Campbell by his first name, he thought the roof would fall in.

The dealer’s hall was modest but with a lot of cool stuff. Tachyon Publishing had a big presence there with a lot of works that were tempting, especially form Peter Beagle’s catalog. Cross Genre Books, a Portland dealer, had a deep rare-book stock: signed Jack Vance, signed Harlan Ellison, Poul Anderson, Anne McCaffrey, and plenty of Heinlein. I spoke with Anthony Eichenlaub, vice president of SFWA, who had a table in the room. Artist John Picacio also set up there, and he kept a line most of the time I passed, with fans buying prints.

In the afternoon I went to a reading with Bruce McAllister, Charlie Jane Anders, and Caroline Yoachim. McAllister is a long time writer who has done wonderful work and does not get enough credit in the field these days despite plenty of award nominations for his work. Anders really worked the room before reading from a forthcoming publication in 2027 that involves vampires and time travel, thanking the moderator and the audience and getting everyone applauding, and the crowd responded in kind.

What’s great is how many of the attendees are there just as fans and not a full slate of scheduled speaking. I ran into Robin Hobb and Tad Williams, among other big names. Peter Beagle held a small meetup that filled before I could sign up, and I hope to catch him another way before Sunday. A bookbinding workshop, where attendees bound their own books, also looked good, and I missed it for scheduling reasons.

Friday night also holds a mass autographing session. Silverberg and Jones are expected to unveil an anthology there, with advance review copies on hand. Saturday brings Silverberg’s interview panel, which I expect to be a highlight of the con as well. The World Fantasy Awards banquet is Sunday to cap everything off. 

All in all, it was an excellent Friday, and World Fantasy Convention delivered. 

Now, I have zero interest in any future accommodation with the SF-SJWs, not because they quite rightly hate and fear me, but because they are such a collection of irrelevant mediocrities that there isn’t a single one of them that I would ever deem worthy of publishing in ebook, let alone in fine deluxe leather. When Castalia House is publishing excellent authors like Eiji Yoshikawa, Benito Perez Galdos, Zenaide Fleuriot, Unno Juza, and Nomura Kido in English for the first time ever, how could we possibly care about these sub-trivial SF/F wannabes who don’t even understand what science fiction is and what it is not.

Unfortunately, Mike Glyer has forgotten that his proper role is that of a science fiction historian, not a racial gatekeeper, and while it’s understandable that he would eventually fold under the hateful pressure of the yapping SJWs, it is a mistake on his part. Because, as a very kind and gentle dark lord once said, an apology is nothing more than a guilty plea in their beady little eyes.

And they are irrelevant anyhow. Despite their best efforts, Castalia House already publishes more and better titles than Tor or Baen. I will not be surprised if within three years, Castalia House is the biggest science fiction-related publisher in the world not named “Amazon”.

Sign up for Castalia Unlimited to find out why.

DISCUS ON SG

Top US Military Strategist Fired

Considering that the US military managed to lose 18 military bases in an offensive action, one would hope that it is looking for better strategists than those upon whom it has been relying.

The Pentagon has fired its top military strategist as Washington draws up contingency plans for a possible escalation of hostilities with Iran.

Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia has been removed from his position as director for strategy, plans, and policy (J5) on the Joint Staff, a spokesman confirmed late Wednesday, following media reports of his dismissal. His predecessor, Lt. Gen. Joseph McGee, was forced into retirement a year ago amid reported friction with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. Sylvia previously served as vice director of the J5.

The Pentagon did not explain Sylvia’s departure. His responsibilities included developing military strategies and plans to advise the chairman and the US president. He joins nearly two dozen senior military and civilian officials removed during Hegseth’s tenure.

The problem, of course, is threefold. First, this is a war that is manifestly not in the US national interest. Second, the shift to 5GW missile-and-drone-based warfare renders all previous strategies at least potentially irrelevant. Third, it is never helpful to have an allied nation calling the shots and dictating a military’s primary objectives.

This is why the war on Iran was obviously foolish and why success in that war was very low-probability from the start. The US military needs a complete reset, and replacing its top strategist is only the first in a very long chain of necessary decisions if the USA wants to remain a major regional military power.

And the sooner that it realizes it is no longer a global superpower, the better.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Descent of America

It’s been fascinating to watch as everyone has gradually discovered that immigration and the service economy and the Boomer love of deals has inexorably led to nothing lasting and nothing working anymore:

DEI, AI, outsourcing- all have contributed to a reality where once mighty America is running on fumes. Innovation today would mean diversifying the AI voices. You know we’re bound to get an Ebonics-spewing AI bot named Jamal. It already means eliminating the entry level jobs at McDonald’s and other fast food places, and replacing them with self-service kiosks. You find these self-service kiosks everywhere, including hospitals and doctor’s offices. Ironic- fast food and the medical system- two of the more dangerous elements in our collapsing America 2.0. We’re not making America Healthy Again any more than we’re bringing back American factories. RFK, Jr. just really polished his sellout skills by coming out in favor of the COVID vaccines for children and praising Anthony Fauci. You know, the guy he skewered so effectively in the best selling book on Amazon. Someone tell him to read his own work. There are no White hats. No heroes. Just AI bots and surly Black women.

Some of us warned, decades ago, that America was going to become nothing more than a service economy, once we destroyed our industrial base with NAFTA and other disastrous trade deals. But we certainly didn’t envision a service economy that featured such really, really bad service. If you’ve essentially retired from making things, then you should at least concentrate on treating the customers who buy all the products you import from other countries decently. You should at least hire friendly and competent American citizens to interact with the customers, who are dealing with the substandard nature of those imported products. Companies that wildly overcharge you for television stations that provide no diversity of perspective, and internet services that are slower and less reliable than those found in countries like the Dominican Republic, should at least hire friendly and competent American citizens to fix that incredibly slow internet and mindless television for you.

Now, certainly our mad immigration policies have contributed to this mess. As they say, when you import the Third World, you become the Third World. Let the record show that, in the year of our Lord 2026, America has undeniably become a Third World country. My parents, not to mention my grandparents, wouldn’t recognize America 2.0 as the country they grew up in, struggled to survive in, and died in. We have become conquered without a shot being fired. An invading force, an army without weapons, ushered in and paid for by the non-Irish and non-non-Irish elite who profit from division and chaos.

The constant stream of new H-1B Visa workers from India hasn’t been stopped. They have made Americans feel inadequate with their nonsense about needing immigrants to “do the jobs Americans won’t do,” and because “we just can’t find enough skilled workers.” No, they want to pay their workers less. They want to slash benefits. They want to use AI and automated menus, not real human beings. And the human beings they do hire, as my most recent experience demonstrated, are not “skilled,” and are not friendly, reliable, and efficient. There has to be a lot of friendlier, more reliable, and more efficient U.S. citizens out there. Laid off or outsourced. Given up after being unable to find work. Blackballed for refusing the jab or other types of political incorrectness. There are an especially large number of White males in this category. Once the toast of the White-run patriarchy, they now bear the burden of being the wrong “fit” for every position, and reap the fallout from the Great Replacement.

We are a society where nothing and increasingly no one seems to work. You can see it in every store, every restaurant. Employees going through the motions. None of them paid enough to live on their own. All of them denied a chance at the American Dream. The Third Worlders who have been installed here have increased their standard of living. Americans whose families have been in this country for countless generations are seeing their standard of living deteriorate. It’s a disgrace that our children’s generation will be the first to have a lower standard of living than ours.

It’s not true that no one cares. And the answer really isn’t that hard. Stick together. Only hire friends, family, and young men who look like you. Stop proudly patronizing businesses run by those who hate you and have already replaced you.

Spacebunny and I don’t go out to dinner very often. And when we do, we always go to the same place: the restaurant run by our Italian friend. Sure, it doesn’t hurt that it is very possibly the best proper Italian pizza to be found anywhere outside of Italy – we both had an amazing Zuchetto from the seasonal menu that was made with pumpkin sauce instead of tomato sauce – but we make a point of not only going there, but telling everyone about it. Which is one of the many reasons he’s actually expanding his business when the restaurants all around him are going under.

The contracting economy is an opportunity to leverage your consumer power. Most businesses are on a razor’s edge, heavily in debt and teetering between survival and extinction. You can help tilt the balance every day by choosing quality over minimizing cost, working with friends and acquaintances rather than strangers, and serving as a cheerleader slash ad hoc advertising department for the companies that are good to you.

Excellence is a choice. Choose it.

DISCUSS ON SG

2026 Based Books Nonfiction

There’s a whole world of ideas out there that you’re not supposed to explore. Forgotten history. Unconventional science. Unfashionable philosophy. Suppressed perspectives. Questions that respectable people aren’t supposed to ask.

And authors who aren’t afraid to ask them.

Welcome to the 2026 Non-Fiction Based Book Sale™, where independent thinkers, researchers, historians, and authors have come together to offer their books for just $0.99 or FREE!

For one week only, from Wednesday, October 28, through Tuesday, November 3, discover books that challenge conventional wisdom, recover forgotten knowledge, and encourage you to think for yourself.

Castalia House and I are participating in the 2026 Nonfiction Based Book sale with two books:

I would also very highly recommend John C. Wright’s excellent collection of essays, Transhuman and Subhuman, which is among the best and most thought-provoking nonfiction works I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of the US Middle East

It appears the Gulf States have chosen a side, and it’s not the US-Israeli alliance:

Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, the brother of the Crown Prince, flew to Tehran. With him came Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin. They sat down with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and senior security official Rezaei, who hosted the talks, for about two hours. The agenda: the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the Strait of Hormuz, the American blockade of Iran’s ports and a regional non-aggression framework.

Read that list again. Those are the four biggest security problems in the Persian Gulf. The countries that actually live there just met to discuss them. The United States, which has two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group and a blockade in the neighborhood, was not in the room. Nobody seems to have missed it.

The three visitors are the signatories of the Makkah Agreement, the mutual-defense treaty that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed on August 7. Article 2 says an attack on one is an attack on all. It was sold, at least in Washington’s imagination, as a Sunni shield for the Kingdom against Iran and its friends in Yemen.

Eleven weeks later, the entire shield showed up in Tehran to talk about cooperation. Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan says Tehran will “study” the agreement, “and if it is good, we will support it.” The treaty conveniently includes an accession clause allowing new members to join by consensus. My sources tell me the three formally invited Iran to join once the U.S.-Israeli war ends, and that Tehran accepted on that basis. No official readout confirms that yet. But the official readouts did agree to keep talking “among the four,” and Iran has a phrase for what it wants: “endogenous security.” Translation: security for the Gulf, by the Gulf, without the 5th Fleet.

Imagine NATO’s founding members inviting the Soviet Union to join in 1952, and you have some idea how badly this has gone for American strategy.

In fairness to American strategists, none of the people involved in the US strategy for the Middle East for the past 40 years have actually been Americans. What we’re witnessing is the failure of the Greater Israeli strategy of the neocons, which I have to admit, did succeed rather better than I would have ever imagined given how effectively it exploited the non-nation states of the region.

The problem, as always, is that the seeds of ultimate failure are planted with initial success. Fortunately for the USA, it appears to have been more of a Suez moment than a Sicilian one.

DISCUS ON SG

Rumors of a War’s End

Days before the Israeli electorate appears to have refused to give the ruling Likud Party a majority, the Jerusalem Post reports that the IDF refused the Israeli Prime Minister’s order to restart Israel’s war against Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir clashed over a military action that could renew the conflict with Iran days before Israel’s elections, N12 News reported Sunday evening. Recently, Zamir received a directive from the political echelon to carry out an action, which security officials told N12 would “trigger a rapid escalation into a confrontation with Iran.”

Due to the sensitive nature of the action, N12 reported that Zamir requested an in-depth discussion and formal authorization before moving forward with the action.

Sources familiar with the details told N12 that Zamir and additional IDF leadership are concerned that the political echelon may be trying to exploit the front with Iran ahead of elections for political gain.

It’s also being rumored that Saudi Arabia has effectively surrendered to Iran and is seeking an accommodation to extricate itself from the US security system. And it’s confirmed that the leaders of Norway and Finland are talking to Putin.

So perhaps things are happening behind the scenes.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Bellwether State

Spencer Pratt reflects upon his experience running for mayor of Los Angeles:

I hate to be this cynical, but I’ll be honest…running for Mayor exposes you to things that make you believe the city is actually being overtaken by demonic energy. Drive south Fig at night. Go to 6th and San Pedro. You see children openly prostituting, drug zombies setting dogs and cats on fire, babies born to crackheads and tossed in a dumpster, dead people just lying in the streets…that’s not even to mention the dozen neighbors of ours who burned alive in what is now a crumbled hellscape.

Many times I wondered if the city’s problems weren’t beyond the reach of any politician’s capacity to actually fix. There is a cultural and spiritual rot that can’t be fixed at the ballot box. Until we fix the culture, we are kinda just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and the shit we shovel around every 4 years doesn’t really mean a thing.

The Dark has been gathering for decades. Now we are seeing the early results of its rising. And we are also seeing how men like Bukele will be required in order to chase it back into the shadows again.

DISCUSS ON SG

Desperation is not Absurdity

When the faction of Clown World that is running the CIA is contradicting the policy of the faction of Clown World that is running the fake Trump administration, that is not “incoherent policy” that is two desperate factions of Clown World fighting for survival:

Armed with information the CIA provides, Ukraine’s military has been launching strikes deep inside Russia. American spy satellites give Ukraine early warning of incoming Russian missiles and drones. Among U.S. personnel on the ground in Ukraine, a retired senior officer who travels there frequently told him, “the CIA is in the lead.”

It gets better. A Baltic intelligence officer who works closely with the Americans told Harris that, whatever Donald Trump says in public, the CIA’s operations against Russia are now “much more aggressive” than they were under Joe Biden. Officers in the CIA’s Special Activities Center, the people who run covert and paramilitary operations, are reportedly among the happiest at Langley, because they are so busy. And this is not new. As Harris notes, the CIA helped build Ukraine’s modern intelligence apparatus after Russia took Crimea in 2014. This has been the agency’s war for more than a decade.

Let me translate that from the polite language of a magazine profile. American intelligence is identifying the targets inside Russia, American satellites are running Ukraine’s air-defense warning network, and American officers are “in the lead” on the ground. If Russia were doing that for Mexico against Texas, Washington would call it an act of war. Moscow has said for years that it is fighting NATO, not just Ukraine. Here, courtesy of The Atlantic and its anonymous sources, is the evidence.

Now comes the absurdity. According to Harris, the CIA’s success has become a problem for the President. The refinery strikes the agency helps enable have hobbled Russia’s economy. The International Energy Agency estimates that in the first eight months of this year, Ukraine hit a Russian refinery on average once every three days.

Those refineries make diesel. The world is short of diesel. The International Energy Agency says the shortage will run well into 2027. And Trump, according to Harris, blames the attacks on Russian refineries for the spike in prices and wants them to stop. He has threatened to cut off intelligence support to Ukraine unless Kyiv halts the refinery strikes.

Think about that. The CIA helps Ukraine knock out Russian refining capacity. Diesel prices soar. Then on October 9, in the middle of peace talks in Miami, the President announces a deal for Russia to sell its diesel on the world market, boasting on Truth Social that prices would be “COMING DOWN… AND FAST!” Harris reports that the announcement caught the negotiators by surprise, and that Putin made no reciprocal commitment. So the United States is simultaneously paying to destroy Russian diesel production and begging Russia to sell it more diesel. You could not design a more incoherent policy if you tried.

You don’t have to buy into my hypothesis of multiple Trumps of varying height to accept the idea that there are rival factions of Clown World with different ideas about how they can survive their defeat at the hands of the various nations that have rejected their globalist satanry.

And that hypothesis is much more in line with the incoherency and many contradictions of the statements by the various Trumps.

DISCUSS ON SG

Devstream Tonight

If you have ANY interest in games, you’ll want to tune into UATV tonight for a rare DEVSTREAM!

PSA: SocialGalactic is back online We just completed a major server upgrade. SG was down for about an hour while we worked through some post-upgrade smoke tests. Everything should be working normally now.

Thanks for your patience.

As, obviously, is VP.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Inutility of Hate

JDA attends Worldcon, writes a convention report, and filed it on File 770. This did not go over well with those who style themselves the Haters of Hate.

On Saturday, I published a report on World Fantasy Con for File 770. The convention was well run, the panels were good, and I found a few rare books for my collection. Within hours, commenters demanded that I be kept out of every convention in the country, and the pile-on moved to Bluesky, where the language got worse. All of this over a convention review that said the con went well.

Science fiction and fantasy has a hate problem. In my experience, it does not come from the right and never has. Most of what you see on the right is just want to be included and be aloowed to exist peacefully. It comes from a left-wing establishment that spent years pushing out anyone who disagreed with it on any topic, then grew so used to total control that it forgot the people it targeted were people.

The genre’s gatekeepers say “diversity” and “inclusion” constantly. Look at who is in the room. You will find one set of opinions, repeated by everyone, and a standing threat for anyone who voices another. A community with no room for a dissenting view is a monoculture with branding that makes them feel good about themselves. What you’ll find is complete intolerance coming from them.

I get death threats and hate on a regular basis, along with people flinging so much hate my way it would break most people and cause them health problems, which is the intention of the mob to do. They want to hurt or kill those they hate from the power of their own keyboards. I have been hesitant to attend conventions because of it. The people who pile on are the same ones who tell us, correctly, that harassment and threats of violence can destroy a person. They say we should stand against it. They often point to my criticism of different cultural pieces as justification for it, which should not be the case. Criticism is a time-honored tradition in our culture and helps hone things to be better. Their personal attacks are just about destruction.

The mob is angry because it lost a little power this weekend. World Fantasy Con did not ban me. File 770 reported on the convention and let me do the reporting. The people who wanted me gone found they could not do anything substantive about it. Both organizations put their love of the genre first, and I am grateful to them. Mike Glyer deserves love for what he’s got, and it’s my understanding the hate and pressure he received was so overwhelming he’s taking a couple of days off the internet. One has to remember he’s an older gentleman; this level of abuse is something he’s probably not used to and can cause real harm, something the mob does not consider. I read File 770 regularly for genre reports, and he finds a great number of things that are interesting, and does some good work. That site does not get advertising nor subscribers; he does it completely for free.

I, for one, don’t care one way or another. I’ve never been part of fandom, I wasn’t published by a genre publisher, and except for being able to talk with John M. Ford for about an hour, I didn’t enjoy the one convention I attended. But I do think that the SJWs who drove out everyone to the right of Barack Obama out of professional science fiction and fantasy are beginning to realize the permanent damage they have done to the various institutions of the genre as well as to the genre itself.

The world is changing. Kindle Unlimited is far bigger than any SF/F publisher has ever been. I believe that within three years, Castalia Unlimited will be bigger than any other SF/F publisher, not just in terms of annual titles published, but in terms of total revenue and pages read too. We’re at 63 titles already, 23 of which have never been seen in English before. We expect to be at 150 by time of launch, 275 by the end of the year, and 1,000 English titles alone by the end of next year.

So it doesn’t matter if they want to freeze us out or not. They have Hugo Award winners. We have the guy writing the #1 movies at the box office and the guy for whom the Japanese literature awards are literally named. They have their artisanal wokeslop, we have groundbreaking science, philosophy, and high-quality history. There isn’t a single book that has been published in the genre in the last five years that can begin to compare with The Book of the Black Death or The Midnight Mayor. And the Unlimited library is growing daily in no less than six different languages.

I think it’s great that men like Mike Glyer and JDA are reaching across the philosophical divide. It was a stupid and harmful construction from the start, and now it has been extended into a technological divide as well. But for me, any “science fiction” that stands against artificial intelligence is not worthy of being called science fiction at all.

DISCUSS ON SG