Vox Popoli

He really, really doesn’t like him:

Ultimately Correia remains enraged at me today because four years ago, I was one of the people (as were some of you) who said no to him when he wanted to help himself to the Best Novel Hugo. Not that I could actually stop that from happening, but when I started covering as news what Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, and everyone else had to say about the controversy (in their own words, with links to the rest of their posts), I had an impact by facilitating the growth of a new community of people who wanted to talk about these issues — most of them opposing the vandalism of an institution they had spent years building up.

In 2013, Correia had decided that someone with his sales figures and blog readership, who had twice had a book on the New York Times bestseller list (for a single week) deserved a Hugo, and started organizing his readers to make it happen. He didn’t think of the members of fandom as his neighbors or colleagues; he approached it like the raid culture of ancient times where you go and steal somebody’s cattle if you think you can get away with it. Despite all of the agitation he stirred up among his followers, he got only 101 nominations and failed to make the ballot.

Larry knew that since the previous summer’s raid hadn’t worked out as well as he’d hoped, to sack Troy, he would need more boats and warriors in 2014. He wrapped his nomination campaign in the flag of the culture wars. Literary awards don’t fire people up, but political motivations do. He called on readers to nominate himself plus selected friends and editors as a way to ”stick it to those SJWs”. His book made the final ballot with the third-highest number of nominating votes (184) and lost to Ancillary Justice. Two hundred votes is enough to do any amount of damage to the Hugo nominating ballot — but after two years of effort by a bestselling author, it doesn’t seem like much of a number.

In 2015 Correia gave the project to Brad Torgersen, his Patroclus, who couldn’t wait to don Larry’s armor and lead the Sad Puppies 3 campaign. Torgersen put together a slate composed of both willing and unwilling writers (with some demanding to be removed), and spearheaded his campaign with a series of abusive political tirades against the Worldcon voters. However, his band of award pirates soon discovered that the Agamemnon of their scenario was really Vox Day. His Rabid Puppies slate blanketed nearly all the Hugo categories, and his followers dictated the 2015 ballot. Larry Correia’s latest novel was one of the things on their slate, but despite three years spent jacking up his readers and colleagues to get him this award, at this point he refused his nomination, went back to his tent, and let everyone else go forward without him.

File 770 covered that story and became a place people gathered to discuss it, and correspondingly became a lightning rod for Larry Correia’s wrath. In the past two years, whenever my name or this site’s name is mentioned in comments on his blog he can always be counted on to erupt in a spew of obscenities about me — in fact, one of his followers regularly injects my name into the conversation just to see him go off. And that same spirit controlled what Correia said on Facebook, and wrote in his post. Likewise the blizzard of comments from Correia’s followers, filled with playground taunts and references to Japanese pornography and prison sex. And these things can be expected to continue because of his example and that they’re encouraged in his comment community.

Then again, Larry Correia really, really doesn’t like China Mike either:

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the seedy underbelly of fandom, File 770 is a garbage gossip column website run by a scumbag named Mike Glyer. His whole shtick is to be a news aggregator for the sci-fi/fantasy business and collect links from people who actually create things for a living. He play acts at being an impartial journalist, but in reality everything he does is slanted to screw over anybody he doesn’t like.

He chums the water for his horde of psychos so they can go about forming internet lynch mobs, boycotts, and black ballings. But then he pretends to be all impartial and above the fray. If you ever want to lose all faith in humanity, read the comments there. His regulars range between basement dwelling goons, creepy weirdo stalkers, and angry rainbow haired social justice warriors.

If you are in any writer’s groups with conservative or libertarian authors in them, then you’ve inevitably heard about this shithole website. We mostly call it Vile 770 or File 666. At one point or another that page has tried to start shit with every author who gets on Glyer’s bad side. Because when you are ever the nail that sticks up, the File 770 crew are the hammer that wants to knock you back down. Luckily, they’re about as effective as a Fisher Price squeaky hammer. So mostly we just mock them.

No matter how big or small you are, if you write something that draws their ire, Glyer will link to you, write some passive aggressive misleading bullshit, and then his little minions will go out of their way to slander you. You are evil and their side is all goodness and light. Usually the slander is about how insignificant and unimportant their foes are, and how they totally don’t even know who you are, which is ironic coming from comments that are bizarrely fixated with your personal details. Across the board they are jealous, spiteful, and really kind of pathetic.

I drew his ire several years ago with my campaign to show that the Hugos were biased. Since Glyer has like 40 something Hugo nominations he took that personal. Go figure. (Sadly, I wish I was exaggerating that number).  He’s been linking back to me constantly ever since, always muck raking and shit stirring. He’ll usually post some passive aggressive thing about look how evil I am, his flying monkeys get riled up, and then he acts all innocent and says he was just reporting the news.

Since I’ve got nothing but contempt for the two faced bastard, I just delete his track backs and move on. I still come up a lot over there . My guess is he really hates me because unlike most authors I don’t dance around with fake politeness. They love fake politeness. They screw you over with impunity, and when you fight back, then they are all about “tone”.

The thing is, for all their mutual dislike, there is an amount of nuance here that may escape your attention. Larry correctly identifies the real problem at File 770 being the commenters, who are as nasty as they are mid-witted. I’ve never been able to discern if Mike Glyer truly shares many of their opinions – unlike them, he seems to grasp that I don’t care about awards and I’m actually pretty good at what I do – or if he’s simply stuck riding the tiger of his readership.

Regardless, the point is that there is more to this than mere personal dislike. The Pink/Blue divide in SF is substantive, ideological, and real, and it is a reflection of the primary divide in the USA that is cultural, ideological, and identity-based.

As for me, I stand by Larry, because he does not throw people under the bus to spare himself. He had every opportunity to do so, indeed, he was actively lobbied to do so by more than a few well-known people, and yet he refused. That is what men of character and integrity do. But I do think there is hope for Mike, if he can ever find the courage to reject the dishonesty and partisanship of his commenters and embrace the objective position that befits the true historian. The ironic thing is that he’d probably a) gain readership and b) never win another SF award if he did so.

Speaking of Puppies, don’t forget to get your Dragon Award votes in. My recommendations are here.