Epistemic closure at Tor

Tor.com is now closed to the unelect:

Since its inception, Tor.com has prided itself on the strength of its original short fiction. For a long time our unsolicited submissions formed the backbone of our catalog. We’ve found some of our favorite, most innovative, and most surprising stories through slush. However, in recent years we’ve found that more and more of our stories have been coming to us from different sources. As more of our stories are being brought in by consulting editors, fewer slots on our schedule can be filled by submitted stories. As such it’s time for a change.

On January 7th Tor.com will close its short fiction submissions system. Our dedicated editors and readers will read through and respond to everything that is submitted up to that point, but we do not plan to reopen in the foreseeable future. We are thankful to the authors who submitted stories to us, and to the readers who read those stories, always looking for the next great undiscovered work.

Translation: the short fiction market is rapidly approaching the terminal point. It costs less to simply let the “consulting editors”, who are mostly Tor writers using Tor.com as a marketing platform, to bring in short stories from their friends and publish them there. Where else are they going to publish them, after all?

(And before anyone declares this is a great opportunity for Castalia, I reiterate: the short fiction market is dying. No one wants to pay for the required vehicles; even a phenomenal collection like There Will Be War Volume X, with rave reviews, superlative non-fiction pieces, and some of the biggest names of the last fifty years of science fiction on the cover, won’t sell one-twentieth as well as a Larry Correia novel. While both mil-SF anthologies do well enough to justify their existence, I don’t see any convincing rationale for developing a short fiction site at this time.)

This closure to the unsolicited means that Tor is, to a certain extent, doubling down on its commitment to Pink SF and the SJW vision of its inner circle, as without a sufficiently close relationship with a “consulting editor”, you’re not breaking in via that particular short fiction market anymore.

However, based on my experience with both RTRH and TWBW, this is unlikely to harm them much. The slush readers for the latter went over hundreds of submissions and found us precisely two new writers, Shao, and Newquist, while Cheah was the only new writer discovered in the process of producing RTRH. Now, the effort was worthwhile in the end, considering that two of the most popular stories in Volume X turned out to be the Cheah and the Shao – “Flashpoint: Titan” is easily my favorite in the anthology – but it was an awful lot of work for everyone involved.

(And Vol X slush readers, I have been remiss in not sending you your copies yet. If you already bought one, email me and I’ll send you your choice of an earlier volume or the forthcoming Volume IX.)

This change isn’t going to affect Tor much, nor does it indicate anything terribly important about Tor having to cut costs due to its declining sales. It’s not as if they actually paid their slush readers. Its significance is in the hardening of the battle lines that it represents, and the way in which the SJWs at Tor continue to gradually cut themselves off from the traditional science fiction that they’ve always hated anyhow.

So, in the end, this is just another example of social justice convergence in action. Boycott Tor Books!

NFL Week 16

It’s championship week in a lot of leagues. Good luck, if you made it. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Vikes need to make a two-game run to take the NFC North back.

Science fiction’s smiling sociopath

One of the things that has always bothered me about John Scalzi’s bizarre public confession concerning his sexual predilections is the same thing that has caused many people to ask the question: why on Earth would John Scalzi openly confess to being a rapist who enjoys sexually assaulting women?

On the one hand, if he was a genuine rapist, why would he ever publicly admit to it? On the other, if he was not, how could he seriously think women would find it funny to hear him declare, in his self-styled “satire”: “I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women without
their consent or desire and then batter them sexually.”

Who could possibly think that is either clever or funny? What sort of person writes that in the first place? Well, now we know, thanks to Cory Doctorow, who after 12 years of acquaintance with Scalzi has warned the public that the Tor Books author is very far from neurologically typical. Scalzi simply doesn’t care about anything; in Doctorow’s terms, he has absolutely “zero fucks to give”. John Scalzi just doesn’t care that you know that he’s a self-admitted rapist.

John is limbically atypical. Having watching him mix it up online and face-to-face, I think he’s just wired up different. I think that he really, actually, no-foolin’ gives no fucks at all. All our human traits are arrayed on a bell-curve, I think, from the length of your fingers to your autonomic nervous system’s response to jerks. John is a four- or five-sigma outlier.

This explains a lot that is confusing about the man’s behavior. I’ve heard from numerous people who have encountered Scalzi about his tendency to engage in socially inappropriate behavior towards others in public, whether it is leaping into the arms of someone who barely knows him to playing “hail-fellow-well-met” with authors he has repeatedly and virulently attacked. I’ve also heard from reliable sources that he goes from overly warm to dead-eyed cold in an instant, depending on whether he believes the person to whom he is talking is of immediate use to him or not.

At various conferences, attendees have reported that Scalzi was “weird”, prone to laughing at his own jokes, and totally unable to talk about anything but himself, even when he was supposed to be discussing the work of others. This is five-sigma narcissism, not necessarily malignant narcissism, but certainly a pathological form. And there is a word to describe a narcissistic outlier who lacks empathy: sociopath.

A reporter from the New York Times appears to have subconsciously picked up some signs of this in his interview with Scalzi, as he delicately described the Tor Books author as being prone to smiling and giggling and “someone who is comfortable with the business of promotion”, even as Scalzi blatantly lied about his site traffic in the interview.

Psychology Today lists the signs of a sociopath, and it’s quite clear that even in the eyes of his friends, Scalzi fits them like a glove, like a glove custom-made in Ohio from the tanned flesh of missing teenagers:

  • Superficial charm and good intelligence
  • Unreliability
  • Untruthfulness and insincerity
  • Lack of remorse and shame
  • Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior
  • Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience
  • Pathologic egocentricity
  • General poverty in major affective reactions
  • Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations

We already knew about the first seven traits. We knew that Scalzi is a habitual liar, that his egocentricity reaches pathological levels, and that he is unable to learn from experience. But we did not know about the two latter traits. And yet, what are “wired up different” and “five-sigma outlier” other than the layman’s way of describing “general poverty in major affective reactions” and “unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations”?

It was clear that the time Scalzi spent in a wheelchair in his youth had a significant effect on his socio-sexual development, but now it is apparent that the wheelchair, plus the absent father, also affected the way in which he developed psychologically. The question now may not be whether science fiction’s smiling sociopath is another abusive sex criminal in the mode of Walter Breen, Ed Kramer, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Gian Gomeshi, and Samuel Delany, just to name five of whom we are already aware, but rather, how many bodies are buried somewhere underneath that broad expanse of Ohio lawn?

And the gift of an empty mason jar is particularly troubling, as it can only make the astute observer wonder what sort of ghastly little trophies are intended to go inside it.

Manning and the HGH accusation

It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that Peyton Manning resorted to desperate measures in order to get back on the field after losing his entire 2011 season. But the fact that his arm strength never returned would appear to be evidence against the accusation that he was using a banned substance as part of his recovery:

As part of the investigation, Collins connected with Charlie Sly, a pharmacist based in Austin, Texas, who worked at the Guyer Institute, the Indiana-based anti-aging clinic, in 2011.

Manning missed the 2011 season, when he was a member of the Indianapolis Colts, after undergoing neck surgery. In the documentary, Sly tells Collins, who is taking secret video of his interactions, that he was “part of a medical team that helped [Manning] recover” from the surgery. Sly alleges that the clinic mailed growth hormone and other drugs to Manning’s wife, Ashley Manning, so that the quarterback’s name was never attached to them.

“All the time we would be sending Ashley Manning drugs,” Sly says in the video. “Like growth hormone, all the time, everywhere, Florida. And it would never be under Peyton’s name, it would always be under her name.”

Manning and his wife also came to the clinic after its normal business hours for intravenous treatments, Sly tells Collins on the undercover video.

Manning left the Colts after the 2011 season to sign with Denver. The NFL banned human growth hormone as part of its 2011 collective bargaining agreement with players, but did not begin testing for it until 2014. No player has ever tested positive.

Full disclosure. I am now on a program of ingesting strange nutritional supplements myself. After spending an evening with Mike and Shauna in Spain, Spacebunny now has me drinking weirdly colored liquids that reportedly contain unfamiliar substances such as “beets” and “spinach” on a daily basis. I don’t know if they’re actually illegal or not, but they probably should be.

Volume X favorite story

It should be interesting to see what the favorite story in There Will Be War Vol. X is around these parts; as with Steve Rzasa’s “Turncoat” in Riding the Red Horse Vol. I, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about a contribution by one of the junior authors.

And if you haven’t gotten There Will Be War Vol. X, what on Earth are you waiting for? It’s every bit as good as the reviews are saying.

  • I own all of the original There Will Be War series from when I
    bought them new. They were all excellent. This follow-on, after a long
    series hiatus, is every bit as good. New names, old names, great
    stories, and thought-provoking essays. 
  • Volume 10, the latest There Will Be War, is worthy to stand with the best of that series. Mil-sf doesn’t get better than this.
  • This volume represents a long
    overdue return to the series, and is as timely and pertinent today as
    the originals were in the 80’s.
  • Since Military SF’s value is to provide a means to understand future threats and solutions, this volume is a treasure.

 I
personally don’t think any of the fiction quite rises to the level of
“Cincinnatus” by Joel Rosenberg or “On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen”
by William F. Wu, both of which appear in There Will Be War Vol. II, but  I would argue that the non-fiction is actually better. Still, even if Volume X is only the second-best in the series, that is a remarkable accomplishment after a 25-year hiatus.

The results here.

Mailvox: the burning shame

Gammas never know when to stop. They always think that if they can just figure out the perfect thing to say, if they can somehow formulate the ideal insult and drop it at just the right time, they can completely flip the situation around and triumph like the secret kings they believe themselves to be.

By which I mean HS, or “Harry Savannah” as he calls himself, couldn’t
even flounce away properly. After loftily announcing that he
would let me “take the last word… like an obnoxious child demands,” he couldn’t quite manage to do so and emailed me a sixth time.

Did I say 16 yrs. old? Overestimated. Make that 13…Gamma.

I figured you’d be back again. You are such a Gamma that you can’t even flounce away properly. You see, when you talked about what an obnoxious child demands, that was a psychological tell. You were emotionally projecting. That’s why you’re trying to use my terms now, because you think they will hurt me the way they hurt you. But they won’t. They don’t apply.

I understand that it stings to know thousands of people are laughing at you. But that’s what happens when you are foolish enough to take on your intellectual and social superiors. Now, you can either learn your lesson and stop here, or you can keep digging yourself in deeper.

Your behavior is not Christian in the slightest, in fact, it makes Christians look more than a little bit crazy. You really should stop this now.

This is where the similarity between the SJW mindset and the Gamma mindset can be seen; both SJWs and Gammas believe that if they fake it long enough, their declarations will somehow magically come alive. It’s a sort of intellectual cargo cult; it certainly involves magical thinking.

UPDATE: Harry just. keeps. going.

You are a study, Junior, in adolescent tub-thumping. You know nothing about me but offer this blunderbuss: “…your intellectual and social superiors.” Are you for real? Can you actually be this intellectually pubescent? Also this teenage piece of work: “…that was a psychological tell.” Riiiiiiiight, Junior, that’s EXACTLY what it was…a “psychological tell”. Now I’m actually curious – how old are you?

Just a little piece of advice, lad, because I’m beginning to feel embarrassed FOR you. And it is just that. You seem to be without a capacity to feel embarrassment. Call it extreme adolescent hubris. Call it moronic, but for heaven’s sake take some adult advice at long last. Am I asking too much here?

I have warned Harry that if he persists in attempting to harass me, his email address is going on the blog. I don’t think it’s necessary to turn him over to the VFM, as he’s just an annoying Gamma male, not an SJW in attack mode. I get the feeling that he is an older individual who doesn’t really understand how social media works.

Just like a control-obsessed overweening bully – you make a threat. Very
good, the mask comes off. You persist in asking why I don’t stop
emailing you. Yet you do not seem to see that you do exactly the same.
Remarkable obtuseness. This could have stopped several steps ago in this
exchange. But, of course, you must have the last word – only to make a
threat after you’re wearied with it. But it is true that I offered to
give you that last word. So I am obligated to do so.  Let me finally say
that it is my judgment that you are a fraud as a professing Christian, a
disgrace – not even identifying as a believer a single time in this
exchange and engaging in a thoughtful manner anything of the substance
of my initial query, but preferred to petulantly complain about my being
“impolite.” Which, considering all the badinage in this tennis
exercise, seems down-right ridiculous in the end, no?

This is the second time he has implied he would stop. We’ll see. It’s really remarkable the way Gammas always seem to want to jump in, lecture you, and then have you obediently accept their very important message without saying anything.

How can I fear my enemies…

When I have supporters like this?

By posting this video… I make no commentary on the quality… or
political implications of this video.  It is here solely for
informational purposes.

I’m not sure which is more horrifying, the video itself or the knowledge that certain SJWs will be watching it over and over again on a repeating loop.

“This is our home”

The post-Paris attacks responses continue to intensify:

Up to 600 French protesters desecrated a Muslim prayer hall in Corsica in a revenge attack prompted by the wounding of two firefighters and a police officer.

The furious mob smashed the prayer hall’s glass door, ransacked the interior and left around 50 partially-burned Korans littering the street overnight.

Chanting ‘Arabs get out!’ and ‘This is our home’, protesters marched through the streets of the French Mediterranean island’s capital, Ajaccio.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls described the attack on Twitter as ‘an unacceptable desecration’, and branded the violence towards the firefighters as an ‘intolerable attack’.

The violence began on the night of December 24, when two firefighters were ‘ambushed’ by ‘several hooded youths’ in the low-income neighbourhood of Jardins de L’Empereur.

It escalated when several hundred people gathered in front of police headquarters in the capital city, before marching through the streets to the housing estate where the attack on the firefighters took place. They then launched the violent assault on the local prayer room.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazaneuve insisted the perpetrators of both incidents would be tracked down and arrested, adding that there was no place for ‘racism and xenophobia’ in France.

As I have said, it will take two election cycles before the situation stabilizes. The current French government, like the current German government, Swedish government, and US government, are all actively taking the side of the invaders, against the nation, and therefore they are totally unable to bring a peaceful end to the situation. If we’re all lucky, they will accept being voted out and seeing their handiwork methodically undone.

If we’re not, there will be civil war throughout the West. It is eminently clear that a sufficient number of young Europeans have now concluded that they will no longer endure Muslim attacks without reprisals.

The governments can’t stop them. Are they going to arrest the 1500 young nationals in Holland? The 600 young nationals in Corsica? And they can’t even hold the threat of disemploying them over their heads, because the youth unemployment rates in Europe are over 50 percent. The die is cast, and most of the current governments have foolishly bet on the side that is destined to lose.

The Disassociate game

This illustrates why you should never, ever, pay any attention to whatever concerns a moderate brings to your attention, whether he is of the ideological, political, or religious variety. At the same time one concerned Christian was urging me to disassociate from Greg Johnson, Dalrock was being urged to disassociate himself from me:

Dalrock,

I have always wondered why you associate yourself with Vox Day. His brand of “Christianity” seems far from yours. You always seem bring the same message of God’s Truth and Justice tempered by His Mercy that we hear in the Gospels, Epistles and the writings of the Church Fathers. Vox seems to forget the Mercy part, fly through the Truth part, and screech headfirst into the Justice part. Every single time. That, and his ardent support for Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik, make me wonder why you continue to link to him and his writings?

Have a blessed Christmas.

Jim Oglethorpe

Moderates of the Christian variety love to play Christian Police of some sort or another. Sometimes it is Sin Police, sometimes it is Theology Police, sometimes it is Appearance Police. Regardless, their primary concern is looking inoffensive to the world and virtue-signaling their church associates. Any overlap with Christian theology and teachings is mostly coincidental.

And, of course, any failure to take their “obviously important” concerns seriously immediately results in a tantrum. HS has already sent two three more emails today: 

No adult reply. No doubt you’re busy.  But…why would I try to fool the
unfoolable? Though it is always somewhat gratifying to see an
expectation fulfilled.

Oh, hey, the little Gamma keeps seeking attention. I’m shocked.

I have to admit, I am surprised at what a child you really are.

And here I’m not even the least bit surprised to see that you are a petty name-calling Gamma. Give it up, HS. You’re not the Christ Police.

Sorry Junior, I don’t play video games. Your juvenile name-calling (gamma?) is lost on me. But don’t bother informing me. It’s pathetic. All I need to know. I can see that I’ve gotten under your thin skin. But given that you’re laughably immature, I feel I’m engaging a 16 year old in this back and forth. And it’s gotten to be embarrassing. Take the last word Junior. You know, like an obnoxious child demands.

Why are you still emailing me? Is this some sort of Gamma fangirl thing? Run along now. 

No doubt the non-Christians of the world are awed by these tremendous testimonials for the faith. I would simply encourage them to keep in mind that it is a fundamental logical error to judge the verity of the ism by the idiosyncratic behavior of the individual ist. For many years, that was a real stumbling block for me.

This has nothing to do with HS being a Christian, and everything to do with him being a Gamma.

Mailvox: interviews and the granting thereof

HS objects to my permitting Greg Johnson to ask me questions about my latest book, Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America.

I am a born again Christian. I believe you profess the same. Therefore, why would you grant interviews with someone so warped as Johnson on every level. He not only is a sodomite but an atheist, paganism-pusher, and sodomite-hostile to Christianity and Christians. Perhaps you are not a regenerate man nor do you possess much in the way of principles. This would then, of course, explain the matter. Johnson even says you “honored” him in your recent book. This is a disgrace, disgusting. Perhaps you will deign to reply to me and explain. But probably not. I think you have something of a duty as a professing Christian to explain yourself. Since I as a fellow believer have asked and being as that the question is biblically legitimate I think you are so obligated.

First, HS should get off his ridiculous high horse. It is neither polite nor Christian to demand an answer and offer a justification for doing so before one has even given the person one is asking the chance to respond.

Second, HS is wrong. I am happy to answer his question.

Third, since I first became a public figure in 2001, I have made a regular practice of answering anyone who wishes to ask me questions. Including HS, even though he is an impolite boor, and Mr. Johnson, even though he does not share my views on a wide variety of subjects.

Would HIS similarly criticize Jesus Christ for not only speaking with, but actually dining with, prostitutes and tax collectors?

HS responded in what can only be described as textbook Gamma style:

First, let me say I appreciate your prompt reply. Though I was surprised at its jejune and unsophisticated nature. My email was direct, even demanding and legitimately so. That is, if my charges were accurate. You deny nothing of what I have charged save an unimportant suggestion that you may not care to respond, which I initially addressed. Thus you tacitly acknowledge said accuracy. You are indeed accountable for unbiblical public behavior. And it is reasonable for me or any Christian to expect such from you or any other public figure also professing a Christian faith –  in some venue or other.  Your appearance of being in league with a patent enemy of the Gospel is scandalous. For you to argue this is plain contumacy. Further, your cliché reflex in bringing up the Lord in his ministry shows only hack disingenuousness. It is precarious ground to draw conclusions from Jesus’ ministry for general behavior on our part in any instance but you are clearly badly mistaken in this particular offering. Our Lord NEVER socialized with people who were decidedly hostile to Himself and hateful to his disciples. And this is precisely what you do vis a vis Johnson. In mere personal terms, as a Christian, how can you not be repelled by this individual on a number of levels? Forgive the digression. I notice that you didn’t trouble yourself to even identify as a Christian in your email. But then you may feel my impolite tone preempts this. Which brings me to a conclusion. That you are concerned with impoliteness and boorishness (complete nonsense – remember? You run a rough-and-tumble blog – “boor?” – lol) rather than the obviously important substance of my email further discredits you. Why do I not expect a reply that will be other than pure defensive/self-centeredness?

I have to admit, I really, really struggle to not hate Gammas. Literally everything they do is almost breathtakingly annoying; no wonder they get bullied and abused so often when they are young. I expect this is the kind of guy who tweets his breakfasts and genuinely believes his bowel movements are “obviously important” to everyone. Now, here is the interview with the pagan to which HS importantly objected so vociferously.

GJ: Seriously, the thing that gets me about what you call Churchianity, which is a good term, the Churchians today is they seem to want to deny that it’s moral and right to have any preference for your own children over strangers, for your own country over neighbors, for your own race over other races, and yet you zero in on that in the New Testament indicating that no, those sorts of preferences were regarded as natural.

Looking at Aquinas, for instance. Aquinas in his Questions on Charity basically he says, “Yes, God’s love flows through all of creation, but creation consists of hierarchies and concentric circles of relationships, and so you have a natural preference for your own over strangers, and that structure of preferences doesn’t impede the grace of God, and it’s not something that needs to be fought against or disdained.” And yet what you’ve got with Christians today is this pure xenophilia, this perverse attitude that your neighbor is not your neighbor. No, the neighbor is someone who is far more foreign than your neighbor, and in fact your preference for these foreigners often turns your neighbor’s life in to a living hell.

VD: Right, but again, these are people who call themselves Christians, but when they’re preaching immigration from the Gospel, they’re doing exactly what the Apostle Paul warned about, which is the whole wolf in sheep’s clothing. These are not Christians.

I’m not playing no true Scotsman here. I’m saying these are not people for the most part… And I’m talking about the leaders, I’m not talking about the average church members.

GJ: Right.

VD: These are people who worship at the Temple of Babel.

GJ: Right.

VD: I would not be surprised at all if many of them actually served some other god. I actually got the concept of SJW entryism from being told about a church that had been basically invaded by people who had managed to take it over and the crazy thing is, I mention this in the book, the same thing happened 20 years later at one of the churches that my parents attended. I actually know one of the pastors involved and my uncle was on the board of the church. They ended up getting invaded by these SJWs, who promptly announced that they had a vision for combining Christianity with Islam and wanted to call it Chrislam.

Now, you cannot possibly hold Christianity responsible for that, because that is anti-Christianity of a sort that Richard Dawkins never dreamed of.

GJ: Oh God, yes! The core issue is really the idea of charity and loving your neighbor and being kind to strangers and so forth, and that notion carries a great deal of moral weight even in the minds of non-Christians. It’s been perverted into an attitude where you measure your virtue by the degree to which you betray the people close to you and side with people far away. It overturns families, it overturns communities, and it overturns societies. It’s just a kind of moralistic absurdity that is an agent of chaos and destruction.

VD: And you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings. What do we usually call a good that is perverted into something else other than its purpose?

GJ: Well, you tell me.

VD: We usually call that evil.

GJ: Evil. Yeah.

VD: I think this Churchianity is absolutely evil. I think it is absolutely of the devil. I don’t think you even need to be Christian to pick up the scent of brimstone from it. I realize for your secular viewers that may sound nuts, and that’s fine, but my point is that the good news for the secular and the pagan Right is that true Christianity, the Christianity that exploded across the world, and the Christianity that caused the lands of Europe to become Christendom, is ultimately on your side in that regard.

There’s no question about that. Even someone like Anders Breivik recognized it. Breivik is not a Christian. He does not worship Jesus Christ, but he described himself as a cultural Christian because he understood that connection.

GJ: Right.

VD: In Europe, that’s going to be the big factor of change. It’s not an accident that Putin often speaks in religious terms. It’s not an accident that the forces that are rising in Poland and Hungary . . . Even Hungary, like you said, is fairly secular, but when you listen to the nationalists speak they often speak about the Christian heroes, the Christian kings.

GJ: Oh yeah.

VD: But the most important thing to keep in mind, and I think it’s something that can inspire seculars and pagans as well, and it’s something that I always enjoy telling atheists, because they say there are fewer Christians now in America than there were before and I always say, “Hey, we only need 11.”

How terrible, that a Christian should speak of Aquinas, and Christian theology, and of the words of Jesus Christ himself, with an unbeliever!