Freedom

I do so enjoy having no credibility, as I have been reliably informed is the case for many years now. It’s just another word for having absolutely no external limits upon one’s behavior:

Vox has 430-odd (so far) Vile Faceless Minions who have pledged to vote as he instructs them. This gives some people heartburn. On the other hand, the VFM support Vox voluntarily, so it’s not really anyone else’s business.

By the next Worldcon, he’ll have even more Minions; a nontrivial voting bloc he can use as he sees fit.

The current “Vox Day” is a creation of the SJWs. They vilified him so thoroughly nothing he can do can alter public opinion one way or the other, so he’s free to say and do anything he wants without concern for repercussion.

“What part of ‘Supreme Dark Lord’ did you not understand? Don’t you get it? I am not the good guy. I am the very bad guy.”

They literally have no idea what to do when you agree and amplify their accusations. I mean, don’t you grasp that they are POINTING and SHRIEKING at you? That is supposed to be your cue to stammer, cringe, and apologize!

So now he’s the dark monster living rent-free in their heads. Which suits him just fine, as far as I can tell.

I had dinner with Mike Cernovich tonight. Two fearsome monsters of the Internet… and yes, we were most definitely plotting dastardly and nefarious deeds.

The challenge of SJW entryism

Brian Niemeier points out the fundamental flaw in the conservative strategy of permanent retreat:

We also agree that the opposition’s numbers are small relative to greater fandom and the general population. Yet despite being vastly outnumbered, look what they’ve achieved.

They halved the Big Five’s SFF sales, took over SFWA, and dominated Worldcon–all in 20 years.

You correctly argue that these institutions are irrelevant. But they weren’t prior to that 20-year march. I’m all for discussing which hills we’re ready to die on, but before we can have that discussion, everyone needs to understand how the enemy operates.

They’re experts at infiltrating and subverting organizations–especially when they’re at a numeric disadvantage. San Diego, SLCCC, and Gen Con have lots of thankless scut jobs that Morlocks will gladly take to get their feet in the door and multiply.

How many of those cons have codes of conduct? All it takes is one infiltrator on a committee and the other members’ complacency to weaponize the rules against normal fans.

Larry posted a while back about a guy who complained that Gen Con isn’t safe for minorities. That’s how it starts.

I’m all for starting new awards and moving on to greener convention pastures. But unless the unequivocal message is sent that entryism will not be tolerated, anything we build will look just like Worldcon and trad publishing inside of 2 decades.

Conservative strategy is guaranteed failure. Conservatism is the prevent defense of politics. It doesn’t always fail, but it fails often enough that anyone who advocates it as a strategy should be assumed to be inept and incompetent.

I am working on developing a proper Code of Conduct designed to not only keep out entryists, but eject them as soon as they reveal themselves. If you want peace, prepare for war. If you want freedom of thought and speech, prepare to police the would be policemen.

Appendix N: conclusions

Jeffro has completed the initial pass of his quixotic masterpiece. Some of his conclusions:

  • Tolkien’s ascendancy was not inevitable. It’s really a fluke that he even became the template for the modern fantasy epic.
  • A half dozen authors would have easily been considered on par with Tolkien in the seventies.
  • Our concept of “Tolkienesque” fantasy has little to do with Tolkien’s actual work. Likewise, the “Lovecraftian” stories and games of today have little to do with what Lovecraft actually wrote. Our concepts of swords and sorcery have had the “weird” elements removed from them for the most part. Next to the giants of the thirties, just about everything looks tamed and watered down.
  • Entire genres have been all but eliminated. The majority of the Appendix N list falls under either planetary romance, science fantasy, or weird fiction. Most people’s readings of AD&D and OD&D are done without a familiarity of these genres.
  • Science fiction and fantasy were much more related up through the seventies. Several Appendix N authors did top notch work in both genres. Some did work that could be classified as neither.
  • It used to be normal for science fiction and fantasy fans to read books that were published between 1910 and 1977. There was a sense of canon in the seventies that has since been obliterated.
  • Modern fandom is now divorced from its past in a way that would be completely alien to game designers in the seventies. They had no problem synthesizing elements from classics, grandmasters of the thirties, and new wave authors.
  • Ideological diversity in science fiction and fantasy was a given in the seventies. We are hopelessly homogenistic in comparison to them.
  • The program of political correctness of the past several decades has made even writers like Ray Bradbury and C. L. Moore all but unreadable to an entire generation. The conditioning is so strong, some people have almost physical reactions to the older stories now.

And at Castalia House, Jeffro has posted a not-unrelated retrospective on the topic of Tolkien’s influence on Dungeons & Dragons:

This list has been held up as conclusive evidence of Tolkien’s
influence on the formation of original D&D.² Taking all of the
game’s influences into account it’s just not that convincing, however.
Certainly, players of this rule set would have been able to recreate The
Battle of Five Armies and The Battle of the Morannon. And unlike
anything you’d see in the coming D&D rule sets, Bard the Hunter’s
ability to take out a flying dragon with a single shot is accounted for
here. But while wraiths here are clearly inspired by the Nazgul, raising
the morale of their allies, causing their foes to make morale checks,
and paralyzing men with fear, these special abilities also failed
to survive the transition from miniatures supplement to role-playing
game.

Other staples of the D&D zeitgeist are in evidence even at this
early juncture: the chromatic dragons are out in force, along with the
chlorine gas breathing variety from the de Camp and Pratt’s The Roaring Trumpet.
The clearest example of Tolkien’s diluted authority in Gygax’s views
would be in the matter of Trolls. “What are generally referred to as
Trolls are more properly Ogres,” he explains. To Gygax, “true Trolls”
are more in line with the one in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions.
 
Similarly, the wizards of the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement are unlike
anything from Tolkien’s corpus; they unleash “Cloudkill” on enemy
armies, create hallucinatory terrain, “haste” friendly units while
“slowing” enemies, and disrupt the opposing force’s command and control
with “confuse”. Tolkien’s stark contrasts between good and evil are
replaced with Poul Anderson’s and Michael Moorcock’s Law to Chaos
alignment spectrum, with the most surprising implication of this
system being that the question of whether Elves will come in on the side
of Halflings or Wraiths is determined entirely by the roll of the dice!

It’s very easy for wargamers to see the wargaming roots that underlie all role-playing games, but rather less easy for non-wargamers to recognize them. This is actually something I cover in my game development course; the students tend to be very fascinated to see how one can trace the developmental lineage of some of today’s biggest games all the way back to the arcade games of the 1980s. As for literature, I always find it amusing when people assert that Warhammer was an influence on Selenoth because I don’t play Warhammer or any miniatures games nor have I ever read even a single book from the Black Library. The influences they think they are seeing actually stem from board-and-counter games that influenced both Games Workshop and me.

Selenoth began life as a wargame called “Warleader” which was my attempt to write rules for Fantasy Advanced Squad Leader. Perhaps one day I’ll return to it.

Speaking of Castalia House, we are looking for some more high-quality writers to join Jeffro, Morgan, and Daniel there, but we are only interested in potential contributors who already have a blog and a track record. If you’re a book reviewer or a game writer interested in expanding your audience, touch base.

    Yes, they’re going home

    The EU is planning to repatriate the invading migrants:

    The EU plans to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants back to their home countries within weeks, according to a Brussels secret document leaked to British daily the Times.

    The plans apparently include the creation of a new “dedicated return office” unit in the EU’s Frontex border guard agency to deal with the “irregular migrants.” The EU plans to use trade treaty clauses to force the return of refugees whose asylum applications failed to countries including Mali, Niger, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have development aid and trade treaties with the EU, the Times reported.

    “All measures must be taken to ensure irregular migrants’ effective return, including use of detention,” the leaked EU document said.

    It is unclear whether refugees from countries in the midst of armed conflict, such as Syria and Afghanistan, would be forced to return to their countries. However, according to the document, the goal of the policy is to end the migrant flow altogether, rather than deal with the issue’s causes.

    This is a very good sign that the European nations want to avoid a bloody tragedy of epic proportions, but it doesn’t mean anything until the repatriations actually take place and the migrant flow is permanently shut down. It also isn’t sufficient, as it isn’t merely the “irregular migrants” who need to be sent back to their home countries, but also the “refugees” and the “Gaestarbeiter” of the last four decades.

    After all, the Germans are getting scared by the migrant invasion and about the last thing the world needs is the Germans feeling both scared and cornered.

    But it is a good start and is a sign that some sanity remains in Christendom. Note, in particular, that “all measures must be taken”. The USA would do very well to follow suit.

    Mailvox: Irrelevant

    To be more specific, irrelevant and outdated drivel written by a coward and a liar. That’s the answer to a question I was asked by a reader concerning my response to this ridiculous guest post at Monster Hunter Nation by Charles Gannon:

    My thought for the day:

    Choose your battles carefully.

    If you find yourself constantly in combat, you’re not being choosy enough.

    Or you’ve decided that you are actually at war. Which means that you are now committed to destruction, not discourse.

    No value judgments implied, but it was a call for courteous self-awareness when in discourse, and, more directly, a kind of diagram of what our discursive behavior tells us about our deepest motivations: are we talking to communicate or do battle? At no point do I imply that battle is always avoidable, or even wrong; just that it’s important to know when you’ve crossed the line, and what that really means.

    This is remarkably stupid on two counts. First, you can’t always choose your battles. When it comes to war, it takes one to tangle. I didn’t choose my battles with SFWA, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the Toad of Tor, McRapey, McRacist, George Rape Rape Martin, or Worldcon. They chose to attack me, completely unprovoked, and with the exception of Martin, I had never even heard of any of the losers prior to them attacking me. I didn’t cross any lines. They did.

    What separated me from everyone else they attacked was that I was willing and able to not only fight back, but break their megaphones. Clueless and cowardly suckups like Gannon find self-defense reprehensible; he is just hoping that he’ll be eaten last. That’s why he favors unilateral disarmament with regards to rhetoric.

    Second, we are in, at the very least, the fourth decade of a cultural war that has its roots in the social justice ideals of JS Mill. You could quite reasonably argue that we are actually in its second century. The time for discourse is long over. There is literally nothing to discuss. Either all individuals and institutions are wholly given over to social justice, as Mill declared, or the war continues. Would-be fence sitting moderates (who, like all moderates, only shoot at the side they supposedly, nominally, support), are totally useless, yammering about the dire need for something that is both impossible and irrelevant.

    On the other hand, Trial by Fire was the only SP-recommended novel that did not make the Hugo ballot. It was also the only SP-recommended novel not included on Vox Day’s authoritarian slate. I will let you decide if there might be some relationship between those two data points…

    As many know, my presence on the SP recommendation list came as a surprise; I did not learn about it until a few days (a week?) later, when someone commented on it on my FB account. Perceiving it as a list akin to dozens I’d seen floated during Hugo and Nebula seasons since I first became an SFWA member in 1990 (I think), the one concern I voiced to Brad (Torgerson) was that I was only comfortable being included if Vox Day (whose proclivities were known to me only via general third-hand report) was not on the list. Which he wasn’t. So then I went back to work (I’m fortunate to have a number of novels under contract) and pretty much stopped following the Hugo process. (I’m the parent-on-call for four kids, so I don’t browse FB feed much and sometimes wonder why I even have a Twitter account…)

    When I learned about the Rabid Puppies and Vox Day’s activities (which prompted my research into the details of his prior commentaries upon race, women, and more), I contacted Brad and we agreed that everyone must follow their own conscience if push came to shove. I should add, for the record, that I not only respect fellow-novelist Marko Kloos immensely for the choice he made, but I also understand what may have been his instinct not to add to the unfortunate spectacle until and unless circumstances made it incumbent upon him to do so.

    There is a relationship, without question. Had I included Gannon’s novel on the RP list, it would have been nominated, just like Kloos’s. I didn’t include it because I hadn’t read it, I’d never heard of him, and now I’m glad I didn’t because apparently Gannon is the same sort of cowardly SJW kiss-ass that Kloos is. Gannon and Kloos are like the National Review of science fiction. I was quite happy to see Kloos withdraw his nomination too; I warned Brad that it was useless trying to support moderates like him because they always run away from the heat. They come up with all sorts of noble excuses, but you can’t help but notice that the direction is always the same: away from criticism and conflict.

    I can’t claim those various declined nominations were any part of my strategy, but I certainly expected to see them. Because moderates are always cowards, that’s the real reason they’re moderates.

    Anyhow, Gannon is not only a liar, he’s a rather stupid one to boot. Not only am I not an authoritarian, but it would be hard to find anyone on the planet who gives less of a damn what people do so long as they don’t a) bother me or b) destroy Western civilization. And really, b) is pretty much a subset of a).

    Notice that Gannon was willing to write me off entirely on the basis of “general third-hand report” while openly palling around with the likes of Scalzi. That means that his calls for civility and discourse are entirely meaningless. To claim that someone is outside the bounds of discourse means YOU have declared yourself their enemy and you do not merit any civility or respect from them in return.

    Gannon poses as a moderate, but he isn’t actually one. He’s on the side of the speech police. He’s on the side of the thought police. He may not be an SJW, but he is on their side, no matter what those who believe they are his friends might think. He’ll turn on them eventually, of course. And when he calls my slate “authoritarian”, he’s doing what SJWs always do. He’s projecting.

    What the likes of Gannon don’t realize is that they’re entirely behind the times. They’re still living in the 1990s. They think their pointing-and-shrieking, and false equivalences, and attempted disqualifications will somehow magically achieve disqualify “extremists” like me. But neither truth nor reality are on their side, and it’s rather remarkable that someone who is supposedly intelligent still hasn’t realized that yet.

    Especially when the other side is writing delusional things like Laura Mixon:

    “Bullies and abusers rely on the larger community’s desire for comity—our willingness to live and let live—to impose their will and silence dissent. In such a case, it’s incumbent on people with standing in the community to speak up against them, providing a counterweight to their destructive ideas. By speaking when she did, in my view, Irene was doing what other thought leaders in our field like N. K. Jemisin, John Scalzi, and the Nielsen Haydens have done: guarding the health and well-being of our SFF community by standing up against hate speech.”

    I absolutely refuse to be a part of any community that has “thought leaders” of such an observably low quality. They are not only thought and speech police, they are proud of policing what they denounce as “hate speech”. What they call “destructive ideas” are better described as “history, science, and logic”.

    The only sane candidate

    It’s rather remarkable, astonishing really, that Donald Trump is the only candidate in either party whose public statements aren’t either completely a) irrelevant, or b) insane:

    Donald Trump, the Republican Party presidential front-runner, was talking about Mrs. Merkel’s invitation to migrants on the American political interview show, ‘Face The Nation’.

    Mr Trump said: “I do not like the migration. I do not like the people coming”. Instead he favours “a safe zone for people”, an idea on which he expanded.

    He said: “Frankly, look, Europe is going to have to handle — but they’re going to have riots in Germany. What’s happening in Germany, I always thought Merkel was like this great leader. What she’s done in Germany is insane. It is insane. They’re having all sorts of attacks.”

    Mr Trump was talking about the decision to throw open Germany’s doors to Syrian migrants taken by Frau Merkel in August, which Breitbart London previously reported. The ‘open doors’ policy is an idea for which she has come under attack, even from those within her own political ranks.

    “What they should do is get all the countries together, including the Gulf States, which have nothing but money. They should all get together and they should take a big swath of land in Syria.

    “They should do a safe zone for people where they could live. And then ultimately go back to their country, go back to where they came from.”

    And then start sending the Somalis and every other group of “refugees” back to safe zones in their own countries. Because they are rapidly and actively transforming the USA into the very third world hellholes from which they came.

    I don’t care what any candidate has to say about any issue except immigration. There is no longer any other issue that matters.

    Volume X

    Jerry Pournelle is pleased with the progress of the revived THERE WILL BE WAR:

    There Will Be War Volume 10 is filling faster than expected. There are still a few fiction slots open, and we are looking for serious previously published non-fiction on future war; previous publication in a military journal preferred but not a requirement. Can be any length but under 5,000 words preferred. Payment on acceptance of a flat $200 advance against pro rata share of 25% of cover price royalties.

    We purchase non-exclusive anthology rights only; original works not excluded but no extra payment for first serial rights. Like the previous works in the There Will Be War series, this is a reprint anthology.  The introductions to the works will be original.  Previous volumes have sold well. Email submission@therewillbewar.net to submit. Volume will probably be published (eBook) in December; hardbound volume next year.

    A few things: PLEASE STOP SUBMITTING straight SF, urban fantasy, SF romance, and anything that is not clearly MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION. A submission will be rejected out of hand as soon as it becomes apparent that it is not mil-SF. We’ve received a startling number of submissions that are not even remotely relevant to one of the most famous anthology series in science fiction.

    Note that this is an elite collection and many of the contributors names are very recognizable. Based on the scores of submissions I have personally reviewed, if you are not a significantly experienced SF writer, your piece is unlikely to be of a sufficient quality to be accepted. If you’re looking to break in for the first time, this is probably not the place, particularly if you have no military experience.

    We are now looking more for non-fiction than fiction. But we are not looking for opinion pieces from people without significant military or strategic experience.

    The importance of failure

    I was speaking to an entrepreneur today whose project is struggling and on the verge of failure. I encouraged him to NOT ask for donations; the need for a commercial venture to ask for donations is the market’s way of telling you that your project HAS ALREADY FAILED.

    Now, it is important to understand that failure is the seed of success, just as success is the seed of failure. This isn’t a Zen koan, it is a simple and straightforward observation. Most successful individuals, myself included, have more failures than successes. There are very, very, very few exceptions; I am having lunch today with a 2x New York Times bestselling author whose first two novels were #1 bestsellers, but she is the exception and she very well knows it.

    The three keys to failure leading to success are as follows:

    1. Fail faster. Once it is clear that it isn’t working as anticipated, shut it down!
    2. Learn from the mistakes you made. 
    3. Apply the lessons learned in your next venture.

    There is zero shame in failure. There is only shame in lacking the courage to try, and lacking the resolution to pick yourself up afterwards and try again.