Science SJWs always lie

Orac Knows is always looking for a chance to take a shot at me because I spank him every time he tries to attack  my vaccine skepticism or whatever. He’s a typical scientist, educated, but not very smart, and totally unable to grasp the fact that his science degree doesn’t make him a match for an opponent with a significant advantage in intelligence.

He tried to leap on the fact that, according to him, the study cited by the New York Times in the story I linked to yesterday was flawed, and thereby claim that I don’t know what I am talking about.

There was just one little problem with that. I never read the study. I never pretended to read the study. I neither linked to nor cited the study.

From @oracknows: Quoth Vox Day: Antivaxers are more educated. Quoth the study Vox cites: Not exactly…

Vox Day @voxday 
You’re dishonest, Orac. More educated does not mean more intelligent. Look at us. You have more education. I’m smarter.

Orac ‏@oracknows
Of course, it amuses me that someone who is so “smart” didn’t seem to understand what the study he touts actually says. 🙂

Vox Day @voxday
You prove my point. I never read any study. I merely linked to the New York Times. You’re not amused, you’re dishonest.

Orac ‏@oracknows
In other words, to borrow a phrase from @WilliamShatner, I’m laughing at the superior intellect.

Vox Day @voxday 
My intellect is observably superior to yours. And you’re not laughing. You’re posturing.

Orac ‏@oracknows
Nope. I’m mocking you for being so lazy and anxious to believe the NYT version that you didn’t bother to check!

Vox Day @voxday
Why would I check it? I don’t check most news sources I link. The only
person leaping at anything is you. Why attack me, not NYT?

Vox Day ‏@voxday
And you also claimed I cited the study. I didn’t. You even knew I didn’t. You lied. See, YOU, I would check. Because you lie.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Proof @oracknows lied:

1. “Quoth the study Vox cites”
2. “it’s obvious that he just read the news…but didn’t actually look up the paper”

Notice how as soon as he’s busted on his two bait-and-switches – he tries to substitute “more intelligent” for “more educated” and “Vox is stupid because he got it wrong” for “I think the New York Times got it wrong”, he tries to back up and say that he’s just mocking me for excessive credulity in citing the New York Times.

You know, the leading American liberal news standard. Someone had better alert Wikipedia! The New York Times is no longer a reliable source!

This is like me claiming someone doesn’t understand economics because they cited GDP or inflation figures reported in the Wall Street Journal. It’s just ludicrously dishonest. But then, Orac isn’t actually interested in correcting the science or he would have focused on the New York Times and not me. He’s just another SJW with such short-term time preferences that he’s willing to throw his own reputation as well as the reputation of a liberal newspaper and a science reporter under the bus just to take an ill-advised shot at me.

The funny thing is that Spacebunny can land a killshot 100x more effective than all the SJWs desperately flailing about, and she can do it with considerably less effort.

UberFacts @UberFacts
A study found that astronauts had more difficulty doing things that required spacial reasoning and motor skills after 6 months in space.

Space Bunny ‏@Spacebunnyday
@voxday would come back a vegetable…..

As in Europe, so in America

Patrick Buchanan sees a similar future to the one John Red Eagle and I predicted in Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America:

What was predicted, 14 years ago, has come to pass.

Migrants into Germany from the Middle and Near East reached 1 million in 2015. EU bribes to the Turks to keep Muslim migrants from crossing over to the Greek islands, thence into the Balkans and Central Europe, are unlikely to stop the flood.

My prediction that European “patriots will recapture control of their national destinies,” looks even more probable today.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who almost lost a referendum on Scottish secession, is demanding a return of British sovereignty from the EU sufficient to satisfy his countrymen, who have been promised a vote on whether to abandon the European Union altogether.

Marine Le Pen’s anti-EU National Front ran first in the first round of the 2015 French elections. Many Europeans believe she will make it into the final round of the next presidential election in 2017.

Anti-immigrant, right-wing parties are making strides all across Europe, as the EU is bedeviled by a host of crises.

Europe’s open borders that facilitate free trade also assure freedom of travel to homegrown terrorists.

Mass migration into the EU is causing member nations to put up checkpoints and close borders. The Schengen Agreement on the free movement of goods and people is being ignored or openly violated.

The economic and cultural clash between a rich northern Europe and a less affluent south — Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal — manifest in the bad blood between Athens and Berlin, endures.

Northern Europeans grow weary of repeated bailouts of a south that chafes at constant northern demands for greater austerity.

Then there is the surge of sub-nationalism, as in Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders, and Veneto, where peoples seek to disconnect from distant capitals that no longer speak for them, and reconnect with languages, traditions and cultures that give more meaning to their lives than the economics-uber-alles ideology of Frau Angela Merkel.

Moreover, the migrants entering Europe, predominantly Islamic and Third World, are not assimilating as did the European and largely Christian immigrants to America of a century ago.

The enclaves of Asians in Britain, Africans and Arabs around Paris, and Turks in and around Berlin seem to be British, French and German in name only. And some of their children are now heeding the call to jihad against the Crusaders invading Muslim lands.

The movement toward deeper European integration appears to have halted, and gone into reverse, as the EU seems to be unraveling along ideological, national, tribal and historic lines.

If these trends continue, and they seem to have accelerated in 2015, the idea of a United States of Europe dies, and with it the EU.

And this raises a question about the most successful economic and political union in history – the USA.

How does an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural United States avoid the fate to which Europe appears to be headed, when there is no identifiable racial or ethnic majority here in 2042?

The USA cannot survive in its current form because an idea is not a nation.

Remember, free speech is firable

If you are a manager or an employer, don’t hesitate to investigate your employees’ social media pages and fire those who express SJW views. The precedent has been clearly established: anyone who makes “unacceptable” remarks that do not reflect a company’s values can be terminated:

A man accused of sending racist private messages to a Black Lives Matter Facebook page has lost his job with food giant Archer Daniels Midland.

Brad Schultz used a racial epithet in referring to the group and told them “get out of town with your [expletive] protesting,” based on screenshots of the messages widely circulated over social media. Schultz’s message added that they should “just leave, white people don’t like you.”

At least one Facebook group posted the messages publicly last week along with a number for ADM, where Schultz was employed. The post was shared more than 1,000 times. According to screenshots of Schultz’s Facebook page, he lives in Mankato.

    (3) The employee who posted these statements no longer works for ADM.
    — ADM Mankato (@ADMMankato) December 27, 2015

    (2) As previously stated, these remarks are unacceptable and do not reflect ADM’s values.
    — ADM Mankato (@ADMMankato) December 27, 2015

    (1) ADM has concluded its investigation regarding recent social media comments made by an ADM employee in Mankato, Minnesota.
    — ADM Mankato (@ADMMankato) December 27, 2015

Archer Daniels Midland said in a statement Tuesday that it conducted an investigation into the employee’s comments and that he no longer works for the company. They would not specify whether he resigned or was terminated. “These remarks are unacceptable and do not reflect ADM’s values,” the statement said.

Schultz did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

Screenshots show he later apologized to Black Lives Matter, seemingly after the comments had gone public. “It was cruel, and I didn’t mean it,” Schultz wrote in another private message. “In no way is my workplace affiliated with these comments. Please delete them.”

“Internet justice is real,” Minneapolis NAACP President Nekima Levy-Pounds posted on Facebook Tuesday afternoon. “Hopefully, individuals will learn from Brad Schultz’s mistake and think twice before making racist statements on social media.”

In like manner, any anti-Christian or even anti-Christmas statement is sufficient grounds for termination, as it can be described as “unacceptable anti-religious bigotry”. Those will probably be the easiest to find, especially among millennials. It should be relatively easy to disemploy any militant atheist working in the corporate world. There are also an increasing number of anti-white comments that can be identified.

Note once more that apologizing is utterly futile. Given the amenability of the authority involved, it probably didn’t matter what Schultz did. But the point is that an apology is NEVER going to save you once you have made yourself vulnerable to SJWs and been targeted by them.

The GT incident

VD, any reference to the GT incident that you are talking about? I
tried looking it up, but it is hard to search for, apparently, for
someone that isn’t already familiar with the story.

It’s a matter of public record:

Contracts; pleading; prevention of performance of condition precedent; repudiation and right to terminate; implied duty of good faith and fair dealing. Tortious interference with contractual relations. Alleged breach of agreement granting defendant rights relating to two software video games. Motion to dismiss (CPLR 3211(a)(7)). Standards for pleading breach of contract. The court upheld a breach claim. The court rejected an argument that plaintiff had failed to comply with a condition precedent because defendant had allegedly prevented the performance of the condition. The court dismissed a claim for repudiation of the entire agreement since under it defendant had had an unconditional right to terminate, which it did, and thus could be liable only through that date, there being no provision for acceleration of future payments. The court ruled that a fair reading of the contract indicated that defendant had an implied duty of good faith to assist, or not interfere with, plaintiff’s entering into bundling arrangements with computer manufacturers. A third claim was thus upheld. The court found that plaintiff had set forth only conclusory allegations regarding interference with prospective contractual relations and thus dismissed that claim. Fenris Wolf Ltd. v. GT Interactive Software Corp., Index No. 601206/99, 10/15/99 (Cozier, J.)

We were working on a groundbreaking SF 3D shooter with AI-driven squadplay called Rebel Moon Revolution that was signed to GT Interactive. We’d had a huge success with Rebel Moon Rising thanks to bundling deals with IBM and Intel; GT used to joke that we were the only developer who had ever sent THEM checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

(This is why I’m never bothered by people claiming I’m a failure. My most spectacularly stupid moves, the mistakes I would most like to have back, have usually been related to my failure to properly exploit either opportunity or success. We gave GT a percentage of our revenue to handle the tech support; it turned out to be the most expensive tech support in computer game history. Idiotic.)

However, GT lost their crown jewels to Activision and soon came under financial pressure due to their funding practically every type of shooter EXCEPT the one that we pitched them twice: a WWII shooter. No one, they explained, would be interested in THAT. No wonder they went out of business.

In the summer of 1998, they went weirdly silent after we delivered a milestone that should have been routinely approved and paid. I got a phone call from our producer, who was very upset and told me that the milestone was not going to be approved. When I asked what was wrong with it, he said, “nothing”. Then he told me it would never be approved, and that they were terminating many development contracts, pretty much everything that wasn’t due to ship before the end of the year.

I’d heard rumors that this might be in the works; Sega of Japan had recently shut down Sega of America, and with it our Dreamcast launch title, an SF RPG that we were developing with Julian LeFay of Daggerfall fame, so I wasn’t exactly shocked. I asked when we could expect the termination notice, which was due within 30 days of a milestone rejection according to the contract, and was shocked when he said, “yeah, that’s the thing, they’re not going to terminate.”

You see, what GT was doing was trying to get back the money it had already paid out to its developers by refusing to release their claim on the IP unless the developer returned a substantial percentage of the advance it had already earned via milestones. This meant that the developers couldn’t take their projects elsewhere; we had good relationships with Microsoft at the time and would almost surely have gone there. Unlike other developers, we resisted their legal pressure, filed a lawsuit, beat them in the initial rounds of court, and ultimately forced a settlement in the place of the simple letter of termination they should have sent us.

The victory came at a serious cost, though. The legal process takes a long time, and by the time GT offered us a settlement worth taking, our entire team was already dispersed throughout the industry in the jobs we’d helped them find. My partner and I were so burned out and disenchanted that we both left the industry for several years. It was a substantial victory, but a Pyrrhic one; we would have been much better off in the long term just signing up with Microsoft and letting them deal with the legal complications such an action would have created.

This is how much he doesn’t care

Science Fiction’s smiling sociopath, John Scalzi, declares he is GLAD and DELIGHTED to be ruining science fiction:

    Today I saw a rant on Reddit about me ruining science fiction, and I was all, “YES I AM AND I WILL RUIN IT FOR ANOTHER 13 BOOKS AT LEAST”
    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015

    ALL OF SCIENCE FICTION WILL FALL TO MY RUINATION WHICH CONSISTS APPARENTLY OF HAVING THE OCCASIONAL FEMALE CHARACTER WITH AGENCY
    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015

    IN THE END THERE WILL BE ONLY ME AND THE BONES OF THE GRANDMASTERS I’VE POOPED UPON or something really it’s kind of confusing to me tbh
    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015

    But, yeah. If you think I’m ruining science fiction you’re just gonna have to suck on that shitsicle for another decade at least. Enjoy!
    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015

    (To be fair to Reddit, someone there was merely excerpting the rant from elsewhere. It’s not Reddit’s fault! This time!)
    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015

    I’ll note the fellow whining I was ruining SF was also self-evidently racist and sexist, so I’m ESPECIALLY glad to ruin SF for that jerk.
    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) December 29, 2015

Seriously, words can’t express how delighted I am to vex and annoy bigoted turds like this one, simply by existing and publishing. Because I do exist. And I will publish! The contracts are signed! Barring death itself, there is no way to stop the decade-long flood of my ruination of the science fiction! Best of all, I don’t have to do anything other than publish to irritate this sad sack of crap. And I was going to do that anyway. It’s the perfect storm of least effort on my part.

Here’s the thing: If I ruin the genre of science fiction for you, or if the presence in the genre of people whose politics and positions you don’t like ruins the genre for you — the whole genre, in which hundreds of traditionally published works and thousands of self-and-micro-pubbed works are produced annually — then, one, oh well, and two, you pretty much deserve to have the genre ruined for you. It doesn’t have to be ruined, mind you, because chances are pretty good that within those thousands of works published annually, you’ll find something that rings your bell. And if you do, why should you care about the rest of it? It’s literally not your problem. Find the work you’ll love and then love it, and support the authors who make it, hopefully with money.

But if you’re determined that I or any author, or feminists or socialists or whomever are ruining the genre, then you’ve given those people the power to ruin the genre for you, whether they care what you think or not, or whether or not they even know you exist. And, speaking personally, if a sexist, bigoted cloacal squirt of a human wants to give me that power, then sure, I’ll be happy to ruin the genre for them through no additional effort of my own. Why, yes, I am destroying science fiction! With glee! And I’m going to be destroying it a lot over the next ten years at least.

So, you might want to pack a lunch, chuckles. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be here in science fiction a nice, long, productive time. I’m going to write what I want to write, how I want to write it, and I’m going to have a hell of a lot of fun while I’m at it. And if you think that ruins the genre, then that’s your problem, not mine.

Perhaps John Scalzi is going to write what he wants to write, write it how he wants to write it, and have a hell of a lot of fun while he’s at it.

But Tor Books isn’t going to publish it….

“Tor has decided to wait until 2017 to release the next new one.”

As one of my friends in the industry commented, “I thought it was going to take until the fourth book was due before Scalzi couldn’t deliver. He couldn’t even come through on the first one!”

Then again, maybe this is just his way of secretly endorsing the Tor Books boycott through sabotage. Wheels within wheels, my friends. Wheels within wheels.

UPDATE: Johnny Con says the problem isn’t that the book has been rejected, but rather, he hasn’t written it yet.

I understand that one of my constant detractors is asserting that the reason the first book of my new contract comes out in 2017 and not 2016 is because I turned in a manuscript and it was terrible and now Tor is trying to salvage things. This is the same person, if memory serves, who asserted that Lock In was a failure and Tor was planning to dump me, shortly before Tor, in fact, handed me a multi-million dollar contract, which included a sequel to Lock In.

Now, as then, his head is up his ass and he’s speaking on things he knows nothing about. I haven’t turned in a manuscript; there’s no manuscript to turn in. They (remember I’m working on two) haven’t been written yet. To be clear, the only thing I’ve turned in to Tor since submitting my manuscript for The End of All Things is my contract for the next set of books. That was accepted without any additional revision, I would note.

For the avoidance of doubt, you should assume that any speculation about me or my career coming from that quarter is based on equal parts of ignorance, craven maliciousness, and pathetic longing for my attention, and almost certainly false. Anything said by that person about me is likely to be incorrect, down to and including indefinite articles.

SJWs always lie. I have never claimed that Lock In was a failure or that Tor was planning to dump John Scalzi. Here is what I actually wrote about Lock In:

It’s so typical of SF/F’s Bernie Madoff that he claims I am “so very wrong” when events have gone EXACTLY as I predicted they would. It’s not that Lock In has been a massive failure; most, though not all, books by a reasonably known author that have been pushed as hard as Tor has pushed Lock In will be similarly successful in its first month. Initial “success” in the publishing industry is, to a great extent, predetermined by the publisher’s decisions concerning print runs and marketing budgets….

So, it’s no surprise that Lock In is superficially successful, as Tor has invested a lot of money (relatively speaking) in the marketing of the book in both obvious ways, such as the author’s nationwide book tour and the reviews in various media outlets, and less obvious ways, such as buying the book onto the New York Times Bestseller list.  

The point isn’t that Lock In isn’t successful, it is that it isn’t successful enough to justify the investment PNH is making in Scalzi, or the opportunity cost that their marketing efforts in it represent. Notice that I even anticipated his new contract:  

In any event, Scalzi is spinning his “success” in the same way that an
NFL running back’s agent spins it when he’s angling for a new contract.

Angling successfully, as it happens. But he’s spinning, always spinning, even trying here to retroactively salvage his past lies: “Anything said by that person about me is likely to be incorrect, down to and including indefinite articles.”

After all, if you can’t trust Mr. Two Million Monthly Views, who can you trust?

UPDATE 2: LT has the scoop on Scalzi’s big new book!

Scalzi has a great new book coming out in 2017. The big evil is Vahkks Gayder, and MaryJon saves the galaxy by xerself, using the Snark.

Mailvox: what would you do?

David of One is curious what I would have done if I had found myself in Steven Gould’s position:

It isn’t hard to imagine, Vox, you having had become president of that foul organization only to discover … to realize at some formal function that you were in the midst of a great number of unwashed and perverse “artists”. Such an occasion and realization that you were in the company and leader of eaters of the dead that relish the flesh of the living young. In truth such is the case now of modern day vampires of the living with the exception you are not, by God’s grace and love, a leader amongst perverters of the the mind, body and soul. Such would surely be the making of a real life horror story.

I cannot help but ask you what you would have thought and done if such a situation were to have actually occurred during the annual formal function when such a realization might have occurred?

I would have held my tongue, smiled and concealed my realization, and done my best to learn as much as possible while I was in their midst. Then I would have quietly launched inquiries and hired private investigators with the organization’s money to look into the backgrounds of the most suspicious parties.

Once I was in possession of the necessary information, I would have spoken directly to the various parties and given them the opportunity to come clean, with the warning that the relevant information had already been sent to the relevant authorities. I would also have made sure that multiple parties beside myself were in possession of it; those who keep information to themselves create an incentive to be silenced in one way or another.

(In case it is not clear, neither I nor Daniel are researchers. We are merely the initial outlets for those who know considerably more than we do about all of this sort of nasty thing.)

After they either came clean or declined, I would have released a statement to the organization and to the media, with links to the full report. Then I would have asked the SFWA Board, and the membership, to vote on expelling the various individuals and stripping them of all honors.

SFWA instead voted to elect the man who selected Samuel Delany as a Grand Master. That’s on their heads, and on their consciences.

Anti-vaxxers are MORE educated

The news that anti-vaxxers are whiter, wealthier, and better-educated than those who place blind faith in vaccines won’t surprise anyone who has actually engaged a vaccine enthusiast on the subject. None of them know anything about history, few of them know anything about science, and all of them are prone to simply repeating the usual vaccine scare rhetoric:

The people most likely to refuse to have their children vaccinated tend to be white, well-educated and affluent, researchers report.

A study published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health used California state government data on “personal belief exemptions,” or opting out of vaccinations for nonmedical reasons. From 2007 to 2013, the rate of vaccine refusal for personal belief doubled, to 3.06 percent.

The researchers reviewed data among all kindergarten children in the state during that time. More than 17,000 children, attending 6,911 schools, were exempted.

Exemption percentages were generally higher in regions with higher income, higher levels of education, and predominantly white populations. In private schools, 5.43 percent of children were exempt, compared with 2.88 percent in public schools.

In some suburban areas, rates of exemption were near 50 percent, and more than a quarter of California’s schools have measles immunization rates below the 92 to 94 percent required for herd immunity, the level of vaccination necessary to protect people who are not immune.

The very simple fact of the matter is that vaccines are far, far less important in halting the spread of infectious disease than controlling entry and immigration from non-first world countries. This is obvious, since vaccine rates are still very high in the USA and Western Europe, and yet there is a massive rise in various diseases that is the direct result of global travel and large-scale immigration.

The idea that the current vaccine schedule is responsible for the huge decline in deaths from infectious diseases in the 19th century is not merely ahistorical, it requires a combination of ignorance and stupidity. This will become readily apparent before long as most children will continue to be vaccinated but disease rates will continue to rise thanks to the behavior and lifestyles of the New Americans.

You can be reliably certain that a position is wrong if it is inordinately held by magical thinkers or cargo cult scientists. Vaccines aren’t magic, they are merely a medical tool that is useful in some circumstances and useless in others. The simple and science-based fact is that most children don’t need most vaccines.

John Scalzi, Baen author

It’s probably a good thing John Scalzi is looking to find some new publishing outlets, because Tor Books obviously isn’t of the opinion that they got their money’s worth with his most recent submission:

So, here’s the Very Important News about my 2016 novel release:

Currently, there isn’t one. Not a new one, anyway.

Which isn’t to say I’m not writing a novel in 2016. In fact, I’m writing two(!). Merely that Tor has decided to wait until 2017 to release the next new one.

Why the wait? Among other things, because Tor just dropped a ton of money on me so we want to make sure we debut this next novel, the first in the new contract, just right. I’m on board with this plan — note the “we” in that last sentence — since (again, among other things) I actually want to try to earn out the silly large chunks of money Tor has dropped on me. I also don’t mind the extra time it gives me to write/tweak the novels I’m currently working on.

I’ll admit it. I laughed. I fully expected Scalzi to crack under the pressure, but not this quickly. It’s one thing to talk about writing a really good book that will sell 100k+ copies, but it’s another thing to deliver on it the big talk.

Now, those who don’t know much about the business of publishing may not understand how serious this little delay is. You see, each quarter, a mainstream publisher has certain books upon which it is relying in order to make its numbers. This is particularly important now, in a market that is characterized by declining sales; all the Big Five have seen their sales shrink as a result of bookstores closing and competition from independent publishers and self-published authors on Amazon.

Now, Tor had never previously depended on Scalzi; as recently as 2012 its bestsellers were Orson Scott Card and Karen Traviss’s HALO novels. But they lost HALO and Robert Jordan isn’t writing any more books, which is why they badly need Scalzi to step up to the next level. Hence the big contract and the aggressive book tours, which are essentially PNH throwing a Hail Mary in an attempt to save his job.

The recent announcement means that Scalzi hasn’t been able to do it and his new novel didn’t meet requirements. He turned it in, and after reading it, the editors at Tor know that it won’t sell enough to meet their needs. So, they’ve pushed it back one year in the hopes that Scalzi can tweak it enough to turn it into something that will justify their investment in him.

But it’s not going to work any better than signing a WR3 to be a WR1 does. More time won’t change the core problem, which is that Scalzi is a stunt writer. He relies heavily on flash to disguise the fact that he’s not a good storyteller, he has no original ideas, and he’s merely a competent wordsmith. There is nothing wrong with that, and he could have had a perfectly satisfying career as the midlist writer that he is – as an editor, I concluded some time ago that writing snarky dialogue for short TV episodes was probably his ideal medium – but he is not the sort of bestselling writer on whom you would ever want to bet the company.

(For what it’s worth, I’m not either. Very, very few writers are. There is no shame in not being a King, a Heinlein, or a Rowling, and even those writers can seldom deliver on that scale for more than a decade.)

But, as we know, SJWs always double down. Tom Doherty or the Macmillan executives should have fired PNH when he gave them the chance last year, because he is going to cost them heavily due to his decision to ride or die with his pyrite boy. It’s far too soon to say this is definitely the case, but the smart money would bet on PNH’s Hail Mary pass falling incomplete. Sooner or later, one has to stop spinning and massaging the Narrative and actually deliver real-world results.

In the meantime, boycott Tor Books!

December Brainstorm

Tomorrow night, December 30th, at 7 PM EST will be the closed December Brainstorm. Invites for members will arrive soon. We’ll be discussing a number of things I’m not going to disclose here; if you’re an Annual Brainstorm member and you want to be a panelist, let me know. I’m particularly interested in anyone with a law degree or IT development being on the panel.

If you’re interested in joining Brainstorm, you can do so here. It is essentially the strategic braintrust of this blog where I can bounce ideas off those who know the community well. I should probably mention that we have enough members that we’re not doing the monthly memberships anymore.

Clarke and the criminal connections

Leo is rather dubious about the evidence concerning certain of Arthur C. Clarke’s supposed idiosyncracies:

Still, a lack of accusations gives us nothing but rumors to work with. Did he associate with anyone later credibly so accused? That would be evidence for me.

Fair enough. It’s not like I know anything about it, although the false claims of his being cleared by the Sri Lankan authorities do tend to make me a little suspicious. Let’s see what is out there. Here is what there is from the 1998 Mirror piece based on the reporter who was sent from the UK to Sri Lanka to interview Clarke.

Sitting in a room he calls his Ego Chamber, Arthur C. Clarke  finally admitted his lifelong secret – not only is he gay but he prefers sex with beach boys. Clarke gives the name Ego Chamber to the study in his Colombo home because the walls are lined with his books and framed photos of himself with celebrities from the Pope to Princess Diana. The room has state-of-the-art computers, satellite TV, video recorders and other hi-tech gadgets which Clarke boasts he uses to communicate with pals at the Pentagon.

When we asked Clarke about suggestions that he may have been one of the original pioneers of sex tourism in Sri Lanka he gave a wry smile and said: “I am more amused than disgusted that anyone should think that. I am all in favour of efforts to stop it. But how do we stop it without interfering with the rights of responsible adults.”

Then he repeated a phrase often used by paedophiles: “I think most of the damage comes from the fuss made by hysterical parents afterwards. If the kids don’t mind, fair enough.”

In recent years Clarke’s name has been linked with two notorious paedophiles, one of whom – a Swiss millionaire – was kicked out of Sri Lanka on the orders of the president for abusing impoverished beach boys. He is now awaiting trial in Zurich accused of sexually abusing up to 1,500 young boys and like Clarke was friends with a lot of Sri Lanka’s top politicians, senior policemen and influential government figures.

Clarke is said to have attended parties at the tycoon’s home. When asked if he had, Clarke replied:

“I may well have done. I mean the very first man I met here in 1954 was a paedophile and made no bones about it. He was in intelligence in the army, a fantastic guy.”

Clarke said of his sexual preferences:

“Here it would embarrass everyone right up to the president. I mean, I am chancellor of the university, a public figure, that is the problem so I would be swallowed alive. I would probably be outed, you see.”

These days the frail, white-haired old man gets around with the aid of a wheelchair and crutches following a polio attack 15 years ago.

But Clarke’s fading health does not stop him enjoying his favourite pastime – playing table tennis with schoolboys at a notorious pick-up haunt for perverts called the Otters Aquatic Club. Crumbling and in need of a coat of paint, the Otters is a meeting point for Westerners who lust after young boys. Those who hang around its games room, pool and tennis courts are perfect prey and are easily persuaded to sell themselves for 1,000 rupees (pounds 10) – a small fortune to them.

Clarke goes there regularly in the afternoon, hobbling on a walking stick, to challenge boys – some as young as 12 – to a game of ping pong.

Asked what his definition for paedophilia was Clarke said:

“There are two different definitions, anyone who interferes with young boys who are not old enough to know their own minds and that’s my definition. It varies for me.”

Asked how he knew whether the boys really did know their own minds as he had not known them for long, he said:

“Because pure and simply they looked reasonably mature. Mature enough for me.”

Told one of them was just 13, he said: “If he really was 13 he will be a very mature 13.”

Asked if he thought that was morally wrong he replied: “No.”

Told that some of the boys had told us they would not have had sex if he had not given them money he said: “I’m sure. But I didn’t make anyone do anything they didn’t enjoy doing.”

Of course, one has to ask why a reporter would fly from the UK to Sri Lanka to interview an old man about his predilections unless he already knew what he would find. There is also more highly specific information from what appears to be a British conspiracy site:

US detectives, who arrested leaders of NAMBLA 10 years ago, say Clarke was named by other paedophiles they quizzed during an FBI investigation. The perverts had set up children’s homes in Thailand as fronts for their sick activities.

One of its leaders was Jonathan Tampico, 48, a top nuclear scientist who worked for the American Government. He served two-and-a- half years in jail for molesting a boy of 12 and is now on the run with a million-dollar warrant on his head for further porn offences. He told detectives he had stayed at Clarke’s home in Colombo and had swapped letters with the author.

Another known paedophile, former church minister John Wakefield Cummings, 56, is serving a 24-years-to-life sentence after admitting molesting 17 boys in his care.

He told police in Sacramento, California, that Clarke had been contacted at his Sri Lankan home by a paedophile who was on the run from the American authorities.

In a sworn statement made to an investigator for Sacremento’s district attorney, Wakefield Cummings told how the pervert fled to Sri Lanka where he was able to contact the paedophile community through Clarke. He then fled from Sri Lanka to Indonesia.

Detectives contacted a child welfare group to warn them about Clarke’s activities.

A senior Sacramento detective said: “We never had any reason to take action against Arthur C. Clarke because he was outside our jurisdiction.

“But Clarke’s name did keep coming up. We were looking into members of The Boy Lovers Association who all seemed to know or be aware of him. He ended up connecting to a lot of people we were investigating. Tampico was one of those who said he went to Sri Lanka. I have seen letters between him and Arthur C. Clarke. There was nothing overtly sexual in them but they were clearly corresponding.”

He added: “Cummings told us in the course of interviews that Arthur C. Clarke is a paedophile. He said Sri Lanka used to be a popular destination for the paedophiles. But then the government changed and they were all thrown out. He said Clarke was one of the few they didn’t expel because of his status.”

Ron O’Grady, of ECPAT confirmed he had been warned about Clarke by police in Sacramento.

Now, I know nothing about any of this so I can’t vouch for any of it, but it’s easy enough to confirm that at least the names are real. Here are public court documents relating to the arrest of the aforementioned Jonathan Tampico. Notice that he and his three fellow defendants are members of NAMBLA, the organization that published the newsletter to which Samuel Delaney admits subscribing. And John Wakefield Cummings is on the registered sex offender list in Clovis, California. Ron O’Grady, who died last year, was a New Zealand minister who founded EPCAT.

Perhaps Mr. Cummings was lying about Mr. Clarke. Perhaps Mr. Tampico was lying about Mr. Clarke. Perhaps Rev. O’Grady was lying about Mr. Clarke. Perhaps all these people from around the world were lying about Mr. Clarke in their discussions with the Sacramento police. But why? Why would his name even come up in the first place?

The Otter Aquatic Club also exists and you can even visit its website. Otter Aquatic Club is one of leading sport promoting club has been in
existence for the past 78 years and it is one of the largest and most
patronized clubs in Sri Lanka.

And then consider how many obvious signs there were about Clarke compared to how much evidence there was about Marion Zimmer Bradley prior to the revelations of last year. A lot of these people are still alive; some of the detectives involved may even still be on the Sacramento police force.

I have absolutely nothing against Arthur C. Clarke. I enjoyed several of his novels. I was delighted to republish the excellent story he wrote for There Will Be War Volume II, “Superiority”. But the truth is what it is. History is what it is. This world is fallen and Clarke would hardly be the first brilliant man of talent to hide a terrible secret.

The question is, will the science fiction world investigate the matter and face the truth, whatever it might be, or will it continue to avert its eyes and permit the monsters in its midst to operate with impunity? Remember, this is a community that awarded Samuel Delaney its highest honor just last year.