Video games reduce crime

From Reaxxion: We always hear the old line that “video games have to be toned down,
they always make boys so violent.” Although numerous scientific studies
have shown that this is hardly the case, the clan of insatiable, denialist harpies still trot out that tired canard every
time they need a seemingly rational reason to attack our hobby and push
their agenda. However, if we look at a certain U.S. Court ruling, Interactive Digital Software Ass’n v. St. Louis County, we actually find a case of the law completely rejecting the claim that video games cause people to act violently.

There goes that old lie. Forget causation, there isn’t even a statistical correlation. It never made any sense anyhow. I mean, you usually have to get off the machine and go outside to commit much in the way of violent crime anyhow.

How do they know?

Ptbarnium points out that the SJWs in science fiction are demonstrating one of the reasons Sad Puppies 3 is so badly needed:

Every single second of the controversy so far has taken place before the ballot has been announced. It might sound plain but it seems that they have all missed it. Everytime TNH wrings her aquatic hands pathetically, every time Jason Sanford stamps his feet childishly, every time Cora Buhlhert blares her senseless foghorn, the undecided ask one question: “How do you know?”

They have done more damage to their own cause than SP3 ever could simply because of their inability to restrain their wounded egos & frustrated self entitlement for four days. No matter how this all shakes out, no matter who wins, the cat is out of the bag now. To the CHORFs, wrapped in their delusions, they have done nothing wrong.

To anyone neutral, anyone without a dog in the fight, they have proven beyond all of our expectations that the motive force driving Sad Puppies is true. Anyone who asks the question “How do they know?” will see the immediate and obvious conclusion that eludes these morons, insulated by their self-righteous anger.

They know because many of the people who ‘should’ have been given the nod haven’t. Is there any other convincing reason why people un-nominated for any award seem to know the entire final slate? You could excuse knowing one or two finalists in a given category but the entire list? The only ways to have their level or knowledge at this stage are (a) Worldcon leaking or (b) interval communication based on information from the people on their own slates that were ‘supposed’ to get through. I know which one my money is on.

This is exactly right. The usual suspects, who revolve in orbit around Tor Books in general and Tor senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden in particular, are accustomed to quietly arranging things to their liking behind the scene. They talk to one another on a regular basis and arrange things like this outcome in 2008.

43 Best Fan Writer John Scalzi
41 Best Novel The Last Colony John Scalzi
40 Best Novel Halting State Charles Stross

That’s quite the coincidence, considering that Larry, Brad, and I were accused of bloc voting in 2014 with the following outcome.

184 Best Novel Warbound Larry Correia
111 Best Novella The Chaplain’s Legacy Brad Torgersen
092 Best Novelette The Exchange Officers Brad Torgersen
069 Best Novelette Opera Vita Aeterna Vox Day

What looks more like a bloc vote to you? Oh, and speaking of 2014, let’s not forget this:

120 Best Novel Neptune’s Brood Charles Stross
127 Best Novella Equoid Charles Stross
118 Best Novelette Lady Astronaut of Mars Mary Kowal

Again, what looks more like a bloc vote to you? Are we seriously supposed to believe that a 115-vote variance is an invalid bloc vote, but 9-vote and 3-vote variances that are limited to SJW authors published by Tor are just a pair of freakish coincidences involving the same group of closely connected authors six years apart?

Regarding Best Novel: I’ve heard that three of the five finalists are SP-endorsed. (Which, see above, doesn’t in itself guarantee that any of them are unworthy of a Hugo.) I don’t know what any of those three books are. I do know the identity of the other two, and I don’t think anyone in this conversation will regard them as unworthy candidates. (Disclaimer: Neither of them are books Teresa or I worked on in any way.) – Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Senior Editor, Tor Books

Since we’re speaking of PNH, how about 2009, 2010, and 2012?

76 Best Novel Saturn’s Children Charles Stross
74 Best Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden
54 Best Novel Zoe’s Tale John Scalzi (Even some in on the game couldn’t bring themselves to vote for that steaming little pile, but it still got enough votes to make the shortlist and keep the next two authors off: Iain M. Banks and Terry Pratchett.)

79 Best Novella The God Engines John Scalzi (indicates outside support)
56 Best Novella Palimpsest Charles Stross
52 Best Short Story Overtime Charles Stross
54 Best Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden

49 Best Novel The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
48 Best Novel Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi
44 Best Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden
 
Three more amazing coincidences! How do they know? How do they know? Furthermore, Kevin Standlee, a Secret Master of Fandom and Worldcon insider, acknowledged at File 770 that these quiet little campaigns are known to have taken place in the past.

There clearly have been campaigns to get individual works on the ballot, some of them going beyond the technically legal.
– Kevin Standlee on April 2, 2015 at 9:41 am

He also added that nothing Sad Puppies has done is illegal or against the rules:

I agree with Vox that what’s been done (at least from the rumors
rumbling around) isn’t illegal. It’s not against the rules. It’s simply
exploiting a heretofore never-considered loophole in the rules that has
never come into play because fans are traditionally not very well
organized.
-Kevin Standlee on April 2, 2015 at 9:44 am

The SJWs are upset because we play openly by the rules better than they cheat behind closed doors. And the mere fact that they are so upset BEFORE THE NOMINATIONS ARE ANNOUNCED is sufficient to prove that they coordinated their whisper campaigns in the past and they are still coordinating them now. And the fact that so few people in latter-day science fiction can’t see the obvious shows how crabbed and limited their imaginations are:

SF fans have been historically so independent-minded and disorganized that the idea of actually filling a slate to try and deliberately stifle anything other than a particular group of five works in each category hadn’t really occurred to anyone I know of, and I’ve been following this since 1984. Sure, there have been deliberate campaigns (of varying degrees of ethical) to get individual works onto the ballot, but to try and monopolize all 85 spaces? Nah. Indeed, the idea would probably been laughable until fairly recently. You can’t generally get five fans to agree on where to go to dinner, let alone get 500 of them to agree on exactly the same slate of Hugo Award nominees.

This juxstaposition, however, is my favorite proof that the other side is utterly incapable of thinking past the end of their noses.

  1. “There’s only one way to deal with people like Day, who see
    themselves as above basic human decency, and that is to cut them out of
    the community like a tumour. Shun them, ignore them, no-platform the
    hell out of them. Our conventions, our fanzines, our anthologies, our
    community is not open to people whose racist arguments could have come
    straight from the mouths of slave-owners.” (April 19, 2014)
  2. “How do you bring the weight of community disapproval on someone who isn’t part of the community?” (March 30, 2015)

Well, who could possibly have seen THAT coming? Give a man a platform and he will speak his mind. Deny him a platform and he will build his own… and you will never silence him again. Rabbits always think that the only possible response to being shunned is to a) submit or b) vanish. The problem, of course, is that some of us aren’t rabbits.

Now a number of them are credibly threatening to No Award everything even before the announcements have been announced. And I’m wondering, do they really think we didn’t anticipate that too? Considering that they repeatedly assert that Brad Torgersen is lying about the purpose of Sad Puppies, hasn’t it ever occurred to them that perhaps the purpose he is concealing is different than the one they assume it must be?

It is a proper conundrum.

Tell us more about “Islamophobia”

And the “religion of peace”:

Up to 150 people have been murdered by masked al-Shabaab terrorists who stormed a Kenyan university and shot and beheaded Christians in the worst attack in the country in 17 years.

The group raided the Garissa University College campus shortly after 5am local time yesterday, overwhelming guards and murdering people they suspected of being a Christian.

The death toll rose to 147 last night and the 13-hour siege ended. A total of 79 were injured and 587 were led to safety.

Most of those killed were students but two police officers, one soldier and two watchmen are among the dead.

This marks the imminent end of freedom of religion in the West. Forget Charlie Hebdo. We need Charlie Martel. I expect he’ll appear on the scene as soon as something like this happens at an American university. If there is any justice in the universe, it will take place at a university full of the sort of students who are always eager to insist that groups like al-Shabaab and ISIS aren’t full of real Muslims.

Christians are being beheaded everywhere from the Middle East to Africa and the UK. How much longer are we going to stand for it? And atheists, note that not being a Christian isn’t going to save you. A mere suspicion of it, which is to say, not being a Muslim, is enough to condemn you.

The immoral monsters of modernity

Whatever they may be, they don’t possess anything recognizable as ethics:

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say. Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

 The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article’s authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

Notice how long it has taken to go from “abortion is not murder” to “abortion is murder and murder is okay”. 45 years. And it is morbidly amusing to see the journal’s editor complaining about the death threats. If “the very values of a liberal society” include the right to murder newborn babies, then number me among the fanatics opposed to it.

If newborn babies are not actual persons, then how can one reasonably limit the right to kill them to the parents? Since they can’t be property, it seems to me that the moral logic suggests that anyone who might happen to feel like killing them has a right to do so.

These people are a death cult. They worship death. Nothing turns them on more than the idea of wiping out humanity… except for themselves, of course. And then there is that name, Savulescu. Where did he get his doctorate, Transylvania?

Fred on the US disintegration

I find it mildly ironic that the inevitable result of all this immigration and forced integration is political disintegration. Fred Reed observes the increasing irrelevance of Federal law and reaches some familiar conclusions:

In the past the rock-solid unity of the United States existed because people wanted it. The foundation was a largely uniform white, Christian, European culture which no one thought about because there was no reason to think about it. Minorities were minor enough that they had to conform to the dominant culture. People shared ideas of morality, education, crime, music, religion, dress, manners, and patriotism.

That unity is gone forever. The old, functioning system has been replaced, not by another functioning system, such as that of Japan, China, or Korea, but by civilizational chaos. A law of human behavior is that people want to live among people like themselves. Another is that they do not like being ruled from afar by people they detest. Who likes Washington today?

Another possibility of secession lies in the South. Mississippi, the darkest state, is thirty-seven percent black. Although we are not permitted to say it, the racial hostility of blacks toward whites is intense. While whites will (now, anyway) vote for a black candidate over a white—which is how we got Obama—blacks vote as a bloc for black candidates. (If memory serves, Obama got 93% of the black vote.)

Should the black percentage in Mississippi grow to a tipping point, then, when whites bail out (which is usually what happens though we are not supposed to say this either), the state would become a self-governing country within a country—dependent on federal subsidies, yes, but having no loyalty to or culture in common with white society. It would not, methinks, feel an urgent need to obey federal laws.

Tell me I’m crazy. But wait twenty years.

Twenty years is 2035. Long time readers will recall that I have long predicted 2033 to mark the point at which the collapse of the USA as a political entity becomes undeniable.

A name designer speaks out

Game designer American McGee dismisses SJWs and Literally Who 2:

I’m prepared for the SJW flamethrower…

Seriously, isn’t Anita saying this character is acceptable because she’s such a blank slate? I can’t help but think the “woman” in this game might as well be wearing a burka for all the identity she has. If this is “positive” and we (as game writer/designers) are meant to emulate this model… then I imagine the characters in our future games getting some really odd looks as they walk down the streets of virtual Los Angeles, sneak through the corridors of Space Station 009, or try to blend into any world that isn’t a magical fantasy world of pixel make-believe.

To me, real characters, positive characters, have flaws. They’re broken. They have an identity constructed of past events – good and bad. Like real people, they might make poor “life choices” which result in them being shallow minded, skin revealing, homicidal maniacs, who wear women’s lingerie under their space armor. Or, like the rest of us, they might be who they are, and wear what they wear, because society (the real world) hasn’t left them many other options. If we’re going to tell real stories, it’s best we do that with characters who closely resemble real people.

We are now advancing on two fronts, the game industry and the science fiction publishing industry. And we’re able to do so because more and more people are entering the ranks. If you know someone who plays games or reads SF/F, talk to them about #GamerGate and Sad Puppies. Let them know about it. Chances are, if they’re not an SJW, they’ll turn out to be as enthusiastic about it as you are.

A lot of science fiction readers abandoned all hope sometime between the late 90s and the middle 00s and lost interest in the genre. They didn’t know exactly why, all they knew is that they weren’t interested in reading the books about kickass werewolf lovers with crossbows or in being lectured about how evil the bigoted Biblethumpers who didn’t accept the quadsexual aliens with open arms and orifices were. So they stopped reading and started playing games instead.

But now games are under attack and there is nowhere else to run, so we have no choice but to fight back. And, lo and behold, it turns out that they are paper tigers, and their victory is no more inevitable or lasting than Hitler’s defeat of Russia.

I was acquainted with American from the time he was a level designer at id and it’s significant that he is speaking out because he is an old school, name-on-the-box game designer. I’ve said repeatedly that the designers and developers are with us, but only now are they beginning to realize that their livelihoods and their freedom to create is under attack. And more of them will be speaking out against the SJWs soon.

Speaking of SJWs and their inability to write characters, consider my original review of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, specifically, this part:

Characters: This is probably the weakest link of the book. While Scalzi makes some effort to provide motivations for his characters, only the protagonist and, ironically, a character who knows next to nothing of herself, come across in full-color. The crude bigot who gets his, the delightful gay man, the crusty drill sergeant, the overenthusiastic fool and the sexually uninhibited beautiful women are all oft-seen staples of SF fiction and they’re simply plugged in as required here.

Of course, I got this part dreadfully wrong: “OLD MAN’S WAR is both stylistically and thematically informed by
Heinlein, especially STARSHIP TROOPERS, but manages to be so without
being a thinly disguised ripoff.”

It’s a bit embarrassing, but how was I to know Scalzi had written what he openly admits was a straight-up color-by-numbers attempt to imitate Heinlein, then follow it up with even less-disguised ripoffs of Dick, Piper, and Star Trek? Anyhow, what I gave the benefit of the doubt and rounded up from a 6.5 to a 7 rating would, in retrospect, lose one star for Style and two stars for Creativity, and therefore wind up rated 5/10.

Of course, Scalzi is far from the only SJW in science fiction who has trouble with characters as a direct result of his ideological perspective:

I certainly don’t deny that I am making a value judgment about modern fantasy, what Bakker simply can’t seem to grasp is that I am expressing a literary judgment and not a moral one. The fact that one of the causes of the genre’s literary decline can quite logically be attributed to observable moral color-blindness on the part of many modern fantasy authors does not make the observation a moral judgment, anymore than attributing the decline to historical ignorance would make it a historical judgment.

This isn’t double-talk or moral cowardice. I am about as genuinely disinterested as it is possible to be and still be cognizant of the matter. I have read everything from Nietzsche and Stalin to Keynes and Onfray without it ruffling my feathers so I’m not inclined to be perturbed by mere fictitious monsters. If I was concerned that Joe or anyone else was “leading innocent souls to potential damnation” through nihilistic genre literature, my track record of publishing highly controversial opinions strongly suggests that I would not hesitate to say so. The fact is that I simply don’t believe the writers of modern fantasy matter all that much, in part due to the literary decline of the genre. As I stated before, they are a symptom of the greater societal decline, they are not a cause.

Meanwhile, an SJW named Bruce Baugh perfectly summarizes the core attitude of every SJW: “It occurs to me that the problems some of us feel about Hugo
nominating tie into something I’ve remarked on in other contexts: the
sense that we have to act like pundits, arbiters, or decision-making
authorities (judges, chief executives, etc.) when commenting on things.”

Everyone else’s opinion is merely an opinion. But their expressed opinion is that of a “decision-making authority”.

The racist SJWs of Making Light

It’s incredible, but now they’re trying to say I’m not a real Native American and Hispanics are just white people like everyone else. Because, after all, everyone knows that all Native Americans are good little Indians who stay on their intellectual reservations and only believe what the nice white liberals tell them what they can and cannot read, write, and think:

#942 ::: Alex R. ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 10:32 AM:
Definitely spoiled white boys. Without ever having met one in person, it’s written all over their behavior. And paranoid too, in a particularly white and spoiled fashion. Please note that the word “boys” was chosen carefully. Boys self-nominate and involve their friends. Men (and women too) who want awards slog it out in the trenches and try to raise their game.

#948 ::: Matt ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 11:01 AM:
I think the behavior you describe is pretty accurate, but I don’t think it’s a white boy thing as much as it is a rich, conservative boy thing. After all, the leader of sad puppies, Correia, isn’t a white guy (and I think that the lack of support by other other minorities in the field is part of his “persecuted for his political beliefs” narrative).

 #960 ::: Kelly Jennings ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 12:03 PM:
Vox Day also claims to be a minority! An American Indian! Based on some genetic test he claims he took.

I mean, I’m sure no one would lie about something like that, for political reasons, or tactical reasons, or to bash liberals on his blog or twitter or whatever. Nah.

#961 ::: abi ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 12:09 PM:
The footnote to my comment above notwithstanding, let’s tread lightly on the subject of whether any individual in this debate is or is not a member of any particular group.

Identity policing doesn’t tend to end well. Or start well. And the middle bits tend to stink, too.

There’s plenty to say that doesn’t go there.

#963 ::: Kelly Jennings ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 12:12 PM:
Okay. Though VD’s use of that particular tactic has been a vexation to me, frankly. But okay.

#975 ::: Mike Scott ::: (view all by) ::: April 01, 2015, 01:23 PM:
Cat @950. If Correia’s ancestors come from Portugal, then he’s white. The Portuguese are white Europeans, the same as the rest of Europe. They doubtless have a bit more Arab and Berber than say the Swedish, but not enough to make any real difference. Remember, there’s no such race as “Hispanic”, which is mostly a mixture of white European and Native American in varying proportions.

It’s rather astonishing that these racist SJWs will openly assert that a genuine Native American simply cannot hold the opinions that I do. They may not like it, but I am a real Indian, complete with tribe, reservation, casino, and language. I even know a few words of the latter, although I am not one of the small number of people who speak it. And I can absolutely prove it.

They seem to think that minorities are pets who should be happy with whatever crumbs they deign to dole out to us. I say we take their thinning, greying scalps instead.

Post-trinitarian levels of war

I’ve been reading Martin van Creveld’s excellent Technology and War, and this struck me as pertinent in light of the discussion we’ve been having about whether the problem with the Western militaries is at the Physical, the Mental, or the Moral level:

Once the politicians and commanders decided to mobilize their male populations, in one sense they overshot the mark. In 1914, and to a lesser extent in 1939, the instinctive reaction of the military to the unexpected prolongation of hostilities was to put everything and everybody into uniform. As the war dragged on, it became increasingly clear that this was a mistake. The same technology that made military mobilization possible also demanded that it remain incomplete. It was not enough for machines to be deployed on the battlefield. For them to do useful service, it was first necessary to have them designed, developed, produced, and supplied with fuel and spare parts. War itself extended its tentacles deep to the rear, spreading from the trenches into the fields, the mines, and the factories. Not content with the mobilization of those, it reached further into the design bureaus and, ultimately, into peaceful university laboratories where the most esoteric work was done and the potentially most powerful weapons were developed.

As war expanded in this way, both the meaning of strategy and its scope underwent a subtle, and at first imperceptible, change. Instead of being merely a question of concentrating the maximum force at the decisive point at the front, as Jomini and Clausewitz had taught, strategy now acquired the added dimension of an exercise in correctly distributing one’s total resources, both human and material, between the fighting front and the rear. Instead of being concerned with waging military operations, it became occupied with the overall coordination and integration of a country’s military effort. To cope with the new reality, a new term—grand strategy—was coined by the theoreticians and sometimes applied by those in charge.

For a variety of reasons, both ideological and structural, grand strategy was a field where Germany lagged behind the Western Allies during both World Wars, and for this, of course, she paid the ultimate penalty of defeat.

The levels of war aren’t difficult to understand once you grasp that there is NO DIFFERENCE between “the military” and “the politicians” or “the brave soldiers” and “society”. This is not new, it’s the framework with which military strategists and theorists have worked since Clausewitz wrote his famous dictum: “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.”

I provided the example of Fabius Maximus in the previous comments, apparently to little avail. But I will repeat it in light of the quote above and perhaps it will help shed some light on the matter. Now, after Hannibal slaughtered 50,000 Romans and Italians at Cannae, the first thing Fabius Maximus did in taking charge was go back to
Rome and shore up public support for the war against Hannibal.

When word reached Rome of the disastrous Roman defeat under Varro and Paullus at the Battle of Cannae, the Senate and the People of Rome turned to Fabius for guidance. They had believed his strategy to be flawed before, but now they thought him to be as wise as the gods. He walked the streets of Rome, assured as to eventual Roman victory, in an attempt to comfort his fellow Romans. Without his support, the senate might have remained too frightened to even meet. He placed guards at the gates of the city to stop the frightened Romans from fleeing, and regulated mourning activities. He set times and places for this mourning, and ordered that each family perform such observances within their own private walls, and that the mourning should be complete within a month; following the completion of these mourning rituals, the entire city was purified of its blood-guilt in the deaths. This decree effectively outlawed competitive outdoor mourning, which could have had a devastating psychological impact on the survivors.

Only after he had secured the Moral level did he change Roman strategy. And there we see the interaction of the
different levels of war.

1. Moral.
2. Strategic.
3. Operational.
4. Tactical.
5. Physical.

Because
Fabius Maximus took care of the Moral level first, he was able to adopt a better
Strategy, which he knew would require a considerable amount of time, hence his nickname Cunctator, or “delayer”. Because that superior strategy was designed to affect the Operational
level, he put himself in a superior Tactical position as Hannibal’s
supplies and reinforcements dried up, thereby forcing Hannibal to retreat to Africa.

This is an amusingly ignorant statement from Wikipedia: “Fabius’ own military success was small.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. In the end, thanks to his superior Moral and Strategic generalship, Rome found itself in a position
to win on the very Physical level that Hannibal had previously
slaughtered them on at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. Fabius Maximus drove Hannibal out of Rome despite never seriously engaging Hannibal on the Tactical or Physical levels, something Varro and Paulus were unable to accomplish with 86,400 brave, well-drilled, well-armed Roman legionaries.

How things have changed

Fresh from predicting the Sad Puppies conquest of science fiction, Jason Sanford uncovers this ironic gem from the past; a 1952 letter to Thrilling Wonder Stories from the infamous feminist icon and child molester.

UNTITLED STORY
by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Dear Sam:

A word with you anent the recent VIRGIN OF ZESH. First, let me get one thing straight; this is not the shrieking of an outraged prude, nor am I going to babble such adjectives as “filthy—disgusting.” I am only going to recall your own words, that sex for its own sake is not admissable.

I am all in favor of allowing characters in science—fiction stories to behave like real people. If they have to strip to the buff, use the john, or rumple up a bed or two, that’s all to the good. But may I ask wherein THE VIRGIN OF ZESH classifies as a science-fiction story? It isn’t. It is a sex sadistic story, laid in the future. It isn’t even fantasy. The only scientifictional element appears to be the Krishnan setting, as a background for a girl who spends most of the story either getting gorily beaten up, raped, or defending her virtue. Such episodes are cogent in a story written for the purpose of titillation— namely, in the legitimate sex-story. But in a science-fiction story, one isn’t looking for sensory adventures, and one finds ones-self thinking, during those long sexy descriptions of the girl being stripped, beaten, the naked men, the rapist, etc, etc.—“For gosh sakes, get on with the story.” Then, when you wind up, there is no other story at all—just a string of sexy adventures in what struck me as atrocious taste for this kind of a magazine.

If mass-produced science-fiction, and the threat of Mickey Spillane, are bringing TWS to this, I fear I’ll start reading Westerns. I don’t mind sex, when well-done and incidental or important to an otherwise good story. But when it is made the prime mover of a story—ANY story—then it ceases to be science fiction and becomes sex fiction. And when I want to read sex fiction, I’ll buy those novels with the shocking-pink negligees on the cover. I fail to see why I should have to wade through poor science in order to enjoy sex fiction, or conversely, why I should have to wade through red, raw and dripping sex to enjoy my science fiction.

Sam. PLEASE! I love you, and I’m begging you on my pink little dimpled knees! I like sex o-k, but NOT IN TWS AND NOT AS THE PRIME BASIS OF A STORY. THE LOVERS was fine; THE HELLFLOWER was fine. Both were full of sex. THE VIRGIN OF ZESH was pure, (or should I say_impure?) unadulterated, adulterous slop. There is a lot of difference! Box 246, Rochester, Texas.

As the innocent bystander may have gathered, Mrs. B. is a lady of some strong convictions, strongly expressed. Fact, we wonder at times whether the sheer joy of teeing off on ye ed doesn’t even outweigh the convictions. Perish the perfidious thought. So get up off those dimpled knees, they’re getting a dishpan look-we promise to consider your tender feelings the next time Sprague hauls into sight with a manuscript under his arm.

It’s a little ironic to see this SJW icon taking a position that almost runs in parallel with the Sad Puppies’ basic position on science fiction. There is a significant difference, of course, as 1952 MZB is calling for story, not sex, rather than story, not finger-waving ideological lectures. But I suppose there is nothing like marrying a pedophile, being surrounded by deviants, and indulging in a spot of child molestation and abuse to really open one’s mind in the SJW-approved manner.