Why men don’t read

We already know that 90 percent of the genre imprints in the UK are run by women. I wonder what percentage of the editors responsible for “premier fiction debuts” are female? Here are the names of the writers Publishers Weekly has declared are Writers to Watch: Fall 2015: Anticipated Debuts:

Elisabeth Egan, Ruth Galm, Lauren Holmes, Naomi Jackson, Alexandra Kleeman, Julia Pierpont, Eka Kurniawan, Gabriel Urza, Christian Kracht

Of the three male authors, one is Indonesian (writing about Indonesia), one is Swiss (writing about a Teutonic explorer), and the only “American” man is a second-generation Spanish immigrant who wrote his debut novel about “a politically-charged act of violence that echoes through small Spanish town.”

Now, these novels may be great. They may be forgettable. But just looking at the list is enough for the average American man to know that these are not books that are very likely to be of much relevance, or interest, to him. Do you know anyone who is anticipating any of these debuts? I certainly don’t.

No wonder the bookstores are turning into potpourri-filled gift stores. Those that remain open, anyhow.

Did I miss anything?

The eight steps of SJW Attack:

  1. Identify Weakness
  2. Point-and-Shriek
  3. Isolate and Swarm
  4. Reject and
    Transform
  5. Press for
    Surrender
  6. Appeal to
    Authority
  7. Show Trial
  8. Victory Parade

Step 4 means when they reject the apology offered and transform it into evidence for the prosecution. Obviously not every SJW attack involves each and every step, as a resignation at step 3 or step 5 will jump right to step 8, but that’s what the full process looks like.

Outing and doxxing are cool now

Apparently, if Gawker is any guide. The difficult thing about dealing with SJWs is one can never keep track of when one is supposed to consider the same action a) outrageous or b) meritorious:

Condé Nast’s CFO Tried To Pay $2,500 for a Night With a Gay Porn Star

David Geithner, brother of ex-Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is
currently the chief financial officer of Condé Nast. This past weekend,
he’d planned to go to Chicago—where he planned to meet a gay porn star
and escort for “2-3 hours” at a cost of $2,500.

Actually, the chief lesson I learned from reading this article is to never rely upon gay porn star escorts, not that I anticipate any difficulties considering what has hitherto been my historical record of spotless success in this regard. Yes, the whole thing is very shady and I have no doubt Mr. Geithner has some difficult conversations with his wife and employer looming, and yes, Gawker merits every bit of the flak that it is going to take from #GamerGate and others, but Geithner is hardly the first corporate executive to have a seamy side and Gawker’s hypocrisy is very much par for the course.

What was truly shocking was the bizarre behavior of the escort. I mean, how flaky does one have to be to try to get the brother of a former administration official to help resolve one’s dispute with the Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of a prostitute whose illicit favors one has not even yet sampled?

In any event, it’s vastly amusing to see how Gawker has demonstrated its ability to make everyone across the political spectrum hate it. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. If you’re interested in joining #GamerGate’s anti-Gawker action, Operation Disrespectful Nod, which has already cost Gawker more than $1 million in advertising dollars, go here.

Emails lead the charge
Cleanse the world of #gawker filth
Our ethics shall reign
– @GG_HaikuBot9000

Sexism in SF publishing

It’s there, it’s just not in the direction you think it is. The former senior editor at Tor UK broke down their genre submissions by author sex in 2013:

I’m just one of a fair few female editors in this particular area. My colleagues (and competitors) are a set of brilliant, intelligent and hard-working women, who have loved genre since they were kids, have fought their way through the ranks, have extensive lists, love their jobs and don’t compromise on the quality of fiction they publish. To name but a few there’s Bella Pagan who works with me at Tor UK, Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz, Anne Clarke at Orbit, Jo Fletcher at Jo Fletcher Books, Jane Johnson and Emma Coode at Voyager, Cath Trechman at Titan and Anne Perry over at Hodder.

That means that every genre publisher in the UK has female commissioning editors and 90% of the genre imprints here are actually run by women. So you can imagine there’s a slight sense of frustration each time I see yet another article claiming that UK publishers are biased towards male writers. And I do wonder if those writing the pieces are aware who is actually commissioning these authors?

The sad fact is, we can’t publish what we’re not submitted. Tor UK has an open submission policy – as a matter of curiosity we went through it recently to see what the ratio of male to female writers was and what areas they were writing in. The percentages supplied are from the five hundred submissions that we’ve been submitted since the end of January. It makes for some interesting reading. The facts are, out of 503 submissions – only 32% have been from female writers.

Tor submissions inbox
   
Historical/epic/high-fantasy: F 33%, M 67%
  
Urban fantasy/paranormal romance: F 57%, M 43%

Horror: F 17%, M 83%

Science-fiction: F 22%, M 78%
   
Young Adult: F 68%, M 32%
   
Total: F 32%, M 68%
          
You can see that when it comes to science fiction only 22% of the submissions we received were from female writers. That’s a relatively small number when you look at how many women are writing in the other areas, especially YA. I’ve often wondered if there are fewer women writing in areas such as science fiction because they have turned their attentions to other sub-genres but even still, the number of men submitting to us in total  outweighs the women by more than 2:1.

Now what happens when you compare these percentages to how many new authors we take on in a year? Tor UK is still quite a compact list – we normally only take on three or four debut authors each year, if that. Of the four authors Bella and I have taken on this year – two of them are women.

In other words, in a field that is 90 percent run by women, two female editors accepted 26.4 percent less male submissions than would have been dictated by statistical neutrality. If there is sexism in SF publishing, there is a clear anti-male bias.

Now, given the very small size of the sample set – they accepted four out of 503 submissions – that’s not really a fair characterization. But then, when do feminists ever trouble themselves about such things when the shoe is on the other foot?

And the sex imbalance at the gatekeeping editorial positions does tend to explain why Pink SF has become so dominant in recent years. Does that mean we should whine about how unfair it is and lobby Congress and Parliament to regulate the sexual distribution in SF editorial positions?

That’s one way to do it. The other way, of course, is to simply set up a new shop that caters to the Campbellian Blue SF and Inklingesque True Myth Fantasy they have consciously rejected and eat their lunch.

Brainstorm tonight

Tonight’s Open Brainstorm session features author John C. Wright. We
will be discussing his new novel SOMEWHITHER, the new fantasy series he
is in the process of writing for Castalia House, his record-setting Hugo
nominations, and the Phil Sandifier debate concerning ONE BRIGHT STAR
TO GUIDE THEM. The session will run from 7 PM to 8:30 PM EDT on
Thursday, July 16, and there will be a Q&A session following the
interview.

To register to attend, click here.

Getting killed over here

So they won’t kill anyone over there… is that really how it’s supposed to work?

4 Marines killed, 1 injured at Chattanooga military recruiting center.

UPDATE: “Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that the shooting suspect was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.”

The problem isn’t that there might be a backlash. The problem is that there won’t be, at least not yet. Do Americans really need to wait until the Somalis suicide-bomb the Megamall before repatriating all of them back to their homelands?

Leave it to them

If Kansas City doesn’t want whites, then whites should reduce Kansas City’s white population to zero:

The mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, in an address to the radical socialist organization National Council of La Raza, bragged that his city is no longer majority white and the city’s schools now have students who speak 62 different languages.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Kansas City, Kansas, was 52 percent white.

But in a speech before the La Raza National Affiliates Luncheon earlier this week in Kansas City, Mayor Mark Holland boasted that only five years later his city’s white population has been reduced to 40 percent.

He seemed to suggest that La Raza was at least partly responsible for the progress. But he also cited the refugee resettlement work of the United Nations and U.S. State Department for the city’s transformation into a gleaming example of multicultural diversity.

Kansas City, he said, “is very proud of the work of National Council of La Raza.”

“Kansas City, Kansas, is a city with no ethnic majority. Kansas City, Kansas, is 40 percent white, 28 percent Latino, and 26 percent African-American,” Holland said. “Our school district speaks 62 different languages by the children every single day. And Kansas City, Kansas, has a proud heritage of welcoming all people into the community, people who are not welcome in other places.

The trick, of course, is to prevent the diversity from following.

M-Zed votes no

2015 Hugo Nominee Mike Z. Williamson explains why he is voting NO AWARD across the board:

I have just voted NO AWARD across the board for the Hugo awards, including the category in which I am a finalist.

At one time, the Hugo WAS arguably the most significant award in SF, with the Nebula being the pro award with a different cachet.

The Nebula lost any credibility when it was awarded to If You Were An Alpha Male My Love, which was not only eyerollingly bad Mary Sue, but wasn’t SF nor even an actual story. If that’s what the pros consider to be worthy of note, it indicates a dysfunction at their level.

As for the Hugos, in the last twenty years or so, they’ve been less and less awarded for either literature or entertaining storytelling, and more and more awarded for trite fanfic.  When not, it’s been the same incestuous group awarding it within a circle of in-people, to the point where there are winners with literally 50 nominations and 30 wins.

This is just ridiculous…. The sheer, frothing, irrational vitriol aimed at us makes it clear that content will not be considered.  We are Unclean, and many have stated they will not even look at our works.

Sadly, there are quite a few nominees this year who genuinely deserve awards for their work and creativity, including other members of my own category.

And perhaps someday, an award will come along that reaches the standards of credibility and accolade their works deserve.

But at present, no such award exists.

I am, of course, sympathetic to his position. Indeed, voting No Award across the board was my original intention, until I discovered that the SJWs in science fiction were more than willing to do the job of burning the awards to the ground for us. As I mentioned previously, why waste time burning Munich when you can trust the Germans to do it for you as you push for Berlin.

Also, and more importantly, not voting No Award permits us to correctly gauge the full extent of the SJW influence in science fiction and see how it compares to the current strength of the Sad and Rabid Puppies. That’s my chief interest in this year’s vote, because it will inform the strategy that we pursue in the future.

Remember, we haven’t even begun to finance “scholarships” in the way the other side has. Our 2015 numbers do not reflect the full extent of the force we can bring to bear.

And that is why I encourage all the Sad and Rabid Puppies to refrain from following M-Zed’s noble example, but rather vote for the various works based on their perceived merits. As the end of the voting period is rapidly approaching, I will soon post a complete list of my Hugo ballot, which of course should not be confused in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc
vote, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil
Legion of Evil to his 389 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.

Le Monde on GGinParis

A la rencontre du GamerGate, le mouvement libertarien qui veut défendre « ses » jeux vidéo
Le Monde
William Audureau

Meet GamerGate, the libertarian movement to defend “men’s” video games. Protean,
sometimes violent and a strange nothing, the movement of video game
players met Saturday, July 11 in Paris without interposed screens.

Paris, Gare de Lyon, at the stroke of 10 PM. Drinks in hand, forty
patrons mingle calmly on the sidewalk in front of a nondescript bar.
Three men stand facing them. In a black  jacket over a black T-shirt,
the writer known as “Vox Day” speaks to the crowd. “We
are the first in decades to successfully oppose the Social Justice Warriors
[derogatory term describing feminist and LGBT activists]. I’m right, you
may be left, but we fight together. You are not alone,” he declares. In
the audience, some lift their glasses, slightly ill at ease.

“I’m
against reconfiguring this movement for political purposes,” says a
young programmer with a psychobilly look– 50s pompadour and an easy
familiarity. “I’m 200% anti-racist, I’ve supported the French
antifascist action since the age of fourteen,” he adds as if to further
distance himself from one of the organizers of the event, Vox Day, a
video game programmer and science fiction writer known for his
supremacist writings and for having called a black female colleague a
“half-savage”– a remark he repeated Saturday to Le Monde. And yet, the
two men were participating in the same rally.

From antifascists
to supremacists to ecologists, libertarians, socialists and the
apolitical, all political sides were present, even the most extreme,
this Saturday, July 11 in this Parisian brasserie, during the first
“official” meeting of GamerGate in France…

In many respects,
GamerGate comes from the same culture as Anonymous. It springs from the
same forums, takes on the same form of hackitivism, tinted with grinning
anarchism and harassment; its horizontalist and conservative values are
close, but with a more pronounced libertarian hue and a new masculinist
core.

 
“We are revolutionaries of freedom” believes Vox Day, who presents himself in a provocative manner as an “extreme libertarian” and cites Voltaire in a triumphant tone. But all do not put as much political motives behind their support of GamerGate. “I like just to play the perfect woman with large breasts,” says an amused Elodie, 25, a software developer. “Let them not change my games.”

I find it vaguely amusing that even in a clear attempt to do a hit piece on #GamerGate, the mere fact that Mr. Audureau actually covered the GGinParis event, and spoke directly with us, caused him to present a much more balanced piece than we’ve seen everywhere from NPR to Popular Science.

That’s why the media tries so hard to avoid talking to us and prefers to instead talk about us. Because every time we speak, we punch holes in their SJW narrative.

Yeah, that’s about right

Always a pleasure to see Japan hasn’t gotten any more sane since I last visited. Clearly K-Pop is history and Kawaiicore now represents the high point in pop music evolution. I love the morning calisthenic lyrics.

While doing our best
We will surpass our seniors, elders, and everyone else.

It’s genuinely hard to look away. And just in case you thought it was a one-off, well, not so much. It’s practically nuclear fusion. I’ll admit it, I would absolutely go and see Babymetal in concert. The Kami band is epic and the musical genius of the superficially ridiculous concept is that the high-pitched voices cut right through the heavy guitars.