Hugo recommendations: Best Novelette

“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal. A Lady Astronaut (-5 demerits for sexism) has to choose between her dream of space and her husband. One guess which one she chooses. Not merely the worst of the five, but easily the worst of them. Don’t believe me? Just read it.

“The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang. Ted Chiang is the best writer of the five and the favorite in this category. Before I read it, I assumed he would be the obvious winner by a mile. However, this is very far from his best or his most interesting work.

“The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard. If there is one thing you will take away from this novelette, it is that Aliette de Bodard wants you to know that she is Asian. A psychoanalyst could probably write a thesis on the primary theme of her work – described by one commenter at Tor thusly: “Asians gotta be
Asians, let Asians be Asians, don’t be trying to colonialize the
Asians!” – combined with the fact that Ms Bodard is not, in fact, Asian, but merely half-Asian.

“Opera Vita Aeterna” by Vox Day. Rather than describe my own work, I will quote a commenter at Tor. “The two main characters here were vividly (and economically) drawn. I thought the evolution of their relationship was nicely portrayed. Hey, it was a more interesting relationship than the one between Elma and her husband Nathaniel in “Lady Astronaut of Mars.” It had more passion in it, too. Though somewhat foreshadowed, the ending sort of came out of nowhere for me. Still, it had impact.”

“The Exchange Officers” by Brad Torgersen.  Old school mil-SF involving a small-unit battle against the Chinese. In space. Good, competent Gold Age-style SF. There is a reason Torgersen is an Analog favorite.

My vote for Best Novelette, and my suggestion to others, is “Opera Vita Aeterna” by yours truly. My indubitably self-serving vote will go as follows:

  1. “Opera Vita Aeterna”
  2. “The Exchange Officers”
  3. “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”
  4. No Award

I recommend leaving both “The Waiting Stars” and “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” off the ballot.

OTHER HUGO AWARD RECOMMENDATIONS

Best Novel 
Best Editor

Pinkshirts running amok

No doubt they’ll be completely astonished when their sales collapse by 80 percent:

Marvel is excited to announce an all-new era for the God of Thunder in brand new series, THOR, written by Jason Aaron complimented with art from Russell Dauterman. This October, Marvel Comics evolves once
again in one of the most shocking and exciting changes ever to shake one
of the “big three” of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. No longer is
the classic Thunder God able to hold the mighty hammer, Mjölnir, and a
brand new female hero will emerge worthy of the name THOR.

Series writer Jason Aaron emphasizes, “This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before.”
THOR is the latest in the ever-growing and
long list of female-centric titles that continues to invite new readers
into the Marvel Universe.

The astonishing thing is that these people actually believe they are the creative ones. Why not turn the WONDER WOMAN into a cross-dressing man? Why not transform the SUPERMAN into a monkey? Why not change the CAPTAIN AMERICA into a buck private in the Armed Forces of the United Nations?

Intentionally or unconsciously, they confuse self-parody with creativity. They tear down and think they are engaged in creative destruction, only what they rebuild is nothing but a cheap and ugly mockery of what stood there before.

Learning to read: a new policy

I deleted yesterday’s post about Catholic charity and the Children’s Invasion of the southern US border because, for the second time this week, some idiot couldn’t bother reading closely enough to grasp who had written what.

The first time, a cretin attributed to me what Tom Kratman had not actually written. Tom expressed a sentiment, I articulated my surprise that his sentiment had not included a certain action, and from this the cretin somehow concluded that I was advocating the action. This was not true; for all that I think very poorly of progressives, I have never advocated crucifying them en masse. As it happens, I would never advocate crucifying anyone, for much the same reason that the Apostle Peter insisted upon being crucified upside down. I prefer to sentence progressives to living in the hellholes their policies have created, with no possibility of escaping them to Californicate other more sensibly governed communities.

The second time, a moron attributed to John C. Wright what I had written. I pointed out an absolutely undeniable fact: the US military would be perfectly justified in defending the borders of the nation by machine-gunning absolutely everyone attempting to invade. The estimated 235,000 illegal immigrants (which counts only those who are expected to be apprehended) considerably outnumber many invading armies of the past; the Immifada is three times bigger than the First Crusade, which was considered an “enormous” army by medieval standards. It is exactly the size of ARMIR, the Italian 8th Army that defeated the Soviets at Serafimovič before being targeted and destroyed in Operation Little Saturn by the 1st and 3rd Guards Armies.

It should be obvious that this is a military and historical and Constitutional perspective on the situation, not a theological or religious one, still less derived from the Catholic Catechism on charity.

As it happens, I do not advocate the machine-gunning of invasive immigrants, particularly not when they have been tacitly invited into invading by an exceedingly dishonest administration. I was merely pointing out that it is a legal and civilized option, and one, I will add, that would be preferred to surrendering and simply accepting the invasion as a prelude to eventual civil war and societal collapse. I favor the immediate humane and civilized repatriation of all the invading immigrants, just as I favor the humane and civilized repatriation of all post-1986 amnesty immigrants from all nations not preferred in the pre-1965 immigration regime. A commitment was made to the American people as part of the 1965 reforms, a commitment that was violated as egregiously as any ever made by politicians. Americans have a right, indeed, they have a responsibility, to hold their government to that commitment.

I don’t blame Mr. Wright in the slightest for not wishing to have his views twisted and misrepresented so completely. Whether that was done in ignorance and carelessness, or intentionally in a vicious attempt to slander him, I do not care at all. In the future, if you falsely attribute to one individual the views and statements or another, your error will be immediately noted. If you do not delete the statement of your own accord after the error has been pointed out to you, the comment will be spammed.

Look, it’s really not that hard. Simply read through the entire post, and preferably, the linked piece as well, before you think to leave a comment here. This is a terrible place to utilize the idiotic practice of skimming until offended, then blurting out your literally uninformed reaction to whatever you imagined you read. There are few things I despise more than comments that begin: “I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but….”

You haven’t? Then don’t write anything, don’t say anything, don’t even try to THINK anything, until you do. And before you decide to criticize anyone, take the time to ascertain that the individual you are criticizing actually wrote what you think they wrote.

Will Shetterly interviews an SFWA Grandmaster

In light of the recent revelations concerning science fiction figures Marion Zimmer Bradley, Walter Breen, and Ed Kramer, Will Shetterly thought it advisable to interview Sam Delany, who in addition to being SFWA’s most recently named Grandmaster, is also known to have publicly endorsed the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Be aware before you read it that it deals in fairly graphic detail with sexual deviancy and child abuse:

After Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter spoke out about child abuse by Bradley and her husband, Walter Breen, a member of NAMBLA, writers as different as Vox Day and Liz Williams brought up Samuel R. Delany’s comment about NAMBLA twenty years ago:

“I read the NAMBLA [Bulletin] fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found. I think before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about. What the issues they are really talking about, and deal with what’s really there rather than this demonized notion of guys running about trying to screw little boys. I would have been so much happier as an adolescent if NAMBLA had been around when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.” — Samuel R. Delany, Queer Desires Forum, New York City, June 25, 1994. 

Then I began to
feel bad for not asking Chip Delany about this. In the 1960s, he was one
of a small number of writers who made me believe fantasy and science
fiction could be both great fun and great art. When he was the guest of
honor at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, he was charming and
learned and pretty much everything anyone could want in a guest of
honor. I can’t say I know him, but I can say I like him. I believe we should be able to talk about things which are taboo—what
reveals our nature is not what we say, but what we do. This is
especially true of storytellers, who regularly write about things they
would never do. 

So I wrote Chip, which
began a discussion that moved between Facebook messages and email. He
has agreed to share it. What follows is a version that I lightly edited
for clarity.

 As some readers may recall, I have observed that in addition to Delany’s homosexuality, his endorsement of NAMBLA, his fiction is literally overflowing with deviancy, sex crimes, and the abuse of children. I view all three of those factors as red flags of varying degrees of seriousness indicating a potential predilection for pedophilia. I would encourage you to consider some of Delany’s following statements that I have highlighted in that light:

  • I never met or knew Walter Breen (and only two or three times met Marion Zimmer Bradley, in the last two or three years of her life)…. I got the impression from others who knew him that the gossip about Breen, especially in the first years I knew Paul (well before Stonewall), whether Breen was gay or straight, was a tempest in teapot. Currently it sounds like it’s not. But, again, I never knew Breen or saw him in my life.
  • I have no idea what NAMBLA has been doing for the last twenty years.
  • I had my first sexual experience with an adult when I was six, with a local Harlem building superintendent. And nothing hurtful happened at all. It would have been cruel and unusual punishment to incarcerate him for it…. The building superintendent, however, abused me not at all. To say that he did, is just incorrect.
  • I said and still maintain that 20 years ago [NAMBLA] was an intelligent and highly thoughtful institution.
  • Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a child, and nine years of that life as a pretty sexually active gay child, my complaint against the current attitudes is that they work mightily to silence the voices of children first and secondarily ignore what adults have to say who have been through these situations. One size fits all is never the way to handle any situation with a human dimension.
  • The current attitude toward pedophilia is a tragic attempt to drive nature out with a pitchfork, and at this point it is a self-reinforcing tragedy, encouraging the worst and punishing the best by making no distinctions at all
  • The consent of a seven-, eight-, or nine-year old is not the same thing as the consent of a seventeen- or eighteen-year old. And the “consent” of a three, four, and five year old means much less—especially if it’s negative. But it must count for something, otherwise you are just saying the child is not human and has no feelings or agency whatsoever—which, in itself, is abusive and counter-intuitive. And, I would maintain, immoral when another possibility presents itself.
  • I have heard fifty or sixty such tales from gay men of this nature. It had none of the affect of abuse. If anything, it had more the feel of an impromptu educational session.

On the basis of Mr. Delany’s remarkably frank answers, I would maintain that he was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused as a child to the point that he is intrinsically unable to tell black from white or right from wrong with regards to sexual matters. However, it is to be regretted that Mr. Shetterly did not ask Mr. Delany anything about the elephant in the room, namely, what he, himself, did. We know Mr. Delany was sexually abused by an older man at the age of six. We know he is familiar with fifty or sixty similarly abused homosexual men. What we still do not know, and what Mr. Shetterly rather delicately avoided asking, is if Mr. Delany ever put his principles into action, and, as an adult, engaged in sexual relations with children under the age of legal consent.

Since most sexual abusers were abused themselves as children, (a fourth red flag, if you’re still counting), at this point I doubt it would very much surprise anyone if he had. And lest you doubt that SFWA’s support for Mr. Delany, let me remind you what SFWA President Steven Gould and former SFWA President John Scalzi had to say about Samuel R. Delany last December.

  1. “One of the perks of being SFWA president is the option of
    selecting the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s next
    Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. One of the tragedies is we only get
    to select one a year. That said, from the grains of sand in my pocket, I
    am delighted to pull this star. Samuel R. Delany is one of science fiction’s most influential
    authors, critics, and teachers and it is my great honor to announce his
    selection. When discussing him as this year’s choice with the board,
    past-presidents, and members, the most frequent response I received was,
    “He’s not already?” Well he is now.” (S. Gould)
  2. “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has named Samuel R.
    Delany its newest Grand Master…. I will say this: This is an award
    both well chosen and well deserved.” (J. Scalzi) 

It would certainly be interesting to know if Mr. Gould and Mr. Scalzi still unreservedly support Mr. Delany.

      Marion Zimmer Bradley’s son speaks out

      After his sister, Moira Greyland, bravely came forward and publicly exposed her mother, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as a child abuser, her son has also stepped forward to confirm both her charges and the deposition of Elizabeth Waters. This is a brief selection; read the whole thing there.

      CS: Do you think other people were aware of your mother’s abuse of you and your sister at the time? If so, in what ways did they respond?
      MG: You assume that I would have felt free to say anything. There was always drama and there was always the invisible blade of what would happen if all of this dreadful secret got out. The atmosphere of fear of discovery was simply everywhere and there was no place to hide.

      Worse, I was ashamed. When you are small you believe stuff, and I felt with my whole heart that I was responsible when she would go bad. There was absolutely no way I was gonna drag the mountain onto my head. And that made every day a drama, a thick clogged tube of waiting for the dreadful, the un-nameable horror.

      And nobody spoke. Everything was always fine and that was my clown suit. I thought everyone knew and that I was such a bad person no one would speak to me. My echo chamber filled me with such fear of exposure I would do anything to make the shadow go away. And I did. The shame paints my world yellow and pink and brown. I don’t want to say these things any more….

      CS: Who benefits from the sales of your mother’s books and the MZB trust?
      MG: I was disinherited by language that sounded so unlike my mother that I knew she never wrote it, as was my sister and my half-brother who is now deceased.

      The money went to the opera and to her lover.

      “Nobody spoke.” That is the shame of the science fiction community then and now. Now that they can’t deny the fact of MZB’s abuse, they can still pretend that Ed Kramer isn’t a member of SFWA, they can still pretend that there aren’t a veritable United Nations of red flags waving around Sam Delany’s head, they can still try to brazen it out. But the truth is going to come out eventually, and their legacies will reflect the fact that they did their very best to sweep the ugly truth under the carpet as long as they thought they could get away with it.

      SFWA still has not responded to my questions about its position on the eligibility of known and suspected child molesters for membership in the organization. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has the organization that produced an 80-page investigative report on the subject of a single tweet done anything to discover who in the science fiction community knew what and when they knew it.

      As for Mark and Moira, as difficult as it may be, they have the right to hold their heads up high. Unlike all the cowards, they were not afraid to speak. They were not afraid to expose the evildoers. One need not be a writer of fantasies to know, and to acknowledge, that such actions are indicative of the behavior of a hero, not a villain, and not a helpless victim.

      If I could tell Mark one thing, it would be this: You did the right thing. You broke the spell of silence. You have made it harder for others to do what was done to you. You don’t have my pity or even my sympathy. You have my respect.

      The end of the CoE

      The Church of England just assisted its own suicide:

      The Church of England finally voted yesterday to let women become bishops – to the anger of many traditionalists. The move was passed by a comfortable majority at a tense gathering of its parliament, the General Synod, in York.

      It ended 14 years of hand-wringing and faction-fighting, delighting Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and almost all of his fellow bishops.

      The decision freed the Church from the risk of intervention by politicians.

      MPs had threatened to step in to force the Church to accept women bishops in 2012, after a disastrously botched vote saw traditionalists narrowly block reform.

      David Cameron described yesterday’s vote as ‘a great day for the Church and for equality’. Ed Miliband said it was ‘wonderful news’, while Nick Clegg called the decision a ‘long overdue step’.

      Of course, any church that was founded on the political basis of an adulterous king’s divorce was always going to have questionable theology. But this will serve to finish off what has been a dying denomination that severed itself from the roots of faith several generations ago.

      I would encourage any Anglicans of my acquaintance to leave the organization, just as I encouraged Episcopalians to do the same a few years ago, except for the fact that I don’t know any Anglicans anymore. They already left.

      While they are far from the only red flag, female leadership is an inerrant sign of a church that does not take the Bible or Christian doctrine seriously. Once female leadership is embraced, it’s only a matter of time before God is declared to be a Goddess, marriage is declared to be malleable, and the Crucifixion is declared to be some sort of poetic metaphor rather than a literal historical event. It was only 21 years from when women were first permitted to become priests to this event, and in another 21, I expect the Church of England will be rapidly approaching its extinction.

      Remember, the same snakes that have methodically destroyed these churches are at work in your church as well. They’re always assiduous about being helpful, filling in the gaps, and working hard for the church body. There is a very good reason the Roman Catholic Church saw fit to create its various inquisitions, which were not aimed at its enemies outside the Church, but at those within it.

      Look at the pictures of the fake tears of the triumphant crocodiles. They’re already planning their next offensive.

      High IQs and theism

      This is no surprise. As I’ve shown in the past, “there are 11.4x more +2SD theists who either know God exists or believe
      God exists despite having the occasional doubt than there are +2SD
      atheists who don’t believe God exists.”

      Have you ever heard the claim “all smart people are atheists”, or maybe
      its inverse: “people who believe in God are dumb”? It’s quite a
      pervasive urban legend, and one which I’ve known is false for a long
      time, but I didn’t realize just how false until the other day. I
      recently decided to do a quick cataloging of the ten highest IQ’s on
      earth, and discovered that it’s nearly the exact opposite of the truth!

      The appeal to intelligence is a fallacy. But, any atheist who makes it is not only violating logic, he’s also demonstrating his own ignorance.

      Who can understand the French?

      It seems extraordinary that the French people should be so tremendously upset about the lethal attacks the Israeli Defense Forces are launching on Gaza.

      Clashes erupted in Paris on Sunday as thousands of people protested against Israel and in support of residents in the Gaza Strip, where a six-day conflict has left 168 Palestinians dead. Several thousand demonstrators walked calmly through the streets of Paris behind a large banner that read “Total Support for the Struggle of the Palestinian People”.

      But clashes erupted at the end of the march on Bastille Square, with people throwing projectiles onto a cordon of police who responded with tear gas.

      The unrest continued early Sunday evening as police announced six arrests had been made. A small group tired to break into two synagogues in central Paris, a police source told AFP.

      It’s remarkable that they feel such a close bond with the Palestinian People and their struggle. They don’t seem to be similarly concerned with the battle over water resources in California. I guess there are some mysteries we’ll never be able to understand.

      ESR and the terrible sinking feeling

      It should be interesting to see the pinkshirts attempt to dismiss ESR’s criticism of their best mediocrities as the conventional white Christian conservative’s bigoted distaste for the saintly Other:

      The introduction to The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014
      (Rich Horton, ed.; Prime Books) gave me a terrible sinking feeling. It
      was the anthologist’s self-congratulatory talk about “diversity” that
      did it.

      In the real world, when an employer trumpets its “diversity” you are
      usually being told that hiring on the basis of actual qualifications has
      been subordinated to good PR about the organization’s tenderness
      towards whatever designated-victim groups are in fashion this week, and
      can safely predict that you’ll be able to spot the diversity hires by
      their incompetence. Real fairness doesn’t preen itself; real fairness
      considers discrimination for as odious as discrimination against; real
      fairness is a high-minded indifference to anything except actual merit….

      If I believed the title of this anthology, I’d have to think the SF
      field was in desperate shape and fantasy barely better off. There are
      maybe five of the SF stories that will be worth remembering in a decade,
      and at best a few more of the fantasies. The rest is like wallpaper –
      busy, clever, and flat – except for the few pieces that are actively
      bad.

      I’d ask what the anthologist was thinking, but since I’ve seen the
      author list on one of his other anthologies I don’t have to guess. For
      truth in advertising, this should probably have been titled “Rich Horton
      Recruits Mainly From His Usual Pool of Writers There Are Good Reasons
      I’ve Never Heard Of”. And far too many of them are
      second-raters who, if they ever knew how to write a decent F/SF story,
      have given that up to perform bad imitations of literary fiction.

      In SF all the writing skill in the world avails you naught unless you have an idea
      to wrap your plot and characters around. In fantasy you need to be able
      to reach in and back to the roots of folklore and myth. Without these
      qualities at the center an F/SF story is just a brittle, glossy surface
      over nothing. Way too many of these stories were superficial cleverness
      over vacuum.

      This got me thinking about why I find Patrick Rothfuss’s very popular THE NAME OF THE WIND to be virtually unreadable. I like to keep my eye on what is genuinely popular in the genre and to learn from it what I can. But I’ve tried to read it three times now, in circumstances where I was travelling and had literally nothing else to do but read, and each time I found myself turning to anything else I had on hand rather than subject myself to any more of it. But, at the same time, I recognize that an awful lot of people genuinely love it and think very highly of it. How is this possible? Why are my perceptions so out of harmony with so many other readers? This pair of conflicting Amazon reviews, in combination with ESR’s post, may explain the apparent contradiction. The first review is by well-known fantasy author Robin Hobb:

      Well worth your precious reading hours

      It seems to me that every year there are more books I want to read and less time for me to read them. Because my time is limited, I’m guilty of picking up the books by my favorite authors first, and fitting in new authors only when it’s convenient.

      Due to a stroke of luck, I’ve had an advance copy of The Name of the Wind by my bedside for over six months, just waiting for me to open it. Unfortunately, deadlines of my own kept getting in the way. But in a way, it’s lucky that I didn’t crack this book until just a few days ago. If I’d had this tale to distract me, I’d have been even later getting my work done.

      I loathe spoilers, so I’m not going to discuss the plot of this book. I will say it has all the things that I demand of a book. The characters are real, the action is convincing and it has a compelling story to tell.

      One of the things I like best about this book is that the magic is absolutely rooted in the book’s world. Nothing seems contrived; the consistency is excellent.

      The characters are very well realized. That means that when the protagonist does something clever, it’s believable. And when he does something youthfully dumb, it rings just as authentically true. Because the characters are real and the magic is true to its own world, I closed this book feeling as if I’d been on a journey with an entertaining new friend, rather than sitting alone looking at words on a page.

      This one is well worth some of your precious reading time. I’ll wager that the books to follow it will also be.

      It’s strange, because I found Hobb’s books perfectly readable, if not particularly interesting or coherent. The second is a hilarious critical parody-review of THE NAME OF THE WIND that I found to be considerably more accurate than Hobb’s review:

      My name is Kvothe. My awesome heroic account narrated by me is pure truth, I assure you. Do not worry folks. You’re looking for a review. I’m giving you one. We’ll get to that in a minute. But first, find some time to listen to me.

      You don’t have time? What makes you think you can leave here, knowing what you know? (I said this exact sentence in my book.)

      Now you want to listen to me after I gave you a death threat? Good. When you take note, do not presume to change a word I say. (I also said this in the book!)

      I’m gifted. Not just gifted in one way, I’m gifted in every freaking way. I’m skilled with music, acting, medicine, chemistry, alchemy, things you might call magic. In fact, anything cool, you name it.

      When I was only about twelve, I devoured in months lessons grown-ups would take years to learn. I had flash-fast, word for word, page for page memory. They ended up paying me instead of charging me for tuition. I was the youngest in quite a while. In barely a week, I owned a teacher so hard, embarrassed him in front of the class, making him hate me for life. In return, I was punished unfairly but also rewarded with a rank students took years to earn – I only took a few days. I saved women. One of the most beautiful girls in the school even invited me into her room, which I refused, of course. I was too pure to do that. I bested my rivals every time we confronted each other, in this book, at least. They accepted me as one of the musical genius, and I was the youngest to gain that recognition, even after my rival played dirty and tried to ruin my performance. By hurting him, I earned another rank. And the best part is, it didn’t stop there.

      You see, I was brilliant. Not just your run-of-the-mill brilliance either. I was extraordinarily brilliant. (I said exactly this in my book too. Word for word!)

      Not yet apparent in this book, but printed on the back cover, I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. My name is Kvothe, not Mary Sue. You may have heard of me.

      You see, I said I would give you a review, but I don’t even have to. Because by the time you reach here, I’m pretty sure you get the point.

      So, on the one hand we have people who read for style in a solipsistic manner. They adore idealized Mary Sues such as Kvothe, because the way they read a book is to insert themselves in the protagonist’s position and experience the book through him. It is reading as an emotional experience. It may even be described, in some cases, as retroactive teenage wish fulfillment. (Those tidbits about owning the teacher, the unfair punishment, and turning down the pretty girl speak psychological volumes.) Call it Thalamic Reading, to borrow ESR’s term. On the other had, we have people who read books from a more detached and intellectual perspective. They engage in Cerebral Reading. The style of the prose is less important to them, except as an aesthetic frosting, because they don’t feel any need to bond seamlessly with the protagonist and they are more concerned with the story, the concepts, and the underlying meaning of the story.

      In my experience, Rothfuss and Rowling and Weber are three exemplaries of the former. Lewis and Tolkien and Wright are three exemplaries of the latter. In the case of the former, the reader knows exactly with whom he is supposed to identify, whose emotions he is expected to share: Kvothe, Harry, and Honor. With whom is one expected to identify in the case of the Narnia novels? Or Middle Earth? Or the Night Lands? The question cannot even reasonably be answered in any straightforward manner. And while there is some crossover between the two forms of reading, the emotional and the intellectual, the more one is oriented to one reading form, the less one will be able to enjoy the other. And while Pink SF/F is not necessarily Thalamic and Blue SF/F is not necessarily Cerebral, the subgenres do tend to fit more comfortably with one form than the other.

      When beauty isn’t enough

      When 17-year-old Axelle Despiegelaere went to support her native Belgium at
      the World Cup she wasn’t expecting it to lead to a job offer. But a
      long-distance photo of her went viral on Twitter, where she was labelled the “most
      beautiful” fan in Brazil, and L’Oreal came knocking with a modelling
      contract. The competition is not even over and the company has already shot a video
      where Axelle is doused in its products, uploaded it to YouTube and received
      over two million hits. Such is the speed at which marketing now works.       But the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long: Axelle’s fledgling modelling career is already finished, after images of her posing
      next to dead animals on the African savannah with a rifle and a smile as big
      as she wore at the football. 


      Apparently it’s not enough to be young and beautiful. To be employed as a professional model, a girl must also possess politically correct opinions concerning big-game hunting. We’ve seen this in the publishing world. We’ve seen this in technology. Now we’re seeing it in modeling, of all places.

      Remember this the next time you’re congratulating yourself on your open-mindedness, and patting yourself on the back for the way you hired that [insert repulsive left-wing opinion or identity here] individual despite the fact that you completely disagree with him. Because not only will you not be the beneficiary of the same treatment if your positions are reversed, you are helping to ensure that your side is going to lose.

      Wars do not require two sides. You can lose a war even more easily by refusing to fight in the first place. One hopes that some rifle manufacturer or hunting magazine will be smart enough to see the opportunity in hiring a very pretty young spokesmodel who knows how to put lead on target.

      A 2010
      report from Microsoft       said that social media checks were already as
      important in the job selection process as a CV or interview. Some 70 per
      cent of HR managers at the top 100 companies in the UK, US, Germany and
      France said that they had rejected candidates because of their online
      behaviour.  

      Most people, when reading this, think that this means pictures of guys doing keg stands or girls posting naked selfies. Such things are included, of course, but so are one’s political identifications, such as expressing support for a political candidate during the electoral season. Don’t think that they aren’t.