Response part II

Some of the hunters have already jumped in and produced some interesting points.  One is that the Board cannot expel anyone on its own, no matter what the bylaws may say, because the organization is still governed by Massachusetts law that requires the entire membership to vote on such matters as per the original bylaws that were written in accordance with state law.  Another, and more serious issue, is that there are genuine questions about the legal propriety of the membership vote on the so-called “reincorporation”.  Given how many corners have been cut and how many irregularities have been revealed in the Board’s actions pertaining to me, it would not be surprising to discover that the Scalzi administration made some fundamental legal blunders in the “reincorporation” process amidst its attempt to remake the organization as a top-down California entity.

Needless to say, the legal team is already looking into this.  It is too soon to say if anything improper was done or not, but the idea that merging the entire organization with a new one, then shutting down the old one requires a lower level of membership approval than a simple amendment to the bylaws tends to strike me as a somewhat dubious proposal.  But I’m not the lawyer, it’s not my opinion here that matters.  That’s their territory, and while they’re looking into that, I’m focused on the direct aspect of my response to the Board’s report, the first part of which is as follows:

A. Violation of SFWA bylaws and policies
In this section only incidents which occurred in SFWA-controlled spaces are addressed. For the purposes of this report “SFWA-controlled spaces” are defined as:

  • Events organized by SFWA (e.g. Nebula ceremony, etc.)
  • Social events hosted by SFWA (e.g. SFWA lounges at conventions, etc.)
  • Print publications published by SFWA (e.g. The SFWA Bulletin)
  • Online spaces hosted or published by SFWA (e.g. the SFWA online forum, the SFWA blog, and any social media accounts controlled by SFWA)

1. Improper use of SFWA channels

The incident which prompted this investigation was Mr. Beale’s use of the SFWAAuthors Twitter account to distribute his blog of June 13, 2013 “A black female fantasist calls for Reconciliation.” (See Fig A.1 for the tweet and Fig A.2 for the blog entry to which the link in the tweet led. Note the #SFWApro tag at the end which shows a conscious choice to have the blog entry published through the Twitter feed.)

Here is the policy sent to members regarding use of the SFWAAuthors Twitter feed:

SFWA maintains the @sfwaauthors Twitter feed to help spread the word about members’ blog posts about writing, fiction/reading (reviews, reading recommendations, etc), or publishing, or about their own writing or publishing news. If you’re a member who would like to have the writing and publishing posts from your blog included in the @sfwaauthors stream, please send an email to twitter@sfwa.org.

Not every blog post is appropriate for @sfwaauthors. If a post is not about writing, or about fiction or publishing, do not mark it for inclusion in the @sfwaauthors twitter feed. (Instructions on how to mark posts for inclusion in the @sfwaauthors twitter feed will be provided when you email twitter@sfwa.org.)

Repeated violations of this policy will be grounds for removal from the feed. SFWA reserves the right to determine what posts are appropriate. Marking blog posts for inclusion that include threats or personal attacks or obvious trolling will also be grounds for removal. While SFWA does maintain the @sfwaauthors Twitter feed for the benefit of its members, ultimately the posts that appear in the feed are the responsibility of the authors of those posts, and are in no way endorsed by SFWA, nor do such posts reflect the opinions or policy of SFWA.

Mr. Beale made a conscious choice to be added to the feed (see Fig A.3). He was made aware of the guidelines (see Fig A.4 and Fig A.5) and stated in conversation on the SFWA online discussion boards that he was aware that some of the content of his blogs would likely be inappropriate (see Fig A.6). This also illustrates the fact that he made a conscious choice to have this particular blog post published by the SFWAAuthors Twitter feed.

SFWA received complaints about the tweet from several members (part 3 of this section looks specifically at the objectionable content of the entry) and it was removed from the feed roughly two hours after the tweet was first posted and between two and two and a half hours after the blog was first posted. (See part 3 of this this section for a more detailed explanation of the timeline.)

In an e-mail sent to the Board, Mr. Beale stated that the final paragraph of the guidelines show that “it is demonstrably false to claim that I have ever misused any SFWA platform.” The precise interpretation of that paragraph is a matter for the Board to decide. However, it may be noted that

a) The Twitter account is maintained and managed by SFWA
b) The Twitter handle contains “SFWA” with the permission of SFWA

I have eight points in my response already, including the Board’s blatant and self-admitted, (see above), violation of the discussion forum confidentiality rules in (Fig A.6), which is a screencap of one of my posts in the SFWA forum that was reposted by the Board without my permission.  I’ve also referenced the Twitter Terms of Service to prove that the Twitter account cannot possibly be considered an SFWA channel, as the Services belong to Twitter while the Content belongs to me.  I’ve pointed out that the complaint rests entirely upon the confusion between the marking for inclusion of a Twitter-fed link to a URL and the actual blog post published on Blogger.  And, most importantly, I’ve demonstrated that SFWA expressly disclaims the @sfwaauthors Twitter feed as an official platform or channel for the organization.  One cannot misuse what does not exist.

The Board doesn’t seem to realize Michael Capobianco, among many other members, is provably guilty of the very thing they accuse me of here.  The important difference is that the SFWA Forum is a genuine SFWA channel whereas @sfwaauthors is not.  This means they have a much stronger case for expelling Mr. Capobianco than me on these grounds.  Nor is he the only member to whom the charge materially applies.

In that vein, it would be useful to find information on other information conduits containing “sfwa” with the permission of SFWA, particularly examples of content that would be more objectionable than the text that actually appeared on the Twitter account in (Fig A.1) to the left or posts in any SFWA channel that contain links to attacks on other members.  Note that it even says right there in the screenshot: “Tweets made from this account are the sole responsibility of the feed/blog post author only. Opinions expressed within the links do not reflect those of SFWA.  swfa.org”

It may amuse you to know that despite its obvious flaws, this is probably their most concrete complaint.  It gets even worse. Considerably worse. As one hunter commented after reading the entire report: “I cannot believe anyone would be stupid enough to go any further using this document as the charge sheet against you.”  And so far, we’ve only reached page 6 of 34.

§ 107 . Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding
the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted
work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by
any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of
copyright. 

Tories favor UKIP

The UK’s nationalist party is on the rise:

Polls conducted in the run-up to Ukip’s local election surge suggested that some 60 per cent of its supporters voted Conservative in 2010, while a survey released by the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft at the end of June indicated that almost a quarter of those who picked David Cameron’s party at the last election would today plump for what he once branded a bunch of “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists”. More recent research, however, reveals something even more alarming for the Prime Minister: it’s not just Tory voters who are tempted by Ukip; it’s also his own grassroots members.

At the beginning of June, and with the help of YouGov and the McDougall Trust, we surveyed 852 Conservative Party members – enough to ensure that we can be 95 per cent confident that their responses are a true reflection of the membership as a whole, plus or minus 4 per cent. What we found is that at least a fifth and very possibly even just over a quarter of the Tory grassroots would seriously consider voting for Ukip in a general election. Asked whether they’d think about it at a European election, the figures are even more worrying for the Conservative high command: in that case, over a third of its grassroots members are wondering whether to give Ukip a go next year.

Note that these aren’t Tory voters, these are the card-carrying Conservative Party members. They are migrating to UKIP because there is no point in voting Tory due to better policy positions than Labour; a vote for either the Tories or Labour is a vote for Brussels.  Every British voter, regardless of his ideology, who believes in national sovereignty has no choice but to vote UKIP. And that’s why no one should be surprised if an unexpectedly high percentage of Labour party members also go UKIP.

The British have UKIP. The Scots have the Scottish National Party. The Italians have Movimento 5 Stelle. The Greeks have Golden Dawn. The Hungarians have Jobbik. The French have Front National. The Finns have the True Finns. The Swiss have the Schweizerische Volkspartei. Even the Germans have Alternative für Deutschland.

Who do the Americans have?

The side the USG won’t take

Ron Paul points out that no matter who wins in Egypt, Americans will be the losers:

Looking at the banners in the massive Egyptian protests last week, we saw many anti-American slogans. Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government that was deposed by the military last week was very critical of what it saw as US support for the coup. Why is it that all sides in this Egyptian civil war seem so angry with the United States? Because the United States has at one point or another supported each side, which means also that at some point the US has also opposed each side. It is the constant meddling in Egyptian affairs that has turned Egyptians against us, as we would resent foreign intervention in our own affairs.

For more than 30 years, since the US-brokered Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, the US supported Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Over that period the US sent more than $60 billion to prop up Mubarak and, importantly, to train and seek control over the Egyptian military. Those who opposed Mubarak’s unelected reign became more and more resentful of the US, which they rightly saw as aiding and abetting a dictator and denying them their political aspirations.

Then the US began providing assistance to groups seeking to overthrow Mubarak, which they did in 2011. The US continued funding the Egyptian military at that time, arguing that US aid was more critical than ever if we are to maintain influence. The US Administration demanded an election in Egypt after Mubarak’s overthrow and an election was held. Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won a narrow victory. The US supported Morsi but kept funding the Egyptian military.

After a year of Morsi’s rule, Egyptians who did not approve of his government took to the streets to demand his removal from power. The US signaled to the Egyptian military that it would not oppose the removal of Morsi from power, and he was removed on July 3rd. With the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government came the arrest of many politicians and the closure of many media outlets sympathetic to them. Then the US government warned the same Egyptian military that undermined democracy that it needed to restore democracy! Is it any wonder why Egyptians from all walks of life are united in their irritation with the United States?

Despite the Egyptian government being overthrown by a military coup, the Obama Administration will not utter the word “coup” because acknowledging reality would mean an end to US assistance to the Egyptian government and military. That cannot be allowed…. So, successive US administrations over the decades have supported all sides in Egypt, from dictator to demonstrator to military. There is only one side that the US government has never supported: our side. The American side. It has never supported the side of the US taxpayers who resent being forced to fund a foreign dictatorship, a foreign military, and foreign protestors.

And remember, this is the man that Republicans refused to nominate because they claimed that his foreign policy was crazy….

The wrong question

Horrified by a picture of observable reality with which he was hitherto unfamiliar, ESR asks: how can we keep the bigots from winning?

I have read very little in the last few decades that is as shocking to me as this: Essay by a teacher in a black high school. My first reaction was that I wanted to believe it was a bigot’s fabrication. I’d still like to believe that, but it was reposted
by a black man who claims it is representative of “dirty laundry”: bad
stuff [known among blacks] about black folk never to be said around
whites.

My second reaction, afterwards, was: for those of us who insist that
people ought to be judged by the content of their characters rather than
the color of their skins, what emotionally compelling argument do we
have against anti-black racism that reading this doesn’t blow to
smithereens?

But if this is really where they came from – if this is what they’re
right-end-of-the-bell-curve exceptions to, and that reality becomes
widely known or believed – rational argument won’t be enough. How can
we keep the bigots from winning?

That’s not the right
question.  ESR is still making false assumptions in ignorance; he still
believes “all the rational arguments against racism are still sound”.
It is said that one must let reason be silent when experience gainsays
its conclusions, so the correct question for the genuinely rational
individual is: “what if those we called bigots were right all along?”

I
have to admit, all this shock and horror from politically correct
goodthinkers is more than a little amusing to me.  I linked to a similar post back in 2007 and wrote about my own experiences with the cruelty of affirmative action in 2011.  And, of course, I was called raciss and bigoted and so on, even though I have been entirely open about the fact that I am, by every political and genetic measure, a bona fide Person of Color.

And
as such, I can reassure ESR that the facts are simply the facts.  Facts
can only be true or false, they cannot be purple, or racist, or
ruffled.  They don’t change depending upon whether the individual
acknowledging them is white, black, or canine.

Response part I

“Many SFWA members have contacted members of the Board to express an opinion on this issue. In total, 66 Active, Associate or Affiliate members sent e-mails on the topic that were either received by the investigator or forwarded to him by the Board members who initially received them. Since not all Board members were able to forward the e-mails they received to the investigator, it is likely that some voices are going unheard.”

That is a quotation from the supposedly “comprehensive” investigative report that was sent to me last week, complete with pie charts.  After repeated requests spanning several days, neither Matthew Johnson, the Canadian Regional Director, nor Steven Gould, the President, were able to provide me with any evidence for the existence of the double-secret “SFWA Confidentiality Rules” to which they had both appealed.  They also refused to respond to my questions about their self-admitted violations of the discussion forum confidentiality rules, concerning which I have now lodged a complaint with the SFWA Ombudsman.  As those members to whom I have already sent the report can substantiate, there is no claim to the confidentiality of the report anywhere in the report itself.

As for the pie chart, I’m sure you will agree this must be a very vital matter indeed if 3.7 percent of the
membership was moved to express their opinion on it. And no less
than 2.6 percent of it were demanding expulsion too… as if they couldn’t
have gotten nearly the same percentage back in 2005 when members first started calling for it.  I
note that there are still fewer members who have demanded my
expulsion than voted for me for president.

Concerning the investigative report, I have been told that I must provide any additional evidence I would like the Board to consider by July 25, 2013.  Which, it turns out, is necessary, as despite the protocols which call for the report to be “comprehensive”, as you’ll see, the report is more than just a one-sided brief for the prosecution.  It’s even more than an attack on my right to freely express my opinion on my own blog, it is a direct assault on the free speech of every single person who comments here or on any other SFWA member’s site.

You might think I’m exaggerating, especially about that last bit.  If so, I encourage you to reserve judgment until you read the 34-page report, which doesn’t count the 46-page appendix.  As you’ll see, this attack isn’t something that is of relevance merely to me, or even to those who share my views, but to everyone who either permits a moderately broad range of discussion on their web site or participates in one.  As I will show, it pertains as readily to many of my critics as to me.

What I’m going to do, in effect, is crowdsource my response to the Board.  Each day, I’m going to post a section of the report and invite those interested in participating to contribute their thoughts, as well as provide links to various evidence on the Internet which they believe to be relevant to my response.  If you are either a) a member of the SFWA, or b) a regular willing to assist with the crowdsourced defense, email me and I will send you a copy of the report so that you can see exactly what is in it, and in the case of (b), get a jump on hunting down the relevant evidence.  All evidence gathered should be posted as links in the comments to post addressing the relevant section and may be posted as Anonymous if that is deemed necessary.

I’ve already amassed a quantity of solid evidence, of course, but the more hunters, the more and better information we’ll have to hand.  And if this subject bores you, then I suggest you focus your attention on the three other non-SFWA related posts per day instead. I think I have made it clear over the years that I am totally unconcerned about the possibility that any reader here believes himself to be insufficiently entertained at any given time.
 
UPDATE: I forgot to mention this, but the Board has rendered it impossible for the membership to discuss the malfeasance of the Board with regards to this matter because the Board has banned all discussion of me in the discussion forums and put me into a “permanent moderation” that prevents me from posting there.  That’s not a problem for me, because anyone who wants to read about what’s going on can do so here.  But it’s not hard to see what effect the Board’s clampdown on internal communication would have on a member without an effective alternative communications channel.

§ 107 . Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding
the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted
work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by
any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies
for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of
copyright. 

A failure to comprehend

I’m sure you recall the various academics and would-be academics at Pharyngula crying about what PZ Myers described as the “depressing” state of reality in American academia.  The accomplished genetic scientist writes in Woe is us academics:

Yeah, that’s the reward for earning a Ph.D. Most of you won’t get employed in academia, and most of you who do will get the terrifyingly fragile job of adjunct. And if you do manage to get a real tenure-track position, after 4-6 years of graduate school and a post-doc or two, you’ll get paid $40-50K/year, and be damned grateful for it.

The comments to these posts are full of the lamentations of angry, highly credentialed, but unemployed Obama-voting progressives who consider any limitation on immigration to be racist, bigoted, and overtly evil.  Which is why, despite opposing the administration-endorsed Senate bill on “immigration reform”, I found myself laughing when reading this description of the bill by Bill Keller at the New York Times.

Any foreigner who gets a graduate degree from an American university in
science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM in the vernacular)
and has a job offer can apply for a green card — even if he or she
studied for a field that is already crowded with native job applicants.
The bill would award permanent residence to anyone with a Ph.D. in any
subject from any university in the world, if he or she has a job offer
in that field.

If the credentialed geniuses in academia think things are difficult for them now, just wait until they have to start competing with PhDs from Bangladesh and Zimbabwe who are willing to work for $5k per year and a green card.  It is ironic that the only thing standing between them and the complete economic devaluation of the credentials they so treasure is the Republican House that they so despise.

The immigration bill multiplies the blessings of diversity with the blessings of free trade.  Imagine how much USA will benefit if wages for PhDs are reduced by 90 percent!

The Harrowing of the Holy See

Pope Francis takes on the Lavender Lobby: 

A tide of lurid speculation, questionable accusations and possible blackmail attempts is buffeting the Vatican following Pope Francis‘s claim that he is preparing to tackle a gay lobby secretly at work behind the Holy See’s walls.

The new pope’s private comments to a group of visiting South American churchmen,
which caused a sensation when they appeared on a religious website last
week, prompted blushes in the Vatican and unleashed feverish gossip in
Rome regarding the contents of a report on Vatican infighting prepared
last year for Francis’s predecessor, Joseph Ratzinger.

On his
retirement in February, Ratzinger handed his Argentine successor the
dossier, which reportedly describes a lobby of gay, senior churchmen
inside the Vatican, running a network of patronage while fighting off
blackmailers. The pope’s unguarded remarks, which appeared to
confirm the speculation, have fuelled a new round of accusations,
beginning with a convicted paedophile priest, Father Patrizio Poggi, who
last week named nine fellow prelates in Rome as part of a secret band
who used a police officer to supply them with eastern European rent
boys.

It’s long been rumored in Italian Catholic circles that the Catholic hierarchy, and the Vatican itself, have been infested with homosexuals and secret Satanists since before Vatican II.  Many believed that while the Pope Emeritus’s resignation was to permit the next pope to take on that lobby, Cardinal Bergoglio was not his chosen successor for the task.  And there are certainly some Catholics, like Ann Barnhardt, who has reservations about Pope Francis’s ability to do what his predecessor could not:

Here’s the deal. Pope Francis, while the Vicar of Christ gloriously reigning, is not a terribly bright man. What brings Jorge Maria Bergoglio’s intellectual shortcomings into even starker relief is the fact that his predecessor, Benedict XVI Ratzinger is not only a bona fide genius, but also … still alive. Francis is a mediocre intellect, poorly educated, and a member of an order (the Jesuits) that is so far gone that it should be suppressed. Layer on top of this the generation of which Francis is a product: perhaps the most godless, evil, blind generation in human history, and add in the fact that while being poorly educated in the age of the hippy, he has also lived his entire life in South America, which has been more steadily and overtly influenced by Marxism, both in the secular world as well as in the Church, than either Europe or North America over the last fifty years.

Jorge Maria Bergoglio is the first “affirmative action” pope – which is a different thing entirely from nepotism. The College of Cardinals, again, not exactly a collection of the smartest men in the world – remember Tracksuit Timmy Dolan, dinner host of antichrists and celebrant of “gay” Masses, a man whose capacity for intellectual nuance is on par with a box of hair, is not only a cardinal, but the head of the U.S. Bishop’s conference – went into the conclave wanting to elect not the best man, not the brightest intellect, not the most competent manager. No. The criteria were racial and geographical. “Um, we need to have a pope from the Western Hemisphere. We need to have a pope from a Spanish-speaking country. We need to make the Latinos feel good and keep the Latino money flowing, because they are the only ones not contracepting themselves into extinction.”

And, if this culture of stupidity persists, then mark my words: they will elect a black African next time for no other reason than “affirmative action”.

Now, back to Francis’ sermonettes, and defending the press. There is a tremendous uproar on the internet with people cursing the Vatican Press Office for not releasing the full transcripts of Francis’ sermonettes but instead only piecemeal summaries consisting of brief quotes from Francis with press-written prose between the quotes to give context. “Give us the full transcripts!”

The reason they aren’t releasing the full transcripts is because Francis’ sermonettes are so rambling, so incoherent and sometimes so embarrassing in their delivery (verbal ticks like, “eh?” and “right?”) that the Vatican Press Office is trying to protect both Francis and the dignity of the Holy See by taking Francis’ stream-of-consciousness rhetorical sausage and presenting it as something that could maybe pass as steak.

On the other hand, intellectual genius and superlative rhetorical skill are no substitute for a determination and a willingness to give the necessary orders.  So, I suppose we shall have to wait and see.

Soccer: the real man’s game

So much for the notion of soccer being a game for wimps, or for anyone with a weak stomach. And some people wonder why I’m a bit skeptical about the prospects for USA 3.0:

A soccer referee in Brazil was gruesomely quartered and beheaded after he fatally stabbed a player on the field during a match. The match took place June 30 at Pius XII stadium in Maranhao, northeastern Brazil.

According to Correio24horas, 30-year-old player Josenir dos Santos Abreu approached the 20-year-old referee, Octavio da Silva Catanhede Jordan, to argue a call.The two couldn’t come to terms so Catanhede Jordan told the player to leave the field.  Santos Abreu refused and the argument turned heated when the referee allegedly pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed Santos Abreu multiple times.

The player died en route to the hospital. Fans outraged by the stabbing – believed to be the player’s friends and family – stormed the pitch and cornered Catanhede Jordan. The mob showed no mercy as they quartered and decapitated the referee and then placed his head on a stake.

Now, I’m not going to claim that I’ve never felt that a referee deserved to be flogged, or in a few cases, institutionalized, but I do think decapitation is, perhaps, a little excessive.  On the other hand, it must be admitted that multiple stabbings are not the most reasonable substitute for a red card.

A belated review

Tom Simon belatedly writes a ruthless review of The Sword of Shannara only 30 years late:

I steered grimly clear of it, having a pretty clear idea what I would be letting myself in for if I read it, and in any case I could not afford to spend money on a cheap imitation of a book already occupying a place of honour in my library. But a friend gave me a dogeared copy of Sword (as I shall call it for short) for nothing, knowing that I wanted to write something about the fantasy boom of 1977, and a week or two ago I finally plodded through all 726 mind-numbing and turgid pages.

It is not, as it happens, the worst book I have ever read, or even the worst genre novel. That distinction belongs either to one of John Norman’s Gor books (I have read only one, and I think it was the first one, but the title has mercifully faded from my memory) or a trivial bit of naughty-naughty in science-fiction drag by one Jarrod Comstock. I have, as it happens, a book worse than either of these: Saga of Old City, by Gary Gygax. This is in fact the most cringingly awful waste of wood pulp I have ever seen offered under the rubric of fiction, but I cannot truthfully claim to have read it. It begins:

    The big, blackish rat sat upon the feast as a king upon his throne. Gord eyed the scene hungrily, his mouth watering at the sight of the trencher. Some incredibly wasteful person had discarded a slab of bread, soaked in rich meat juices and imbedded with succulent bits of things. It lay atop the garbage heap in the alleyway, and the rat sat peremptorily upon it. Gord stood nearby in jittery indecision — encouraged by hunger, restrained by fear. Then he decided to act. With a rapid motion he scooped up a pebble and flung it at the rodent. It struck the rat on its flank, but the creature didn’t run off as Gord had hoped. Instead, the rat bared its teeth viciously, voiced a horrid chittering noise, and advanced menacingly in Gord’s direction. With a frightened shriek, Gord leapt back, turned, and fled. Such a threat easily overcame the gnawing feeling in his stomach.

    ‘Shiteater!’ Gord screamed over his shoulder as he fled the huge rodent.

At this point I flung the book across the room. I don’t know how I acquired it; I think it was abandoned by its former owner; and the back cover is battered and torn in a way that suggests it had been thrown against walls before. I am tempted to compare it to the infamous Eye of Argon, but I find that the case will not lie. Gygax’s monstrosity has been at least superficially edited, robbing it of the obvious errors and typographic howlers that furnish Argon with at least half its charm. There are no lithe, opaque noses or scarlet emeralds in Gygax, though in fairness there is a city called Stoink. Jim Theis had to publish his story in an apazine; Gygax, as the owner of TSR, could force his employees to publish Saga of Old City and even had the clout to get it commercially distributed. I think it safe to say that neither work would ever have been accepted by an editor who was free to reject it.

The Sword of Shannara is not as bad as that. This is what is known as damning with faint praise.

But that does not mean, Mr. Shippey to the contrary, that there is any difficulty in identifying it as a bad book. It is of course a close copy of The Lord of the Rings, in the sense that a paint-by-numbers Mona Lisa is a close copy of Leonardo’s masterpiece. Each artless blob of colour recognizably stands for an element superbly executed in the original. But it is also haunted by the ghost of quite a different sort of book, and it took me some time to work out just what it was. Leaving aside the stolen plot, what Sword really reminds me of is Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels, as seen through the jaundiced eye of Mark Twain.

Read the whole thing.  It mercilessly dissects what I always remembered as a shameless ripoff of Tolkien, but I never realized precisely how incompetent it was.   And Simon pinpoints the utter absurdity of the basic plot in the first place.

A still more blatant stupidity is the inclusion of Shea Ohmsford in the
company sent to retrieve the Sword in the first place. We are told that
the Sword has the power to destroy the Warlock Lord, and that only Shea
can use it. Every other person who could possibly wield it has been
systematically hunted down and killed, and the Skull Bearers (=Nazgûl)
have already tried to kill Shea once. A sane person would lock Shea up
in the remotest and most impenetrable fortress in the country, with an
army ringed round to protect him, rather than let him go anywhere near
the forces of the Warlock Lord. Instead he is sent along as one of the
eight companions on the quest to recover the Sword from Paranor. Shea
has no magic to speak of, no skill with weapons, no ability as an
outdoorsman, nothing that would make him even remotely useful to such an
expedition. Anybody can handle the Sword; anybody could go and
fetch it and bring it back to him; but no, he must go along himself,
exposing the quest to certain ruin and the whole world to defeat and
devastation if he is captured.

The Sword of Shannara did have one thing going for it, however.  Being a shameless ripoff of Tolkien, it was semi-readable, which is more than one can say for the subsequent books in the series.  I tried three times to read the next book, and never managed to make it as far as chapter three.