Tag: McRapey

Science fiction is dead

The SJWs who killed science fiction and wore it as a skinsuit can’t even bother wearing the skinsuit anymore. An Analog professional writes of the latest SJW atrocity against science fiction history:

I got my start as a pro writer at Analog, and for a couple of years I was one of its most published writers.

That was past Campbell’s day – my editor was Stan Schmidt.

But it’s disheartening to see one of the giants of my field disenfranchised from the award named after him because of the shrinking SJW pussies currently dominating “formal” SF.

I quit SFWA thirty years ago, because even then it was obvious what it was becoming.  I hate to see this cancer continue to destroy a field I used to love.

What he’s referring to is the disappearing of one of science fiction’s most important figures, John W. Campbell, as signified by the renaming of the Campbell Award:

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer began in 1973 as a way to honor exemplary science fiction and fantasy authors whose first work was published in the prior two calendar years.

Named for Campbell, whose writing and role as editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later renamed Analog Science Fiction and Fact) made him hugely influential in laying the groundwork for both the Golden Age of Science Fiction and beyond, the award has over the years recognized such nominees as George R.R. Martin, Bruce Sterling, Carl Sagan, and Lois McMaster Bujold, as well as award winners like Ted Chiang, Nalo Hopkinson, and John Scalzi.

However, Campbell’s provocative editorials and opinions on race, slavery, and other matters often reflected positions that went beyond just the mores of his time and are today at odds with modern values, including those held by the award’s many nominees, winners, and supporters.

As we move into Analog’s 90th anniversary year, our goal is to keep the award as vital and distinguished as ever, so after much consideration, we have decided to change the award’s name to The Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

It is debatable when science fiction officially died. Historians may date it to John Scalzi’s ill-fated Tor contract, to NK Jemisin’s unprecedented and unbelievably absurd three Best Novel awards in a row, or to the disappearing of one of the genre’s leading figures. But whatever the date of expiry, there can be no doubt that it has now expired.

Unsurprisingly, McRapey enthusiastically applauds the latest turn in the Narrative. He’s desperately hoping to be eaten last.

As a Campbell Award winner (and now, an Astounding Award winner!), I applaud the choice, and the decisiveness with which this change was made. Thank you!

Four years later

Four years ago, I published SJWs Always Lie. Mike Cernovich told me at the time that it would be what he called an “evergreen” book. It would appear that he was right, because the social justice Narrative hasn’t disappeared in the intervening period. To the contrary, it is now a much bigger problem affecting even more people across a far wider spectrum of activities and organizations than before.

If SJWAL is still on the bestseller list several hundred years from now, will that indicate that we failed or that we succeeded in defending Western civilization? The latter, I suppose, since the alternative is illiterate gay satanists living in filth and literally devouring each other whenever they take a break from molesting stolen animals and kidnapped children. It does amuse me, though, to know that John Scalzi’s lasting claim to fame in the long run is much more likely to be his brief appearance in SJWAL than any of the color-by-numbers works of fiction that he presented as his own over the years.

Just say no, Johnny

John Scalzi@scalzi
TFW something designed to antagonize me turns out to be a consistent and profound source of trouble for the person who made it. Karma is apparently real, y’all.

I wonder what this Karma is in response to?

OVERDOSE

Complainant: Scalzi, [REDACTED], [ADDRESS], Bradford, OH 45308
Incident Address: [ADDRESS], Bradford, OH 45308

DETAILS: Report of male subject unresponsive

Perhaps Mr. Scalzi should spend less time snarking and snorting things and more time working on his next literary failure. Anyhow, if you’d like to read the book that all the fuss was about yesterday, it’s called CORROSION and you can pick up the DRM-free ebook at the Arkhaven store.

RIP Whatever

John Scalzi’s decline into irrelevance continues apace:

Every year I post stats on traffic for Whatever, and every year it gets harder to see how it accurately reflects my actual readership, because of the way people read things I post here. Bluntly, relatively few people visit the site directly at this point in time — As of this moment, for 2018, Whatever has had 2.82 million direct visits in 2018, down from last year’s 4.1 million, and substantially down from the 2012 high of 8.16 million.

Strange, because I simply haven’t seen the same sort of decline here at Vox Popoli. As of this moment, for 2018, VP has had 31.85 million PAGEVIEWS, up slightly from last year’s 31.2 million, and substantially up from the 2012 figure of 6.10 million. And Whatever’s reported traffic of 2.82 million is about 25 percent worse than I expected; I had anticipated a decline to 3.75 million in 2018.

Note that Scalzi actually means “pageviews” when he writes “direct visits”. This is the sort of definitional bait-and-switch he has attempted to play in the past, but we know from his past reports that he’s actually talking about pageviews rather than hits or unique visits. Of course, he’s referring to WordPress pageviews, which tend to be a little more generous than Google pageviews, so an apples-to-apples comparison would be 31.85 to 2.69.

But wait, there’s more!

As an aside, there’s a fellow out there who loves when I post these pieces because he like to then say that his own (self-reported, as these are) blog numbers are higher, and this is evidence that he is truly more popular than I am, I am not all that popular, etc. It’s entirely possible at this point he has a larger number of direct visitors to his site than I do. I suspect I may have a larger overall social media footprint than he does, however. For example, I have 158K Twitter followers, and he has none whatsoever, as he was booted off the site for being a terrible person some time ago. I’m not sure he ever talks about the fact that his being a terrible person means his own site is one of the few remaining social media outlets where he is tolerated at all, so if you want his brand of petty shittiness, that’s where you have to go.

Zero. Fucks. Given. So brave. Thank you for this. Actually, Scalzi being willing to post his numbers even when they no longer flatter his self-inflating pretensions is one of the very few things I respect about him. As for my “self-reported” numbers, they are straight out of Blogger and I am reporting them with scrupulous accuracy, as even my worst enemies will usually admit is my wont.

I track my blog stats on an annual basis, so the final figure for VP will be north of 32 million. Thanks to all of you for making this possible, and thanks as well to the Scalzi fan-trolls, who encouraged me to start paying attention to my blog statistics, and from whom we never, ever hear lecturing us about the vital importance of such things anymore.

Do click on the link. Give the poor guy a little traffic for the sake of the good old days.

UPDATE: If you find it hard to grasp the concept of gamma, this should suffice to get it across to you.

lol, it didn’t take the sad little person in question very long to take that particular bait, did it. He’s awfully predictable, and easily manipulatable.

Secret King wins again! Anyhow, as far as relevance goes, the objective metrics are in line with the blog statistics. What is amusing is that if you look at the Google Trend statistics going back to 2004, you can see that he’s really made a meal of that brief period in 2012 when one viral post made him look somewhat more significant than he has ever actually been.

John Scalzi is actually a tragic figure. He could have been considerably more than he turned out to be, had he simply been willing to accept his limitations and work within them rather than focusing all of his energy on convincing the world that he was something he was not and could never be.

A belated discovery

John Scalzi finally realizes that the science fiction community has passed him by.

John Scalzi@scalzi
Just saw my WorldCon schedule.

Single panel and a kaffeeklatsch.

Huh.

They don’t respect Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein anymore. They’re certainly not going to take long to forget about a mediocre, middle-aged white male.

UPDATE: If you can’t win, pretend not to have been playing the game.

John Scalzi@scalzi
It’s a trend. Also, after noting last night I’d be happy to give up my panel slot, this morning I went ahead and withdrew from programming entirely, to open up slots for folks previously excluded from programming, including other Hugo finalists.

Such magnanimity! It almost brings a single tear to my eye.

The jar ran out

He tries so hard to be relevant. To be significant. To matter. But not all the agent- and publisher-pumping in the world can disguise the fact that the grand decade-long attempt to transform a blogger turned midlist writer of color-by-number Heinlein pastiche into a leading author has failed.

John Scalzi@scalzi
Actual thing I just said as I was cleaning my office: “Damn it, *now* where am I going to put this special citation from the Ohio House of Representatives?!?”

(it was under a pile of books before)

Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records@FrmerJoe
Actual thing I thought while reading this tweet: “Scalzi needs everyone to know that he got citations from the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate? How pathetic is that?”

John Scalzi@scalzi
(pats head)

That’s because you’re an asshole, child.

Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records@FrmerJoe
Wow! Killer comeback! I can see why your cutting wit is feared throughout the land.

This naturally raises the question, how would a dumpy little guy like Scalzi pat anyone on the head in the first place? He’s 5’4″ and nearly 200 pounds; he’s little more than a gelatinous blob of SJW, snark, and insecurity. Anyhow, I preferred this response.

Spacebunny Day @Spacebunnyday
Actual thing I said when I was cleaning out my attic: “Damn it, *now* where am I going to put my fifth place ribbon from my jr. high track and field day?!”

The most amusing thing about this exchange is that it’s the consequence of Scalzi’s attempt to address the very uncomfortable fact that VP is now nearly ten times more popular than Whatever by his own chosen metric of importance. IT’S LIKE THE BOUNDLESS HELL OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ALL OVER AGAIN! IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY! NETFLIX! PARAMOUNT! MOBILE GAMES! SPECIAL FREAKING CITATION!

Well, Scalzi certainly is special, to put it mildly. Whatever happened to that jar of ZFG? It must have run out.

FOUR MILLION PAGEVIEWS

The not-at-all-solipsistic John Scalzi is given cause to suspect that blogs are dead:

As I noted in early July, visitorship to Whatever — as in people actually clicking through to the front page of the site — has undergone a collapse this year. I speculated as to why at the link, so if you’re interested in that, check it out there, but the relevant bit now is that I estimated in July I would end up with about 4 million visits to the site in 2017. As of right this minute (6:18 am, 12/28/17), Whatever’s visitorship for the year is: 4,110,902. Right in line with my expectations.

Am I worried? Well, no. One, four million visits in a year to a personal site is still nothing to sneeze at.

I will note that there is a very high correlation between the most visited pieces on the site this year and my linking to it on other social media, most notably Twitter. Twitter and Facebook are also consistently the top non-search-related sites (by far) for referrals to my site. This strongly suggests something I’ve long suspected, which is that Twitter and Facebook have at this point largely consumed and digested the former blogosphere, enough so that at this point, I wonder if I should even call Whatever a “blog” anymore. The name is beginning to get a fusty smell to it.

Sure, that’s possible, I suppose. On the other hand, the decline from 8 million pageviews in 2012 to 4 million in 2017 – I’m sure we’re all shocked to discover Scalzi is being deceptive again, this time by substituting “visits” for “pageviews” – in addition to the 30,953,348 “visitorship for the year” that VP has as of right this minute tends to suggest that intelligent people who like to read commentary simply aren’t all that interested in Whatever anymore. It appears I am far from the only person who once read Whatever back in the day who no longer does so.

But the posturing is informative, as it demonstrates a classic Gamma perspective. You see, the Gamma doesn’t mind at all that he’s observably in deep decline, so long as the decline is right in line with his expectations.

Secret King wins again!

UPDATE: Scalzi realizes he got caught… again.

John Scalzi@scalzi
TFW someone mewls pathetically and at ridiculous length about a terminology error you made on your site, but he has a point, so you correct the error.

If it was anyone else, I would have assumed it was simply a mistake, but in this case, we’re dealing with someone who blatantly lied to both Lightspeed and The New York Times about his site traffic in the past. So, one can’t reasonably give him the benefit of the doubt.

That being said, good for him for correcting his error. Let’s hope this will lead him to correct his previous “errors”.

He must be jealous

John Scalzi opines, mostly in experienced, but uninformed ignorance about Milo’s bestselling book, which actually made the New York Times bestseller lists on the merits of its own performance.

This is a little bit of publishing inside pool which apparently Yiannopoulos is not aware of (or is trying to fudge), but: You don’t count wholesale orders because wholesalers will eventually return books if they don’t sell them. The publisher has to make them whole for that, either by shifting credit to other books (which in this case Yiannopoulos as a self-publisher of a single book does not have), or by refunding the money. Yiannopoulos may have shipped 105,000 hardcover copies of the book, but that’s not the same as having sold them. I don’t know in this case what “direct orders” mean — it could be sales to individual book buyers (in which case that would be a sale) or to individual booksellers (in which case they are probably returnable, as book stores are loath to stock anything on a non-returnable basis), or to organizations which are making a “bulk buy” for their own reasons, say, a conservative organization who wants to hand out copies to employees or on the street or whatever.

But however you slice it, by Yiannopoulos’ own words (and by his apparent lack of understanding of how bookselling works), he probably has not in fact sold all 100k of the hardcover books. Also, with regard to the wholesalers and other booksellers, I do hope someone in his organization is keeping money in reserve to deal with returns when they (inevitably) happen. I’m also curious as to how he as a self-publisher is dealing with long-term storage and shipping of the books; I really don’t see Yiannopoulos himself handling that. I don’t picture him as a detail-oriented person. Perhaps this will be a job for the interns.

With all of this said, and again with the reminder that I find Yiannopoulos a hot feculent mess of a person, sales of 18,000 hardcovers in one week is pretty darn good. It was enough to land Yiannopoulos at #3 on the USA Today list and at #4 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction list (and #2 on the paper’s print/ebook combined list). He’s a legitimate bestseller. And those 18K sales don’t cover ebook sales, which given his audience demographics I suspect are pretty high. Most authors would be absolutely delighted to have 18k in hardcover sales in their first week. People exercising schadenfreude about all this are thus advised to temper their glee somewhat. The book is not a failure in any manner except in contrast to Yiannopoulos’ industry-specific hype, and also (if the professional reviews are to be believed) as a book worth reading.

Can Yiannopoulos sell 100,000 copies of his book? I suspect so in the long run, especially considering that Yiannopoulos can now have it as a rider for speaking events that whomever is having him speak will be obliged to purchase a certain number of the book in order to have him appear — and speaking events and appearances are the actual bread-and-butter for a creature such as Yiannopoulos, for which this book is mostly advertising.

Has he sold that many in the first week? I doubt it. The actual number, in all formats, across all retailers, is somewhere between 18,000 and 100,000 copies. Which, again, is not at all a bad number of books to sell in the first week. Had Yiannopoulos been smart, he wouldn’t have alleged selling 100K books in his first week at all, he simply would have taken those USA Today and NYT list rankings and waved them about happily, and built PR around those.

But apparently he’s not really that smart. Now most of the stories are about how he only sold 18,000 copies in his first week, rather than the 100,000 copies he alleged.

It’s rather amusing to see Scalzi opining on someone else’s book sales and strategies, in light of how his fans claim that anyone doing the same to Scalzi is doing so out of envy. (For the record, I am not envious of Scalzi’s career nor do I think he is envious of Milo’s.)

Now, I can state, with certainty, that Scalzi has it mostly wrong. I won’t say more than that, because Milo’s secrets are not mine to tell, except to observe that no author publishing through the major publishers really understands how the world of independent publishing works at the top. In fact, even trying to compare unit sales doesn’t even make sense, because Milo will be making somewhere between 3x and 5x more per unit than Scalzi and other mainstream-published authors depending upon whether one is utilizing hardcovers, trade paperbacks, ebooks, or audiobooks as the metric.

Where Scalzi is correct is when he notes that Nielsen Bookscan woefully undercounts book sales, so much so that I pay it absolutely no attention whatsoever. And I am absolutely confident that Milo will sell more than 250,000 copies of Dangerous before the end of 2017; my expectation is that he will sell somewhere between 300k and 350k this calendar year. And that is copies sold to the reader, NOT merely units in the distribution channel

As for permitting the media to spin the story of Milo “only” selling 18,000 copies, that is the statement of a man who is accustomed to the media fawning on him and repeating his lies without question. No matter what Milo did, the media was going to find a way to say something negative. But  his assumptions about Milo’s dishonesty is a timely reminder of the 3rd Law of SJW: SJWs Always Project.

Sargon schools Scalzi

Scalzi, being an SJW, is always one to try to push the false SJW Narrative, in this case the one defending Anita Sarkeesian for harassing someone in the very way she has made a little career decrying. Sargon of Akkad, who was Literally Who 2’s target, sets the record straight.

Typical, though, of the SJW to act as if women who cry about criticism are being harassed, but men who do nothing more than point out that they are being attacked in the very same manner are crybabies.