Tag: Pink SF

Mailvox: the sorry state of SF

I thought this email from RC was interesting, as it demonstrates how Gresham’s Law applies to science fiction, with Pink SF tending to drive out Blue. Hey, even if Tor Books can’t be bothered to read your emails, at least I do:

I am writing to you today regarding the lack of professionalism of certain staff at Tor books.  I know others have contacted you regarding the contempt in which some staffers hold certain authors and a large part of your customer base.  What I wish to address is the editors’ contempt for the genre itself, and their incompetence at one of the essential tasks of producing SCIENCE fiction: getting the science right.  I am certain these are related.  The upshot is that Tor is printing a lot of stuff which ticks all the fashionable social and political check-boxes, but stinks on ice as SF.

An egregious example which I encountered recently is in the first of the Ender’s Game prequels, Earth Unaware.  There are a host of glaring faults in the orbital mechanics among other things, but they are too involved to detail in a short letter.  I will instead quote a concise example from page 261:

“The ship scoops up hydrogen atoms, which at near-lightspeed would be gamma radiation, then the rockets shoot this gamma plasma out the back for thrust.”

There is no such thing as a “gamma plasma”.  Gamma rays are photons, not atoms or parts of atoms.  Plasmas are a mixture of ionized matter and free electrons.  A high-energy proton is not a gamma ray; many cosmic rays are high-energy protons, but that does not make this phrase remotely acceptable in a science fiction book.  A well-read middle school science geek could have caught this error; I should know, I was one.

Shortly after this comes another one (p. 269):

“If it’s sucking up hydrogen atoms at near-lightspeed and taking in all this radiation….”

This is part of a plotline that plays for weeks, between a mining ship plying the Kuiper belt and Earth.  The Kuiper belt extends from about 30 astronomical units to 55 AU from the Sun (earth orbits at 1 AU).  Light travels 1 AU in roughly 500 seconds, so an object travelling at “near-lightspeed” would cover 55 AU in not much more than 27,500 seconds; on the order of 8 hours.  Even if the initial speed of the object is reduced to 25% of c and it decelerates linearly, the transit time is less than 3 days.  The whole plotline is nonsense because the author (Johnston, I’m sure; Card does better work) couldn’t be bothered to read a basic science book.  This is lousy even for fan-fiction.  Why did this ever make it to print?  More to the point, why do the editors have such contempt for the genre and its fans as to allow it, to the point of commissioning a lightweight like Johnston to play in Card’s universe in the first place?

I could not but help but notice that Earth Unaware got all the “we are the world”, social justice, anti-corporate messages lined up front and center.  The priorities are literally that obvious.  That’s why I’ve not bothered to read the other two prequels.  I don’t waste my time on dreck. I spotted this trend quite some time ago, but it was only after the highly-publicized outbursts of certain senior Tor staff that I realized that it wasn’t due to the times, but was a matter of policy.

Well, we all make mistakes from time to time, authors and editors alike (cough, tunnel), but it is pretty egregious to combine SJW message fiction with a major plot foul-up of the sort one RC describes. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t testify to the accuracy of his critique, but it does sound like a rather impressive howler.

As for the total number of emails sent, based on the CC’s Peter and I received, around 2,300 emails were sent by 765 different people that we know of. And there were others being sent as well, although we can’t possibly know how many. Regardless, I expect that enough were sent to make it clear to Macmillan that the excuses given by the senior Tor employees for the emails that they previously received was a false one.

Those senior employees have publicly attacked Tor-published authors, Tor published-works, and Tor customers. They have needlessly antagonized tens of thousands of book-buyers in pursuit of their ideological agenda. They’ve now been caught lying to their superiors about the extent of the consequences of their unprofessional behavior and violations of the Macmillan code of conduct. And that is why, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Macmillan cleans house even more thoroughly than people have been demanding. I certainly would if I were in their shoes.

Then again, for all we know the Macmillan executives are fanatic SJWs whose instinct will be to dig in and defend the actions of Irene Gallo, Moshe Feder, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. If that’s the case, Peter Grant has made it clear that the boycott, which for no particular reason at all may be christened TORDROP, will begin at noon on Friday, June 19th. And since no one has received any sort of response at all from Macmillan or Tom Doherty as yet, this is a good time to take a picture of your books published by Tor Books and tally up the total of the books and ebooks you have purchased from them. The truth is that we’re not asking for much, only that the senior employees at Tor Books be held to the same professional standard expected of a retail sales clerk or a fry cook at McDonalds.

SF war to the knife

One would expect Peter Grant to recognize one:

I’ve had a couple of threatening e-mails from supporters of Ms. Gallo’s position, warning me that if I (and/or other indie authors) call for a boycott of Tor books, they’ll call for a boycott of my/our books in return.  This made me laugh out loud.  As those of you who’ve read my books will know, I don’t think I can be described as ‘progressive’ or ‘SJW’.  Heck, read the header of this blog – it’ll tell you in a nutshell my position on most things!  I have grave doubts whether readers of the progressive persuasion have ever bought my books – so why would a boycott from that part of the reading spectrum hold any fears for me?

No.  It’s becoming increasingly clear that the problem lies in the corporate culture that’s taken over at Tor Books and Tor.com.  Four individuals currently or previously associated with Tor’s management and publishing activities at a senior level have now made statements that I can only regard as biased beyond logical comprehension.  They are Patrick Nielsen Hayden (manager of science fiction books at Tor);  his wife Teresa Nielsen Hayden (listed by Wikipedia as a ‘consulting editor’ for Tor Books, and formerly a senior editor there – also the publisher of the well-known web log and forum ‘Making Light’);  Moshe Feder (also a consulting editor for Tor Books);  and Irene Gallo (Associate Publisher of Tor.com and Creative Director of Tor Books).  Certain Tor-published authors, primarily John Scalzi but also including others, have spouted the ‘party line’ in their support and/or on their own account as well.

There’s an old military saying when bad things happen:  “Once may be an accident.  Twice may be coincidence.  Three or more times is enemy action.”  In the same way, I could understand one senior Tor representative holding such views.  I might even accept two.  Four is too many.  This is not coincidence.  It’s concerted, organized, deliberate enemy action.  Tor as a publisher appears to either espouse, or tolerate (and actively encourage), views like this.  The utterances of these individuals appear to indicate that the company supports lies, slander, libel and viciousness as debating and/or promotional tactics.  I hope that the reality belies that appearance;  but that’s for Tor to say, not me – and back up their words with actions.  Weasel words will no longer be acceptable in any way, shape or form.

THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE.

It won’t be. Let them threaten. What are they going to do, continue to not buy books from Castalia House, from Baen, and from independents? Are they going to keep not reading what they repeatedly proclaim to be terribly written bad-to-reprehensible works without ever having read them? What are they going to do, have the Board vote me out of SFWA again? Are they going to continue not giving Nebulas to John Wright, and Sarah Hoyt, and Larry Correia, and Brad Torgersen? The reality is that we have the decisive advantage here because we have long supported them.

But we don’t have to.

I have can count dozens of Tor and Forge books on my bookshelves surrounding me, and that doesn’t count the bookshelves in the halls, in the bedrooms, and in the attic. But I don’t have to buy any more. Why should I, when the Senior Editor of Science Fiction at Tor has done nothing for me except insult and attack me for ten years now? A lot of people are getting sick of their constant bullshit, even people who have absolutely nothing to do with me in any way, shape, or form.

“I’m an author, involved with the publishing industry. Does that mean that I have the moral authority to point out to you that she is making actual, factually untrue statements here? She might be a really wonderful individual, in person, but her facts are dead wrong, bordering on libelous, and taking a position on a hotbutton issue really undercuts Tor’s credibility as a politically neutral, or even tolerant, business.”
– Jim Butcher, author, The Dresden Files

Apparently the bestselling and Hugo-nominated Mr. Butcher didn’t much appreciate being described as an author of “bad-to-reprehensible” books.

Back in April, Larry Correia and I, among others, encouraged everyone to leave Tor Books out of it. We made it clear that our problems were with certain individuals at Tor, not the organization itself. But as Peter Grant points out, Irene Gallo’s comments, to say nothing of Moshe Feder’s and John Scalzi’s (now that the organization has bet its future on him, Scalzi is relevant in this regard), appear to indicate that we were wrong and our problem is with the organization as it is presently comprised after all.

What do you think? I’m interested in hearing everyone’s arguments, pro and con.

UPDATE: I would certainly hope that they didn’t.


2h2 hours ago

Happy Monday! We appreciate your comments & would like to remind you that the views of our employees do not reflect those of the publisher.

Publishing: the negative-sum game

It is both amusing and a little tragic to see the brave face that the File 770 wannabes put on when contemplating the state of the traditional publishing world. They keep insisting that it is not a zero-sum game, which is true in a sense, because it is actually a negative-sum game.

The most difficult problems are negative-sum situations, where the pie is shrinking. In the end, the gains and losses will all add up to less than zero. This means that the only way for a party to maintain its position is to take something from another party, and even if everyone takes his or her share of the “losses,” everyone still loses in comparison to what they currently have or really need. This type of situation often sparks serious competition.

However, negative-sum disputes are not always lose-lose because if the parties know the pie is shrinking, it is possible their expectations will be low. A perfect example of a negative-sum dispute is the allocation of budget cuts within an organization. In this case, each department expects to have some funds taken away, but whether the outcome is a win or loss depends on how much money a particular branch gets in comparison to what they expected to have cut from their budget. So, if a branch was expecting to get a 30 percent cut and they only got cut 20 percent, which would be a win, even in a diminishing resource situation.

The present negative-sum situation was probably inevitable, not only due to the primary factor of men’s increasing preference for electronic forms of entertainment, but there is also the secondary factor of changing ethnic demographics. In the USA, for example, Hispanics don’t read as much as Anglos and they don’t buy as many books.

Among all American adults, the average (mean) number of books read or
listened to in the past year is 12 and the median (midpoint) number is 5. The White average is 13 and the median is 5, the Black average is 12 and the median is 4, the Hispanic average is 7 and the median is 3.

Throw in the number of non-English speakers into the mix and it should not be a surprise that prospects for the traditional publishing world were not good despite a growing population even before the SJW invasion of genre publishing is taken into account. But that doesn’t mean that the advocates of Pink SF haven’t made the situation worse, as the corporate masters are apparently beginning to understand. “Tor’s editorial director Julie Crisp has left Pan Macmillan following a
review of the company’s science fiction and fantasy publishing.”

Does that mean that Castalia has stupidly entered a declining market in the hopes of carving off a slice of a shrinking pie? Not at all. Because we have no intention whatsoever of becoming a traditional publisher, our cost structure will keep us competitive despite the higher royalties and lower prices we offer, and we know there is still a significant market for the Campbellian science fiction created by beardy, middle-aged white men in which the traditional SF publishers are aggressively disinterested.

Moreover, as the Brainstorm crowd knows, we are developing the technology to massively expand that market by reaching the young men who have, quite reasonably, abandoned the traditional SF market. I started reading Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Seveneves, and it is truly depressing. Less because nearly everyone on Earth dies than because he appears to have gone full SJW with a Gamma sauce. It’s the first time I’ve found it necessary to force myself to keep reading one of his books, and the first time one of his books has struck me as being proper Pink SF. Female presidents, token ethnic melanges, you name it, he’s got it to such an extent that were it not for Stephenson’s past gamma markers, I would almost suspect an epic, master-class trolling of the current genre.

On a tangential note, as Aristotle has informed us, some people are simply incapable of learning.

Julie Crisp ‏@julieacrisp May 20
So I’ve had a lot of submissions in recently. And do you know how excited I am to see how many of those are SF novels written by women?!!

Julie Crisp ‏@julieacrisp May 20
The answer is VERY!! 🙂

Her doubling-down on her enthusiasm for female SF authors is intriguing in light of this news report from 2011:

But with the hiring of Bella Pagan away from Orbit, Tor UK does hope to grow — and diversify — its line. Crisp explains:

With Bella joining us, we’re looking to grow our list in size, direction and selection. While, as of yet – everything is still under wraps concerning the new innovations we’ll be putting in place (watch this space!) I can tell you that Bella has a particular interest in urban fantasy and paranormal romances – an area that Tor UK hasn’t explored to its potential previously. So that’s one area we’ll be looking to expand into.

It doesn’t look like that strategy worked out all that well, does it. I’ve even seen some rumors floating around that Pan Macmillan is in the process of shutting down Tor UK altogether. Meanwhile, Tor.com is abandoning the novel in favor of the novella:

When the book wars sweep across the galaxy, and the blood of publishers runs down the gutters of every interstellar metropolis, the resource we fight for will not be paper, or ink, or even money. It will be time. For our readers, time is the precious commodity they invest in every book they decide to purchase and read. But time is being ground down into smaller and smaller units, long nights of reflection replaced with fragmentary bursts of free time. It’s just harder to make time for that thousand-page novel than it used to be, and there are more and more thousand-page novels to suffer from that temporal fragmentation.

Enter the novella, an old form with a new lease on life. We expect that the reader who has to fit their reading into their daily commute will appreciate a novella they can finish in a week, rather than a year. We’ll be releasing books that can be begun and completed on just one of those rare evenings of uninterrupted reading pleasure.

Apparently they believe Pink SF is more digestible in smaller doses.

The Olympian indifference of Johnny Con

John Scalzi attempts to spin the narrative about his book deal on Twitter:

John Scalzi @scalzi
I’d like to thank @torbooks for taking a chance on me even though I don’t actually sell any books.

John Scalzi @scalzi
Also, yeah, if you’re one of those people who thinks I’m ruining science fiction, it’s gonna be a bad next decade for you. Oh well!

John Scalzi retweeted
Jim C. Hines @jimchines
1. @scalzi signs a $3.4 million deal with Tor.
2. People authorsplain how he’d have earned even more if he’d only done ________.

#Facepalm

John Scalzi @scalzi
Reading commentary on the deal reminds me that a large majority of people do not know how publishing works. Which is fine, but interesting.

John Scalzi @scalzi
Most people don’t HAVE to know publishing economics, mind you. Why would they? But if you’re going to opine on them, it does help.

John Scalzi @scalzi
Schadenfreude: Watching people who’ve been sooo wrong about my career desperately try to spin this deal as a bad thing for me. Wrong again!

John Scalzi @scalzi
For those interested in compare and contrast: The advance for my first published novel — “Old Man’s War” — was $6,500.

John Scalzi@scalzi
Someone living off of daddy’s money probably shouldn’t try to lecture others about finances.

What else is new? SJWs always lie. Mike Cernovich summed up the salient point yesterday.

Mike Cernovich @Cernovich
As a white straight male capitalist, I’m happy for @scalzi’s $3.4 million book deal. But how many women/POC are squeezed out because of it?

I had estimated 680 on the basis of other SF publishers’ current initial advances, but I stand corrected. According to McRapey(1) himself, Tor is funding 13 more John Scalzi books at the opportunity cost of no less than 523 initial advances to new science fiction authors. As a side note, it is informative to see how much initial advances from major publishers have shrunk over time; the advance for my first published novel in 1996 was $20,000 $25,000.

CORRECTION: For the benefit of those who don’t know, I brought in Bruce Bethke as a co-writer AFTER being offered my first book contract with Pocket Books. Also, it was the advance for my first solo novel, The War in Heaven, that was $20,000. Those who think publishing isn’t a zero-sum game are correct in a sense, it is worse than a zero-sum game. It is a negative-sum game, which is why first advances are now one-fifth to one-tenth of what they were 20 years ago.

Those who have thrown hissy fits over Sad Puppies supposedly slate-blocking as many as 12 authors and preventing them from receiving recognition for their work at the Hugo Awards would do well to consider the fact that Patrick Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi have combined to prevent more than 500 authors from getting published and receiving paid advances. Opportunity cost is a bitch, especially when you’re the one upon whose fingers the window of opportunity has closed.

As Scalzi himself says, it’s going to be a bad decade for them. But at least we’ll have a few more snarky, derivative and mediocre novels from Tor to not read. So that’s nice.

It’s a little strange that people have claimed that my head is exploding or that I’m somehow upset by this deal. That’s not the case at all. In fact, I’m very, very, very pleased that Tor has decided to bet its future on John Scalzi rather than on any of the 523 other authors in whom they could have invested. I wish it had been a 13-book deal at $3.4 million per book. Scalzi isn’t the problem, after all, Scalzi is just one of the uglier public faces of the problem.

Castalia House was never going to publish Johnny Con because we don’t publish Pink SF snark-fic or work with people we know to be liars. But if you’re one of those 523 authors left out in the cold and you have a really good science fiction novel you want to publish, then we would certainly be interested in hearing from you.(2)

(1) I have been asked if John Scalzi will be relinquishing the “McRapey” title in light of George R.R. Martin’s astonishing accomplishment in rape fiction. Upon consideration, the answer is no, but GRRM will henceforth be known as “George Rape Rape Martin”.  

(2) Yes, we are behind in responding to our submissions. I’ll be working on them this weekend.

George Martin really really likes rape

Like the worm, the SJW always turns on his own:

Rape acts in Game of Thrones the TV series (to date): 50
Rape victims in Game of Thrones (to date): 29

Rape acts in ASOIAF the book series (to date): 214
Rape victims in ASOIAF (to date): 117

The books contain over 4 times as much rape as the show (and probably even more; the method of analysis likely underestimates the rape in the books – see below).

Before the barrage of anon hate mail floods in: that’s not to say the show’s not problematic. It’s to say that the books are problematic. ETA: Please see A Song of Ice and Fire Has a Rape Problem for a detailed discussion on why the rapes in the books aren’t any better than those in the show. Spoiler: the only women who get vengeance on their rapists are villains.

Those 214 rape acts are particularly astonishing if you compare them to the number of times a married couple has sex. Which, if my memory serves correctly, happens about twice in five books.

Nor are the various defenses of Martin that have been offered valid. As Tafkar notes: “the only thing that protects a woman from rape is being one of Martin’s POV characters.” 

More damning is this conclusion: “The stories of rapists are important to George R. R. Martin. Those are
the stories he tells. Our point of view characters are the rapists, not
the victims.” 

George R.R. Martin well merits his fate. 

Racists vs Child Rapists

The Campbell-Delany divide pretty well sums up the two sides in the science fiction culture war. To translate how the New Republic describes it, it is scientagic realists against child-molesting pedophiles and their defenders in the science fiction community:

To outsiders, the struggle over the Hugos can be confusing. It involves the arcane details of a complex nomination procedure and factions named Sad Puppies 3 and Rabid Puppies. But the ruckus makes a lot more sense in the context of science fiction’s historical lack of diversity, and there’s perhaps no better illustration of that problem than the career of Samuel R. Delany…. John W. Campbell, Analog’s editor, claimed that he enjoyed shaking up his audience with outrageous ideas, but [Delany’s] “Nova” proved too much for him. According to Delany, Campbell called the author’s agent and said that while he liked the novel, “he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character.” Campbell’s contention that fans weren’t ready for a book like “Nova” was belied by the fact that it was shortlisted for a Hugo in 1969.

Campbell used his audience as a cover for his own racism. He had published editorials arguing that slavery was a perfectly sensible system for pre-industrial societies, championing the racial theory that whites have a fundamentally higher level of intelligence than blacks and asserting, “One of the major reasons the Negro people are having so much trouble gaining acceptance is, simply, that the Negroes are not doing an adequate job of disciplining their own people, themselves.” Campbell was no fringe kook. He was the most influential science-fiction editor of the last century, whose vision of rule-based, scientifically informed fiction shaped the careers of such canonical writers as Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon and Frank Herbert.

Amid the strife of the 1960s, which polarized science fiction no less than the rest of culture, it was easy to cast Campbell and Delany as diametric opposites: Campbell as the old reactionary apostle of heroic, manly tales of space cowboys, and Delany as the young subversive practitioner of cutting-edge speculative fiction that challenged certitudes about identity.

We have called for a Cambellian revolution in science fiction; to a certain extent, that’s what Blue SF is. And “subversive speculative fiction that challenges certitudes about identity, morality, religion, sexual orientation, and tradition” is about as good a way as any to describe the Pink SF we oppose. Campbellian SF vs Delanyite SF. Science vs Subversion. White Male Racists vs Gay Child Rapists.

One thing you’ll note that the mainstream media never does is to dig up and expose the evil that lies at the heart of Pink SF. They love to point-and-shriek at the late Campbell’s racism, never mind that he was, and is, absolutely correct, as whites have been reliably observed to possess a higher average intelligence than blacks. One would expect a top science fiction editor to be up on the relevant science, after all. Here is a quote from William Saletan, a writer of whom Delany himself cites respectfully:

Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70.

So, are we all East Asian supremacists now? Is science intrinsically racist and therefore anathema? In the meantime, both the media and the science fiction community resolutely avoid looking into the likelihood that good old “Chip” Delany is a criminal pedophile, like Walter Breen, like Marion Zimmer Bradley, like Ed Kramer, like David Asimov, and like other members of the science fiction community whose sex crimes the science fiction community has either ignored or defended for decades.

The New Republic article quoted Delany talking about Campell; what a pity they didn’t quote Delany talking about himself.


“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.”
– Samuel R. Delany, June 25, 1994.


“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. Many, many children—and I was one of them—are desperate to establish some sort of sexual relation with an older and even adult figure.”
– Samuel R. Delany, Wednesday, July 9, 2014

“Adults hurting children is my notion of a bad thing, whether it is through corporal punishment or in any other way. Children hurting children is equally bad. Pain is not a good teaching tool. So that’s where I tend to stop.”
– Samuel R. Delany, Wednesday, July 9, 2014

That last quote is particularly problematic, as contra his self-appointed public defenders’ claims, Delany is clearly referring to physical pain, not sexual contact, when he says “hurting children” is his “notion of a bad thing”. Most people assume that sexual contact is intrinsically harmful to children. Delany actively denies this.

Delany has admitted to being in sexual contact with adult men since the age of 6 and considers himself to have been sexually active since the age of 9. He has attacked the idea that children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults and only opposes children being hurt in the sense of physical pain, and has even quoted a Carlin joke in claiming that it is less harmful to a boy to receive oral sex than be spanked. He has written, repeatedly and at great length, about his fantasies of pre-adolescent boys and girls being raped and otherwise sexually molested by men in a number of his novels, most particularly Hogg: A Novel, which was published in 2004 and is described as follows by Publishers Weekly:

Hugo-and Nebula Award-winner Delany – whose early books were fascinating but whose recent efforts have grown increasingly obtuse – has been trying to get this pornographic novel published since 1973. The main narrator here is an 11-year-old boy who joins up with a raping, murdering pederast named Hogg. Coprophiliac Hogg violates women for pay. He enlists the help of other pedophiliac murdering rapists – Nigg, Dago and Denny – and the group sets off to perform acts of hideous violence. After the attacks, a biker friend of Hogg’s sells the boy into sexual slavery to dockyard slum resident Big Sambo, who keeps his 12-year-old daughter for prostitution and his own perversions. The traumatized little girl is gang-raped by Hogg’s crew as well. Meanwhile, teenaged Denny goes on an insane mutilating and mass-murder spree, eludes the police and finally returns to Hogg and the hopelessly confused narrator, who has been “rescued” after Hogg murders Big Sambo. Gang-rape attacks and criminal sex orgies are detailed at excruciating length, with photographic realism. This potent emetic is all the more disturbing for want of modulators of honest outrage. 

If one can reasonably declare John W. Campbell a racist on the basis of his essays and reported words, then one can absolutely, and with utter certainty, declare Samuel R. Delany to be a child-raping pedophile on the basis of his own stated beliefs and published fantasies. This is true despite our limited information about his actual historical actions. Whether or not Delany is a literal child rapist, he certainly has child rapist views. And as for his past actions, we certainly know a hell of a lot more about the SFWA Grand Master pedophilic inclinations than we did about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s only eleven months ago. Is anyone going to even pretend to be surprised should evidence be uncovered that good old “Chip” acted on his criminal fantasies at some point in the past?

Here are two questions for Samuel R. Delany. If the media or SFWA continue to avoid asking them, you’ll know they’re simply afraid to receive the answer; even Will Shetterly, who otherwise addressed the issue in a forthright manner, failed to ask the obvious and important question. I will say one thing for Mr. Delany, he is alarmingly forthcoming, he hasn’t been afraid to answer difficult questions posed to him in the past, and one can’t blame him for not answering questions that were never asked. So here they are:

  1. Have you ever had any form of sexual contact with an individual under the age of 17?
  2. What is the oldest age at which you had some form of sexual contact with an individual under the age of 17?

Until those two questions are answered honestly by Mr. Delany, anyone who denies that good old “Chip” Delany, SFWA Grand Master has ever behaved inappropriately is doing so dishonestly on the basis of no information at all and in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. What a pity that Delany didn’t throw a few spaceships into Hogg or it might have made the Hugo shortlist too.

On a lighter note, this quote from George R.R. Martin cracked me up:

“We’re SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FANS, we love to read about aliens
and vampires and elves. Are we really going to freak about Asians and
Native Americans?”

Well, George, judging by the continuing series of articles about Sad Puppies and the Hugo Awards, to say nothing of your own copious posting on the subject, you certainly appear to be freaking out about this Native American.

Brad Torgersen breaks the narrative

As you might expect, Brad Torgersen’s response to the Toad of Tor and the carnival of the grotesque on display at Making Light is considerably more polite and measured than mine. But it is equally dismissive in substance:

We’re about a week out from the release of the final ballot results, for the 2015 Hugo awards. These results will determine which picks are available for your choosing when it comes time for you to cast your ballot. Best Novel, Best Short Story, etc. Already, the critics of Sad Puppies 3 have been laying the groundwork for de-legitimizing SP3. To include statements which completely misunderstand the point of Sad Puppies. Some of it is innocent. Not everybody’s had time to do a deep-dig on the history of Sad Puppies, nor to be able to discern that each iteration of the project has tended to assume its own personality. What they’re hearing about SP3 is probably hear-say from friends, and much of that is at least one to two years out-of-date. And even then, many of the “facts” put forth are demonstrably wrong.

But other commentary is not so innocent. There are people who find the very existence of Sad Puppies 3 to be an affront to their personhoods. A sinister outside force come to trouble their precious genre and its establishment. For the people deliberately misconstruing the purpose and thrust of Sad Puppies 3, it’s all about getting out in front and shaping a narrative. They’re smart. They know that truth can be overwhelmed with lies if you just spin your narrative adroitly, and with enough volume.

Thus the charges, in no particular order.

● SP3 is a trojan horse effort conducted by and for the benefit of authors who cannot earn a Hugo award the honest way.

● SP3 is just ballot-stuffing, which ought to be disallowed according to precedent and the rules of ballot-counting established through WSFS.

● SP3 is artificially trying to warp the Hugos out of true; an outside effort conducted by and involving people who are not real fans.

● The SP3 slate works are substandard based on (insert garbledy-garble talk about taste here.)

● The SP3 slate is just a bunch of right-wingers who should go set up their own awards, and leave the Hugos alone.

● SP3 is not legit because its participants were drafted for the effort, and are not willing participants.

● SP3 is not legit because Larry Correia is a terrible human being who is hated by all real fans.

● SP3 is not legit because Vox Day is also running Rabid Puppies and everybody knows Vox Day is also a terrible human being who is hated by all real fans.

● SP3 is a trojan horse for GamerGaters, and all real fans hate and loathe GamerGaters.

● SP3 is just a bunch of straight white guys who are terrified of women, gays, trans, and folks with brown skin.

● SP3 would never happen in the first place if (resurrected conservative editor of the past) could lecture them about their wrongdoing.

● SP3 is a fringe minority faction that does not represent the “main body” of real fans.

● SP3’s slate selections are not the “natural” selections of real fans.

There’s more, but I think you get the gist of it.

Much of this is simply the “in” crowd reacting badly to watching the “out” crowd take a seat at the lunch table. As I’ve mentioned before in this space, according to the dyed-in-the-wool denizens of WSFS and Worldcon, a “real fan” is defined as someone who has been attending Worldcon (and other cons) for a long time, has been properly inculcated into the specific culture of Worldcon and con-going fandom, is someone who volunteers time and effort to cons, generally makes Worldcon (and con-going) a “family” affair, etc. So if you don’t go to Worldcon and you’ve not been part of that culture for a number of years, you don’t qualify as a “real fan” in their definition. And they resent the hell out of anyone who is not a “real fan” showing up to vote on the “real fan” award.

Imagine that, an SJW trying to deceitfully shape the narrative in her favor. Keep in mind that Brad is addressing those who are still running around saying demonstrably untrue things like “Vox Day is the originator of Sad Puppies” and “Spacebunny does not exist”. These SJWs are not so much insane as willfully delusional. I have no doubt that I could show up at Sasquan with Spacebunny and some of them would claim that I somehow managed to find and hire an escort who happens to look just like the model whose pictures I’ve been using to make it look as if I am married to a slender and attractive woman. Because #GamerGate. And also, raciss.

Of course, they know better, but they’re perfectly willing to lie for rhetorical effect. Which raises the question: once you know that, why would you believe a single word that comes out of their mouths? The good thing is that it is easy to destroy their narrative. Because it is false, all that is necessary to do so is to relentlessly tell the truth.

Since 1986, Tor Books has 84 Hugo and Nebula Best Novel nominations. In 2014, Tor.com had 50 percent of the short story nominations, 40 percent of the novella nominations, and 20 percent of the novelette nominations. Tor has also won the Locus Award for Best Publisher for 26 straight years, beginning in 1988.

Keep that in mind when you read the Toad of Tor’s claims about people being afraid of losing their privilege.

“It just makes sense”

Parody is the homage rhetoric pays to dialectic:

Star Wars is getting its first lesbian character. Paul S Kemp has revealed that he is adding the mystery woman to his upcoming novel Lords of the Sith, the next instalment in the official sci-fi canon due out on 28 April.

Little is known about her, but “nerd news” blog Big Shiny Robot has dropped a few hints about what fans can expect.

“Moff Mors is an Imperial who has made some very serious mistakes, but she is an incredibly capable leader and spends much of the book working hard to prevent absolute failure,” a recent post reads. “She also happens to be a lesbian.”

Shelly Shapiro, editor of the Star Wars books, explaining that including a lesbian character “just makes sense”.

“There’s a lot of diversity…there should be diversity in Star Wars,” she said. “You have all these different species and it would be silly to not also recognise that there’s a lot of diversity in humans.

And yet, we won’t find any Muslims in Star Wars despite there being a billion of them. We won’t find any Christians in Star Wars despite there being nearly two billion of them. How many Chinese, serial killers, and Green Bay Packers fans will we find? But More Muff (how very clever) just happens to be a lesbian.

It certainly didn’t take Disney long to gay it up. I’m very glad that I lost all interest in Star Wars about ten minutes into The Phantom Menace. If there is one thing you can count on, it is that once SJWs get involved in something, it’s just a matter of time before it is ruined. At this rate, they’ll have Han Solo transitioning in the second new film and we’ll learn that Luke and Leia got married despite knowing they were brother and sister.

Pink SF’s 2015 business plan

The pinkshirts have revealed their clever plan to deal with technology, reader disinterest, and Blue SF cutting into their increasingly declining sales:

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has reportedly paid University of Oregon “poet” Amanda Powell to translate a 2005 science fiction novel promoting “a straightforwardly queer approach to sexuality.” Powell, whose poetry has appeared in the anthology This Assignment Is So Gay: LGBTIQ Poets on Teaching, reportedly was given a $12,500 federal grant to reword the book by Uriel Quesada, El gato de sí mismo aka Cat on His Own Behalf, from Spanish into English. (The novel is currently holding down an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of #6,737,114)

On a scale of 1 to 100, my level of surprise is about minus 20. Lefties ALWAYS eventually turn to the government for handouts. They have no choice, they’re parasites. They are the Grasshopper People. Without forced consumption, bait-and-switches, begging, or funding from industry and government, they can’t survive because no one actually wants to buy what they’re selling.

Why we fight

Because this is what happens when you don’t:

Karen Memery (like memory but with an e as she explains), is just such a seamstress. She is the titular narrator of Elizabeth Bear’s latest steampunk adventure, Karen Memory (with an o and not an e). A prostitute at the Hôtel Ma Cherie, a high-class bordello in Seattle Rapid City in the late 1800s, Memery is dissatisfied with her job and her johns, longing for the prairie life she gave up when her father died….

Bear also gleefully subverts gender roles in Karen Memory. Not just with Karen and Priya’s lesbian relationship. She also introduces Crispin, the gay bouncer at the Hôtel Ma Cherie, and Miss Francina, one of the seamstresses who has a select client base. As Karen puts it:

    “…the thing about Miss Francina is that Miss Francina’s got a pecker under her dress. But that ain’t nothing but God’s rude joke. She’s one of us girls every way that matters, and handy for a bouncer besides.”

So not only do we have three prominent gay characters, including the main protagonist and her love interest, but we also have a transgender character — the first I’ve run into in a 19th Century setting. And Karen’s plainspoken acceptance of Miss Francina, and those other societal outcasts who gravitate to the Hôtel Ma Cherie is probably the most refreshing part of the book.

Indeed, one of the major themes of Karen Memory seems to be the subversion of the dominant white male paradigm. Bear puts a variety of alternative lifestyles and minority role models on display, and fervently asserts that they too can be heroes in a fantasy novel. Madame Damnable in her quest for leadership of Seattle Rapid City against Bantle; the African-American Marshal Reeves, who has risen to a place of leadership despite his race (and actually Madame Damnable as well – Karen makes it clear that the powerful madame is also African-American by blood, if not by appearance); and Priya and Karen’s blossoming relationship, forbidden both as same-sex and interracial, are all examples.

Does that sounds like “loads of fun” to you? Because reading about a dissatisfied whore while being subjected to a sermon on the importance of diversity in sexual orientation, race, and transgenderism sounds about as much fun as listening to to SJWs drone on NPR about intersectionalism. I would genuinely rather read an IMF paper on the monetary policy of Zambia  or Newton’s Principia. In Latin.

Loads of fun. That’s what they want to bring to the game industry too. Loads of fun. Now, you can either submit to this SJW shit, or you can help us keep it out of games and take back science fiction. What will it be?

UPDATE: Bandai Namco sensitively responds to SJW concerns by providing new armor for female characters Ivy and Amy. Happy now?

No, apparently not.