Tag: Pink SF

The End of an Era

Life is not a 1980s fantasy novel. Sometimes, the Dark Lord triumphs. After giving up writing science fiction in favor of cat porn, my onetime blog traffic rival, John Scalzi, has laid down his blog pen and passed on the Whatever torch.

In 2012, John Scalzi’s blog was the place to be for anyone interested in science fiction. His blog popularity and traffic as an influencer led to him getting massive multi-million dollar contracts at Tor Books and industry insiders giving him multiple Hugo Awards. In 2016, Scalzi revealed a small chink in the armor of his online presence, as he reported his blog traffic as falling, coinciding with the first election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. With his push toward extreme liberalism and social justice, Scalzi turned off a portion of his originally military sci-fi reading audience as he pivoted toward what he perceived to be mainstream clout.

His blog saw an 11% traffic drop from a 2015 self-reported number of 5.8 million site visits (close to 500,000 a month) in that year, but it seems to have gotten far worse in recent years as his online persona has made sure that half the country or more is not interested in what he has to offer with his extreme political takes. It’s gotten so bad that he doesn’t report his blog stats at the end of the year anymore, instead giving updates about his life in general. He vows in 2025 he will “spend more time on friendships and community,” which is usually a self-reflection that things are not going very well.

Despite his not posting his stats, using online statistical sources, Fandom Pulse estimates his monthly traffic to be anywhere from 150,000-200,000 on an average month, less than half of what it was only eight years ago. Fandom Pulse, by contrast, is doing well over 300,000 per month in our first month full time, making this Substack the most trafficked blog in science fiction.

Another sign John Scalzi doesn’t view his blog traffic as doing well is that he’s now conscripted his daughter to take over Whatever. She posted, “Hello, everyone! If you saw my father’s post yesterday, then you know that some changes that have been in the works for a while now are finally here. Mainly, I have been passed the torch that is Whatever, and I plan to carry it proudly.”

I wish both The Artist Formerly Known as… well, in the spirit of leaving history in the past, let’s just call him Neil Gaiman’s good friend, and the new Whatever blogger well. No, don’t laugh. I have absolutely nothing against Athena, and it was always Scalzi’s fans who used to infest the blog comments here that were more in my sights than the man himself. He mostly served as a useful metric, given Whatever’s onetime status as The Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction.

It’s a little sad, actually. Beating up on Brandon Sanderson is redundant; the man self-flagellates more than one can possibly kick him, and I couldn’t even name most of the SJW pets and never-weres that have replaced Scalzi as Tor’s Award-Winning authors. The transformation of Whatever truly represents the end of an era, a stupid and mediocre era, to be sure, but an era nonetheless. David Weber is gone, Neil Gaiman is done, George RR Martin is done, John Scalzi is petering out, Brandon Sanderson has gone rogue and is nuking his fan base; the genre publishers simply never developed my generation of fantasy and science fiction writers and there is very little coming up behind them in the mainstream.

And yet, we not only survive, we thrive. Whatever is gone. Tor Books is next. But you can be absolutely certain that the dark empire of Castalia will continue to grow and expand.

The silence was the most terrifying thing. Not the absence of sound, but the absence of life. Birds no longer sang, their vibrant melodies replaced by an eerie stillness. Laughter, once a common thread weaving through the tapestry of human existence, had vanished, leaving behind a chilling emptiness. The whispers of the wind through the trees, once a comforting lullaby, now sounded like mournful dirges. Even the gentle hum of the world, the subtle symphony of existence, had been extinguished, leaving behind a suffocating vacuum where hope and joy once thrived.

And somewhere beneath his black velvet hood, in the shadows where no one could see, the dark lord smiled.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Gaiman Defense Team in Action

Behind the scenes, Neil Gaiman and his coterie of freakshows and followers and PR firms have been actively engaged in gaslighting his growing number of accusers for the last two months. This is probably the primary reason for the wall of silence from everyone who has worshipped at the feet of the modestly-talented charlatan, which is nearly everyone in science fiction and fantasy today. One target of this gaslighting has apparently had enough of the nonsense and was gracious enough to expose it publicly:

A summary of the SIXTH episode about Neil Gaiman’s decades long web of abuse. He can be heard in recorded calls. This is Neil. Listen to it for yourself.

Also of note, my former friend who is deep in his cultish inner circle sent me private emails from this woman speaking in this episode. Private emails sent to me in the hopes I wouldn’t believe her story (first aired on a different podcast). Emails from when she was 21/22 and was in the midst of her situation with Neil.

Neil sent this woman’s emails out to one of his lovers and god knows who else, along with lies about her claims…long AFTER these phone calls you’ll hear in this episode. He admits it. And later lies. Lies that arrived on my phone randomly from someone I considered my friend. Because apparently he really enjoys brain washing people.

I am livid. These women have been brave to come forward this way! Guess he’s not so far removed from his Scientology upbringing after all, eh? If you want to come forward about Neil in any way I hope you will feel empowered by the women who have spoken out. You don’t have to protect him any longer.

I won’t share screencaps of Claire’s emails themselves because those shouldn’t have been shared with me in the first place but this is from my former friend, the day after we fought by phone. Neil forwarded my friend these emails which she sent to me and at least one other person TO DISCREDIT CLAIRE.

The exact date was the day after Claire’s story first dropped. July 28th i believe? He was working overtime texting and calling people to get them in line. Also his lawyers apparently asked him for a list of names of all his “girlfriends” who might be “unhappy”.

It’s somewhat amusing how the Gaiman Defense Team tries to hit any angle that they think might work. But denigrating journalists who are literally doing their job as “sociopaths who just wanted a story” is never going to work with anyone. I’ve been the subject of more stupid, pointless, and unmerited hit pieces than Neil Gaiman ever will be, and it never even occurred to me to blame the journalists or call them psychopaths for trying to score a few points with the SJW crowd.

I mean, when a Tor Books author publishes a piece in a major UK newspaper quoting numerous Tor editors and authors about how evil you are for stealing nominations that should have gone to Tor editors and authors like they always do, it’s hard to take it personally. The motivation underlying the hit piece isn’t exactly opaque.

Anyhow, I really don’t think the defense team’s “get to know the real Gaiman behind the allegations” is a tactic that is likely to prove successful. Because the real Gaiman, the one you can hear on the podcast, is a creepy, self-pitying little Gamma male, whose success has obviously been mostly manufactured for him. Forget autism and narcissism, I’ll bet he’s got one whopper of a case of Imposter Syndrome, because he’s an even bigger literary imposter than John Scalzi. What Gaiman’s fans like about him is not the actual individual, it is the Wizard of Goth construction that conceals the wretched little man.

I just finished reading Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s not terrible. It has its elements and its moments. I’ll review it on the Darkstream sometime. But for me, the most noteworthy aspect of the little novel was not its whitewashing of a historical Scientology-related suicide that may or may not have actually been a suicide, but rather, its relentless and imitative mediocrity.

Jeff Vandermeer saw it too. Any halfway-decent author who actually reads a Gaiman book can’t help but see that it’s always been fraudulent. Given what we now know of his Scientology background, his success in bookselling shouldn’t be taken any more indicative of his literary talents than L. Ron Hubbard’s was.

Just stop quoting stupid ass Neil Gaiman writing advice. It’s always like “trust in your dreams” or other shit you see on a bumpersticker or on a sign in a Hobby Lobby. “Trust your dreams and pixie dust will shoot out of your ass.”

The art always betrays the author. I knew John C. Wright was a science fiction grand master from the first time I read The Golden Age. I knew Cornelius Claudio Kreutsch was a genuine magician at the keyboard the first time I saw him play in Barcelona. And I knew Neil Gaiman was a literary fraud by the time I finished reading the sixth issue of Sandman back in 2018; I’d previously read Good Omens, which aside from a few typical Terry Pratchett gems, I found to be a disappointing and not-very-funny Douglas Adams pastiche.

Neil Gaiman is Jordan Peterson for the Drama Club. He mirrors back to them what they want to see in themselves He was always John Dee, never Dream.

UPDATE: The Wall of Silence just developed a pretty big crack. The Bookseller is an important industry site in the UK:

The Bookseller reached out to Gaiman’s representatives, who did not respond, and his publishers, with Headline declining to comment, and Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House (PRH) and HarperCollins US not responding to requests to comment. The Bookseller also reached out to the Royal Society of Literature, of which Gaiman is a patron, which declined to comment, as did the Publishers Association. The Bookseller also contacted the Society of Authors (SoA) for a comment but it did not respond.

Just wait until the publishing industry realizes that a significant percentage of Gaiman’s alleged 50 million book sales went to Scientology, as with L. Ron Hubbard’s “bestsellers”.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Fifth Woman

The fifth Tortoise Media podcast features a young woman who had already come forward in another venue with more allegations of being sexually assaulted by Neil Gaiman, but the Tortoise Media investigation and podcast go into considerably more detail, and, for the first time, feature Gaiman’s voice directly discussing the alleged victim’s accusations in a telephone call.

A fifth woman has accused Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting her. Claire – not her real name – says that while the author was on a book tour in the United States in July 2013 he took her to a room with a bed at the back of a bus, closed the door, then got on top of her and started kissing her and groping her under her dress and over her breasts.

Accounts by other women who have come forward with complaints about Gaiman’s behaviour have raised questions about consent within highly asymmetric relationships.

Gaiman’s account is that he invited Claire onto his tour bus because their previous interactions and correspondence suggested to him that she wanted intimate contact. His account is that he attempted to initiate a kiss with her, while they were lying on a bed at the back of the bus, but he stopped when it became quickly apparent that she didn’t want one.

Nearly ten years later Gaiman and Claire had two phone calls, in response to a letter she sent him detailing her ongoing trauma from the incident. Tortoise has heard recordings of these calls. Neil Gaiman admits that he “fucked up”, calls his behaviour “shitty,” and offers to pay Claire $60,000 to cover the cost of her therapy, and promises to make a “hefty donation” to a rape crisis centre where she once worked.

I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Gaiman does not appear to have kept his promise to make that “hefty donation” to the rape crisis center. And Tortoise Media journalist Paul Caruana Galiz notes:

Gaiman claims she made the first move on him because “I’d have never made the first move on anybody. I’d be terrified of that.” Even by his own account he made the first move on Scarlett (jumping into a bath with her in Feb 22) and on Julia Hobsbawm (sudden, unwanted kiss in 1986)... Makes her the third woman he sent money to in the space of eight months.

DISCUSS ON SG

Shiny, Sexy, Secutopia

The epic retarderies of modern civilization can, to some extent, be blamed on science fiction:

By the 1960s, progressivism had reached a new ascendancy. Fueled by the unparalleled wealth that came with a modern economy, millions were lifted into new, luxurious lifestyles. Now was the time to put aside the ignorance of religion and finally embrace the freedoms offered by a world liberated from Christianity.

It isn’t hard to understand how so many fell for the deception. Things were getting better and better. Technology was improving, and more importantly, accelerating. The Soviet Union was an existential threat, yes. However, too many had already seen the miracle of science, and it seemed a better horse to back than spiritually weakened priests who were quickly conceding to the liberalism’s demands.

But with any new religion, there has to be a story, and the story science told wasn’t so flattering. Men had gone from sons of God to sons of apes. Salvation was a lie and death was the end. There was no justice in the world, and mercy was just the delusion of fools. Man was a small being in a cold universe. The only thing modern men could be comforted by was his own increasing material comfort.

That’s not a story anyone wants to hear. And it’s certainly not a story anyone wants to tell. While abject nihilism has always had its place in literature, it rightfully has a small audience. Nihilism has nothing that could sustain a city, much less a nation.

Reason and science needed romance. It needed adventure and a destiny. Without these things, it was a boring, uninspiring philosophy. Writers (good ones anyway) instinctively shy away from boring. Better to be dead than boring. If there is a victory, it has to be a glorious triumph. If it is a defeat, it has to be a last stand. And if it is banal, then it has to be the most shuddering and teeth clenching banality of all.

But the Sci-Fi writers of the 1960s and later could do a lot more than banality. They knew how to tell stories, and they (unconsciously or otherwise) slipped that dreaded irrationality and religious ignorance back into their fiction. In doing so, they created the archetypal myths which define the modern world.

The problem was their myths were material, stupid, and false. They always were, but it wasn’t always completely obvious as the technology- and debt-bubbles expanded and made the impossible seem inevitable. Now, of course, people are embarrassed to admit they ever bought into any of it.

DISCUSS ON SG

Racists Running SFWA

This news about former SFWA President Cat Rambo’s rant is absolutely hysterical, especially in light of the fact that Rambo was one of the most active members of SFWA pushing the Board to vote for my expulsion over a considerably less-controversial offense:

According to an attendee of the convention who sent an exclusive report to Fandom Pulse, Cat Rambo started ranting about Jews outside of one of the writing panels at the gaming convention. 

“Cat Rambo went off on an antisemitic tirade in the Writers Symposium lounge in front of multiple witnesses,” the whistleblower said. “It took all of two minutes to go from discussing how ‘the sci-fi community needs to do more for Palestinians’ to an utterly unhinged rant about there being ‘too many New York Jews in publishing’… complete with a patronizing addendum to name-drop a few famous editors as ‘some of the good ones, if misguided.’”

If this report is accurate, having an organization that is obsessed with race and has often labeled opponents as racist, SFWA now has a massive problem on its hands. Speaking this way about an entire race of people but saying there are merely “some” good ones is shocking, to say the least.

SFWA removed Hugo Award-nominated editor Vox Day for merely replying to attacks on his person from N.K. Jemisin in which he declared the author to be a “half-savage,” but this seems far more egregious of racism than anything that can be construed out of a personal feud between authors.

The question looms—will SFWA take action against blatant racism and anti-semitism allegedly spoken at Gencon?

Looks like Cat might be the first member to get expelled from SFWA. While the SFWA Board unanimously voted for my expulsion, the membership never held any vote on the matter as was required by the bylaws at the time. I’m still a Life Member, the organizations false claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

Then again, they never expelled the convicted pedophiles in their midst, so perhaps Rambo is safe.

DISCUSS ON SG

She Knows Some Bad People

This is a short piece about Neil Gaiman by a woman with whom I was briefly acquainted; I also knew the “Mike” to whom she refers, and even spent quite a bit of time talking to him about Traveller at the one science convention I ever went to, which I believe was called Minicon. He had contributed a few adventures to Marc Miller’s excellent SF game, and I was interested in obtaining the video game rights to it. Elise was a bit of a character, as she attended the Minnesota writers workshop that consisted of Lois McMaster Bujold, Pat Wrede, Joel Rosenberg, Bruce Bethke, and Peg Kerr, among others, at which I was a guest for a few months in the mid-90s. However, I was always a bit confused as to what Elise was doing there, as she never wrote anything and didn’t appear to ever read anyone else’s work either. I don’t believe Mike aka John M. Ford belonged to the writer’s group, or if he did, he never showed up while I was there.

The one thing I remember about Elise was that she was what I consider to be a full-time professional feminist. So, if she says she didn’t know Gaiman was up to the various shenanigans of which he has been repeatedly accused, I have absolutely no doubt that she didn’t, because she struck me as the sort of woman that is obsessively interested in complaining about every form of male oppression. Which tells us that Gaiman was more than a bit circumspect in his predations, and that he was very much a self-controlled and intentional stalker of insecure and starstruck young women.

I’ve known Neil Gaiman since the very early nineties, when Mike said a friend was coming to a local book-centric fantasy convention and that we should look after him. Apparently he sounded trepidatious or something; Mike said something about how of course there were the comics but the friend said he’s only written one book and he only wrote half of that. Sure, Mike, we can make your friend welcome. So we did. I wrote elsewhere about how this left me for some years with a habit of checking in on Neil at events or when he had a recording session where I worked. I’d go by to see how he was doing, ask whether he’d eaten lately, see if he needed anything. I didn’t quite march over and tell him to put on a sweater, but it was like that. (He always had a leather jacket; a sweater wasn’t necessary.)

Over the decades there were shared meals in various cities, late night convention conversations, visits to the house, gatherings and parties, some with musicals written by Mike because Neil had made a typo on the invitation too good for Mike to resist. For many years I’ve navigated to Neil’s house by singing the American Pie filk Mike wrote about Neil’s invitation to his annual Guy Fawkes Day party which contained the driving directions. One verse ended “The tower lights will be alive; you’ll see the house as you arrive. But do not park upon the drive!” because that last bit was emphasized on the invitation.

Mike and Neil meant a lot to each other. Back in the day, watching the two of them talk writing at a restaurant or sushi bar or a room at a convention late at night was a true delight. When Mike died, Neil helped me through the aftermath. He gave one of the eulogies. He did kind things. He wrote a foreword for Mike’s posthumously published book Aspects which was pretty much another eulogy. He told me it was the hardest thing he ever had to write, and that we were very lucky to have had Mike in our lives.

One time at the house Neil gave me beeswax from his beehives. I used it to make pendants where meteorite dust was sealed into tiny corked glass bottles with the beeswax and sterling silver wire. Stardust in a bottle.

For decades, my metric for buying a new pair of glasses was that whichever one made me wonder what Neil would think of it was the one I’d probably buy.

He took me to my first Tori Amos concert many years ago.

So yeah, I’ve been friends with Neil for somewhere upwards of three decades.

After the news broke, I walked through my house, and every room had something Neil had written, or some art or music that he had introduced me to, or something he had given me. He’s woven through so many memories, with Mike and without. I looked through various correspondence, all the notes with “So much love to you,” all the snippets of news and shared silliness. Years. Decades.

And you know what? Not one bit of that cancels out any of what the survivors say. He’s been my friend for a long time. And I believe them. Which is a tangled set of feelings from one angle, but from another perspective what rings true to me is clear. I believe them.

When I see people saying “Oh, everybody knew,” I shake my head. Everybody did not know. I didn’t know. Nobody in any of the whisper networks told me, or warned me, or asked me to help anyone who had been hurt. And I never figured it out for myself. When the news broke, I was shocked.

Thinking back, I wondered whether anyone had thought he must be OK to be around because of people like me who were his friends. It’s happened before. I don’t like being used as cover… What I say to my friend when we next talk will be between me and him. What I most want to say is “You know fairy tales. You WRITE fairy tales. What did you think was going to happen??”

DISCUSS ON SG

The Memes Must Flow

It’s going to be a busy day on r/neilgaimanmemes today, in light of the news that two more women have come forward to accuse Neil Gaiman of sexual assault, one in 1986 and the other in 2017. That makes five alleged victims over a period of 35 years, so the chances that there will be dozens more is astronomical. It’s a good thing Gaiman is a prolific storyteller, because he’s almost certainly going to have to be coming up with an awful lot of stories explaining away his historical behavior over the next few months.

Exclusive: Two more women accuse Neil Gaiman of sexual assault and abuse

The two new accounts — published today in a new episode of ‘Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman’ — have been corroborated through documents, emails, and messages seen by Tortoise as well as through interviews with friends and family who the women confided in. Gaiman did not provide any on-the-record response to multiple detailed requests for comment on either set of allegations.

Caroline Wallner lived in a house on Gaiman’s property in Woodstock, New York between 2014 and 2021 with her three young daughters and, until 2017, her husband. Alongside her work as a ceramic artist in a studio in a barn on the property, Wallner and her husband worked for Gaiman and his then wife Amanda Palmer, including doing property maintenance, gardening, and grocery shopping. Gaiman had moved to the area to teach at Bard College.

Around the time Wallner’s marriage ended in 2017, which she said devastated her emotionally, Gaiman told her ex-husband that there was no more work for him on the property, which had provided the family’s main income. Wallner and her daughters were now dependent on Gaiman for work and housing. While she was in this situation, Wallner, then 55, said that Gaiman began pressuring her for sex.

Wallner said: “There were little hints of, ‘we’re going to need the house’. And I remember saying, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure it out. That’s when he would just come to my studio and make me give him a blowjob”. There is no suggestion of physical force, but rather of coercion in light of her housing and family situation. Wallner said: “And he can say it was consensual. But why would I do that? It was because I was scared of losing my place”, characterising Gaiman’s treatment of her as “sexual abuse.”

The UN defines sexual abuse as actual or threatened sexual contact by force or coercive conditions. The UN’s refugee agency, where Gaiman is a goodwill ambassador, has described the allegations against him published by Tortoise as “very serious”, adding that it is “assessing the detailed reporting”.

Gaiman settled with Wallner for $275,000 and a non-disclosure agreement less than two weeks later. The NDA “disputes and denies that Wallner has sustained any losses, damages, or injuries for which Gaiman is legally responsible.” Gaiman’s position is that he settled with her to avoid expensive and protracted litigation. The NDA prohibits Wallner from talking about Gaiman with “family members, friends, associates” and from filing, reporting, or prosecuting any action or proceeding in “any court, governmental agency, or before any tribunal whatsoever or wheresoever”. If Wallner is asked to make disclosures by a “valid legal process”, the NDA says she must give Gaiman 20 days notice and help him resist disclosure.

The 1986 woman is an OBE. It’s certainly going to be difficult for Gaiman to play his customary “who are you, you’re nobody” card.

“I’m a very wealthy man. You’re…”

“I’m an OBE. Her Majesty the Queen made me an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Who are you, Mr. Wealthy Man?”

One wonders what the Crown knew about Gaiman. Far less well-known, far less successful authors have been given honors by the Queen. I would think he must have come up at some point but then failed the vetting process.

In less than 24 hours, there are already 96 members of r/neilgaimanmemes and loads of memes with thousands of views. The media’s wall of silence will not stand!

DISCUSS ON SG

The First Rule of Fighting the Patriarchy

The first lesson of fighting the patriarchy and exposing sex predators is don’t talk about Neil Gaiman! First Reddit:

r/neilgaimanuncoveredu/voxday is permanently banned from r/neilgaimanuncovered
expand allcollapse all

[–]subreddit message via /r/neilgaimanuncovered[M] sent 14 hours ago
Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/neilgaimanuncovered because your comment violates this community’s rules. You won’t be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team by replying to this message.

Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole.

The amusing thing, of course, is that there are more comments on a single post on that subject at Sigma Game than on any post at that subreddit. And then something called Bluesky, which is apparently where all the would-be literary SJWs ran after Elon Musk bought Twitter for reasons that are still unclear to me. I’m not sure I even got around to posting anything there yet; they REALLY don’t want you talking about Neil Gaiman AT ALL. Notice that to SJWs, the mere creation of an account is “harassment”.

Hi there,

A Bluesky account you control (@voxday.bsky.social) has been taken down for harassment.

This takedown is not a temporary suspension. Please do not create additional accounts on our service. We will take action against any additional accounts as we become aware of them.

If you have any additional questions or wish to appeal this decision please email moderation@blueskyweb.xyz.

Bluesky Moderation Team

Anyhow, if you wonder why JDA and I are still talking about this, this should explain why. The evil people in this publishing industry desperately want to maintain their wall of silence. Just because he’s always been irrelevant to our community – I don’t own a single Gaiman book or comic; if I want to read magical realism, I’ll read Murakami or Borges, not a mediocre wannabe – doesn’t mean he’s not extremely important to them, if only as a symbol of success. And it’s observably making a difference; I have now heard from several people who have been strangely silent up until now who are clearly in the process of formulating their first public statements about Gaiman. But they know how it goes.

Of all the words of screen and pen

The saddest are these:

Vox was right again.

DISCUSS ON SG

Birds of a Feather

Wowzers, they made quite the creative pair… the publisher disappeared Kramer’s name at some point, just as SFWA tried to claim that the convicted pedophile wasn’t still an active member of the organization when he was still in their member’s address book, both print and online. Birds of a feather and all that…

EDITORS

Neil Gaiman has been awarded more Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards than any other creator, took the World Fantasy Award for The Sandman #19 (making it the first comic ever to win a prose literary award), and has awards for his comics from England, Finland, Canada, Austria, Spain, and Brazil. His miscellany, Angels and Visitations, was nominated for two World Fantasy Awards, and was awarded the International Horror Critics Guild for Best Collection. In addition to The Sandman he is the author of such graphic novels as Signal to Noise, Mr. Punch, and Violent Cases. He cowrote, with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, a funny novel about how the world is going to end and we’re all going to die. He just made a six-part TV series for the BBC called Neverwhere, and is working on a Neverwhere novel. He has just finished his first book for children, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, and was surprised to find himself acting in the BBC Radio adaptation of Signal to Noise. The Sandman collection Dream Country was picked by Waterstones and The Observer as one of the ten coolest books of the 1990s. He is 35 years old, and is intimately familiar with jet lag in all its forms.

On July 3, 2024, Neil Gaiman was accused of sexual assault by two women in a four-part podcast series by Tortoise Media. Neil Gaiman is reported to have denied the charges, but has yet to make any public statement about them.

Edward E. Kramer is a writer and coeditor of Grails (nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology of 1992), Confederacy of the Dead, Phobias, Dark Destiny, Elric: Tales of the White Wolf, Excalibur, Tombs, Dark Love, Forbidden Acts, and many additional works in progress. Ed’s original fiction appears in a number of anthologies as well; his first novel, Killing Time, is forthcoming from White Wolf. His credits also include over a decade of work as a music critic and photojournalist. A graduate of the Emory University School of Medicine, Ed is a clinical and educational consultant in Atlanta. He is fond of human skulls, exotic snakes, and underground caves.

Kramer was arrested on August 25, 2000 and charged with molesting three teenage boys. The ensuing investigation revealed that Kramer had previously been accused of molestation in 1997 before the alleged victim recanted. On December 2, 2013 Kramer pleaded guilty to one charge for each of the three victims. On February 27, 2019, Kramer was arrested by officers from the Lawrenceville Police Department for allegedly taking photos of a young boy at a doctor’s office. Kramer was later charged with possession of child pornography.

UPDATE: Neil Gaiman has reportedly hired the same US lawyer who has represented Prince Andrew and Danny Masterson. The same Danny Masterson who got 30 years in prison. Since he’s not currently facing any charges this strongly suggests that he’s expecting to be arrested and charged for crimes committed in the USA.

UPDATE: A third accuser has now come forward about her experience with Gaiman after meeting him at a book signing in 2014.

Claire uses a pseudonym to share her story about being groomed and sexually coerced and manipulated by world-renowned author Neil Gaiman. We discuss the power of stories and fame, and she shares how journaling, therapy, and friendships have helped her find her center in her own story. We originally spoke in 2022, and at that time she decided she wasn’t ready, but said that if other survivors came forward, she would join them. Several weeks ago two women came forward and shared abuse stories about Neil Gaiman. Claire reached out to me to support herself and them and all survivors by sharing her story today.

There will be more. There will very likely be dozens more.

DISCUSS ON SG

Neil Gaiman: “The Tip of a Very Large Iceberg”

The mainstream and SF/F medias remain eerily silent about Neil Gaiman and the accusations against him. Virtually no one of any note in the SF/F community besides me, Larry Correia, Jon Del Arroz, and John Scalzi have addressed the matter at all, and Scalzi, who purports to be close friends with Gaiman, is refusing to say anything beyond noting the accusations, even though Gaiman has hired the same crisis management team, Edendale Strategies, that worked for Ezra Miller and Marilyn Manson, and has also cancelled his only public event since the accusations were made public.

But social media is certainly paying attention:

  • Just here to tell my own personal experience: I was friends with one of his former personal assistants, and I remember her telling stories back in the early aughts about having to “pull Neil off of a 15 year old fan.” She said this with kind of an eye-roll like it wasn’t uncommon, simply a part of the job. Given that, I think we’re about to hear much worse stories than the ones in this podcast.
  • Yeah, I keep hearing (what are so far) rumors of this kind and it’s unsettling to say the least. I’m waiting for more information but at the same time I feel like I know what’s coming.
  • Neil was very important to me at various times in my career. He was my teacher at Clarion. He blurbed my first novel. He invited me to perform at TED. We’ve always been friendly. My impression was that he’d dated fans in the past, during headier younger days, but now knew better. But now that survivors have gone on record? I have zero problem cutting all ties. I want to say that publicly and explicitly. No personal favors—and no creative works, frankly—are worth more than the safety and well-being of these two young women. And who knows how many others. I also say this because you better be sure I’ll be paying attention to whoever stays silent.
  • Thank you so much for saying Neil Gaiman. His silence and the silence of everyone in his orbit in the wake of this is making me feel like I have lost contact with reality.
  • it really is bananas how much more heat the sff community has for, like, guys accused of being social-climbing jerks than for the neil gaiman allegations
  • Me: I wonder what Neil Gaiman is saying about this. Me 30 seconds later: oh look, he hasn’t posted anything in over two weeks, what a freaking coincidence! At this point in the process, that’s nearly an admission of guilt.
  • First Neil Gaiman disappeared for obvious reasons. Then Ken White disappeared because (I assume) he just chose to do so. If John Scalzi disappears then my feed will basically be empty.
  • Whatever does or doesn’t come of the Neil Gaiman allegations, the fact remains that many many people (myself included, to an extent) have spent years extolling The Sandman, whose beloved protagonist condemned a woman to eternal torture for checks notes rejecting his advances
  • Absolutely WILD for Amanda Palmer’s first tweet since June 19 to be scolding Joyce Carol Oates for not reading the Alice Munro article before speculating on it considering she’s actively avoided addressing her part in the Neil Gaiman allegations. Particularly wild seeing as Amanda Palmer deleted comments from her Instagram on Saturday asking her about the Neil Gaiman allegations (including the allegation that 13 young women came to Amanda about Neil’s behaviour and that she personally hired the 14th to be their nanny)
  • LOL Reddit’s Neil Gaiman board is banning all discussion of him allegedly liking rough, non-consensual sex and instead only allowing discussion of his work. I guess we’ll soon be seeing the r/hitler subreddit shifting its focus to an art appreciation thread?
  • Ngl, I’m kinda disappointed at the fact that the comic community isn’t talking about the Neil Gaiman sexual assault allegations. I find it very hypocritical that they will so swiftly condemn others for racism and bigotry, but when a big name like Gaiman is accused, pure silence.
  • I’ve known this about Neil for years. A close friend of mine is a local artist who has worked for Neil and Amanda off and on for years and had to deal with Neil’s advances. They knew of others as well. I have posted about Neil’s behavior on occasion on social media and sometimes women reach out privately to thank me for saying something, they have long feared coming forward due to the harassment they will likely face. I’m not going to debate anyone here, but yes I spoke to the reporter behind this, who happens to be well known and award winning. He was looking for information, not a story, and the information is what informed the story he wrote, from people I know and a lot of others. What is presented in this podcast is a tiny fraction of what I and others are aware of. This is what can be demonstrated right now with the permission of the victims willing to come forward and face the inevitable abuse Neil’s fans will heap upon them, but there are others, a lot of others. This is the tip of a very large iceberg.

The publishing industry knows. The publishing industry absolutely knows about Gaiman, has known about him for decades, and is now preparing for sufficient information to come out that will sink him entirely. Hollywood will probably fight harder and try longer to protect him, but the publishers don’t want to be caught with large stocks of books they can’t sell.

  • I can tell you that the female junior staff at Harper used to warn each other about him.
  • They are really pushing them Neil Gaiman books REAL HARD. The sales prices are ridiculous. Like, “We gotta get in there before the whole public gets in the know” levels of hard.
  • I’m pretty sure the example in the cited Girls scene about “Chuck Palmer” is supposed to be a plausibly deniable reference to both Chuck Wendig and Neil Gaiman, which sure tells me the writer had heard the same convos as me in 2016.

There is also at least one confirmed report that Random House is removing Gaiman blurbs from forthcoming books.

There are even some very old posts referring to Gaiman’s alleged past behavior on Tumblr.

UPDATE: Less than eight hours after this was posted, presumably as a result of this post, the linked article about a negative reference to “Chuck Palmer” was disappeared. However, it was archived and can be seen here. The reason the “Palmer” is believed to be a reference to Neil Gaiman is because at the time, he was married to his second wife, Amanda PALMER.

UPDATE: Posted on Reddit. There is a moderate probability that PrudishChild is either a) a sockpuppet of Neil Gaiman’s or b) an employee at Edendale Strategies.

PrudishChild: Any reason to think he set up the gmail, or had access to it? I thought someone else set it up and he just commented on it.

voxday: Yes, there are very good reasons to think Mr. Gaiman set up the Gmail, as well as the BathBookNeil Tumblr site.

  1. The mediocre parenthetical dialogue is very indicative of his writing.
  2. There is no “Jolene Parton” who is a bored college student. JOLENE is a song by Dolly PARTON released in 1973. As a music journalist, Mr. Gaiman would be familiar with it, whereas few, if any, college students would be. Also, the only Jolene Parton in the USA is in her 60s now, far too old to be the bored college student.
  3. The fake surprise. Mr. Gaiman knows Rule 34, so he’s not going to be surprised at a naked bath site. The whole dialogue between Gaiman and “Parton” is fiction written by the same person, presumably Mr. Gaiman.
  4. Mr. Gaiman appears to have a bath fetish. He writes about bathtubs more than any author outside of the plumbing industry. He writes nearly as often about baths as George RR Martin writes about rape.
  5. The BathBookNeil site hasn’t been taken down yet, while other damning articles such as the Splinter article about the coded “Chuck Palmer” reference believed to be about him and Chuck Wendig on the show GIRLS were vanished within eight hours of being cited.

Googlers already know if he set the Gmail account up or not. The truth will come out eventually.

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