Tag: SFWA

I Didn’t Even Have to Ask

There is an old saying, attributed somewhat dubiously to Voltaire: “I prayed the Lord to make my enemies ridiculous, and He answered my prayer.”

I can’t claim any credit here, and I very much doubt any divine intervention was required, as the SFWA has not only managed to make itself ridiculous again, but is now demonstrating that there is no reason for it to even exist anymore.

If you’ve read my body of work here at Upstream over the past year or so, you know I’m not a big fan of the SFWA. From their long and sordid history of hagiographic treatment of serial child molesters to cancelling their own honorees to getting vast amounts of member data leaked, it’s safe to say that SFWA as an organization has entered the “skinsuiting” phase of their existence; a once-valuable entity that had meaning, now merely doing whatever it can to rake in cash on little more than its former notoriety.

If that sounds too harsh, allow me to present what came to mind after I had a chance to pore over their recently released tax returns for 2021. That year’s filings have been of particular interest, given that 2021 saw a highly profiled but spectacularly failed lawsuit.

The “LOLsuit”, as it became known in certain corners of the internet, was the effort of member author Patrick Tomlinson to subpoena Cloudflare into revealing the identities of the users on an Opie and Anthony fan forum that had taken to trolling him. It’s been highly speculated since that Tomlinson received help from SFWA’s Legal Fund for the effort. Many who had taken a look at our previous article on SFWA’s filings from prior years were anxious to see if barely-an-author’s escapades would be reflected in 2021’s long-awaited filings.

Welp, wouldn’t you know it, their legal expenses nearly quintupled compared to 2020 (that year’s filings can be found here):

LEGAL EXPENSES 2020: 17,533

LEGAL EXPENSES 2021: 83,750

Which, naturally, leads me to wonder if 2023 is the year I should consider filing that lawsuit to force the organization to publicly acknowledge that I am still a member. The Legal Legion certainly has a much better record in the California courts than SFWA’s legal team.

DISCUSS ON SG

RIP Greg Bear

Five-time Nebula winner Greg Bear died November 19, a week after heart surgery from which he never awoke. A CT scan showed stroke damage was caused to many parts of the brain by clots that had been hiding in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain ever since an earlier surgery eight years ago. After a review of the possible outcomes by the medical team, and following the wishes expressed in his advance directive, Bear was taken off life support and died two hours later.

He wasn’t a major talent or a SF icon, but he was a legitimate author who represented the last gasp of mainstream science fiction being founded in actual science. I didn’t know him, and I didn’t particularly like the three or four books of his that I read, but his passing is indicative of an era that is observably in the process of ending.

DISCUSS ON SG

They Devour Their Own

Having run all the sane, unconverged writers out of science fiction, the lunatic SJWs are now busily occupied with devouring their own. Some nonentity named Stephanie Burke who writes SF porn is crying about how people she didn’t know accused her, in public, of things she didn’t do and things she never said.

Why, can you even imagine such a travesty?

Home from Balticon and I will never return. I was accused of some nasty things, treated like a criminal, judged without proof save for hearsay, and stripped of my remaining panels. My only recourse is to make a complaint. My reputation which took close to 20 years to build is now destroyed. I am devastated. This is my complaint. I am angry and I am hurt and I am at a loss because all of the networking I have done here is dead. The publishers I wanted to talk to probably are hearing the lies.

The hilarious thing is the way it’s now clear that not even writing very bad sex novels, convincing your little boy that he’s a girl, having a mental illness, and declaring, with all sincerity, that “the G-word” (apparently Gypsy) “is equivalent to the N-word” is enough to save anyone from the SJW thought police these days.

DISCUSS ON SG

SFWA Devours Itself

I wish they had actually banned me, instead of simply engaging in public theater about having done so in order to placate the SJW membership. But they did actually ban Mercedes Lackey from the Nebulas.

The Science Fiction Writers of America banned New York Times Bestselling Author Mercedes Lackey from their 2022 Nebula Awards conference for alleged racist remarks.

The Nebula Awards was once considered the second most prestigious award for science fiction writers. In recent years, the awards have become known for controversies over identity politics. Many fans perceive award-winners to be chosen on the basis of race or gender rather than the contents of their work.

Source: Screenshot, Nebula Awards Site

Lackey’s banning comes just a year after she won SFWA’s Grand Master lifetime achievement award, becoming only the 57th person to be given such a title from the organization…. Less than one year later, SFWA banned Mercedes Lackey under Kennedy’s leadership. The organization disavowed her allegedly racially insensitive comments.

SFWA stated, “We learned yesterday that while participating in the ‘Romancing Sci-Fi & Fantasy’ panel, Mercedes used a racial slur.”

The organization’s Board of Directors continued, “First, we apo0logize to our attendees and the other panelists who were subjected to that slur. We’ve disabled access to the panel to avoid any additional harm being caused.”

From there they stated “Second, we are immediately removing Mercedes Lackey from the conference and the additional panels she was scheduled for, in accordance with SFWA’s Moderation Policy.”

“The use of a racial slur violates the instruction to ‘Respect all cultures and communities. Do not make derogatory or offensive statements even as a joke.’ That applies to everyone in a SFWA space, at all levels of their career,” the Board of Directors explained.

Ironically, she’s being banned for calling Samuel K. Delaney “a colored person” and not “a gay black pedophile who writes pornography, badly.”

DISCUSS ON SG

A New Campaign

Dear Mr. Johnson,

I am writing you to confirm my campaign for SFWA’s Chief Financial Officer in the 2022 election as per the SFWA Elections page.

As I am an SFWA Life Member with more than two years’ active SFWA membership in good standing, please confirm my eligibility for the SFWA Board in a timely manner. I will be happy to provide you with my platform after receiving your confirmation of my eligibility.

Thank you,
Vox Day
SFWA Life Member
Lead Editor, Castalia House

DISCUSS ON SG

Verdict: Not Unfair

I’ll admit to occasionally getting frustrated with Larry Correia’s insistence on abiding with the mainstream platforms that hate him rather than throwing in with the alternative economy and friendly platforms, but I also have to admit that there is no one like him for pure literary vituperation and excoriation, be it personal or political.

Anytime there is a breaking news story, there will be legions of howling leftists, and blue check mark idiots, lying their asses off and saying the most horrific things imaginable. And since they literally own social media, they get an official pass while the uppity on the right get officially squashed. We’ve all seen it. From trending hash tags that mysterious vanish, shadow bans, to ultra-biased fact checkers, to Youtube demonetizing wrong thinkers or even getting rid of the thumbs down button.

Yet as your fellow travelers are saying all this horrid shit, where are you? You’re supposedly sane. You claim to have a voice of moderation, but it must be a whisper because we certainly can’t hear it.

Social media is a constant barrage of Common Internet Shit Gibbons popping in and screaming at everybody who diverges from the accepted leftist narrative. They work off a standardized playbook and repetitive talking points, sneering derision, and passive aggressive insults designed to get around algorithms, and it is all designed to shame people into silence.

Yet many people on the right are slowly waking up to this game, and they’re beginning to fight back, skipping the false civility, and getting right to the meat of things, and returning insult for insult… Oh THEN I can count on the Caring Liberals to show up! Inevitably, every fucking time. Whenever someone on the right fights back, that’s when the real-life liberals you know magically appear to cry about “civility” and “tone” and such rudeness!

Gee whiz, Aunt Margaret/coworker #7/guy from the gym. Where the fuck were you when the leftist assholes were screeching at me and wiping their diseased anus on my carpet? Nowhere. Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s because you voices of reason don’t actually care about civility, you just care about shaming your wrong thinking friends and family into compliance. You emotionally manipulative motherfuckers.

Why do I have such scorn and derision for the so-called reasonable voices on the left? A. I don’t believe most of you. B. If you do exist, you’re cowards, who do nothing, say nothing, and then maybe show up after the dust settles to chide the rest of us about our tone.

Anybody with the courage to speak up on the left is swiftly set upon by the rest and devoured. They’re the cow and social justice warriors are the piranhas.

Sad part is I know many liberals in real life who will admit that they helped create a monster, and its now gone out of control, and the beast will eat them if they draw its ire. Oh, they’ll tell me this in person, but they won’t say shit in public. Because they know they’ll get cancelled, boycotted, fired, mocked, threatened, and kicked out of the Goodthinkers Club.

There is more. There is a LOT more where that came from. And it’s all true. The key line: “Liberal “friends” will sell you out in a heartbeat.”

DISCUSS ON SG

And Now We Know Why

A few years ago, in 2015, I presented evidence that strongly suggested that the rumors concerning Arthur C. Clarke being a pedophile were correct. However, the initial public reports by a reporter working for News of the World and the Sunday Mirror were never followed up on by the media and were subsequently dismissed as aberrations without anyone ever actually being refuted. Now we know why they never led anywhere.

The News of the World spiked an exclusive story exposing the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke as a paedophile, according to a new book about life inside the newspaper whose closure was announced a year ago today.

In Hack, an account of his nerve-shredding days as a reporter on the News of the World and then the Sunday Mirror, Graham Johnson claims that although the NOTW prided itself on outing pederasts, editors made an exception for Mr Clarke because he was a friend of Rupert Murdoch.

Through BSkyB, the tycoon commercially exploited the futurologist’s theory that satellites would be ideal for communications and praised him in public. As a result, according to Mr Johnson, who by that time had been sacked by the NOTW and had joined the Sunday Mirror, a story by reporter Roger Insall about Mr Clarke’s alleged abuse of adolescent boys was never published for fear of upsetting the proprietor.

Tipped off about the story, the Sunday Mirror sent Mr Johnson to Colombo, where he extracted an confession from the author that he paid boys for sex. “I have never had the slightest interest in children – boys or girls. They should be treated in the same way. But once they have reached the age of puberty, then it is OK,” Mr Clarke was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mirror. “If the kids enjoy it and don’t mind it doesn’t do any harm … there is a hysteria about the whole thing in the West.”

Mr Clarke subsequently denied he was a paedophile, saying: “The allegations are wholly denied.” But he never sued the Sunday Mirror and died aged 90 at his Sri Lanka home in 2008.

Speaking to The Independent yesterday, Mr Johnson said: “Roger [Insall] said that because Arthur C Clarke was a mate of Rupert Murdoch, the editor wasn’t having any of it and despite Roger getting a lot of evidence that Clarke was a paedophile they wouldn’t publish it.”

It’s probably not a coincidence that Murdoch has himself been accused of harboring similar predilections.

Full disclosure: Castalia House publishes several Clarke stories in the THERE WILL BE WAR series. We will continue to publish them despite our belief in Mr. Clarke’s misdeeds because a) they are very good stories, b) I do not believe the work is inseparable from the author, and c) Mr. Clarke derives zero benefit from their publication.

In like manner, we will not refuse to publish H.P. Lovecraft because he is accused of racism, John C. Wright because he is accused of Catholicism, Vox Day because he is accused of white supremacism, or Owen Benjamin because he is accused of heightism, regardless of how substantive or insubstantial the accusations may be.

UPDATE: A reader writes about his experience meeting Mr. Clarke in Sri Lanka.

Very interesting post about Arthur C. Clarke. I actually met him in spring 1988 at his house in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where I found him simply by looking in the phone book, called the number, and he answered and invited me over straightaway. I was delighted to meet him, but very surprised to see something like ten to fifteen 11-year-olds running around the house like pets. I was 19 at the time, and made no question of it, just noted it in my head.

A few weeks later I met an expat living in Sri Lanka who said there were two reasons why Arthur C. Clarke moved to the remote island nation of Sri Lanka, the official reason, and the actual reason. The official reason: the sacred mountain was visible from space, and this was where the aliens would land when they came to earth, and he didn’t want to miss it. The actual reason: loads of 11-year-old boys, and very little legal consequence for taking advantage of them. He said that “everyone” in Sri Lanka knew this, but nobody talked about it except in knowing smirks and nods.

Canceling Rape Rape

The SF-SJWs have finally come for George R. R. Martin:

Celebrated author George R.R. Martin angered a lot of fans this week. No, not because he still hasn’t finished the next book in A Song of Ice And Fire (although he missed his self-imposed deadline for that this week, too), but because of the incredibly lackluster job he did hosting a prominent award ceremony.

The Hugo Awards is one of the most prestigious and well-known award ceremonies for science fiction and fantasy literature, and something many SFF fans and creators alike look forward to every year. Like many big events this year, the Hugos turned into a virtual ceremony, streamed online for fans and nominees, and with pre-recorded hosting duties completed by Martin.

But some felt Martin fell short of the responsibility bestowed on him, repeatedly mispronouncing the names of nominees and celebrating the achievements of dead white men over the actual winners.Natalie Luhrs summarized the disaster on her blog, calling the entire ceremony “blatantly disrespectful of the nominees and winners.”

“George R.R. Martin repeatedly mispronounced the names of nominees and, in one case, a publication which was nominated. All the nominees were asked to provide pronunciations for their names in advance,” she wrote. “The fact that Martin chose not to use that information is disgusting and racist as f*ck, as nearly without exception the names he mispronounced were Black and brown.”

Martin also continually name-dropped John W. Campbell, a writer who had a Hugo Award named after him until 2019, when the title was changed to the Astounding Award on the heels of a scathing speech given by winner Jeannette Ng.

“John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fascist,” Ng said at the time. “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White. Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists.”

The Game of Thrones author also reportedly complained about fandom getting bigger, which some took to be a criticism of the fandom becoming more inclusive and welcoming to anyone who isn’t a straight white man. And when mentioning N.K. Jemisin, a Black female author who won best novel three times in a row—an accomplishment Luhrs rightly pointed out is unprecedented for the Hugos—Martin turned it into an excuse to harp on the achievements of a white male author who won the award three times over a span of nine years.

Shameful. Truly shameful. Just wait until they actually read one of his books and discover what a rape culture enthusiast he is. And then they’ll come for Scalzi.

UPDATE: They all know that Jemisin’s “best novel” wins are a fraudulent joke. Robert Silverberg couldn’t bother to hide his contempt for them:

He fucked up primarily by focusing all of his attention on ancient Hugo history, pointing his gaze backwards to the 1970s and lionizing problematic faves like Heinlein and Asimov and, yes, Campbell. The latter was especially egregious, since just last year Jeannette Ng began her now Hugo-winning Campbell Award speech by declaring him (rightly) to be a “fucking fascist.” It felt like a stinging rebuke of Ng’s incredible speech, a speech that actually prompted the Hugos to change the name of the award, to spend so much time talking about Campbell throughout the ceremony. To then trot out Robert Silverberg, who made dismissive comments about N.K. Jemisin’s deserved three-peat in the Best Novel category, felt like an especially craven capitulation to the old racists who feel the genre slipping out of their hands.

Superconvergence

They’re not even interested in science fiction, let alone science, anymore:

The members of SFWA’s newly-formed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee are:

  • Alaya Dawn Johnson – traditional novelist
  • Alex Acks – traditional novelist 
  • Crystal Watanabe – freelance editor
  • James Beamon – SFWA director-at-large, short fiction writer
  • Jane Pinckard  – writer, game designer, researcher, teacher
  • Kyle Aisteach  – short fiction writer
  • Michi Trota – SFWA Editor-in-Chief, critical and creative nonfiction writer
  • Tao Roung Wong – indie novelist
  • Whitney “Strix” Beltrán – game writer

The committee is developing procedures, and setting its action and scope, and will update the membership soon.

SFWA is an excellent example of how convergence renders an organization entirely incapable of performing its core purpose. The committee would have been more accurately named if they’d called it Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.

Another day, another scandal

Today’s scandal du jour wafting out of the fetid freakshow that used to be called science fiction and fantasy stars two overrated mediocrities, Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch:

I was groomed and abused by Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear for several years.

For a long time, I never wanted to talk about this in public. I didn’t want anybody to know about this. I only began rethinking yesterday and I was still considering what to do about it, but… apparently I don’t have that luxury anymore. Additionally, I’ve recently heard some new  information about their abusive behavior towards other people–young women, usually baby writers who do not have established careers, girls they had mentorship relationships with–and frankly SOMEBODY has to be brave enough to speak up first, or these young women will continue to be hurt and intimidated into silence, just as I was.

This is terrifying to write. I’m afraid of career repercussions, for one. I’m also alarmed at the potential threat to my physical safety: Lynch and Bear live 15mins away & know how to get to my house. I spoke to my roommate about comfort levels with me speaking out, and we have prepared for the possibility that they could confront me in person.

It goes on and on and on without ever saying very much of significance, which tends to prove her claims of having been mentored by Bear and Lynch. On the plus side, however, it does explain why mainstream science fiction and fantasy are all but unreadable these days.

Scott Lynch’s response is pretty much guaranteed to get his book contracts canceled, despite his having dutifully performed all the required ritual genuflections before the SF-SJWs.

I have read the June 25 statement made by Alex Rowland on their website, and while it contains much that I would consider merely heavily edited, it also contains statements that I consider to be outright lies and defamation.

I will be responding in more detail as promptly as I possibly can, and I will also be inviting them to back, modify, or delete the statements that I consider actionable.

It’s really not that hard. The more enthusiastic the fan, the further you should keep them away from you and everyone you know. And that goes double for any female fan who shows any signs of being attracted to you.