Tag: SFWA

Subhuman action

“Take one monkey, train it to
wear a fedora and hypnotise it in to believing it is a Towering Literary
Intellect. I give you N.K. Jemisin.”
– Damien Walter

Shocking stuff! A straight white male calling an African-American woman a monkey! I am as agog as I am aghast! Oh, wait a minute… it seems there was a minor typo there.

“Take one monkey, train it to
wear a fedora and hypnotise it in to believing it is a Towering Literary
Intellect. I give you John C. Wright.”
– Damien Walter
Upon further review, it appears the illustrious Mr. Walter was only calling a white man a monkey. That’s COMPLETELY different, of course. It is acceptable to call a straight white male what one cannot call a gay black female. Because equality. And privilege.

In any event, it is more than a little amusing to see such a complete non-entity striking a pose as the literary superior to one of the greatest living science fiction masters. I would direct you to Mr. Walter’s work for the purposes of fair comparison, but unfortunately, he hasn’t published so much as a single novel. This behavior might appear inexplicable to the rationally minded, but it is in fact entirely predictable.

Because Damien Walter illustrates the primary point made in “Restless Heart of Darkness”, the final essay in John C. Wright’s brilliant and #1 bestselling TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN:

I realized why it is that the current mainstream modern thought, despite its illogical and pointless nature, is so persistent, nay, so desperate. I realized why these Moderns never admit they are wrong no matter how obvious the error, nor can they compromise, nor hold a rational discussion, nor a polite one, nor can they restrain themselves. They can neither win nor surrender….

The unwillingness of the Progressives to discuss their beliefs is because one of their beliefs (the most outrageously false of all, and most easy to prove false) is that they are superior beings, superior by virtue of their greater intelligence, broader open-mindedness, higher education, finer sentiments, and greater compassion, surrounded by yowling and filthy yahoos. These Progressives, who have never read a word of Aristotle, much less read him in Greek, boast that they cannot discuss philosophy honestly with a psychotic yet retarded Neanderthal like me, due to my inferior nature. Well, I cannot argue with their assessment of my education, except to say ἀντικεῖσθαι δ᾽ ὁ ἀλαζὼν φαίνεται τῷ ἀληθευτικῷ· χείρων γάρ.

Tom Simon adds some not inapt comments after dealing with a different individual exhibiting very similar tendencies to Damien Walter:

I used to deal with trolls for a living (saddest job I ever had), and I can tell you that it probably isn’t masochism. More likely, he is so socially inept and so incapable of reading emotional clues from text, he actually thinks that his words are inflicting righteous damage upon us, the heinous foe, and that he is returning to his lair covered in glory after causing us all to writhe in soul-deep agony at the sudden exposure of our horrible, horrible guilt. And he is so plug ignorant of the art of dialectic that he actually believes he is winning his arguments with us.

Moreover, as a person who despises religion, theology, philosophy, and history, who knows nothing about art, literature, science, technology, or any of the useful trades, he is gloriously unequipped to appreciate any mode of thought but his own – and his own mode contains no actual thought, just an angry clashing of slogans without ground or consequent, like Nietzsche on cheap drugs. Therefore (hello again, Dunning and Kruger) he imagines that his own mental slush is superior to all our thoughts; that we disagree with him is, to him, proof of our imbecility.

At least Mr. Simon’s troll was willing to attempt to engage in discourse, however ineptly. Which does put him ahead of Damien Walters, the current president of the SFWA, the former 3x president of the SFWA, and numerous other would-be luminaries of the field.

An unconvincing president

Steven Gould’s inept and dishonest efforts to mitigate the continuing damage to SFWA taking place on his watch is really rather entertaining. And while I will leave the discussion of whether SFWA’s philosophy is hellish or not to the more theologically inclined, there are few things more Orwellian than Mr. Gould’s historical revisionism.

Recently a member of SFWA resigned and gave as their reasons that they were being slandered and libeled by leaders and members of SFWA who were also engaged in an “organized attempts to harass my readers and hurt my sales figures.” He subsequently posted this letter on his website.

The writer in question is a successful author of over a dozen SF & Fantasy novels and has previously been nominated for the Nebula Award. The fact that I’d never heard of them before receiving their resignation email says far more about me and the scope of my reading in the field than it does about them. There are 1800 members of the organization after all, but I would like to point out that this also means that neither I nor any other officer or director of this organization has been slandering, libeling, or organizing against that person–I would certainly have heard about it. When asked for specifics, the author replied that it would be unprofessional to name those who had.

Notice the first thing the SFWA president attempts to do is diminish John C. Wright’s standing in the field. Perhaps it is true that he’d never heard of any of Mr. Wright’s brilliant novels, from the magnificant The Golden Age to the Nebula-nominated Orphans of Chaos and the amazing Night Land novella, “Awake in the Night” that was literally named The Year’s Best Science Fiction. The fact that the SFWA president openly admits he has never heard of the man who Publisher’s Weekly described as potentially bing “this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent” tends to underline what I, and others, have pointed out concerning SFWA’s irrelevance to the genre.

But whether his claim is true or not, what is the point of telling everyone that? To underline his ignorance? No, what he is trying to do is send a signal to the lesser talents of SFWA that it doesn’t matter that one of the best and most important writers in the genre is spurning them.

He’s also implicitly attempting to attack John C. Wright’s integrity. To show that Gould is being disingenuous here, the SFWA Report that was used to justify Gould’s purging of me included 20 statements from individuals purported to be either members, prospective members, and in one case, “an outgoing board member”. Not a single one was named.

In researching this I have seen some critical historical posts by both members and non-members responding to statements made by the author. Without passing judgment on the nature of the author’s posts I would like to make the following points:

1. The only place where the Science Fiction and Fantasy
Writers of America makes an effort to monitor and control what members
and non-members say or write is within the official publications and venues of the organization itself and
then only to the extent that the language does or does not support the
goals and purposes of the organization. These venues include, among
others, The SFWA Bulletin, the SFWA website, our meetings,
official communications to the membership, and our online member
discussion boards. They certainly do not include members’ own websites,
their fiction, their conversations, pieces published in non-sfwa
publications, and any other private and public space.*

This is an absolute lie by Gould. In the SFWA Report, Section B. Continuing pattern of actions prejudicial to SFWA, Board Member Matthew Johnson writes:

1. Attacks on members
Attacks on members which occurred through SFWA channels or in SFWA-controlled spaces are addressed in part A. The following looks at attacks and threats which were made in his blog and other public space.
 
Personal attacks
Beale has made numerous attacks on fellow SFWA members which may be seen as going outside the bounds of professional conduct. The best-known and most consistent is likely his use of derogatory nicknames, such as “McRapey” for John Scalzi and “McRacist” for N.K. Jemisin (see Fig B.1). He has also compared Amal el-Mohtar to an Egyptian cleric who has, according to Beale, called for the ethnic cleansing of Egypt (Fig B.2); accused James Enge of “despicable behavior” (see Fig B.3); accused Ms. Jemisin of plagiarism (see Fig B.4); and has published a blog comment claiming that Teresa Nielsen Hayden has herpes. (See Appendix I for the question of whether and why to consider blog comments.  In this case, though, Beale actually reprinted the comment in one of his own blog posts, making him more clearly the publisher of the comment: see Fig B.5)

This proves Stephen Gould to be a blatant liar. The SFWA clearly monitors and controls what both members and non-members say on their personal blogs and other public spaces. Of course, the SFWA has tried to bury this report, so perhaps Mr. Gould thought that he could get away with telling outright lies.

2. It is the position of SFWA that language within our official channels and publications which marginalizes and/or alienates any portion of our membership  does not support the goals and purposes of the organization.

This is fascinating, considering that in my response to the SFWA Report, I chronicled no less than 71 attacks on other members in the SFWA Forum itself by the following SFWA members, most of which were NOT directed at me.

Athena Andreadis, Liz Argall, William Barton, Andrew Burt, Steve Carper, Gregory Norman Bossert, Carrie Cuin, Amal El-Mohtar, Jim Fiscus, Diana Pharoah Francis, Steven Gould, Sarah Grey, Jim Hines, Keffy Kehrli, Kate Kligman, Lee Martindale, David Moles, T.L. Morganfield, Jason Sanford, Steven Saus, Catherine Shaffer, Cory Skerry, Charles Stross, Rachel Swirsky, Elise Tobler, Wendy Wagner, Sean Wallace, Damien Walter, Bud Webster, Django Wexler

For example: Board Member Jim Fiscus. Posted 15 May, 2013 – 10:23 PM “We have a reckless jerk who wants to harm people — not just harm
SFWA or sff.net — they want to harm individual human beings.  And they
do not give a damn what harm they do to people. The thing is that this thinking has much wider implications.  It is
no different from the ideological purity demanded by the Tea Party or
the Taliban, and it’s only a small step from the tactics used by the
Taliban and the Westboro Baptist Church.” Note that this attack, by an SFWA Board Member in the SFWA Forum, took place before I’d violated any SFWA policies myself. So, again, we see that Gould is lying.

3. I don’t see this as a particularly onerous or oppressive policy as this simply boils down to treating all our members with respect in our official channels of communication.
While it is my belief that the vast majority of our members would not
intentionally disparage their fellows based on irrelevant factors like
gender identity, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual preference, or
ableness, they certainly are not constrained from doing so in a host of
non-SFWA venues.

And for the third time, it is easy to prove that Gould is lying. Not only are members constrained from disparaging their fellows in a host of non-SFWA venues, they are expected to constrain their own commenters as well and will be held responsible for ALL of their commenters comments, even if they utilize an open and unmoderated comment system. From the SFWA Report Appendix I. Inclusion of blog comments:

This Appendix examines the question of whether to give weight to comments made on Beale’s blog by people other than himself. A key question is whether or not Beale actively manages the content of the comment threads on his blog by removing comments: if he does so, it follows that he has permitted all
other comments to remain.

In considering the question, it’s worth looking at the precise meaning of the term “moderate” in the context of Blogger, the blogging platform used by Beale. As this article by Blogger explains, turning on Comment Moderation in that platform means that all comments have to be actively approved by the operator of the blog before they are published. Beale’s blog is not moderated in this sense, possibly because the large volume of comments on his posts would make it impractical.

However, there is evidence to suggest that Beale actively manages the comments on his blog.… Therefore it would seem that Beale actively manages the content in the comment threads on his blogs, meaning that while he may not necessarily agree with the content of those comments that are not deleted, he does consider them to be appropriate for publication.

4. Just as SFWA doesn’t control what members and non-members say in
non-SFWA spaces, it also doesn’t control what members and non-members say in response to
members’ public comments, statements, essays, and blog posts. When
persons say things in public that others find objectionable, it is
likely they will receive criticism and objections. There is an odd
misconception among some that Freedom of Speech includes freedom from
the consequences of one’s speech and freedom from commentary on what one
has said.

A fourth and particularly egregious lie. Gould knows that the very blog post he used as an excuse to purge me was a RESPONSE to NK Jemisin’s attack on me, an attack to which he himself linked in the SFWA Forum. Once more, the evidence is in the SFWA Report.

The incident which prompted this investigation was Mr. Beale’s use of the SFWAAuthors Twitter account to distribute his blog of June 13, 2013 “A black female fantasist calls for Reconciliation.” 

5. There also seems to be an oddly misplaced tendency to look at SFWA’s recent efforts to moderate language in its own channels as
somehow being responsible for public criticism of various individual’s
public statements and positions. I submit, though, that if one
is somehow threatened by the organization’s requirements that we treat
fellow members with respect within our official channels, then the problem is someplace other than with SFWA.

For the first time, Gould doesn’t directly lie, he merely attempts to deceive with misdirection and then launches another passive-aggressive attack on Mr. Wright. In his attempt to minimize the impact of Mr. Wright’s renunciation of SFWA, he has done nothing more than to show himself to be a shameless liar, and in doing so, helped support Mr. Wright’s case for leaving the organization.

*Board investigation of harassment complaints may take public statements into consideration, but this is extremely rare.

Translation: Never mind what I said above, we’ll actually do whatever we want, whenever we want. But don’t worry, as long as you stick sufficiently close to the currently approved opinions with which we will provide you, you shouldn’t have a problem. As long as you don’t run for office against me, of course.

Disqualify!

Jim Hines tries to play the usual progressive card:

So what about Vox Day making the ballot for Best Novelette? My opinion of the man isn’t exactly a secret. If he got on the ballot for writing an awesome story, great. But unlike Correia, I’ve seen very few people trying to defend Day as a good author. He did post his novelette online for potential voters, so I downloaded it and started reading. I can honestly say that even if I knew nothing about the author as a person, I would have tossed this into the rejection pile after the first couple of pages.

And perhaps he truly would have. Every editor is entitled to his own opinion. But would he have been wise to do so? After all, nearly 30 publishers passed on Harry Potter. Hines is doing little more than striking a pose here that assumes he is a legitimate SF/F writer and I am not. (It’s a little amusing that he talks about a rejection pile when I am an editor and he is not.) In any case, perhaps we can consider the objective metrics available to the public and use them to compare two of my most recently published fantasy works to his two most recently published fantasy works:

(1) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,054 Paid in Kindle Store
4.4 out of 5 stars (60)

(2) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #148,509 Paid in Kindle Store
4.4 out of 5 stars (36)

(3) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #40,425 Paid in Kindle Store
4.2 out of 5 stars (142)

(4) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #101,358 Paid in Kindle Store
4.3 out of 5 stars (143)

One would assume that the more legitimate author would have higher ratings from the general public and sell more books, right? Two of these books were published by Jim Hines in 2013. Two of these books were published by me in December 2012 and 2013. Without checking Amazon, can you tell which two are my books and which two are McCreepy’s? And since his work was of sufficient quality to win the 2012 Hugo for Best Fan Writer, how can he possibly pretend, given the objective evidence, that my work is of insufficient quality to win the 2014 Hugo for Best Novelette?

(Cue the usual suspects and their fake reviews. Of late, a few Scalzi fans have been posing as long-time Kratman fans, then giving BIG BOYS DON’T CRY fake one-star reviews. Which, by the way, was published in 2014, has 4.3 out of 5 stars (61), and ranks #18,001 Paid in Kindle Store.)

As for seeing very few people trying to defend me as a good author, it is obvious that Hines neither reads the Amazon reviews for my books nor Making Light, despite having Abi Sutherland’s talking points down pat. I find it somewhat incredible to observe how the SF/F pinkshirts never cease their spin nor their attempts to control the narrative, no matter how often reality insists on surfacing to expose their pretensions.

ANSWER: VD (1) and (3), JH (2) and (4).

Tor author rejects SFWA

L. Jagi Lamplighter is not an SFWA member, but as a fantasy author published by Tor Books, she is eligible for membership. In a recent post, she explains why she will not be joining the organization:

If a professional writing organization decides to uphold any social agenda whatsoever, they turn their back on the members of their organization that do not support that particular agenda.

Worse—this is speculative fiction—they turn their back on those who merely wish to speculate about what happens if you don’t support that agenda.

In other words, by dabbling in politics—even something as simple as deciding that a half-clad girl is sexist—they stop supporting science fiction.

So, it is with great sadness that I must announce that I shall not be applying for membership in this group that I have so long loved.

And in other SF-related news, the debate over the politicization of science fiction has now made the Washington Post, which follows the lead of a prominent liberal SF writer in supporting Larry Correia’s core position:

On the merits of this particular controversy, I largely agree with prominent liberal science fiction writer (and former Hugo winner) John Scalzi: both left and right-wing SF writers can legitimately try to influence their fans to nominate them for the Hugo, and both should be judged on the merits rather than on their political ideologies. 

My position, on the other hand, is that since the editors and writers of Tor Books, (which has won more Hugo Awards than any other publisher), have openly declared they do not judge the nominated works on their merits, no one else has any obligation to do so either. The rules are clear, so let’s play by them.

Mailvox: on surviving a witchhunt

I was asked to have a look at this question on Roosh’s forum, as it is something that more and more people are likely to face in the near future:

Witchhunts are becoming more and more common. A full list of people purged from their jobs for their political or social views can be found here. The most recent and famous is the Modzilla CEO. Now it looks like another tech startup founder is about to go.

I’m considering putting together an article for ROK on surviving witchhunts, but before I do, I’d like to see how the collective wisdom of the forum would respond to this situation.

Imagine your RVF account is connected to your real name. A liberal staff writer publishes a viral piece on an unpopular opinion you hold. A former girlfriend spreads a false abuse rumor. An employee part of a protected minority calls you bigoted because you don’t share their politics. The mob realizes you aren’t one of their tribe.

Whatever the accusation, your off hand comment or personally held view spins into a scandal as cultural elites and twitter mobs call for your resignation. Industry peers begin to distance themselves from you anticipating a purge. What would you do?

As it happened, the tech founder did end up being convinced to fall on his sword. One might well say that I am the wrong man to ask, given that my lifetime membership obviously did not survive the SFWA purge.  (It is listed at number 126 on the list linked above.) On the other hand, having been through the process, perhaps some of my thoughts about it may prove useful.

  1. Recognize that it is happening. In the case of my own purging by SFWA, I was initially caught a little by surprise because my nominal offense was so minor, had previously been committed by literally scores of other members, (including three members of the Board), and carried a specific penalty that had already been applied. It took me nearly a day to realize that they were going to take the inch I had given them and run a marathon with it. By the second day, I knew they intended to expel me at any cost, by any means necessary.
  2. Don’t think that you can reason your way out of it. Most people have the causality backwards. They think the purge is taking place due to whatever it is that they did or said. That’s not the case. It is taking place because of who you are and what you represent to them. The truth is that the faction behind your prospective purge already wanted you out and they are simply using the nominal reason given as an excuse to get rid of you. Despite my long and detailed defense, I never imagined for one second that it would be successful. In presenting it, I had other objectives in mind.
  3. Do not apologize! They will press you hard for an apology and repeatedly imply that if you will just apologize, all will be forgiven. Don’t be fooled! They are simply looking for a public confession that will confirm their accusations, give them PR cover, and provide them with the necessary ammunition to expel you. Apologizing does nothing more than hand them the very weapon they are seeking.
  4. Expose their excesses. Most of the time, these purges are committed at least partially outside the organization’s established rules and forms. You may not be an expert, but some of the people following along will be. Make sure every step in the process, and every piece of communication you receive from them, is publicized. They will pull out all the stops to hide their actions in order to avoid criticism, and in some of the more egregious cases, ridicule. Nine months later, SFWA STILL has not publicly admitted that I was the member expelled by the SFWA Board, and they even filed a DMCA takedown notice against my ISP to hide their accusations against me from public scrutiny. So shine the light of truth on the insects and watch them scurry.
  5. Do not resign! Their real goal is not to formally purge you, but to encourage you to quit on your own. That allows them to publicly wash their hands of it and claim that your decision to leave was not their fault. They will often enlist more reasonable allies to approach you and tell you that it’s not possible for you to continue any more, they will appeal to the good of the organization, and they will go on and on about the importance of an amicable departure. Don’t fall for it. Don’t do their dirty work for them. Make them take the full responsibility for throwing you out, thereby ensuring they have to suffer the long-term consequences of their actions.
  6. Make the rubble bounce. Whether you survive the purge or whether you don’t, observe who has defined himself as ally, enemy, or neutral during the process. The choices will pleasantly surprise you about as often as they disappoint you. Target the enemy at every given opportunity. Benefit your allies at every given opportunity, even if they are the lukest of lukewarm friends. Treat neutrals fairly, assume nothing of them either way, and refrain from judging them or attempting to convince them to take a side. Never forget that it is better to be respected than loved by your allies, and it is better to be feared than respected by your enemies. Your enemies will never love you, so don’t spare a moment’s thought about trying to appease them.
  7. Start nothing, finish everything. Reward your enemies who leave you alone by leaving them in peace. Reward your enemies who insist on continuing hostilities with responses that are disproportionate to their provocations. And never forget, no matter what they do, they cannot touch your mind, they cannot touch your heart, and they cannot touch your soul. Matthew 10:28.

The science fictional is the political

Instapundit rightly laments the politicization of science fiction in USA TODAY:

There was a time when science fiction was a place to explore new ideas, free of the conventional wisdom of staid, “mundane” society, a place where speculation replaced group think, and where writers as different as libertarian-leaning Robert Heinlein, and left-leaning Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke would share readers, magazines, and conventions.

But then, there was a time when that sort of openness characterized much of American intellectual life. That time seems to be over, judging by the latest science fiction dust-up. Now, apparently, a writer’s politics are the most important thing, and authors with the wrong politics are no longer acceptable, at least to a loud crowd that has apparently colonized much of the world of science fiction fandom.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the Left has politicized science fiction. While there has always been an influential Left active in science fiction – the Futurians were communists and Trotskyites who believed SF writers “should actively work for the realization of the scientific world-state
as the only genuine justification for their activities and existence” – the influence of Jack Campbell, among others, kept that tendency in check.

But the ascendancy of the post-1980s editorial gatekeepers at publishing houses like Tor, followed by the three-time SFWA presidency of a left-wing activist and inveterate self-promoter, caused the Left to assume that they were the only players on the field. They attempted a return to a modified Futurianism, albeit this time in favor of the realization of the post-racial, post-national, post-cultural, omnisexual secular society as the only justification for their activities and existence.

What is the solution? There are various possibilities, but my answer would be to outwrite them, outsell them, and win all their awards until they beg for mercy and offer a truce. They politicized science fiction, and only they can unpoliticize it. Until then, they’ll have to deal with the fact that we’re not only capable of playing the game according to the new rules, we’re able to play it better than they are.

Politics don’t belong in science fiction. But we didn’t put them there and we can’t take them out.

A letter to the SFWA

Nebula-nominated author John C. Wright, the author of THE GOLDEN AGE and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, and one of the most accomplished science fiction writers alive, has publicly resigned from Science Fiction Writers of America:

To whom it may concern,

It is with no regret whatsoever that I rescind and renounce my membership in SWFA. I wish nothing more to do with the organization and no more contact with it.

The cause which impels the separation is clear enough: over a period long enough to confirm that this is no mere passing phase, the SWFA leadership and a significant moiety of its membership has departed from the mission of the organization, and, indeed, betrayed it.

The mission of SWFA was to act as a professional organization, to enhance the prestige of writers in our genre, to deter fraud, and to give mutual aid and support to our professional dreams.

It was out of loyalty to this mission that I so eagerly joined SWFA immediately upon my first professional sales, and the reason why I was so proud to associate with the luminaries and bold trailblazers in a genre I thought we all loved.

When SWFA first departed from that mission, I continued for a time to hope the change was not permanent. Recent events have made it clear that there is not reasonable basis for that hope.

Instead of enhancing the prestige of the genre, the leadership seems bent on holding us up to the jeers of all fair-minded men by behaving as gossips, whiners, and petty totalitarians, and by supporting a political agenda irrelevant to science fiction.

Read the rest of it on his journal. It is a powerful and accurate indictment of the decline of a formerly meritorious organization. SFWA could survive the loss of a minor writer like me without anyone even noticing. But if the very best and most successful writers in the science fiction and fantasy fields see no place for themselves in it, then it is readily apparent that the organization has no reason to exist.

UPDATE: In the comments on Mr. Wright’s blog, the Hugo-, Campbell-, and Nebula-nominated science fiction author Brad Torgersen announces that he, too, is leaving SFWA.

It was with great excitement that I first entered SFWA as a full member
in 2011. It’s with a deflated and resigned sense of sadness that I am
letting my SFWA membership lapse in 2014. Largely for the reasons
you’ve cited, John. Instead of tackling (head on) the job of defending
authors’ interests in a publishing industry enduring great change, SFWA
contents itself by persecuting individual members for perceived sins of
nonconformity, engaging in ideological purity tests (“Your papers . . .
they are not in order!”) and impugning the reputations of men (and
women) who have devoted their lives to enriching and growing the field.

A vile taste in her mouth

Oh my. Anyhow, I found the angst of a fellow Hugo nominee who professes to oppose “award campaigns” to be somewhat amusing:

Let me be clear: Vox Day is a despicable person whose repeated racist, sexist, and homophobic behavior towards specific members of the genre community as well as the community as a whole should make all decent human beings recoil from his presence.  That I received my first Hugo nomination on the same ballot that bears his name leaves a vile taste in my mouth.  That the rest of the fiction ballot feels, as several people have noted, as if it’s recapitulating the culture wars only makes this nomination worse, and confirms me in my feeling that the only people who benefit from award campaigns are those with large and devoted fanbases–whether those fanbases are motivated by love of a particular writer, or the desire to stick it to the lefties (or, as is most likely, both).
– Abigail Nussbaum, April 20

Or at least, she opposes them when she isn’t successfully running one of her own, or pimping out the “dozens” of others by various would-be nominees:

Even as the award eligibility phenomenon gains steam (and respectability), more and more people are also using the internet to create a more broadly informed voter base.  Dozens of people are posting their Hugo ballots and recommendations (to take a by no means exhaustive sample: Nina Allan, Thea and Ana at The Book Smugglers, Liz Bourke (1, 2, 3, 4), the bloggers of LadyBusiness, Justin Landon, Martin Lewis, Jonathan McCalmont (1, 2), Aidan Moher, Mari Ness, Ian Sales, Jared Shurin, Rachel Swirsky (1, 2, 3), Adam Whitehead).  Blogs like Hugo Award Eligible Art(ists) seek to inform people (like myself) who have little grounding in the category, and make them acquainted with worthwhile nominees.  Existing projects like Writertopia’s Campbell award eligibility page collate information that makes it easier to nominate for an award whose eligibility requirements can seem tricky even if you’re an old hand at this Hugo stuff.  If you’re someone who is interested in voting as more than a single author’s fan, it has never been easier to gain a broad appreciation of the field and its practitioners, even the ones who aren’t superstars.

I still don’t know whether award eligibility posts are part of the problem or simply a ineffective distraction.  I do think that the efforts I’ve been seeing in the last two months have a real chance of being part of the solution, and I mean to join in.  In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting my own Hugo ballot, a few categories at a time.  (I’ll also be posting links to works that I consider worthwhile on my twitter account.)
– Abigail Nussbaum, March 6

The ironic thing about the complaints that Larry and I somehow bought our nominations is that while my massive and energetic campaign consisted of a single and straightforward post, a blogger at Tor.com actively waged a successful cheerleading effort on behalf of the Tor-published Wheel of Time series:

Therefore, O my Peeps, I exhort you: if you can and will, please
consider nominating the Wheel of Time series as a whole for the Hugo
Award for Best Novel, and spread the word so that others might do the
same…. So go! Join! Nominate! Vote! Participate! And maybe help make Hugo
history, eh? I can think of worse things to do with your time!

Of course, the Dread Ilk know my actual position on liberals giving awards to each other:

Everyone has different goals. Rabbits need the group affirmation that
these sorts of political awards offer them. Not-rabbits don’t.
Psykosonik once beat out Prince for Best Dance Record at the Minnesota
Music Awards for a song I wrote; I didn’t know we’d won until months
later because not only did I not bother going to the ceremony, my bandmates who attended didn’t even see fit to mention that we won because they knew I didn’t care. I
didn’t even know I had been a three-time Billboard top 40 recording
artist for about 16 years until I looked it up a few months ago when I
was pointing out the dirty laundry of  the “New York Times bestselling”
authors.

When you are fortunate enough to experience success, you learn to value
certain aspects of it and to disvalue others.  My objective is to write a
great epic fantasy series that is capable of creating the same feeling
in its readers that Dune once created in me. That’s why I simply laugh
when people claim I’m jealous of McRapey, or I’m imitating George
Martin, or my feelings are wounded that A Throne of Bones wasn’t
nominated for any awards.*  Because in the game I’m playing, those things
don’t even enter into it. They’re not relevant to my metric for
success.

That being said, I have thoroughly enjoyed being nominated for the Hugo this year and I sincerely hope that this is merely the first of many such nominations for me and other fine writers upon whom the rabbits gaze upon in terror. I am very much looking forward to attending WorldCon this year and spending lots of quality time with my fellow Hugo nominees there, such as Mr. Charles Stross, who writes: “As a matter of policy I do not talk down/diss Hugo nominees when I myself am on the shortlist. But I shall be waiting for Vox Day in the Hugo Losers Party wearing a
kilt and a shit-eating grin, with a bottle of 90-proof distilled
schadenfreude that’s got his name on it.”

I don’t know. Sounds a little rape-culturey to me. For a nice roundup of the rabbits striking various poses and feeling the heat, check out Far Beyond Reality. And since it’s starting to get boring, I think that’s enough about the Hugo Awards for now until I’m able to read through the packet and decide for whom I’ll be voting.

*As it happens, the book was nominated for the 2013 Clive Staples Award.

The destruction of Damien Walter

First the massive tetsubo that is Larry Correia responds to the scurrilous libels of SF wannabe Damien Walter in The Guardian:

[M]y name showed up as the poster child for hate mongery and villainy in the Guardian (a liberal tabloid that passes for a major newspaper in Britain). I’ve been in a lot of American news things but this was a first for me, so on Friday afternoon I had to discuss with my fans on Facebook what I should put on my new business cards. We finally decided on Larry F. Correia, International Lord of Hate. Almost went with The Hatemaster because of the 70’s super villain vibe, but that looks too much like The Hamster when you’re reading fast.

So here is the article written by Damian Walter. It turns out that Tom Kratman knew him back when Asimov’s had a forum, and remembered him as a shrill little libprog, and that if Damian was at the Guardian a village somewhere in England was missing their idiot.

Somebody else told me that Damian is an “aspiring” author, and that he’d recently been given a grant by the British government to write a novel. I have no idea if this is true, and don’t care enough to look it up, but man, if it is… your government actually pays people to write novels? BWA HA HA HAW! Holy shit. As an actual novelist, that’s funny. And I thought my government was stupid.

Unlike Damian, I’m not a huge pussy, so I will include the link to the thing that I’m about to insult.

There is more. There is considerably more. Go, thou, and read. And laugh. Then, when Mr. Correia was done abusing the corpse of Mr. Walter’s aspiring career, the elegant rapier that is John C. Wright filleted the bloody chunks:

I was reading Larry Correia’s blog, Monster Hunter Nation. In today’s episode, he has been subject to a ritual shaming by the Guardian so-called newspaper of some country our ancestors left long ago when we got sick of their dandified addiction to petty tyranny, and came here to be free men.

The mewling cravens and castrati were left behind. By some odd miracle, no doubt involving arts forbidden by the Catholic Church, they reproduced and swelled in numbers, and, after Churchill was voted out of office, they outbred the remaining homo sapiens, and overspread the sceptred isle, so green and fair, once called Our Lady’s Dowry.

Not to worry! All that made England decent, fine and free survives in America.

How badly have the dross devolved? A simian named Mr. Damian Walter takes up his pen in his quadrumanous left foot to savage the indomitable Mr. Correia. I read this sentence:

Somebody else told me that Damian is an “aspiring” author, and that he’d recently been given a grant by the British government to write a novel.

A grant?

A grant?!

A GRANT?!!

Can you imagine the sheer effrontery it requires for someone who grovels for pity-pennies to address a real man, a man who works for a living, and upbraid him in his chosen field of endeavor?

Mr. Correia quit his day job, friends. He supports himself entirely by his pen, which by any account, is a frail narrow pillar for all by the most accomplished wordsmiths.

The simian creature does not write in his non-work hours, as do I, he is a beggar. An aspiring beggar. Nay, let me insult no beggar. The creature is not an honest beggar. Honest beggars asks and accept only alms freely given.

There is, of course, more. There is considerably more. Read, and then spare a moment of pity for the wretched creature so publicly humiliated. The painful thing for the libelous Mr. Walter is not that he has managed to draw the scorn of two of the best and most successful writers in the SF/F genre, but that the expression of that scorn makes for considerably better reading than anything he is ever likely to write, with or without the funding of the British government.

No likely futures

I’ve pointed out many times, and demonstrated on more than one occasion, that the Left is considerably less intelligent and educated than it believes itself to be. To further demonstrate the conceit, dishonesty, and self-deception of the Left, consider Damien Walter’s inept responses to criticism of his most recent hit piece aka Guardian column.

Commenter:  Not quite sure I agree with the conclusion “The future is queer”. Given the current balance of power in the world, it must as equally be likely that future generations may revert to traditional gender roles, however advanced the tech gets. For example, in 75 to 100 years, it’s quite easy to imagine a society which regards historical sexual freedom as a contributing factor to the failure of our capitalist paradise. Revisionism which twists historical events is not new, and it’s entirely possible some future government/state will twist our present when it’s their history. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the progressive liberalism talked about here affects only a tiny percentage of the world’s population. When the Chinese buy up the UK in a fire sale 50 years from now, how much mind are they going to pay such freedoms?

DamienGWalter: Of course, there are no absolutes when it comes to the future. But putting aside “collapse” scenarios, I can’t see any likely future where gender isn’t radically changed from its current norms. I think expecting otherwise would be like expecting feudal social structures to carry over in to industrial society. We can already see the structural changes being wrought by technology, the social changes are then almost determined.

There are 83 countries where homosexuality is criminalized. There are 20 countries where homogamy has been at least partially legalized. The countries where homosexuality is criminalized have growing populations. The countries where homogamy is legal have declining populations. And yet, Mr. Walter can’t see the possibility of a future where the larger trend is in line with demographic growth.  No wonder he is a mere SF wannabe rather than a bona fide SF writer; his imagination is too limited.

Any doubts that he was engaging in pure rhetoric are answered in this exchange:

Commenter: It’s Larry Correia being discussed, so let’s use his handy Internet Arguing Checklist to examine this article. Points #1 (Skim until Offended), #4 (Disregard Inconvenient Facts), and #5 (Make S——t Up) are fairly well represented here. In particular, compare Damien Walter’s misrepresentation of Correia’s article:

    But Correia boils it down to a much simpler argument. However accurate a queer future might be, SF authors must continue to pander to the bigotry of conservative readers if they want to be “commercial”.

to an excerpt from the core of Larry’s actual essay:

    “Now, before we continue I need to establish something about my personal writing philosophy. Science Fiction is SPECULATIVE FICTION. That means we can make up all sorts of crazy stuff and we can twist existing reality to do interesting new things in order to tell the story we want to tell. I’m not against having a story where there are sexes other than male and female or neuters or schmes or hirs or WTF ever or that they flip back and forth or shit… robot sex. Hell, I don’t know. Write whatever tells your story.

    But the important thing there is STORY. Not the cause of the day. STORY.

For extra entertainment, read Larry’s brilliant counter-fisking of Jim C Hines’s post.

DamienGWalter: Counter-fisking? Hmmm…sounds kinky.

Deep and insightful stuff there. But Walter gave his propagandistic game away in an earlier essay: “The challenge for writers of science fiction today is not to repeat the same dire warnings we have all already heard, or to replicate the naive visions of the genres golden age, but to create visions of the future people can believe in. Perhaps the next Nineteen Eighty-Four, instead of confronting us with our worst fear, will find the imagination to show us our greatest hope.”

What is his greatest hope? Based on his recent column, a queer future. Kathryn Cramer of Tor.com correctly pegged Walter as a propagandist rather than a writer with anything to say about the human condition on Tor.com.

“Walter says he wants SF to do more than “reflect” the world, but rather fiction that seeks to “influence” it.”

And that is what fundamentally separates Pink SF/F from Blue SF/F. We tell stories to entertain the reader and make him think. They print propaganda to lecture the reader and stop him from thinking. We ask “what if?” They assert “it will be so!”