Tag: SFWA

Science fiction and fantasy writer Sarah Hoyt explains why she is no longer an SFWA member:

Yes, when I dipped into the discussions in SFWA I became aware that most of the people talking were unreconstructed college Marxists.  But given the organization’s policy of “once qualified you’re in forever” and the fact that the ever-shrinking advances (a subject for another post, really) made writing either a mad choice because you had to write six books a year to make a middle-class income, or a hobby, it was to be expected those with time to get into never-ending public wrangling would be college professors.  And we all know what those are like.

And then came Amazon and the possibility of indie-publishing.

SFWA was always resistant to the idea of self-publishing.  Its rules were designed to protect those who were traditionally published.  In fact, over the years, they ignored transgressions in contracts and behavior if the publisher was big enough.  After all the leadership of SFWA, too, had to work for the six publishers remaining.

To say they didn’t cope well with the new system when any writer can publish himself, there’s virtually no stigma attached and several new writers have made far more than the beginning advance is to understate the case.  There were alarums and excursions and loud Amazon denunciations and pledges of eternal love to the traditional publishers.  I think some members dropped out over these, but I was busy writing and paid no attention.

Then came the dispute between Amazon and IPG, a small distributor of small press books.  The details evade me after all this time, though to be fair they were never very clear, except that IPG screamed Amazon was bullying them or forcing them to sell their books cheaper or whatever and SFWA – with no question asked its members, no clear delineation of the dispute – immediately came down on the side of IPG.  This while many of us were making a substantial income from Amazon and while IPG could not provide a living income to any of the authors’ it distributed.  (The key word about IPG being “Small.”)

This penetrated through my fog of writing, and I dropped SFWA, and eventually MWA who took the same, if less vocal position.  (I’m also currently lapsed on RWA, simply because I see no benefit in the membership.)

I realized that of the things I expected SFWA to do, it was doing none: it did not provide for members in financial distress; it did not secure us group insurance rates; it did not dispute the abuses or ever-shrinking advances of big publishers, of even the wisdom of the push-marketing model, all of which materially hurt their members; it did not complain of contracts that frankly amount to RICO violations by preventing the writer from working except at the sufferance of the publisher; it didn’t even, really, teach new authors.  RWA has a division of unpublished authors, whom it gets in touch with mentors and teaches.  SFWA’s version of “beginning authors” are those who have sold enough to be called professionals – i.e. those who already have some clue how to navigate the system.

In fact, SFWA didn’t do anything that might be considered its legitimate interest, but continuously stuck its nose in things where it had no interest, such as disputes between distributors and Amazon.

This is when I let SFWA lapse and decided never to renew again.

The current chaos in the SFWA is primarily the result of two strategic blunders by the old guard who are now being driven out by those who wish to turn the organization into the Vereinbarunggehend Geschlecht Polizei.  The first was the decision to stop requiring Active members to requalify, aka “The Heinlein Aberration”. That is why the organization now has an overabundance of Active members who have barely published anything, are terminally insecure about that fact, and are hell-bent on finding some way to demonstrate that They Are Too Equal to the real writers.  The second was the decision to permit Fantasy, and later, Horror writers to join the organization, aka “The McCaffrey Mistake” . There was always going to be a severe culture clash between the hard science fiction writers and the romance writers… even when they put their romantic triangles in space.

Since it is a lot easier to simply write necrobestial romances than master one or more scientific disciplines and turn that into interesting fiction, there are considerably more of the necrobestial devotees shambling about.  And they quite genuinely believe that their work is every bit as Valid and Important and Serious as the science fiction despite the fact that there isn’t an original idea to be found in any of it.  Derivative schlock like Puppinette ripping off Jane Austen and McRapey ripping off everyone he has ever read is about the best one can expect from that crowd.

Will she choose the wolf or the vampire?  Will she choose the rebel spaceman or the alien stand-in for the Gentleman of Color? Will she choose the sexy zombie or the sexy witch? SFWA fantasy isn’t a literature of ideas, it’s a literature of geometries. 

I posted the following in the SFWA forums a few days ago and hereby grant myself permission to quote myself:

Jerry Pournelle raised the historical example of a friend of his and
his eccentric habit of politely, and very directly, inviting women to
have sex with him.  Two things became clear in the course of the
discussion that followed, which was a) most of the members commenting
believed that this single polite invitation constituted sexual
harassment, and b) most of those members believed that their position
was the popular and mainstream one.  As I suspected that the consensus
opinion of the vocal membership on sexual harassment is somewhat out of
the mainstream for various reasons, I took a poll of the readers at one
of my blogs.

I first asked for the sex of the reader, then asked the following question, based on the example Jerry cited:  Do
you consider it to be sexual harassment when a man asks a woman with
whom he is unacquainted, once, politely, and with no physical contact,
if she is willing to have sex with him?  I counted most answers with conditions as “YES”.

MEN: 121 NO, 13 YES

WOMEN: 28 NO, 2 YES

One woman commented: “I am astonished at how many men are saying
yes or trying to qualify the answers with conditions and settings. Most
women get propositioned in some way, shape or form (not necessarily the
question directly, but jeezly, even innuendo, joking, and waggling
eyebrows convey the same question in a different format while leaving an
out of “I was just joking!”). You just say no if you are not DTF. It is
not a hard set of questions. If you have the victim mentality, which I
know some women do, then you will feel threatened by the mere asking.
But if you have a shred of backbone, you might be shocked at the
forthrightness of the question, but shock is not feeling threatened and
“harassed.” Any man or woman who says yes to the second question is an
idiot.”

And one individual took the question to his company’s HR specialist. “It
is not, under [state] and Federal law, harassment to ask ONCE. 
However, if it got to court, it is even money to be ruled sexual
harassment if the question happened at work and was unwanted. Full
discloser, we have a manager who was sleeping around with his
underlings. Nothing happened since he was “good looking” (no law suits).
Also had a supervisor buy flowers for another staff member’s birthday.
That was viewed as harassment and he was forced out. He was old and fat.“

So, it should be clear that many people outside the organization
disagree with the consensus opinion expressed here and that the core of
the problem here is that the men one encounters at cons too often tend to
violate the unspoken rules of avoiding the commission of sexual harassment:

1. Be handsome;
2. Be attractive;
3. Don’t be unattractive.

Now, one can certainly presume that the male and female readers of my
blog are a different subset of humanity than the members here.  I would
not dispute that, my objective is merely to point out that the present
groupthink here is not necessarily the societal norm and that by
attempting to take on the role of SF Sexual Police to the convention
world, (at the very least), SFWA is not only stepping far outside its
legitimate responsibilities, but will also look completely insane to
people who are, to be polite, of different socio-sexual classes than
most of the SFWA membership.

I am no stranger to sexual harassment.  I was in a successful band on
a gay-run music label in my early 20s and I can safely assert that I
have been sexually harassed by more men and women than most members
here. It can be annoying, and for women I’m sure it can at times feel
threatening.  And even so, sexual harassment is still irrelevant to the
organization’s primary purpose of helping the members write and publish
science fiction and fantasy.  Therefore, it is something that the
organization should not make itself look ridiculous in attempting to
combat, at SF conventions or anywhere else.

Needless to say, this lead to a civil, rational, and mutually edifying exchange of views among the professional science fiction writing membership, which was so exceedingly civil that the poor moderator was forced to lock it down barely two hours later.  And while the shambling shoggoths didn’t hesitate to declare their objections to, well, everything, it should nevertheless be readily apparent to all the members of SFWA that their position concerning a single polite but unsolicited invitation amounting to sexual harassment is not necessarily the societal consensus.

It would seem remarkable that those apparently least likely to receive such invitations appear to be the most terrified of them, until one reflects upon what sort of bottom-feeding omegas are likely to make a pass at a shambler.

I receive some answers to my questions concerning the mysterious “SFWA confidentiality rules” from an SFWA officer:

1. Can you please inform me where in the bylaws these “confidentiality rules” can be found?

“This report contains posts from online Forums, and private emails sent to the Board in conjunction with the investigation.  Just as our Member Discussion Forums and our printed Directory and The Forum are subject to Board policies regarding limited access, so is this report, both for your own protection and for others.”

2. Is it a violation of “SFWA confidentiality rules” to provide a copy of the report to my attorney?

“No.”

So, let’s summarize:

1.  The SFWA Board has openly and admittedly violated the clearly posted SFWA forum confidentiality rules by reposting material from the SFWA discussions forums outside those forums without the explicit permission of me, and presumably, other members.

2. The SFWA Board appears to have invented some imaginary “confidentiality rules” and appealed to them in an attempt to keep its admittedly one-sided “investigative report” from being released to the membership and the public.

3. According to one SFWA officer, these nonexistent confidentiality rules permit the release of the report to non-SFWA members, including, but not necessarily limited to, my attorney, contra the claim of another SFWA officer.

4. The SFWA Board has intentionally misconstrued the SFWA forum confidentiality rules, by claiming “the report contains material from the SFWA Discussion Forums which therefore may not be distributed outside of SFWA”.

This last claim is obviously and knowingly false, as the confidentiality rule is posted right on the front page of the forum and states: “The SFWA discussion forums are for SFWA members only, and all posts made
here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted outside these
forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”  Emphasis added.  Note that there is no special exception for the Board.

Since the Board has already broken discussion forum confidentiality by distributing material from the forums outside them, and since the SFWA officer responsible for the investigation subsequently informed me that the report “may not be distributed outside of SFWA”, I will provide a copy of the investigative report to any SFWA member who emails me to request one.  In light of the remote, but still extant possibility that the double-secret “SFWA confidentiality rules” relating to the release of the report to non-members will magically appear, I will refrain from making it available to the public for the time being.

In addition to the SFWA Board’s violation of existing rules and invention of nonexistent ones, if there is any doubt the process is a farce designed to give cover to their true object, consider the following answer to another question:

5. There are specific claims concerning [REDACTED]. Why was I not provided with the evidence supporting those claims?  The appendix included no copies of [REDACTED].

These are listed for context and the Board will be considering these, but they are irrelevant to the substance of the complaint and shared in confidence with the Board.

So, we are told, the Board will be considering things that are irrelevant to the substance of “the complaint”, which is the same thing as “the investigative report” even though, according to the protocols, the report is supposed to be “comprehensive”.  As I expect will soon be readily apparent to even the most unsympathetic SFWA reviewer, it is far from comprehensive and is strictly prosecutorial.  And I am warned that if I subsequently proceed to release the report to the public and thereby violate the nonexistent “SFWA confidentiality rules”, that will be held against me.

“Pelase be advised that such an action will be added to the material of
the complaint and considered by the Board in its deliberations.” [sic]

As I noted yesterday, what we’re seeing from the SFWA is a petty version of the same tactic one can observe being utilized by various governments and agencies.  Just as the police in Arlington, Massachusetts attempted to secure permission for a “voluntary walk-through” before finally breaking in and doing what they intended to do from the start, the SFWA Board is appears to be trying to provide cover for its predetermined actions in order to avoid alarming the rest of the membership and alerting them to the fact that any of them can be expelled for any reasons that happens to suit eight members of the current Board at the moment.

This charade of due process is only being played out to conceal the fact that, thanks to the revision of the SFWA bylaws, a united Board can quite legitimately expel any member for anything, including their appearance or their opinions.  This is the leftist’s dream structure, in which the only limits on the actions of the ruling body are its own self-imposed restrictions that can be ignored at will. 

The curtain has gone up. The lights will soon be shining bright. Enjoy the play.

I received an email from a gentleman from the SFWA today:

Complaints against you have been filed by
multiple members of SFWA. In following our procedures for responding to
such complaints a report was prepared by a Board-appointed investigator
and found, by a Board vote, to merit continuing our complaint process.

Our current protocols mandate presenting you with the report and
adequate opportunity to respond so that the Board may make a
determination. Responses may include, but need not be limited to,
denial, claiming extenuating circumstances, and claiming provocation.
You have 14 days to respond. If you require statements by others to be
submitted for the record, such statements shall be collected and added
to the record. If you request an extension of time to collect these
statements, one additional 7-day-period shall be granted.

Please find attached the Board investigator’s report. This report
and all contents not publicly available fall under SFWA confidentiality
rules and may not be publicly disclosed.

Now, here is what remains something of a mystery.  I examined the organization bylaws and there are no “confidentiality rules”.  There are confidentiality rules in the Forum, which are clearly posted, but an unsolicited email is not a Forum post and is no more protected by expectations of confidentiality than spam.

However, I certainly wouldn’t want to violate any more organization rules than I already have, so I requested more information from the gentleman:


I have received the information you sent me.  I shall be pleased to
review it.  However, I do not recognize that the information falls under
any “confidentiality rules”, as this is not the SFWA Forum, but an
unsolicited email sent to me.  Nor are there any “confidentiality rules”
in the SFWA bylaws.


Please inform me by what “confidentiality rules” you believe this report
falls under within 24 hours or I will assume that there are none
pertinent to this report and I am therefore free to reproduce its
contents in its entirety wherever I see fit.

Now, perhaps there are some double-secret confidentiality rules of which I am unaware, in which case I shall, of course, abide by them.  But if there are no such rules, then I shall certainly not hesitate to make the report available to the public.

Mary Robinette Kowal, who is a leading SFWA pinkshirt, a professional puppeteer, and a mediocre science fiction writer of Regency romances with a little fantasy sprinkled over them, (you know, the sort that wins awards despite nobody reading them), has decided to get tuff now and tell the real SF writers to “shut the fuck up” and leave the organization. Because respect.

Dear Twelve Rabid Weasels of SFWA, please shut the fuck up.

I know you value your freedom of speech. Good on you. However there are 1788 other members of SFWA who also value their freedom of speech and manage to exercise it without being raging assholes.

You are professional writers, so should know the power of words. I therefore must assume that you are deliberately being provocative and trying to set things on fire because you enjoy watching a flamewar.

There are 1788 other members who don’t. Scratch that… there are 1752 because some people just quit because of you….

Please quit. And by “quit” I mean, please quit SFWA in a huff. Please quit noisily and complaining about how SFWA is censoring you for asking you to stop using hate speech. Please quit and complain about the “thoughtcrime” of asking people not to sexually harass someone.  Please quit and bellyache about the good old days when people could be bigoted jerks. I want you to express your opinions clearly so that everyone knows them and knows that you are quitting because the other members of SFWA want you to Shut the Fuck up.

With all sincerity,

Mary Robinette Kowal

First, I note that of the three people that I know who have quit the organization, two quit due to the actions of Kowal and the junior members that the Scalzi administration foolishly encouraged instead of keeping in line.  And if 36 people have really quit of late, then obviously the responsibility lies with those who have actively sown dissension and dissatisfaction throughout the organization with their inept activist leadership rather than the so-called “rabid weasels” who have been there for years, if not decades.

It lies with people like Mary Puppinette Kowal.

Second, no one is complaining about anyone asking people not to sexually harass anyone.  They are objecting, quite reasonably, to the insane idea of setting up SFWA as a sexual harassment police with self-declared jurisdiction over every SF/F convention on the planet. They are objecting to the abuse of the organization by a number of vocal nonentities attempting to use it for their own ideological purposes.

If anyone is going to “Shut the Fuck Up”, it should be irresponsible nobodies like the Puppinette who have absolutely nothing of any value to say, either on their blogs or in their books, and who have contributed nothing to the organization except to bring it to the brink of self-implosion.

I continue with these SFWA-related posts, not because I think anyone is particularly interested in the petty squabbles of writers, but because they are a perfect micro-example of the greater processes in work as part of the Left’s long march through the institutions and organs of society.  Leftists like the Puppinette invade, infest, and then, as soon as they feel strong enough, start issuing dictates and posturing as if they speak for the entire organization in order to cement their control.  They attack, attack, and attack, and when they finally meet up with a modicum of resistance, shriek that their critics are being provocative for no reason at all except personal shortcomings.

Thus we end up with “Christian” churches devoid of actual Christians, a “Republican” party devoid of genuine republicans, a “Democratic” party devoid of proper democrats, and a “Science Fiction  writers” association without any actual science fiction writers.  Learn to recognize the pattern.  It is already at work in an organization near you; it is why every organization that is not firmly vigilant about keeping these destructive invaders out will eventually succumb to them.

While the organization is still reeling from the loss of our intrepid president of the last three years, it appears another member has just seriously violated SFWA’s confidentiality rules by posting screencaps of posts by Jerry Pournelle, Susan Schwartz, Jim Bailey, William Barton, Brad Torgersen, Gordon van Gelder, Bud Webster, and Jim Fiscus on Speculative Friction.  On the basis of the posts selected, it appears to have been done by a member who is sympathetic to Ms Jemisin.

Some Background: After John Scalzi became president of SFWA in 2010
the organization moved the official SFWA forums away from SFF.net to a
server under the SFWA.org domain. Many members moved to the new forums,
but the private SFWA forum on SFF.net remained for people who did not
want to make the change. The conversations on this Tumblr come from the
private SFF.net forums.

These discussions center around the proposed expulsion of Theodore
Beale/Vox Day from the organization and a speech given by author N. K.
Jemisin. There is also mention of a recent issue with the SFWA Bulletin.
Context for all of this:

(My apologies, Josh, I was incorrect.) While SFF.NET is not SFWA.ORG, I am informed that it is every bit as off-limits to make the private messages from sff.private.sfwa.lounge public as it is to quote the messages posted in the SFWA forums.

And if you think these conversations are entertaining, I only wish you could read the insane drivel being posted by the pinkshirts.