Tag: SFWA

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.

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.

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.

Yet more sex-related scandals in the freaky world of science fiction:

Over the last 48 hours or so, the science fiction and fantasy literature field has been rocked by multiple accusations of multiple authors of improper behaviour, abuse, gaslighting, racism, misogyny, sexual coercion and authors using their platforms to engage in dogpiling and bullying.

The number of accusations has been almost overwhelming. Genre Grapevine is currently running a list of the allegations where the facts of the matter are not in dispute. Authors Paul Krueger, Myke Cole and Sam Sykes have been accused of inappropriate behaviour (Cole has subsequently been dropped by his publisher and agent, and Krueger by his agent) and others of enabling that behaviour.

It’s the exact opposite of “shocking” to be informed that a field that lionizes convicted and admitted pedophiles and celebrates its sexual freaks is rife with creeps. Like, you know, our old pal McRapey, who has a pain in his tummy over the possibility of his own peccadilloes coming to light.

My friends fucked up. Not accidentally, to be clear. They made choices.

They are responsible for their wholly intentional fuck ups.

Also, I am responsible for my fuck-ups in relation to them — to what extent my friendship implies complicity with their actions, or provides cover, or has allowed me to overlook things I should have been paying attention to, or has allowed me to excuse what they were doing. This is one reason I feel like I have a small ulcer at the moment; the gnawing feeling in my gut that wonders how much of their fuck ups are at my door. In some cases, not much! In others: well, more.

(You should also know right now I definitely have that exasperated part of me that is all, like, look, I haven’t been in the same room as this guy for a couple of years! I don’t have a body cam on him! I don’t see every goddamned thing he does as he does it and to whom he does it! My brain is very full of defensive frustrated whining right now! Which is also a thing I have to work through.)

(And while I’m at it, I’m going through my own interactions with people, especially women, at conventions and other places where it turns out the power differential slides toward me. I can admit that this power differential wasn’t something I truly clued into for a while — I think it took being SFWA President to get it drilled into my head, because that was a big fuckin’ neon sign, wasn’t it — but it was there fairly early, so, uhhh, yeah. I’ve seen people commenting “well, at least we still have Scalzi,” and there’s part of my brain going, oh, man, I sure hope you do! But I also know that I have fucked up before in other places where I didn’t understand my power (see: RaceFail, now a decade back), and because of that what I did or said hurt people. That’s also a thing.)

So, yeah, I have to sit with and work through all of that.

It’s delightful to be able to state that I have absolutely no connection with any of these awful people on either side. And I can’t say that my own tummy hurts from laughing so hard, because I’m not really the laugh-out-loud type. But I may have smiled.

UPDATE: If, like me, you have no idea what the latest tempest in the freakshow teapot is about, it apparently is related to this:

In last night’s episode of The Horror Show With Brian Keene, he said the show’s team was aware of 10 cases of allegations involving everything from sexual coercion to sexual assault that have been made “against ten different individuals in the comic book, horror, science fiction, book-selling, convention organizer, and cosplay sectors of our industry — all of which had publicly come to light in the last 7 days.” When Keene followed up the podcast today with a public Patreon post, “Behind Closed Doors”, he said the number is up to 17.

The soyboys are finally beginning to understand why the men’s club was necessary, even by their idiotic equalitarian standards. It’s fine to decry the creeps and all, and I have no doubt that most of them did what they are accused of and more, but the fact is that there has been a lot of significant art created by very flawed men. I am dubious that all of the art, science, and technology created by sub-Alpha males and good Christian married men can be adequately replaced by female creators.

SFWA member and convicted child molester Ed Kramer has gotten himself in legal trouble again:

Former owner and co-founder of Dragon Con, Edward E. Kramer, was charged with possession of child pornography again. This comes after an investigation into Kramer et al for attempting to hack the court’s computers.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, Kramer had a warrant issued against him on Monday, September 30th, 2019 for having multiple pictures of child pornography.

The warrant was issued after investigators began scouring Kramer’s computer and found that he and a private investigator, TJ Ward, attempted to hack into a county’s computers because another judge – Kathryn Schrader – suspected a prosecutor of monitoring her computer. Kramer, Ward, and Schrader were apparently all working together to hack into the county’s systems, but the trio’s plot was foiled when a wiretap and additional investigators began investigating Kramer, Ward, and Schrader, as detailed in a separate report by WSB-TV from back in mid-September.

Kramer’s fellow SFWA members, including the current president, tried to pretend he wasn’t a member the last time he was in the news, back in 2014. But, then as now, he was merely inactive, which meant that he hadn’t paid his dues while he was in prison; he was still listed in the online member’s directory.

To the best of my knowledge, he has still not been expelled from the organization, which has a long and sordid history of defending him.

Larry Correia chronicles the sad decline of China Mike Glyver from science fiction historian to open piracy:

A while back Richard Fox got nominated for a prestigious award for a story he wrote. Problem was, Richard is a financially successful indy author, and the snoots have a hate boner for indy authors, (snoots are all about writers having to go through proper thinking “gate keepers” first). Since Glyer is addicted to stirring up controversy, the world’s fattest vulture swooped in and started posting about Richard Fox’s nomination.

Wait… You know what? Glyer is right about one thing. Accuracy is important. Vultures are actually noble, social creatures who play an important role in the ecosystem, which is basically the opposite of Mike Glyer, so I should not have compared him to a vulture. I apologize. To vultures… Not Mike Glyer. He can fuck right off.

Problem was, Richard was already wise to Glyer’s game, and told him to keep his name out of his whore mouth, up to and including sending an official take down notice.

Good. Because fuck Mike Glyer. Every author should tell him to keep their stuff off his awful website.

At the time I didn’t really know or care who posted the story on the internet. That’s obfuscation. If Richard did post it himself, that’s up to him. When I throw out the trash, that doesn’t mean I want racoons rummaging through my garbage can. Nobody wants racoons in their trash. Now imagine Mike Glyer rooting around in your dumpster. No. Shoo, bad Glyer! BAD!

Except after seeing the email exchange, it’s worse than that. Richard posted the link to a private closed forum only readable by SFWA members (the people who would be voting for the award). Somebody (Richard says he doesn’t know who) took that private link and stuck it on Google Drive and Glyer linked to that to get clicks for his shitty public website. When Richard contacted him, rather than be a decent human being and go “Oh, my bad. Sorry.”  Glyer acted like an entitled shit and started lecturing the author he was trying to screw over about his tone and lack of civility.

It’s always amusing to see how SJWs are shocked to discover that the laws apply to them too. Ever since John “McRapey” Scalzi helpfully came up with the bright idea to make award-nominated fiction available to the voters, the SJW gatekeepers of science fiction have been distributing the award-nominated works to the public, mostly with the permission of the rights holders.

However, Richard Fox did not give his permission to have his work publicly released outside of the private SFWA forum to which I totally do not have access any longer. And while China Mike was not the only individual to provide a public link to Fox’s work, he was the only one who refused to take the link down and leave it down when requested to do so by the rights holder.

Needless to say, the usual suspects have been whining and crying about Fox’s “timing” and “motivations” despite the fact that none of that matters. The law is clear. If a rights holder tells you to take something down, it doesn’t matter why or when he tells you to do so, you either comply or you are in violation of U.S. copyright law. End of story.

On a side note, doesn’t “China Mike, space pirate” have a great ring to it?

Forgive me if I don’t gasp in horror at the totally brand new idea that literary organizations don’t promote people they don’t like:

The world of literature, where Jews have made so many invaluable and long-standing contributions, is succumbing quickly to the new anti-Semitism.

The most recent example comes from the United Kingdom. Two cultural organizations in England have just rejected hosting talks by novelist Richard Zimler—explicitly because he’s Jewish. In the Guardian, Zimler writes of the conversation with a friend in which he learned of the trouble: “‘They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,’ he said. “‘They even stopped replying to my emails and returning my phone messages.’”

Zimler had been hoping to promote his new novel, The Gospel According to Lazarus, and up until his friend confirmed the author’s Jewishness, these unnamed organizations had been interested. And then they weren’t. “It made Britain seem like a place I didn’t know and maybe never knew,” Zimler writes. “Even just asking about my religious affiliation struck me as outrageous.

It doesn’t bode well for the next Bellows, Roths, and Malamuds, none of whom would come close to making it through today’s identitarian obstacle course to publication. And it’s going to get worse.

Invaluable? It would be very hard to name three more overrated novelists than Bellows, Roth, and Malamud. Anyhow, Zimler is still getting published. How many writers known to be conservative Christians are published these days by the Big Five’s primary imprints?

To virtually no one’s surprise, another SJW writer has been outed as a pedophile:

Peter Bright, best known as a contributing writer to the tech publication Ars Technica, has been arrested on charges of soliciting sex with children online. This complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, shows that an undercover FBI special agent contacted Bright via KinkD, a social media platform for sexual fetish connections, on April 18.

“Bright has been charged with one count of attempted enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity,” reports Claire Goforth at The Daily Dot:

A federal complaint alleges that Bright sought to molest a 7- and 9-year-old and met with an undercover agent for this purpose, at which point he was arrested. It also states that Bright claimed to be in a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old. He is currently being held without bail.

His Twitter handle is… wait for it… @DrPizza. And no one could ever have guessed his inclinations from his tweets.

As someone named DrPizza I dread to think what my involvement in pizzagate will turn out to be.

And now we know.

I had no doubt whatsoever that one of the major figures of science fiction fandom and Lifetime Member of SFWA, Forrest Ackerman, was a seriously creepy pervert who preyed upon any young women foolish enough to hang around that environment. The way the man named “Uncle Forry” used to publicly drool over a young cosplayer named Heidi Saha should have sufficed to lock him up and instigate a multi-agency crime scene investigation of his garage, basement, and garden. But now there is eyewitness evidence that “Mr. Science Fiction” was exactly the creepy molester he appeared to be, courtesy of one Lucy Chase Williams, who posted this indictment of the man last week.

I and other young women like me were subjected to a different kind of “Forry worship.” How differently would any of you have felt, when all you wanted was to talk about monsters with the “over eager editor” of your favorite monster magazine, if your Uncle Forry had forced wet kisses on you? If he had put his hands all over you, pinching your “naughty bottom” and squeezing your “boobies”? If he had enthusiastically related with a big grin how he wanted to strip off your clothes with everybody watching?

And if, in the face of your total refusal of any of his attentions every single time you saw him in person, he never didn’t try again, and again, and again? And if for years, in between those times, he mailed you letters with pornographic photos, and original stories about how naughty you were, and how he wanted to hurt and abuse you, yet all the while make you weep and beg for more? And if he continued that behavior, despite written and verbal demands to cease, entirely unabashed for more than two decades?

No, I can’t forget him either — or how he turned my childhood love of monsters into something adult and truly monstrous.

I’m not sure what is more appalling, the fact that so many of the famous figures of the recent science fiction past were deviants and sex criminals or the fact that the current science fiction community still resolutely refuses to stop celebrating them or to root out the deviants and sex criminals currently in their midst.

Like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Forrest Ackerman is still celebrated by the SFWA as well as the freaks of science fiction fandom.

UPDATE: Beyond creepy. “Obsessed” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF HEIDI SAHA was assembled by Forry Ackerman and sent off to the printer prior to Heidi’s summer 1973 appearances as Vampirella at the New York Comic Art Convention and TorCon 2.

She was 14 years old.

So much for SFWA’s increasingly ludicrous claim to represent the interests of professional science fiction writers. It’s now an objectively racist organization of people who mostly don’t write science fiction that doesn’t accept American Indians or Hispanics who professionally publish science fiction.

Statement from the SFWA Membership Credentials Committee
Recently, a science fiction writer made a very public announcement of his application to join SFWA. SFWA Bylaws section VI.1.c.i gives discretion to the membership credentials committee “regardless of qualifications.” Based on the behavior of and online statements by this writer over the preceding year or so, which the credentials committee believes is inconsistent with the obligations that SFWA members have to one another, the committee has determined that it has good and sufficient cause to deny this membership.

We did not take this step lightly, and we are sensitive to suggestions that this action is due to the writer’s political opinions: it is not. SFWA does not, and will not, impose a political test or political standard for membership. We strive to be welcoming to all SFF writers of good will, whatever their personal beliefs or opinions. However, the membership credentials committee, comprised by the sitting Board of Directors, believes that admitting this writer would not be in keeping with our obligations to our membership.

SFWA is a heavily converged organization. As per the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence, they are increasingly unable to perform their core function, which originally concerned representing the interests of professional science fiction writers.

Instead, they defend sex criminals, celebrate pedophiles and child molesters, accept members with literally ZERO science fiction publications, are largely comprised of amateurs who publish the occasional short story in short-lived amateur publications, and reject genuine science fiction professionals because of “obligational inconsistency.” It is no wonder that the vast majority of bestselling science fiction authors don’t bother to join the organization, since it has nothing positive to offer them.

SFWA is functionally dead. It serves literally no professional purpose anymore. As the lead editor at a mid-sized science fiction publisher, I can attest that it has absolutely no influence with science fiction publishers, distributors, and retailers whatsoever.

The most amusing aspect of this is that SFWA isn’t even trying to hide that it is no longer a professional writers’ organization anymore. The small print they cited from the new bylaws means that they can literally accept anyone the committee likes as a member, whether the applicant has ever written anything or not, whether the applicant is even human or not. Thanks to the short-sighted fools who gave in to Ann McCaffrey’s threat to quit if they did not let fantasy writers join, SFWA is now an organization for racist cat ladies and their cats, not science fiction writers.

Important lesson: whenever someone threatens to quit unless you do x, the only correct response is to say: “We are not doing x. We accept your resignation. Goodbye.”

Now, as always, the SFWA statement hides its true justifications behind a nebulous fog. What are the actual justifications that supposedly provide “good and sufficient cause”?

Dear Mr. Del Arroz,

SFWA Bylaws section VI.1.c.i gives discretion to the membership credentials committee “regardless of qualifications.” Based on online statements and your behavior from the past year, the membership credentials committee believes it has good and sufficient cause to deny your membership in order to keep SFWA virtual and physical spaces harassment-free and has done so.

Examples of behavior from the past year:

• Threatening to film people without their consent at private SFWA functions.
• Soliciting people on social media, including Facebook, Gab, and Twitter, in order to “troll” and harass other professional authors, including SFWA members and board officers.
• Accusing SFWA of “doxxing” your children, supporting pedophiles, racism, among other attacks.

Sincerely,

The Membership Credentials Committee

SFWA, Inc.

Of course, if they were to hold the existing membership to the standard they are claiming, they’d have to expel half the leadership, past and present.