Tag: SFWA

Remember, Pizzagate is Fake News

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.

Celebrated creeps and criminals

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.

SFWA rejects Jon Del Arroz

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.

The sickness in the SFWA

Believe it or not, the current President of the SFWA is defending the pedophiles and child molesters of her organization and attempting to sweep Moira Greyland’s damning bestseller under the rug, probably because they have never expelled its inactive members who are convicted pedophiles or looked into the behavior of its Grand Masters such as Arthur C. Clarke and Samuel Delaney. John Del Arroz has more about the vile behavior of Cat Rambo.

It’s no wonder these people are so obsessed with “harassment policies”. One innocuous off-color joke by a Tor editor several years ago sent all of fandom spiraling and signalling. He was fired and ostracized from conventions after that. But it’s as they say, SJWs always project. The reason they focus so hard on what they call harassment, is they have far darker skeletons in their closets.  They know the actions they and their friends engage in, and so they have a hyper focus on the public appearance, the social element. They witch hunt average men to call harassers, all while on the other hand promoting the most deviant, pornographic lifestyles imaginable. Ironically, my wife, a far more beautiful woman than anyone you’ll see at a sci-fi con, has only had problems with men creeping on her and going over the line twice in her life — both by self-professed male feminist science fiction professionals and at science fiction conventions.

It was no wonder that yesterday, SFWA President Cat Rambo made a vile attempt to downplay Moira’s story of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Marion Zimmer Bradley. To someone like Rambo, MZB’s identity as a feminist and gay icon is far more important than the real human who was hurt. In her capacity at SFWA, Rambo should be championing Moira, a  best seller with a related work in the field — instead, she downplays the relevance in order to make more politically charged and wholly irrelevant attacks on the president. She’ll go so far as to protect the pedophiles in sci-fi that she’ll label anyone concerned over what happened to a real human being “alt-right” in order to dismiss them.

Sick. She refuses to disavow a dead pedophile and deflects. Why? We can only speculate, but from what I’ve observed in Sci-Fi fandom in conjunction with Moira’s story, MZB and Breen are not isolated incidents. The exposure of their story frightens the gatekeepers of the industry who have pushed an agenda of this lifestyle for decades.

Cat Rambo is a complete trainwreck. She makes Stephen Gould look sane by comparison, and Gould actually honored the author of Hogg by naming him an SFWA Grand Master. I have never been so proud to be the first SFWA Life Member to have had the SFWA Board vote for my expulsion. What sane, psychosexually healthy individual would want anything to do with such a deviant-filled degenerate organization?

Twitter was unimpressed.

J_Ishiro‏ @J_Ishiro
The SFWA and World Fantasy are so quick to condemn #hplovecraft’s racist opinions, yet won’t touch Marion Zimmer Bradley’s ACTUAL CRIMES? In her daughter’s own words, Bradley was a monster.

An Eclectic Scribe: Richard Paolinelli‏ @ScribesShade
 Actually, just wondering how many more of them are being sheltered by the SFWA now like the one you just referenced. BTW, I never supported either Moore or Trump so your deflection attempt, much like your leadership of @SFWA, seems to be a complete failure.

superversivesf‏ @superversivesf
It is rather telling that you decline to denounce the behaviour of convicted pedophiles and child abusers with “What does it matter at this point?” WTF is wrong with you?

Henry Vogel‏ @HenryVogel_
SFWA Pres, who believes it’s more important to dig up a 60-year-old corpse than deal with the 20-year-old one in her organization’s basement.

BADKarma‏ @karmalysing
The Fascist Left, where viciously denouncing the victims of pervert abusive pedophiles is “being on the right side of history” if said pedophiles happen to be homosexual and famous.

What’s Cat Rambo going to do for an encore, name the corpse of Marion Zimmer Bradley the 2018 Damon Knight Grand Master, then dig her up for the ceremony? If Rambo isn’t pressured to resign by the SFWA membership, that will speak absolute volumes about the deviants and pedophiles who are still lurking in their midst.

RIP Jerry Pournelle

J. Lamplighter Wright recalls Jerry Pournelle’s last public performance at Dragoncon, where he gave out the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction novel.

What Mr Pournelle did not tell you is that when he went up to hand out the award, he got a standing ovation. Everyone stood up…even Larry Niven. It wasn’t a big crowd, but it was a wonderful moment. I also noticed that, unlike everyone else who seemed to be reading the names, I could have sworn that Pournelle had his list memorized. He recited them smoothly while looking out at the audience.

I’m so pleased to hear that he was publicly celebrated to the very end, as he deserved. My favorite memory of Mr. Pournelle was talking to him after the publication of Riding the Red Horse. At almost the last possible moment, he had agreed to let me use “His Truth Goes Marching On”, a story which had appeared in the first volume of There Will Be War, which Riding the Red Horse was consciously designed to imitate. I thought that would be a fitting symbol of the torch being passed from the one series to the next, since I had been unable to obtain the rights to the original anthology series.

Then, at absolutely the last possible moment, I happened to see an article written by him in an old issue of The General, which combined strategy, wargames, and game design. Excited to have discovered it, I shot him an email asking him for permission to republish it, which right he graciously granted. This is the introduction I wrote for it.

Editor’s Introduction to:

SIMULATING THE ART OF WAR

by Jerry Pournelle

Science fiction’s gain was the game industry’s loss.

There are few, very few, readers of this anthology who do not know of Jerry Pournelle, the science fiction writer. Nearly everyone has heard of the author of Jannissaries and The Mote in God’s Eye, the editor of many anthologies, the techno-savvy Byte columnist, the SFWA president, the Lord of Chaos Manor, even the aphorist who coined the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

But there are not very many who know of J.E. Pournelle, Ph.D., wargamer, and particular fan of the classic Avalon Hill game Afrika Korps. In the early 1970s, Jerry was also an occasional contributor to the Avalon Hill house magazine, The General, in which he introduced new rules for Waterloo, conceived an clever device for counter concealment that anticipated Fifth Frontier War‘s Fleet rules by a decade, and penned an astute article explaining how to draw upon the timeless Principles of War for the purposes of designing better wargames.

Alas, it is a lesson that few designers in the industry have taken to heart. These little-known facts may be reasonably cited as evidence that Dr. Pangloss was wrong, and we do not, in fact, live in the best of all possible worlds. After all, we narrowly missed living in a world where J.E. Pournelle designed Halo: Combat Evolved!

But the best part was yet to come. Not long after the publication of Riding the Red Horse, Jerry called me up and said, “You know, maybe it would be a good idea to revive There Will Be War. Would you have any interest in bringing that back into print?”

I did my best to remain calm, refrained from mentioning that obtaining the rights to publish There Will Be War had always been my original desire, and informed him that we would be extremely pleased to do so. I am very sorry that we were unable to get the last two original volumes, Vols VII and VIII, out before his death, but they will be released later this month, and at least Jerry was able to see his flagship anthology fully revived with Volume X last year. As I said before, working with him was both an honor and a privilege.

Please feel free to post your remembrances of Dr. Pournelle and his work here. Beginning tomorrow, Castalia House will honor Jerry Pournelle by making the first volume in his classic military science fiction anthology, There Will Be War Vol. I  a free download on Amazon for three days. Also, Chaos Manor has set up a Well-Wishing Page in case you wish to offer the Pournelle family your condolences.

Their indifference is palpable

This interview with NK Jemisin in The Atlantic is interesting, as it indicates a change in strategy on the part of the Puppykickers:

Just a year ago, the idea of a novel as deliberately outside the science-fiction norm as The Fifth Season winning the Hugo Award seemed unlikely. In 2013, a small group of science-fiction writers and commentators launched the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies” campaigns to exploit the Hugo nomination system and place dozens of books and stories of their own choosing up for awards. Those campaigns arose as a reaction to perceived “politicization” of the genre—often code for it becoming more diverse and exploring more themes of social justice, race, and gender—and became a space for some science-fiction and fantasy communities to rail against “heavy handed message fic.” Led by people like the “alt-right” commentator Vox Day, the movements reached fever pitch in the 2015 Hugo Award cycle, and Jemisin herself was often caught up in the intense arguments about the future of the genre.

I spoke to Jemisin about her works, politics, the sad puppies controversy, and about race and gender representation in science-fiction and fantasy the day before The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Newkirk: For you, are those people something that bothers you as you build a profile? Are people louder now that The Fifth Season is getting so much love?

Jemisin: They may be, but I’m not hearing them as much. I seem to have passed some kind of threshold, and maybe it’s something as simple as I now have so many positive messages coming at me that the negatives are sort of drowned out. As a side note, the so-called boogeyman of science-fiction, the white supremacist asshat who started the Rabid Puppies, Vox Day, apparently posted something about me a few days ago and I just didn’t care. There was a whole to-do between me and him a few years back where he ended up getting booted out of SWFA [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America] because of some stuff he said about me, and I just didn’t care. It was a watershed moment at that point but now it’s just sort of, “Oh, it’s him again. He must be needing to get some new readers or trying to raise his profile again. Or something.” I didn’t look at it. No one bothered to read it and dissect it and send me anything about it. No one cared.

She just didn’t care. She just didn’t care. No one cared.

And then, the next day, they completely revamped the rules of the Hugo Award.

SJWAL. What’s particularly amusing about this is that last year, the Puppykickers went running to the media, pointing-and-shrieking like banshees. That strategy completely failed, so now they’re going with the “oh, we don’t care” line, while simultaneously trying to claim that I am seeking to raise my profile. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Let’s face it, I’m not the one talking to The Atlantic about me. Nor do I have any need to do so. As Mike Cernovich says, we are the Alt Media now.

Notice how the interviewer doesn’t ask her about calling Robert Heinlein and most of SF fandom “racist as *fuck*”. The truth is that having Jemisin replace Scalzi as the public face of Pink SF is about the best possible thing for Blue SF.

Smells like SFWA

Elijah Wood speaks out about the pedophiles in Hollywood:

Hollywood is in the grip a child sexual abuse scandal similar to that of Jimmy Savile in Britain, Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood has claimed.

The 35-year-old former child actor said paedophiles had been protected by powerful figures in the movie business and that abuse was probably still taking place.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Wood said he had been protected from abuse as he was growing up, but that other child actors had been regularly “preyed upon” at parties by industry figures.

“You all grew up with Savile – Jesus, it must have been devastating,” he said.

“Clearly something major was going on in Hollywood.

“It was all organised.

“There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind.

“There is a darkness in the underbelly – if you can imagine it, it’s probably happened.”

Considering the physical proximity of Hollywood to the California SF scene, it would not surprise me in the least if there turns out to be links between the Hollywood coven that Wood is describing, the Breen-MZB coven, and the coven of convicted pedophiles that the Sacramento police department reported were in contact with Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka.

The truth will come out eventually. Eventually the victims will find the courage to speak out and save others from suffering their fate.

Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparents, a group set up to help child actors, said Hollywood is currently sheltering around 100 active abusers and said a “tsunami” of claims was beginning.

The Science Fiction Women’s Awards

The SFWA’s Nebula Awards were given out this weekend and offer further proof that allowing women into a men’s club inevitably destroys it over time. The winners in the four major categories:

Novel: Uprooted, Naomi Novik
Novella: Binti, Nnedi Okorafor
Novelette: “Our Lady of the Open Road,” Sarah Pinsker
Short Story: “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” Alyssa Wong

What’s interesting about this is that all the screaming about sexism in science fiction has never been louder. This is despite the fact that women now dominate the SF publishing houses, the editorships, run the SFWA, and are giving themselves literally all the major awards. Consider the winners of the four categories over the last five years:

2015: 4/4 women
2014: 3/4 women
2013: 4/4 women
2012: 2/4 women
2011: 2/4 women


The trend is clear, and what is readily apparent is that very few, if any, men will win Nebula Awards in the future. You might think I’m complaining about this, but quite to the contrary, I very much welcome the transformation of SFWA into the Science Fiction Women’s Awards. The more the SF publishers are influenced by it, the bigger a competitive advantage Castalia House is going to have.


Men reliably flee female-dominated institutions and activities. There is a reason there are so few lawsuits by men demanding admittance into women’s-only organizations, after all. The 2015 Nebula Awards not only tell us who is probably going to win the Hugo Awards for Best Novel and Best Novella, but also indicate that Pink SF is going to become even more omnipresent in what passes for mainstream science fiction publishing.

A review of “Safe Space as Rape Room”

Lela Buis reviews the series:

This work is an expose about pedophilia within the SFF community. It’s posted by Castalia House in five parts on their website, plus three appendices for supplementary information. Like most people, I’ve been aware that particular members of the community had a dark side to their reputations, but this is an eye-opener. I’m impressed by the author’s integrity, and the challenges he brings about dealing with the problems. The law is the law, and everyone needs to observe it, regardless of their personal philosophies.

The only issue I have with this is that it gets sidetracked with attacks on John Scalzi as past president of the SFWA, and others, as enablers. However overwrought the charges, I have to admit Daniel does have a point with some of these complaints. I’m tempted to say this series should be required reading, but readers should keep in mind that Castalia House has an axe to grind, especially with Scalzi.

Four stars.

For me, the most damning thing has been the reaction to the series on the part of the SF community. Instead of grasping that they have a serious and ongoing problem on their hands, they have tried to minimize the extent of the problem, claim that it is just a few bad apples, and resolutely ignore the indications that there are more bad apples still active in their midst.

It’s not important that many of the people associated with Castalia House harbor contempt for SF fandom. What is important are the facts of the matter. And it is disingenuous, in the extreme, to claim that they have done anything but attempt to sweep the latest revelations under the carpet as fast as possible.

Contrast the claims of the Pedofilers at File 770 that the series is either old, irrelevant news or circumstantial evidence versus Ms. Buis’s statement that it is “an eye-opener”. While “Safe Space as Rape Room” is neither definitive nor conclusive, it is a very important first step in discovering just how pervasive the sickness in science fiction is and putting an end to it.

Mailvox: what would you do?

David of One is curious what I would have done if I had found myself in Steven Gould’s position:

It isn’t hard to imagine, Vox, you having had become president of that foul organization only to discover … to realize at some formal function that you were in the midst of a great number of unwashed and perverse “artists”. Such an occasion and realization that you were in the company and leader of eaters of the dead that relish the flesh of the living young. In truth such is the case now of modern day vampires of the living with the exception you are not, by God’s grace and love, a leader amongst perverters of the the mind, body and soul. Such would surely be the making of a real life horror story.

I cannot help but ask you what you would have thought and done if such a situation were to have actually occurred during the annual formal function when such a realization might have occurred?

I would have held my tongue, smiled and concealed my realization, and done my best to learn as much as possible while I was in their midst. Then I would have quietly launched inquiries and hired private investigators with the organization’s money to look into the backgrounds of the most suspicious parties.

Once I was in possession of the necessary information, I would have spoken directly to the various parties and given them the opportunity to come clean, with the warning that the relevant information had already been sent to the relevant authorities. I would also have made sure that multiple parties beside myself were in possession of it; those who keep information to themselves create an incentive to be silenced in one way or another.

(In case it is not clear, neither I nor Daniel are researchers. We are merely the initial outlets for those who know considerably more than we do about all of this sort of nasty thing.)

After they either came clean or declined, I would have released a statement to the organization and to the media, with links to the full report. Then I would have asked the SFWA Board, and the membership, to vote on expelling the various individuals and stripping them of all honors.

SFWA instead voted to elect the man who selected Samuel Delany as a Grand Master. That’s on their heads, and on their consciences.