Tag: SFWA

I know it was you, Fredo

I always knew that John Scalzi was primarily responsible for the SFWA “expulsion”*, but I didn’t realize that I had proof of it sitting right in front of me the entire time. Consider this statement from page 23 of “Evidence regarding the complaints made against Theodore Beale, Report to the Board of Directors of SFWA”, dated July 1, 2013.

Most prominently, an outgoing Board Member indicated that he intended to let his membership lapse until Beale was no longer a member: “My membership is due and I can’t in good conscience renew it until SFWA finds the means or moral backbone or whatever’s ultimately required to expel someone as hateful and wilfully destructive as Beale—notjust from the organisation but from the culture present within it.”

And from Twitter less than two hours after I announced the Board’s action against “an unidentified member”:

John Scalzi @scalzi
I just renewed my @sfwa membership!
2:18 PM – 14 Aug 2013

P Nielsen Hayden ‏@pnh Aug 14
@scalzi So did I! What a coincidence! @sfwa

Now, you might rightly say that these remarks by the outgoing president of the organization and the most influential member of the organization (Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a Senior Editor at the largest SF publishing house and gives his address in the SFWA membership directory as the Tor Books address on Fifth Avenue in New York City), are merely circumstantial evidence. And that would seem be true, since there were five outgoing SFWA Board Members in 2013. However, only two of those outgoing members were male. Compare the two successive lists of Board Members from the 2013 SFW Directory.

Board Members beginning July 1st, 2013
Steven Gould, President
Cat Rambo, Vice-President
Susan Forest, Secretary
Bud Sparhawk, Treasurer
Sarah Pinsker, Eastern Regional Director
Lee Martindale, South-Central Director
Jim Fiscus, Western Regional Director
Tansy Rayner Roberts, Overseas Director
Matthew Johnson, Canadian Director

Board Members through June 30th, 2013
John Scalzi, President
Rachel Swirsky, Vice-President
Ann Leckie, Secretary
Bud Sparhawk, Treasurer
Catherynne Valente, Eastern Regional Director
Lee Martindale, South-Central Director
Jim Fiscus, Western Regional Director
Sean Williams, Overseas Director
Matthew Johnson, Canadian Director

So, we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that either Sean Williams or John Scalzi was responsible for threatening to quit the organization if I was not purged from it, and that John Scalzi did let his membership lapse precisely as the “outgoing Board Member” threatened to do. We observe that the outgoing Board Member is not a particularly coherent writer. And we also know that John Scalzi has evinced considerably more interest in my career over the last 10 years than Sean Williams, who lives in Australia and has hitherto exhibited no signs of even knowing that I exist.

But although that is sufficient evidence to surmount the standard of reasonable doubt, it is not absolute proof of Mr. Scalzi’s guilt, since it is remotely possible that both outgoing Board Members happened to let their memberships lapse at the same time for different reasons. Therefore, in the interest of historical accuracy, I have contacted Mr. Williams and asked him to either confirm or deny responsibility for the statement quoted.

While we’re on the subject, it is interesting to compare the list of 2012-2013 Board Members to the recent list of Hugo and Nebula winners. Note that last year’s Novelette winner, Mary Robinette Kowal, was previously SFWA’s Secretary and Vice-President. Perhaps award-watchers should keep an eye out for Mr. Gould, Ms Rambo, and Ms Forest inexplicably outperforming in 2015 and 2016.

* Assuming that it was, in fact, a genuine purge. More than one lawyer has looked at the case and informed me that I am still a member in good standing of SFWA despite the public pretensions of the SFWA Board. There was never a vote of the entire membership, which under Massachusetts law, is clearly required to expel a member. This is why I have not filed a lawsuit; I have no damages of which to complain. The “expulsion” was a legal charade concocted to placate certain elements of the membership, as the bylaws under which I was “expelled” did not come into force until 15 May, 2014, ten months after SFWA’s announcement of an SFWA Board vote on 14 August, 2013.

Notice that SFWA has never officially announced my expulsion. That’s because it never took place. They informed me privately of the Board vote for my expulsion, which was true, but they could not announce my expulsion publicly because “the Board’s decision” was not, in August 2013, sufficient to actually expel a member. Note in particular the reference to “ the existing Massachusetts By-Laws” in the 2013 announcement.

Title XXII, Chapter 180, Section 18: No member of such corporation shall be expelled by vote of
less than a majority of all the members thereof, nor by vote of less
than three quarters of the members present and voting upon such
expulsion.

Posted without comment

Study: Men Who Post Selfies Show Psychopathic Tendencies

Men who regularly posted photos of themselves online scored higher on a measure for narcissism and psychopathy…. The study also found that men who edited their pictures before posting
also scored higher on the scales of narcissism and self-objectification.

For no particular reason, you understand. And in other SFWA-related news, it appears that the services of the Toad of Tor may no longer be required by Tor Books:

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, aka the repugnant and infamous cyberbully “Hapisofi” on Absolute Write, has been officially fired from the Tor staff. We received the following note from someone connected to the publisher (who must remain anonymous to prevent retaliation by Nielsen’s husband Patrick who is still a big shot at Tor Books and who has supported his wife regardless of her vitriolic and unprovoked assaults on writers, presses, and organizations using her anonymous ID on Absolute Write):

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is now officially off the Tor staff page. She has been removed permanently. A source close to the staff reports that the sheer amount of negative information about her on the web was the reason.

There is, however, some reason to doubt the accuracy of this report, given that the link is to the Tor.com staff page, not the Tor Books staff page. The two are related, but distinct corporate entities. I will update this once news of the Toad’s firing is either publicly confirmed or confirmed to be false.

Dr. Pournelle health report

From Jerry’s blog:

    “Jerry had a small stroke. He is recovering well at a local hospital. Prognosis is good, though they’re running more tests and he’s expected to stay at least another day or two.

    “He felt well enough to call Mom [Mrs. Pournelle] from the hospital.

    “Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. More updates when we have them.”

They are permitting well-wishers to post comments, in case you would like to do so.

I can’t say I know Dr. Pournelle well, but after working with him over the last two weeks to get “His Truth Goes Marching On” and “Simulating the Art of War” into RIDING THE RED HORSE, I found myself marveling at how sharp he is despite being 81 years old. Of course, it probably helps when you’re starting with a mind that is around +4SD.

We did talk a little about the SFWA purge in passing; he was curious about my perspective on it. He was mildly appalled to hear what really happened, as you might expect, and thought the Board’s action was both ridiculous and short-sighted. But he also saw the humor in the incident, and laughed out loud when I explained the actual nature of the technical violation.

It’s such a pleasure to discover that a giant of one’s youth is also a genuinely good man. Here is to his speedy recovery.

Overrated and underbrained

I always thought LeGuin was considerably overrated, but I didn’t think she was actually stupid until now:

“We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa,” LeGuin said. “And I see a lot of us, the producers, accepting this — letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant!”

She was referring to the recent dispute between Amazon and the publisher Hachette over e-book pricing. The power of capitalism can seem inescapable, LeGuin said, but resistance and change begin in art. And writers should demand their fair share of the proceeds from their work. “The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”

Really? I always thought profit was the central point. I stand corrected. Let there be freedom! And I have to say, the cognitive dissonance inherent in simultaneously a) defending a mainstream publisher and b) demanding a fair share of the proceeds is impressive.

Although if Amazon were to actually adopt a policy of putting out fatwas on SFWA members, I suspect that’s something a lot of people could get behind.

Is Lena Dunham eligible for the SFWA?

It appears she’ll fit right in with the SJWs, pedophiles, and child molesters there:

If there is such a thing as actually abusing a child through
excessive generosity and overindulgence, then Lena Dunham’s parents are
child abusers. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter noted for his
primitive brand of highbrow pornography, his canvases anchored by puffy
neon-pink labia; her photographer mother filled the family home with
nude pictures of herself, “legs spread defiantly.” Self-styled radicals from old money, they were not the sort of people inclined to enforce even the most lax of boundaries. And they were, in their daughter’s telling, enablers of some very disturbing behavior that would be considered child abuse in many jurisdictions — Lena Dunham’s sexual abuse, specifically, of her younger sister, Grace, the sort of thing that gets children taken away from non-millionaire families without Andover pedigrees and Manhattanite social connections. Dunham writes of casually masturbating while in bed next to her younger sister, of bribing her with “three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds . . . anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.” At one point, when her sister is a toddler, Lena Dunham pries open her vagina — “my curiosity got the best of me,” she offers, as though that were an explanation. “This was within the spectrum of things I did.”

YERGGHH! I’ve always thought Dunham looked like a Daughter of Innsmouth straight out of Lovecraft. It turns out that she’s even uglier and more freakish on the inside than her appalling exterior would suggest. She’s not the voice of her generation, she’s not a voice of a generation, by her own account she is an incestuous child molester.

Holding the line

One of the Honey Badgers, Hannah Wallen, explains why the SJW hate is so ferocious for the gamers in Gamergate:

The only people who are equipped to fight off that rushing tide of manipulation and control are those for whom potential social rejection doesn’t constitute a threat.

That, gamers, is why gamergate is not about any one of the damseling drama queens receiving the coverage in gaming media that is now spilling over into other news sources. It not about the media themselves, either, or the companies supporting the industry.

It’s about us.

We’re not under attack because we owe anyone anything we have refused to give, or because we’ve done anything we shouldn’t have done. We’re under attack because we’re one of the last shields that human individuality in western society has.

It’s absolutely vital that gamers continue to reject the shaming and demands being launched at us by elitist social engineers in journalism. We’re the line they can’t be allowed to cross, the last bastion of intellectual freedom. Out of everyone, we have the one factor that can stop them from owning the social landscape of the western world. Out of everyone, we have the power of immunity to their weapon of choice. We have the ability to turn that very same weapon around and use it against them by not only refusing to adopt their narrative, but making our rejection of it hurt them financially.

This is how we’re going to hold the line and begin pushing back. It’s going to be ridiculously ugly. The beast that is social justice elitism is not going to go peacefully, nor is it going to change its tactics. We’re going to see that  monstrous, flailing attempt to shame us into compliance continue. We’re going to see the accusations and whining, damseling and demonization all accelerate as the elites try to smash the resistance without understanding why it exists. And then hopefully we’ll see like-minded individuals joining the ranks of resistance as they realize they don’t have to be adopt the victim narrative to be part of a community. If we can achieve just that one thing by standing our ground and defending our territory, we can push that bullying force out, take our community back, and get back to gaming in peace.

It’s not a bad piece. Only the geeks of Gamerdom are not as alone as they think they are. Those who have followed the SFWA saga of the last two years will recognize the pattern that is at work there, that is at work in places as diverse as NBA team ownership and the executive offices of the tech industry. The SJW jihadists are attempting to drive out every heretic who dares to violate their equalitarian dogma anywhere one can be found.

But it is not only low-status rejects and outcasts who are impervious to their social pressure. And those of us who are neither rejects nor outcasts, but lone wolves by preference and temperament have the ability to build rival structures, rival institutions, and rival organizations that have the distinct advantage of operating in accordance with science, history, and objective reality rather than dogmatic fantasy.

Every time we refuse to back down, every time we refuse to accept their dogma as truth, we win. We reduce the amount of social pressure they are able to bring to bear. They know that. And it makes them furious. One need only read the foam-flecked rantings of their more outspoken members about me or about other members of the open resistance to see that. What makes them so angry about our very public resistance to their dogma is that their social pressure becomes less effective when it is seen to be resistible. That is why it is so important to  resist openly rather than to do so in a private and covert manner.

Because regardless of what you think in the privacy of your own mind, the public acquiescence of your silence causes others to believe that you are in accordance with the dogma and thereby adds to the social pressure placed upon others.

Sarah Hoyt talks about despair and how it is not only debilitating, but a sin. And perhaps some feel an amount of despair when they finally see how the cards are stacked against them simply for committing the crime of believing what their own eyes can see. But I see despair as being primarily a combination of ignorance with a failure of imagination. Things will not always be this way because the world is not, and has never been, a static place.

Maybe they will get worse. Maybe they will get better. But they won’t get any better while one sits and laments one’s losses and disappointments. One can ALWAYS accomplish SOMETHING positive, even if it is no more than refusing to be moved by lies, blandishments, and social pressure. Learn to take pride and pleasure in the small victories and you will find yourself considerably less inclined to worry overmuch about the disappointments and defeats.

Denying SF, dissing Baen

He also claims that “science fiction is not a genre”. Which goes to show how much confidence you should place in the opinions of a man who hasn’t published a single novel and has more than a few prose deficiencies himself:

Today space opera is a battlefield for competing fantasies of the future. As America plunged in to renewed militarism after 9/11, sci-fi books again began to mirror real-world wars. Baen books specialises in works of “military SF” that, behind their appalling prose styles and laughable retro cover designs, speak to a right-wing readership who can recognise the enemies of America even when they are disguised as cannibal lizard aliens. Baen’s chief editor Toni Weisskopf went so far as to issue a diatribe against any and all sci-fi that did not pander to this conservative agenda.

Hugo-nominated Baen Books author Larry Correia is unimpressed: “Damien Walter of the Guardian is a liar. Provide a cite where Toni Weisskopf ever said that or apologize and retract.”  Equally unimpressed is the Hugo-nominated Baen Books author Brad Torgersen:

I won’t feed this particularly empty ego any more than is necessary, suffice to say that the individual who wrote this obviously does not read very many (if any?) actual Baen books by actual Baen authors, nor do I think this person has actually read any such “diatribe” by my editor at Baen. In fact, I can state with certainty that the words “Toni Weisskopf” and “diatribe” do not belong in the same ZIP code. You will seldom find a less offensive, even-tempered, non-confrontational, fair-minded editor and publisher in the field today. And it’s not just an insult to her when shit like this (above) gets written, it’s an insult to all the many talented and varied authors who ply their trade beneath the Baen label. Myself included.

Unfortunately, ignorant snobbery of this sort is nothing new in the genre. You find out very quickly (once you begin publishing) which writers, editors, publishers, and artists enjoy the favor of the “society” people, and which writers, editors, publishers, and artists do not. My from-the-hip observation is that the “society” people want to see SF/F turned into a lightly speculative and fantastical carbon copy of the “prestigious literary” world. Replete with ambiguous covers that don’t really tell you anything about the story, but follow the general pattern of all things deemed “prestigious” and “literary.” If this year’s talked-about lit work features a somewhat fuzzy, off-focus photo of a pair of muddy Converse sneakers sitting on somebody’s front stoop, then by golly SF/F needs to follow suit with similar photos of similarly mundane, slightly off-focus objects which may or may not have anything to do with actual science fiction; as practiced traditionally by the greats.

And so the battle between anti-canon Pink SF and pro-classic Blue SF continues to heat up. There is, however, one point with which I find myself in agreement with Our Friend Damien is that this battle will be good for real science fiction and those who love to read it, because it is exposing the pretenders and the frauds who have been selling not-science fiction under a false label of science fiction for two decades now.

While he is not a Baen Books author, the inimitable Tor Books and Castalia House author John C. Wright has also weighed in on the matter as only he can. I daresay his criticism of Walter is considerably more entertaining, and more artfully crafted, than the sum total of Walter’s ouevre:

Allow me to translate from the airy emptiness of Newspeak to the Vulgate: he is saying a novel whose only gimmick is the lack of the use of male and female pronouns in order to aid the attempt of social engineers not to entertain science fiction readers as patrons of our craft but to indoctrination and Pavlovitize them toward a false-to-facts neurosis about human sexuality is healthy on the grounds that science fiction should be used not to tell entertaining stories about the future, but as a propaganda adjust to the political program of socialist progressivism, which means pervert-loving, man-hating, white-hating, Christian-hating, liberty-hating, life-hating nihilism.

I note to any Martians reading these words that humans come only in two sexes, male and female, and that the Brahmins of political correctness have decreed that fairness to sexual perverts requires that sexual reality to be changed. Naturally, reality cannot be changed, but what people say in public can.

Therefore the gentleman writing this article rejoices in the idea that science fiction be made into a department of the Ministry of Truth, so that anyone speaking frank and plain truth about human sexuality, if he is weak minded, will come to fear that his opinion is in the minority and unpleasing to the society at large. Once the truth is unpalatable, unspeakable, outlawed as a hate crime, everyone is a liar. When everyone is a liar, everyone is a cynic, and cynics never embrace the ideals necessary to join a rebellion.

In short, the gentleman penning this piece is glorying in the prospect of perverting science fiction from its intended purpose and making it into an instrument to spread and glorify sexual perversion.

It’s also rather amusing to see a British individual who regularly claims that he hates British class issues to take what is the literary equivalent of a middle-class posture dismissing those dreadful working class Baen writers and their awful unwashed prose.

ESR on SF and literary penis envy

Er, sorry, I guess that was literary STATUS envy. Although considering the predominantly female and low-testosterone gamma male makeup of the other side, either description would serve equally well. In any event, ESR addresses the Blue SF/Pink SF divide:

I’ve been aware for some time of a culture war simmering in the SF world. And trying to ignore it, as I believed it was largely irrelevant to any of my concerns and I have friends on both sides of the divide. Recently, for a number of reasons I may go into in a later post, I’ve been forced to take a closer look at it. And now I’m going to have to weigh in, because it seems to me that the side I might otherwise be most sympathetic to has made a rather basic error in its analysis. That error bears on something I do very much care about, which is the health of the SF genre as a whole.

Both sides in this war believe they’re fighting about politics. I consider this evaluation a serious mistake by at least one of the sides.

On the one hand, you have a faction that is broadly left-wing in its politics and believes it has a mission to purge SF of authors who are reactionary, racist, sexist et weary cetera…. On the other hand, you have a faction that is broadly conservative or libertarian in its politics. Its members deny, mostly truthfully, being the bad things the Rabbits accuse them of.

It’s interesting to see ESR weigh in on this, not only because he is an unusually intelligent individual, but as he says, he has sympathies on both sides of the divide. And, I would suspect, competing natural inclinations as well. But it was a little surprising to see him conclude that he tended to be more sympathetic to the side of evilly Evil. As the title of his post suggests, his observation is that the root cause of the divide is not political, but rather literary:

Alas, I cannot join the Evil League of Evil, for I believe they have
made the same mistake as the Rabbits; they have mistaken accident for
essence. The problem with the Rabbits is not that left-wing politics is dessicating and poisoning their fiction. While I have made the case elsewhere that SF is libertarian at its core,
it nevertheless remains possible to write left-wing message SF that is
readable, enjoyable, and of high quality – Iain Banks’s Culture novels
leap to mind as recent examples, and we can refer back to vintage
classics such as Pohl & Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants
for confirmation. Nor, I think, is the failure of Rabbit fiction to
engage most SF fans and potential fans mainly down to its politics; I
think the Evil League is prone to overestimate the popular appeal of
their particular positions here.

No, I judge that what is dessicating and poisoning the Rabbit version
of SF is something distinct from left-wing political slant but
co-morbid with it: colonization by English majors and the rise of
literary status envy as a significant shaping force in the field.

This is a development that’s easy to mistake for a political one
because of the accidental fact that most university humanities
departments have, over the last sixty years or so, become extreme-left
political monocultures. But, in the language of epidemiology, I believe
the politics is a marker for the actual disease rather than the pathogen
itself. And it’s no use to fight the marker organism rather than the
actual pathogen….

The Evil League of Evil is fighting the wrong war in the wrong way.
To truly crush the Rabbits, they should be talking less about politics
and more about what has been best and most noble in the traditions of
the SF genre itself. I think a lot of fans know there is something
fatally gone missing in the Rabbit version of science fiction; what they
lack is the language to describe and demand it. That being said, in the long run, I don’t think the Evil League of Evil can lose.

Of course the Evil League of Evil cannot lose. Not with me as its Supreme Dark Lord! I have studied the lessons of my many failed predecessors well and have subsequently implemented the following protocols:

  1. Installed a magical ground-to-air defense system called IRON CLAW that will grab, pull down, and dismember any airborne creature large enough to carry a hobbit.
  2. Scheduled rotating squads of crack guards, each including at least one experienced battlemage, to be positioned outside the side door to Mount Doom. Also hired new Head of Security after ordering the previous one thrown into the lava flowing inside the aforementioned mountain.
  3. Established an operation called HERODSIX that tracks global birth data and passes it on to a team of nutritionists who will arrange to feed abortifacients to any pregnant woman who has previously given birth to six sons.
  4. Constructed a well-guarded underground facility in which my undead, unkillable warriors are created. Instead of carting a heavy, rune-inscribed iron cauldron around to every prospective battlefield, the Evil League of Evil is paying top silver for freshly killed corpses in good condition, with a bonus for each one over 6’4″.
  5. Dismantled and reassembled the four thrones at Cair Laugharne. I’m looking forward to seeing the little bastards park their bony little arses on them as foretold now that they’ve been made into gold-plated wooden stakes.
  6. Armored the air intakes to my mighty mountain fortress, Gheddorodim, with plasma shields capable of deflecting the most powerful energy-torpedo.
  7. Implemented DOUBLE-TAP, a protocol which includes bans on monologuing, evil cackling, unauthorized torture, and extended prisoner-taunting by all lieutenants and minions of rank E6 or higher. It also lays out specific policies concerning proper confirmations of death (or True Death in the case of the undead), and corpse disposal. All employees of the Evil League of Evil who fail to abide by the protocol will themselves be subject to DOUBLE-TAP.
  8. Also, at the request of Generalissimo Xcrucifix, we now have cookies. Chocolate Chip and Oatmeal Butterscotch. I’m not convinced this actually enhances our security, but I don’t see how it harms it either.

Now, in my opinion, ESR is partially correct in his interpretation of the divide as being intrinsically literary. But while the literary aspect is absolutely another facet of the SF/F divide, and one which I have written about in some detail in the past, it’s only the second of five facets that separate the Evil League of Evil from the rabbits.

  1. Political. This is obvious. We tend to be center-to-right, they tend to be left-to-extreme left.
  2. Literary. They tend to be focused on style, followed by ideological concerns regarding diversity and social justice. While our best stylists, Gene Wolfe and John C. Wright, are better than theirs, it’s true that they tend to be more skilled when it comes to pure prose. As the International Lord of Hate has frequently pointed out, we are focused on story, story, story, followed by characters, followed by worldbuilding and/or ideas.
  3. Religious. We tend to be either religious or religion-friendly seculars. They tend to range from goddess-worshipping Unitarians to rabid anti-theists. Even the atheists in our midst are more comfortable with religion in their SF/F  than their most religious members.
  4. Socio-sexual. We tend to be men of Delta rank or higher. They tend to be women, feminized Gamma males, or Omega males. Our female members possess more of the masculine virtues of courage and honor than most of their men.
  5. Experiential. We tend to come from worlds outside of academia and education. We write and we work real jobs that are totally unrelated to writing. They mostly write, and write about writing, and teach, quite often about writing. I expect their academic majors were mostly English, with the occasional STEM degree, while ours are from a much broader spectrum. For example, by training, John is a lawyer, Larry is an accountant, and I am an economist. And ironically, for all their politically correct enthusiasm for diversity, we are probably more ethnically and linguistically diverse.

The differences between the two sides are often visibly identifiable, and not just because we’re the ones carrying guns. One of the two book signings I ever did was a big one featuring 20 different authors at a big Barnes & Noble, including Gordon R. Dickson, Joel Rosenberg, Lois Bujold, David Feintuch, David Arneson, and various other SF/F luminaries. One kid asking me to sign his book said: “You don’t look like an SF writer.” And, I had to admit, after looking to either side of me, it wasn’t at all clear that we belonged to the same phylum, let alone species.

In response to a few of the various statements and questions raised:

  1. I would never deny that it remains possible to write left-wing message SF that is readable, enjoyable, and of high quality. That is true. But I would argue that the Culture novels are an excellent example of how the left-wing messages tend to harm, rather than enhance, the fiction. It’s not an accident that nothing interesting ever happens in the Culture (or in the Federation), or that in order to simply tell a story, it is necessary to leave the left-wing utopia and go in search of adventure elsewhere. Just as the Left has only one joke (you know that guy there, he’s stupid, isn’t he?) it has only one story, that of the struggle of the transition of an entity, individual or collective, from Badthink to Goodthink. They don’t tell stories, they tell Very Important Lessons.
  2.  How do you separate real writers from wannabes with deep pockets? Who cares? Let everyone write. Publish them all and let Amazon sort them out. SFWA was already irrelevant because its reason for existence was subverted. It was captured by the mainstream publishers long ago, as illustrated by its lining up against Amazon on Hatchette’s behalf.
  3. The term “rabbit” actually comes from E.O. Wilson’s ecological r/K selection theory. I explained it in a post called Digging Out the Rabbit People. It is derogatory; it is also very apt. More importantly, it’s always fun to be able to throw in the occasional Lapine phrase from Watership Down.
  4. Contra Mr. Andrew Marston of Marshfield, MA’s claims, I do sell books. I’m no bestseller, to be sure but my books usually sell around 5,000 copies apiece. Not enough to live on, especially when it takes me two years to write one, but not bad for a hobby. My bestselling book sold between 35,000 and 40,000 copies. My bestselling game sold over six million copies. And I have never had a trust fund.
  5. The idea that the existence of the “Gamma Rabbit” t-shirt is evidence that the rabbits have a sense of humor about themselves indicates an insufficient understanding of the gamma mentality and the gamma male’s need to spin the narrative in his favor. It’s little more credible than Scalzi’s claims that he found my mocking his inept satire and exposure of his self-inflating traffic claims to be “adorable”.

UPDATE: The Official Spokesvillain of the Evil League of Evil, The King in Yellow, explains the identifiable attributes of the rabbits/morlocks/trog-progs:

There are thirteen identifiable markers of the membership of the tribe of Troglodytes:

1. Theologically, they are atheist and agnostic, or at least laiacist.
2. In Metaphysics, they are nihilist. They hold the universe to have no innate meaning.
3. In Epistemology, they are subjectivists and (ironically) empiricists.
4. In Ontology, they are materialists. They believe minds are epiphenomena of matter.
5. In Logic, they are polylogists. They believe each race and both genders possesses unique and exclusive rules of logic.
6. In Aesthetics, they glorify the ugly and destroy beauty.
7. In Ethics, they are Gnostics. Whatever we call good, they call evil, and whatever we call evil, they call good.
8. In Politics, they are statists, and tacitly totalitarian. They want arbitrary power rather than law and order.
9. In Economics, they are socialist. They want the law of supply and demand to vanish softly away.
10. In Semantics, they are nominalists. They hold words to have no innate meaning.
11. In their psychological stance, they are sadists.
12. In their psychopathology, they are suicidal. They don’t want to live, they want you to die.
13. Emotionally, they are infantile. The emotion that governs them is envy.

Now, these are rough generalizations only, and no one member of the movement believes all these points, and, being a strongly anti-intellectual and pro-irrational bent, few of them even know what these big words mean. Some of these points contradict each other. That matters nothing to them. Logic is not their strong suit.

    The pinkshirts are trembling

    And it’s not merely Amazon that is scaring them. What’s amusing about this is that the truth is finally beginning to dawn on Damien… that he and all his weird little friends are in the minority. Their little freakshow extravaganza of diversity and left-wing ideology only existed thanks to the gatekeepers and now they’re getting blown out of the water by people like Larry Correia, Tom Kratman, John Wright, Sarah Hoyt, the Mad Geniuses and hundreds of other ambitious writers who don’t have to kowtow to their ridiculous demands or respect their absurd dogma any longer.

    One noticeable difference between John Scalzi and Damien Walter is that McRapey is a master of self-marketing who always understood that there were as many, if not more, people on the right side of the ideological fence as the left. And Scalzi was, in the past, assiduously careful to maintain good relations with the other side, until he lost his temper and let the mask slip too egregiously. Damien, on the other hand, simply doesn’t grasp that Fox News is not an outlier, it is an indicator. He simply cannot fathom that there are far more people who, if forced to choose, will genuinely prefer what I stand for, sanity and civilization, over his diverse band of deviants, weirdos, race hustlers, and outright sex criminals.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    Vox has a core of a few hundred regular readers. They may be sad losers, but they’re enough to effect a small Hugo voter pool.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter @mareinna Vox Day is a racist rightwing nutjob. He gathers in his umbra, many of the same. This isn’t really surprising.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    Exactly why letting this clique have a platform within the niche SF community is a very bad idea. @E_M_Edwards @mareinna

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter @mareinna I don’t see how they threaten SF -as a community; outside of their circle, they’re routinely laughed at & despised.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter @mareinna And SF has a not insignificant share of (historically and currently) rightwing, racist, nutjob writers & readers.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter @mareinna They have a platform because, unfortunately, they represent a portion of the human spectrum.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter @mareinna A portion that is pretty awful, even by human standards, but I don’t understand why VD creates such a stir.

    Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
    @damiengwalter @E_M_Edwards @mareinna I’d be happy if they stuck to their own little niche, but they want to take over the genre.

    Martin McGrath ‏@martinmcgrath
    @damiengwalter So why would you tweet links to their hateful words?

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna That’s not going to happen though.

    Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter 2h
    Only because at this point he’s been allowed a platform. Kick him off that platform and there’s no problem.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna And I fear it’s wishful thinking to consider racism & fascist tendencies a ‘niche’ in SF.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @martinmcgrath Because he’s already got himself a Hugo nomination. Ignoring the issue became moot at that point.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Certainly from a historical point of view, it is a recognizable thread in genre. As it is in the world

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards If that as the case I would leave the community. It’s a *tiny* minority, but vocal.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna I think you have to support a more diverse SF community because you’ll not ever stamp it out.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna But I’m less sure you’ll ever snip it out of the overall pattern. It will remain, and reappear.

    Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
    @E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna I was lucky that my early exposure was via bookstore which kept fascist books off their shelves.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna And I’m not saying that out of some ‘free speech’ argument.

    Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
    @damiengwalter @E_M_Edwards @mareinna Whenever these jerks spew their crap again, I feel like leaving.

    who needs words @mareinna
    @E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter maybe because he kerps writing tirades against writers who in turn give him publicity by defending themselves?

    Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
    @E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna The SFF community is getting more diverse, that’s why these folks are furious.

    Arthur Wyatt ‏@arthurwyatt
    @damiengwalter I’m pretty sure it’s not people who have actually read his stuff you need to worry about.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter You’re an idealist. I don’t see VDs values as those of a tiny minority. He’s just more visible.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter In no small measure, I suspect, because it is a part – and I dread this phrase- of his personal brand.

    Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards If you prove to be correct, I’ll leave the community. In an instant.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Agreed. There is always a push back by groups who have had more of a majority share, when it shrinks.

    Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
    @E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna VD is the radical fringe. IMO the Correias, Kratmans, Ringos, Hoyts are the bigger problem.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna But that doesn’t mean they’re going to disappear. Which is why diversity best use of energy, I feel.

    Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert 2h
    @E_M_Edwards @damiengwalter @mareinna Cause they pretend to be the reasonable mainstream and silent majority.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter Your choice, OC. But why? Better to add your weight to the counterbalance then throw out your toys.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Again, I agree, mostly. Though I suspect some of their ‘moderate’ stance is just as calculated.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards Why? If SF is mostly bigots and racists it can go fuck itself. But, it isn’t, you’re wrong on this.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter @mareinna Which doesn’t mean they disagree with people like VD. But they’re rather he be the lightning rod.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter I don’t believe it is however, a ‘tiny’ minority. Or even a radical fringe.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards If it was even a substantial minority. It isn’t. @CoraBuhlert @mareinna

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter Is VD radical within it? Likely yes. Both personally and due to his positioning, but a black swan? No.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards Again, if you prove to be right, I’ll leave it. No point repeating this again.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter OK. I can hear you don’t want it to be. It would be more useful perhaps, to have real figures.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter Which I don’t have either, so I’m not saying you have to have them to have an opinion.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter But I’m not swayed by your conviction, without them.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards Do you think VD deserve a Hugo award? You’re derailing on to an irrelevancy here.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter I hope not. Even if we don’t agree on much. I’d rather you were out there in it than VD

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
        @damiengwalter Which sounds like weaker praise than it is meant. 😉

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter I’m hard pressed to think of anyone I’d rather have active in SF than VD. Likely they’re out there.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards I’ll happily go back to ignoring the idiot when the SF community stops letting him hijack it as a platform for his bile.

    E. M. Edwards @E_M_Edwards
    @damiengwalter And if he does or doesn’t, how exactly – considering the limits & flaws of the Hugo – prove a point?

    @damiengwalter I’m not sure that will happen. We make our own platforms these days and the margins are very porous.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    @E_M_Edwards Given the small number of votes required, and coordination with other cons, it seems possible.

    Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert
    If he or Correia win, the Hugos will have become a complete joke.

    Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert
    Actually, these people are a big part of the reason I’m not going to Loncon.

    TL;DR: We’re winning. Already.

    First of all, it is, as usual, amusing to see them still failing to understand that this blog is considerably better trafficked than the blog that was celebrated and respected for years as the biggest blog in science fiction. Prior to the SFWA’s decision to purge me, the blogs were running just over one million pageviews per month. They’re now running at 1.4 million per month, a 40 percent increase in only one year. No one is “letting me have a platform” and SFWA has already tried to kick me off it. How did that go for them?

    Second, I don’t have a core of a few hundred regular readers. I have a core of a few thousand regular readers and a hard core of a few hundred Dread Ilk. I don’t lead them and they don’t follow me. If I quit tomorrow, a dozen would take my place, some of them smarter and more articulate than me.

    Third, to quote the Real Slim Shady: “I have been sent here to destroy you.
    And there’s a million of us just like me, who cuss like me; who just don’t give a fuck like me. Who dress like me; walk, talk and act like me.”

    Every day. Literally EVERY SINGLE DAY, I get emails from people who thank me for speaking out, who tell me how glad they are that someone is finally standing up to the freaks and deviants and pedophiles, who let me know that they are reading SF again for the first time in years, who send Castalia submissions saying how glad they are to know they will get a fair shake and an impartial reading that isn’t based on political correctness and diversity checkboxes.

    E.M. Edwards is more right than he knows. Damien reminds me of the troll, Andrew Marston, who once said that it made him feel suicidal to know that I had over 200 Twitter followers. Well, Damien should throw in the towel and quit right now, today, because the sane, civilized, and traditional side of SF/F is not only bigger than he knows, it is bigger than he fears. And it is going to grow bigger still.

    The pinkshirts are hoping the worst has passed and yet we have barely even begun to get started. They have no idea, none, about what is coming down the pipeline. Just wait until there are ten bestselling Correias and 20 outspoken VDs and even more young right wing radicals who make Tom Kratman look soft and have less sympathy for the pinkshirts than we do.

    Baen is kicking ass. Castalia is exceeding every expectation. The selfies and indies are eviscerating the gatekeepers as Amazon crushes the Big Five. Read those frightened tweets and smile, because we are only now beginning to light the fires that will engulf them.

    UPDATE: Now Damien is demonstrating, again, that he can’t comprehend what he reads. This lack of reading comprehension may be related to his dearth of literary success:

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    You see, this is what happens when you let racists on your award ballot. Hugos utterly discredited at this point.

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    “So who are the Hugo noms this year?” “Oh you know, some Hard SF, some Fantasy…and a man who advocates acid attacks on women.” +

    Damien Walter @damiengwalter
    + Do you see where that departs the usual “Hugos are broken” narrative?

    The fact that I can understand and even articulate a logical case for acid attacks on women when challenged to do so does not mean that I endorse or advocate it. Damien is reduced to trying to score cheap rhetorical points; he hasn’t learned yet that if you want any credibility in the public commentary game, you simply cannot fold, spindle, or mutilate the object of your criticism’s words.

    In any event, it’s not as if the Hugos could further discredit themselves after awarding Best Novel to Redshirts, a mediocre one-joke derivative of a previous parody of Star Trek. And has he read “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”? Ye cats.

    Call people “fucking cowards” and whatever other names you want, Damien. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. Your nightmare is just beginning.