Tag: SFWA

The exposures continue

It appears the British Parliament may contain almost as many pedophiles and pedophile defenders as SFWA:

More than 10 current and former politicians are on a list of alleged child abusers held by police investigating claims of a Westminster paedophile ring. MPs or peers from all three main political parties are on the list, which includes former ministers and household names. Several, including Cyril Smith and Sir Peter Morrison, are no longer alive, but others are still active in Parliament.

The existence of the list was disclosed by Peter McKelvie, the whistleblower whose claims prompted Operation Fernbridge, the Scotland Yard investigation into allegations of a paedophile network with links to Downing Street. Mr McKelvie, a retired child protection team manager who has spent more than 20 years compiling evidence of alleged abuse by authority figures, said he believed there was enough evidence to arrest at least one senior politician….

Mr McKelvie, who helped bring the notorious paedophile Peter Righton to
justice in 1992 when he worked in Hereford and Worcester child protection
team, said: “I believe there are sufficient grounds to carry out a formal
investigation into allegations of up to 20 MPs and Lords over the last three
to four decades, some still alive and some dead. The list is there.”

In a letter to his local MP Sir Tony Baldry last month, Mr McKelvie suggested
that a further 20 MPs and Lords were implicated in the “cover-up” of abuse
of children.

The Guardian has already done one story on Marion Zimmer Bradley. One hopes the newspaper will continue investigating her defenders and enablers, and then look into Ed Kramer, Samuel Delany, and the connections between Walter Breen, L. Ron Hubbard and a science-related gifted kids program.

The strange link between physics and ESP came to the forefront in the
character of Jack Sarfatti, whom we already introduced. Sarfatti was, in
1952, part of an after-school group of gifted children, being tutored
by Walter Breen of the Sandia Corporation, an organisation famous for
atomic weapons research and development. Breen was helped by others from
Sandia to lecture to these children. In 1952, Sarfatti received a
phone-call from outer space – quite literally, he felt. It seemed to
predestine him to become a leading physicist, interested in time and
space, other dimensions, etc.

Sarfatti reiterated that the enigmatic phone calls he received occurred in the summer of 1953. “I met Walter Breen soon after that via Robert Bashlow who recruited me and Johnny Glogower. Also Robert Solovay (briefly). Breen was working for Professor William Sheldon at Columbia Psychiatry Department funded by Eugene McDermott, a World War II Intelligence leader, co-founder of Texas Instruments and University of Texas at Dallas – and part of the Charles Lindburgh, Arthur Young ‘Round Table’ group. Saul-Paul Sirag says that L. Ron Hubbard was part of that scene along with Puharich. 

What this suggests is that the science fiction freakshow of sexual deviants may not necessarily be just three or four bad actors, each operating more or less on their own. It is well known that pedophiles tend to run in loosely affiliated packs, and the fact that there have been at least three confirmed pedophiles, Breen, Bradley, and Kramer, and one serious red flag, Delany, active in the relatively small science fiction community, indicates that there could be as many as ten times that number involved, as is apparently the case in Westminster.

And keep this description in mind when you read plaudits about the wonderfully warm “Chip” Delany, who has provided considerably more cause for suspicion than the recently convicted Rolf Harris ever did.

To people throughout the world, myself included, he was the beloved uncle: warm, colourful, comforting. Lovely touchy-feely Rolf had this ability to make you feel as though you were the most important person in the world…. Experts in pathological sex offenders say the really clever ones spend only one per cent of their time grooming their actual victims — but 99 per cent of their time grooming the people around them. Often working as teachers or priests or entertainers, they are expert at persuading people they are trustworthy — tirelessly giving to charities, visiting the sick, cheering up the masses — to the extent that no one would believe a bad word against them.

Everyone knows that I am not a fan of SFWA. I think it is an outdated organization that has outlived its purpose and thereby enmeshed itself in left-wing ideology in a misguided attempt to remain relevant to writers. But my feelings and motivations have absolutely nothing to do with what other people have done over the last 50 years. Pattern recognition has always been a strength of mine (see: Financial crisis of 2008), and SFWA’s increasingly bizarre non-reaction to revelations of FIVE DECADES of child abuse and the public defense of child abusers by its members is tripping my radar. It may be simple incompetence, or it may suggests that there is more to the situation than the isolated acts of a few bad apples.

Defending the kiddy fiddlers

As an explosion of historical child abuse cases are being revealed in Britain, from popular entertainers to Members of Parliament, it can be readily observed that the British elite’s reaction to the exposure of the pedophiles in their midst was not dissimilar to the current non-reaction of the SFWA concerning the revelations concerning Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ed Kramer, and Samuel Delany.

His paedophile campaign ran into the buffers of derision from the press and hostility from fellow parliamentarians, some of whom denounced his use of parliamentary privilege to name Hayman and accused him of grandstanding.

It is hard to imagine today, as celebrities from that era are brought before the courts for historic sex offences, that this matter was treated so lightly by Parliament. Dickens believed this was because influential people were involved in the abuse and were determined to shut him up.

In reality, it stemmed more from a startling indifference to what was then called “kiddy fiddling”. It was as though because it had always gone on, it was not something to get too worked up about.

For his part, Dickens simply could not understand how an organisation such as PIE was allowed to exist…. Frustrated, Dickens brought a Bill before Parliament “to make it an offence to be a member of any organisation, association, society, religious sect, club or the like that holds meetings at which support is given to encourage, condone, corrupt or entice adults to have sexual relationships with children.”

Is it really that hard to imagine today? The British Attorney General’s dismissal of Sir Peter Hayman’s subscription to the Paedophile Information Exchange network is more than a little remniscent of the defenses various SFWA members have offered of SFWA Grand Master Samuel Delany’s being a regular reader of the NAMBLA bulletin.

“Sir Peter Hayman had subscribed to PIE, that is not an offence and there is no evidence that he was ever involved in the management.”

“I’ve seen no evidence (doesn’t mean it’s not out there; I’m not
trying to be willfully ignorant here) that Delany’s position was
anything other than intellectual.He was responding to the contents of their newsletter, which may
have been interesting and/or thought-provoking intellectual discussion
for all I know.”

Despite reports that the SFF community is reeling, neither SFWA nor its president, Steven Gould, have publicly said anything despite being directly asked about the scandals. But attempting to sweep the whole problem of child abuse in SFWA under the carpet as nothing more than the accusations of a bitter ex-member is not going to work any better in the long term than the British attempt to dismiss child abuse by its entertainers, diplomats, and politicians as “the fantasies of a deluded man”.

I suspect Jo Walton will eventually come to regret her repeated praise of Delany on Tor.com, just as Ann McCaffrey and Robert Sawyer likely came to regret their defenses of Ed Kramer in the official SFWA publications and Jim C. Hines and Tor.com itself have come to regret their past celebrations of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

“We didn’t know,” they cry, some honestly, some not. But it seems readily apparent that the only reason many of them did not know was because they were determined not to look for fire amidst all the smoke. For example, notice that the Toad of Tor is STILL trying to defend Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Just F-ing Keftastic @Keffy Jun 13
THERE ARE FUCKING COURT FUCKING DOCUMENTS. And you still got people waffling about WELL WE DON’T KNOOOW and making excuses based on “vibes.”

tnielsenhayden @tnielsenhayden Jun 14
Pointing out that there remain areas of considerable uncertainty is not necessarily a defense of pedophilia.

Not necessarily, no. But remember, Teresa Nielsen Hayden is one of the very members who demanded an 80-page investigative report of my supposed racism on the basis of a single tweet. But when it comes to Marion Zimmer Bradley, there “remain areas of considerable uncertainty” and when it comes to SFWA Grand Master Samuel Delany, it would appear his constant dwelling on things such as “racist porn”, “racial ephithets”, “father/son homosexual incest starting very young” and “bestiality” “on almost every page” don’t merit an investigation or anything except repeated public celebrations of the man.

Consistently looking the other way for decades, ignoring all the obvious signs, and then belatedly trying to hide behind “areas of considerable uncertainty” is, taken in sum, a de facto defense of the pedophiles in science fiction.

SFWA still harbors child molesters II

It’s rather remarkable, but SFWA continues to associate with known child molesters while pretending that they are deeply concerned about me doing things I have never done even AFTER they purged me from the organization. Bud Webster wrote this in October 2013, two months after the SFWA Board informed me that it had voted unanimously for my expulsion:

This is partly my fault because I’ve only just now looked at the “Authors Estates” pages, but why were those estates handled by family members or other private individuals listed with their full contact information? That’s exactly what we DON’T want, and its why I wish i’d had a chance to proof those pages before the Directory went live.

All we need is for someone outside the organization (or even someone inside, for that matter) to use that information to harass the heirs of an author they don’t like, or who represents a race, gender or nationality they find offensive (don’t shake your head – remember Vox Day?) to start sending abusive emails or worse, phone calls.

I had to laugh at his bizarre appeal to SF’s Voldemort. First, recall that SFWA members such as John Scalzi, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and NK Jemisin have been publicly attacking me since 2005. Second, be aware that I have had the entire membership’s personal contact information for more than 14 years and have never once made any use of the SFWA directory to send emails or make phone calls, abusive or otherwise. And third, note that John Scalzi was lying, and knowingly lying, when he tweeted: “@jimchines The Naive Idiocy of Not Checking Your Facts Before Making Accusations Online”

Prior to posting the information about Ed Kramer last week, I checked the 2010 directory. I also checked the online membership list. Ed Kramer, the convicted child molester, appeared in both of them. I did not check the 2013 directory for an obvious reason: I was expelled from SFWA and did not have a copy of it. Why didn’t I check the 2011 and 2012 directories? Well, as Michael Capobianco wrote in March 2013:

I know a bunch of handbooks were sent out at some point a couple of years ago, but the Directory is a principal part of the new member packet, and there hasn’t been a new Directory since spring of 2010.

Who was responsible for this failure to produce a new Directory between spring 2010 and March 2013? None other than John Scalzi, President of SFWA from July 2010 to July 2013. Which means that Mr. Scalzi knew perfectly well that there was no failure to check any facts on my part before I observed that Ed Kramer was a member of SFWA (and remains eligible for SFWA membership today). Also note that during those three years as the president of the organization, John Scalzi did absolutely nothing about Ed Kramer’s membership even though he threatened to leave SFWA in 2013 if the newly elected Board did not remove mine. He had no problem at all associating with rapists, sexual deviants, self-described savages, and child molesters. Nor did SFWA member and Tor.com editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who, nearly one year after threatening to leave SFWA if I was not expelled, published the tribute to MZB entitled “Marion Zimmer Bradley Gave Us New Perspectives”.



I recently obtained a copy of the 2013 directory. It is true that Ed Kramer is not in it. One therefore concludes he failed to pay his dues sometime between 2011 and 2013. But that doesn’t mean SFWA ended its association with him or with other child molesters. For example, consider page 102 of the current directory and note the highlighted estate. Fortunately, seeing as the directory is in print, it will be considerably harder for those who deceitfully implied that I was inventing Kramer’s SFWA membership to deny the organization’s continued association with another, now-deceased child molester.

Thanks to the SFWA Forum, we know that SFWA has known about Ed Kramer since at least 2004.  Thanks to SFF.NET and SFWA member Stephen Goldin, we know SFWA has known about Marion Zimmer Bradley since at least 1999. SFWA still has not ended its association with either of those two known child molesters. And those are merely the two members whose criminally aberrant activities are already known to the public; they are not the only two deviants with whom SFWA is continuing to associate and celebrate.

Jason Sanford, an SFWA member who is neither a friend nor ally of mine, wrote this about “science fiction and fantasy’s Woody Allen” in February:

I’ve heard no apologies from any of Kramer’s other extremely vocal defenders in the genre. Just like Hollywood, many in the SF/F community are too willing to look away from sexual abuse and child molestation when it is inconvenient to either themselves or the genre. However, doing this actually weakens the genre and harms all of us, as it encourages a culture of silence and allows predators like Kramer to continue harming new victims.

Mr. Sanford said it, not me: “Many in the SF/F community are too willing to look away from sexual abuse and child molestation.” But it is absolutely true. Still, it’s hard to blame SFWA when they have so many other, much more pressing concerns with which to deal, such as policing the political opinions of its members, reviewing convention policies, denouncing nonexistent award campaigns, and writing 80-page reports about the potential misuse of a non-official Twitter account. The more SFWA tries to deny that it has a problem with criminal deviants in its midst, the more its members attack those who expose the problem instead of addressing it, and the more silent and inert its leadership remains on the subject, the more questions this raises about the moral degradation of the organization and its members.

A few days ago, Mr. Sanford wrote this:

The Marion Zimmer Bradley revelations shocked me when I first learned of them a week ago. But what shocked me more was that the actions of MZB and her pedophile husband were an open secret in the genre for decades. Many people even defended MZB and attacked anyone who dared speak the truth about her.

The same thing happened with Ed Kramer, who recently pleaded guilty to child molestation charges. The same veil of silence surrounded Kramer. People who dared speak the truth were attacked….

How many times must our genre go through this? How long must our silence protect those who use that silence to prey upon others?

Support me or despise me, I am speaking the plain and simple truth. Attack me for it if you wish. Question my motivations if you like. All of that is entirely irrelevant. Nothing will change the readily confirmable facts. I didn’t create this cancer in science fiction and I cannot excise it from a community to which I do not belong and with which I have never cared to personally associate. Only the people who dwell inside that strange little community can do so, and if they do not, if they continue to look the other way while celebrating and honoring their deviants, they will be rightly condemned for it by every decent person of any political stripe.

An apt simile

I’m not sure Damien understood quite how funny this was, if one presumes that he is referring to Larry’s fans and the Dread Ilk:

In the social media era, we lend authors immediate credibility when we follow them. I’m thinking of some of our right wing friends here who deploy their fans like paramilitary forces. Strange times!

I have to admit, I did laugh at that one. What the Left simply can’t seem to understand is that when they attack an author for his beliefs, they are providing motivation to all of his fans who happen to share those beliefs, because the fans uunderstand that it is not the author, but their own beliefs that are under attack. The author is merely the symbol.

Also, our fans tend to be intrinsically more capable than those of our left wing counterparts. That’s not pandering or anything, it’s just that theirs don’t tend to be good for much more than fawning, favoriting tweets, feigning outrage, and pretending to donate money they don’t have.

Expose or damage control?

The Guardian relies heavily upon certain left-wing SF/F authors while reporting on the Bradley revelations:

The world of science fiction and fantasy is in shock, following news that the daughter of the bestselling late fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley has accused her mother of abusing her as a child.

Authors such as John Scalzi, G Willow Wilson and Jim Hines have reacted to the allegations against a woman who had been regarded a pillar of the SFF community with horror. The writer Janni Lee Simner has announced she will be donating her earnings from a story set in a fictional world created by Bradley to an anti-abuse charity.

One wonders how John Scalzi’s one-word commentary via Twitter, Jim “Celebrate the Legacy of MZB” Hines’s belated attempt to cover his past as an MZB cheerleader, and a female convert to Islam who published her first novel in 2012 are deemed a reasonable representation of “the world of science fiction and fantasy”.  Scalzi, who spent more words denying that Ed Kramer was still on the SFWA membership list than he did discussing Bradley, is mentioned twice in the article, while Deirdre Saoirse Moen, who along with Moira Greyland is actually responsible for the revelations, is only mentioned once in passing.

Stephen Goldin, the longtime SFWA member and former editor of the SFWA Bulletin, whose posting of the MZB depositions on SFF.net substantiated Greyland’s accusations, isn’t mentioned at all. Neither is the original MZB tribute on Tor.com that prompted Mrs. Greyland’s original email to Miss Moen.

While it is good that coverage of the problem of child abusers in science fiction is spreading, this is yet another example of why you can never trust the mainstream media to do more than scratch the surface. That being said, this part of the article is poignant and illustrates the importance of exposing the monsters regardless of the cost to their reputations:

Greyland, writing to the Guardian via email, said that she had not spoken out before “because I thought that my mother’s fans would be angry with me for saying anything against someone who had championed women’s rights and made so many of them feel differently about themselves and their lives.  I didn’t want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut”.

Greyland, a harpist, singer and opera director, said it was now clear to her that “one reason I never said anything is that I regarded her life as being more important than mine: her fame more important, and assuredly the comfort of her fans as more important.  Those who knew me, knew the truth about her, but beyond that, it did not matter what she had done to me, as long as her work and her reputation continued.”

It will be interesting to see if this is a genuine effort to dig into the larger problem of child abuse in science fiction or if it is an exercise in damage control. Meanwhile, Larry Correia’s #1 fan actually has a reasonable take on the Bradley revelations, comparing it to the Jimmy Savile scandal, and considering it in light of how people react to the moral failures of their cultural icons:

How far can we separate any cultural figure from the values they represent? And in rejecting the figure, do we risk rejecting values that should transcend the actions of any single individual? The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series made Marion Zimmer Bradley a leader of the emerging feminist movement in science fiction, alongside writers including Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Margaret Atwood. In critical terms Bradley was rarely considered seriously comparable to those writers, but as a writer of popular, mythic fiction she reached an audience those more acclaimed figures of feminism SF did not.

Readers will ultimately choose whether the works of Marion Zimmer Bradley are remembered and continue to be read. Many readers, myself included, will agree with Redditor CJGibson that “to read/support these authors in spite of their positions or actions sends a tacit message that what they’re doing is OK”.

I don’t have any problem with people separating the work from the artist and continuing to enjoy it. The work and the artist are not the same and the work doesn’t NECESSARILY reflect the evils of the artist. I still listen to Lostprophets despite the appalling crimes of the band’s lead singer. (MZB’s work is no dilemma for me despite the observable overlap between her crimes and her fiction as I never thought much of her work in the first place.) I don’t believe in the whitewashing of history.

Where I have a problem, and where I believe a line must be drawn, is when the artist is still celebrated, honored, and lionized on the basis of his work while his known moral failings are ignored or even denied.

Circling the wagons, poisoning the well

Colleen Doran points out one of the hidden costs of an abusive community:

I
have heard from many people in the last couple of days (men and women)
who had to deal with multiple incidents from multiple perps themselves,
and most said they got out of fandom because of it. Fans may think Bradley was a mighty fine writer, or that comic book
was a mighty fine comic, but consider all of the art we’ll never see and
books we’ll never read because the young people who might have wanted
to make them someday ran screaming from this community.

These people poisoned the well for generations of fans, and future
writers and artists. And the poison not only came from the perps, but
from the people who covered up for them, claiming if the outside world
knew what really goes on, “it might make fandom look bad.”

No folks, YOU did that. You did.

S. Andrew Swann adds:

What’s disheartening is that the general reaction of SF Fandom
to things like this echoes the reaction I’ve seen from just about any
organized group to this kind of thing, esp. when someone of some weight
and power in the community is involved in the abuse. Be it Jerry
Sandusky at Penn State, Jimmy Savile at the BBC, or the Catholic Church
to their own abusive priests. It’s like everyone has this script that
tells them they must continue to enable abuse to protect their own
little community.

After SFWA quickly leaped to wipe Ed Kramer from their online membership list on 24 June 2014 following my post of a screen capture proving Kramer’s SFWA membership yesterday, some of its fans and members began to pretend that Kramer’s apparent failure to pay his dues sometime between 2011 and 2013 somehow exculpates SFWA’s complete failure to do anything but publicly defend the child molester while he was “an active member of the Science Fiction Writer’s Association (SFWA) for more than two decades, and a past Nebula Awards host”. This is how they continue “to protect their own
little community”:

  • Vox attempting to defame with phony “screenshot” showing Ed Kramer still a member. – Thomas Wagner
  • Why should we keep talking about Kramer? Oh, right, because VD made up
    some fake bullshit to stir controversy. Not surprising at all. – Shaun Duke
  • The Naive Idiocy of Not Checking Your Facts Before Making Accusations Online – John Scalzi
  • Yeah. So Kramer isn’t actually a member of SFWA. (Though it looks like he was an associate member…four years ago.)
    #FactChecking  – Jim C Hines
  • Font in the link on his screenshot doesn’t look right to me, size difference. – JabberwockySR
  • I’m not a member, and when I do a search at the site Jim linked, I get 0 results found. Searched just “kramer.” – The Barbarienne
  • Nah, can’t be. Ed Kramer’s not currently a SFWA member. I mean, it’s not like the troll would *lie* about that. Or not have their facts in order before spouting off.” – Jazzfish
  • VD says the SFWA removed Kramer’s entry right after he posted, but I
    think he’s lying and the screen grab is a fake – Agent Mimi 
  • What a troll. Never could understand such petty BS. How small his soul must be to run a campaign of destruction of others. – Walter L. Fisher

If there are others, let me know. These people must be put on the record for their attempts to whitewash the problematic past. The screen capture is not a fake. Multiple readers here have testified that they saw Kramer on the list and SFWA has not denied the fact that Edward E. Kramer was on the SFWA.ORG membership list as of 5:04 AM EST, 24 June 2014. The fact is that Kramer was listed in the SFWA print directory in 2010 and I am still waiting to hear from someone who has the 2011 and 2012 directories. The fact is that Kramer himself said he was an SFWA member “for more than two decades”. And the fact is that numerous members of the science fiction community are attacking me and deceitfully claiming that I forged a screen capture rather than believe the well-documented truth: SFWA has harbored, defended, and celebrated child molesters for more than 50 years and is still doing so today.

Furthermore, even if Ed Kramer stopped paying his dues at some point between 2011 and 2014, how is that to SFWA’s credit? They did not criticize him. They did not investigate him. They did not expel him. They did not cut ties to him. They did not do any of these things even though Dragoncon began attempting to cut ties with the man 14 years ago! Instead, as I pointed out, SFWA defended him, and now its defenders are attempting to deny the undeniable evidence literally in front of their eyes rather than admit that SFWA has a real and ongoing problem with child molesters in its midst.

And, if Ed Kramer paid his dues tomorrow, he would again be an Active member in good standing. As he was for more than 20 years.

Consider how many SFWA people are doing exactly as their predecessors who defended Ed Kramer did in 2004 and 2006, only now they are pointing out that there isn’t any hard evidence that their new Grand Master ever put his words into action. Keeping in mind that the SFWA Board produced an 80-page investigative report on the basis of a single tweet last year, when did SFWA ever do a similar investigation of the author of Hogg: A Novel on the basis of his public support for NAMBLA or even this review of his book by Publisher’s Weekly?

Hugo-and Nebula Award-winner Delany – whose early books were fascinating but whose recent efforts have grown increasingly obtuse – has been trying to get this pornographic novel published since 1973. The main narrator here is an 11-year-old boy who joins up with a raping, murdering pederast named Hogg. Coprophiliac Hogg violates women for pay. He enlists the help of other pedophiliac murdering rapists – Nigg, Dago and Denny – and the group sets off to perform acts of hideous violence. After the attacks, a biker friend of Hogg’s sells the boy into sexual slavery to dockyard slum resident Big Sambo, who keeps his 12-year-old daughter for prostitution and his own perversions. The traumatized little girl is gang-raped by Hogg’s crew as well. Meanwhile, teenaged Denny goes on an insane mutilating and mass-murder spree, eludes the police and finally returns to Hogg and the hopelessly confused narrator, who has been “rescued” after Hogg murders Big Sambo. Gang-rape attacks and criminal sex orgies are detailed at excruciating length, with photographic realism.

That monstrosity is precisely what SFWA chose to celebrate in May 2014. SFWA President Steven Gould, who was personally responsible for the decision to select Delany,  was “delighted” to select the author of Hogg instead of Frank Herbert, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, or other, much more deserving SF authors:

One of the perks of being SFWA president is the option of
selecting the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s next
Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. One of the tragedies is we only get
to select one a year. That said, from the grains of sand in my pocket, I
am delighted to pull this star. Samuel R. Delany is one of science fiction’s most influential
authors, critics, and teachers and it is my great honor to announce his
selection. When discussing him as this year’s choice with the board,
past-presidents, and members, the most frequent response I received was,
“He’s not already?” Well he is now.

If Delany was truly “one of science fiction’s most influential
authors”, then science fiction would be in dire straits indeed. Fortunately, aside from a fairly small number of Pink SF/F freakshows like Gould, Delany isn’t even remotely influential. Virtually no one actually reads his perverted sewage: Dhalgren is #523,915 on Kindle, Nova is #381,524, and Hogg is #873,530. Unfortunately, there are those who unwittingly read the writers influenced by him. Writers like this one:

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has named Samuel R. Delany its newest Grand Master…. I will say this: This is an award both well chosen and well deserved.
 – John Scalzi, 4 December 2013

In light of what we have learned about the way in which the crimes of Walter Breen and Marion Zimmer Bradley were directly tied to the dark themes of their literary work, is it truly justifiable to give another award-winning author the benefit of the doubt and simply assume his innocence without asking any questions at all? Or will it eventually come out that the SF community is again doing what it has repeatedly done over the last 50 years and circled its wagons in defense of yet another celebrated child molester? I have invented nothing here. This is what they are.

To paraphrase Miss Doran: “Even when abuse is right in their faces, they will cover up and deny.”

Another letter to SFWA

Dear SFWA President Steven Gould,

It has come to my attention that a convicted child molester still
belongs to SFWA as of 23 June 2014. In light of your concerted efforts
to expel me for a single tweet linking to a blog post deemed
unacceptable to the organization, it very much appears that you and the
rest of the SFWA Board have no similar objections to the sexual abuse of
children. Given the recent decision to award SFWA’s Grand Master award
to Samuel Delany, a public supporter of the North American Man Boy Love
Association, these facts raise some serious questions about SFWA’s
position concerning the sexual abuse of children.

I would very much appreciate it if you would explain to me and the rest
of the world how a single expression of a private opinion on a personal
blog merited expulsion from SFWA while multiple arrests over a period of
18 years, culminating in a conviction on multiple counts of child
molesting, did not.

If you do not respond to this email, as you failed to respond to my
previous questions concerning SFWA’s continued support for Marion Zimmer Bradley, be aware that you will leave everyone little choice
but to conclude that SFWA tolerates and celebrates the sexual abuse of
children by its members.

Sincerely,
Vox

Attachment: Screen shot of SFWA Membership List

I also tweeted this:

A lot of criticism of @monsterhunter45 by @scalzi, @jimchines and @damiengwalter. Absolutely none of SFWA member @edwardekramer. #askthemwhy

The complicit silence

It’s informative to observe that even though a few belatedly brave members of the science fiction Left are pointing out that “silence is complicity”, SFWA and most of its members are still completely silent about the child molesters they have honored in the past and continue to celebrate today:

And, as is clear from the Breendoggle documents, everyone in their vicinity knew what was going on. What is even more clear, because of the years involved was that many people knew for a long time. And, for a long, long time–the time it takes to ruin a generation of lives–the community still did nothing to stop him.

Let me repeat that. EVERYONE KNEW IT.

Adults. Knew.

And did nothing. Nothing. To stop it….

Friends, we have a problem in the science fiction & fantasy community. A big problem.

We have a culture of silence around our missing stairs. We expect the whisper network to warn newcomers about them–except the whisper network only works when people are connected. And a newcomer is, almost by definition, not connected….

We must confront this history and bring it to light.

I don’t know how we can make this right to the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have been injured by our complicity in these horrors.

Speaking of silence and complicity, I note that although a week has passed, neither Steven Gould nor any other member of the SFWA Board has responded to my letter to them concerning their continued support of Marion Zimmer Bradley. Keep in mind this is the same SFWA that recently gave its Grand Master award to Samuel Delany, the homosexual supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

A few wags have suggested, given SFWA’s longstanding support for child molesters and its members’ complicity in child molestation, the Nebula Awards should be renamed the NAMBuLA Awards.

As for those attempting to distinguish between the confirmed child molesters Bradley, Breen, and Kramer, and the SFWA Grand Master Samuel Delany, this raises the obvious question: has Mr. Delany actually denied ever having had any sexual involvement with underage boys? Has anyone from SFWA ever asked the known NAMBLA supporter about it? Or is this simply more silent complicity on the part of SFWA?

A letter to McCreepy

And, by extension, to every member of SFWA, the organization that celebrates child molesters and champions of child molestation such as Walter Breen, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Samuel Delaney. It’s written to Jim Hines by a man who was victimized himself as a child:

Why are you focusing on Larry Correia?

I just don’t get this.

At all.

Why are you responding to a piece by a guy who thinks rape is wrong and just disagrees with you on the exact nature of the problem and the solution? I’m not saying those aren’t large gaps. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s wrong about rape culture. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s wrong about education (another survivor I know actually works in those groups with those people and says its effective and I trust him, although to be honest even giving offenders that much help makes my stomach turn).

But why is Larry Correia a target?

I don’t agree with a lot of what Larry has to say, but I’ll be honest and say I still like him. He reminds me of a couple of uncles I have and some friends I used to argue with at a couple construction jobs I had. He’s really loud and says some shit I don’t agree with but you also see him actually trying to help other writers and doing stuff for charity all the time.

So, I get that you guys have serious disagreements. I get that he’s called you names. You feel attacked and that makes sense that you’d want to focus on him.

BUT (and this is what’s bugging the shit out of me): The community just found out that Marion Zimmer Bradley was a child rapist. As in, she raped children. She put her hands on kids. I’ve just found out that the community knew she was a procurer and turned a blind eye to child-rape for decades on top of all of that. And no one talks about it.

No one in the community who usually talks about this stuff is talking about this.

I was five when I was victimized. That story hit me right in the guts. I figured I’d see everyone talking about it, trying to do some agony origami and figure out what to say about it that might bring some kind of useful awareness to the community. The silence has been deafening.

I get that Larry is loud and he says things that people don’t like. But maybe fandom needs a voice like that? Before you disagree, Larry’s website is the only place I’ve heard anything even WHISPERED about Samuel R. Delany. I can’t quite seem to figure out why that is.

Samuel R. Delany was just honored at the Nebulas and quoted in NK Jemisin’s speech (I agree with a lot of what she has to say, but I just don’t get how this isn’t at least being pointed out) and Samuel R. Delany outright without any kind of doubt or apology speaks up for NAMBLA.

NAMBLA is a group that advocates grown men raping young boys.

That’s so fucked up I don’t even have words for it.

Look at his Wikipedia page. If you can stand to do it, go to NAMBLA’s website. They quote him right goddamn there.

I’m not going to say that being a male survivor is harder than being a female survivor. But I will say that when you’re a male survivor not nearly many people are willing to talk about it. Giving a pass to a guy who supports NAMBLA is not okay. It’s not okay. Focusing on Larry Correia when that shit is not being talked about is not okay.

It is not okay.

I’m hoping you didn’t know. I’m hoping NK Jemisin and K Tempest Bradford and Mary Robinette Kowal don’t know. I saw everyone tweeting happily when he won his award. Because if you guys all know and aren’t saying anything about it and maybe even turning a blind eye because it’s really hard…

Well, I’d even kind of get that.

People talk a big game until that stuff is at their doorstep and then it becomes really easy to look away. We’re all human. No one’s invincible or infallible.

This is about the ugliest thing you can look at as a person.

But it’s still not okay.

I know none of you are under any obligation to condemn Samuel R Delany or Marion Zimmer Bradley. But when you’re going to start attacking people and you choose Larry Correia….

I just don’t get this.

The science fiction left is attacking Larry Correia for the same reason they have been attacking me since 2005. Because he is a threat to their claimed dominance of the genre. He exposes their lies. He proves that you don’t have to be a left-wing sexual deviant writing about progressive ideology and the deviancy du jour in order to write and sell books today. He shows that their ultimate victory is not inevitable.

First they tried to win him over, and pretend that his offense was aligning himself with me. Once they learned that he is not aligned with me, that he speaks for himself, and that he rejects everything for which they stand, they showed their true faces, their twisted, ugly, hateful faces.

They attack Larry Correia for his ideas and his language because he is a good man who is willing to stand up for what is right. They attack him while overlooking the deeds of perverts and molesters and rapists because they are evil. It is that simple.

My nonexistent wife on Twitchy

Twitchy has a round-up of Larry Correia’s comprehensive Twitterspank of John Scalzi:

After the freakout sparked by Miss Nevada promoting women’s self defense, Correia wrote a blog post with the headline The Naive Idiocy of Teaching Rapists Not To Rape. Here’s a taste:

The idea that there is a “rape culture” in the USA is a
myth. There are individual imbeciles, individual evil scumbags, and
there are some criminal gang subcultures where rape is business as
usual, but for most regular people it is an evil anomaly, and our
children are taught accordingly. To all of these TEACH BOYS NOT TO RAPE
morons, my question is who the hell is teaching them that it is okay?
Where do you live? Next to Roman Polanski or Bill Clinton?  

Some of his science fiction author brethren weren’t too pleased with it and sanctimony ensued.

In addition to accusing Larry of looking like “a rape-excusing asshole” (I note that unlike Scalzi, Larry Correia does not belong to the group that associated with Walter Breen and still celebrates both Marion Zimmer Bradley and Samuel Delaney), John Scalzi went on to claim that Larry’s blog readers are misogynists, that Larry is “sexist” and not “able to understand the English language past the fourth grade level”, and even went so far as to assert that Spacebunny does not exist in her own right, but is merely my sockpuppet.

John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
@Spacebunnyday Hi, Vox. Run along now. @monsterhunter45

Larry Correia ‏@monsterhunter45
Uh… @Spacebunnyday is an actual female human person on the internet @scalzi

I thought that was a little rich coming from a self-described rapist who claims to be celebrating two decades of married bliss with a drag queen. Isn’t denying female agency supposed to be an important aspect of Rape Culture? Anyhow, given the timing of the relevant laws, it should be apparent to the casual observer that it is not my wife, but his marriage, that is imaginary.

But since we’re talking about the Hugo-nominated Larry Correia, I would be remiss were I to fail to note that Larry’s latest Monster Hunter International, NEMESIS, is already available on Amazon despite its nominal release date of 1 July. Does the man not entertain you? I’ve read the previous four books in the series and I’ll be posting a review here next week. I was intending to post it on the release date, but either Baen or Amazon threw me a curve ball with the early release of the ebook on that one.

UPDATE: I just noticed that Tom Kratman’s THE RODS AND THE AXE are also available on Kindle. It’s a big day for Baen fans! But don’t be disappointed if you’re a Castalia fan too… we’ll have a little something for you on Monday.