Tag: SFWA

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.

Shut up, McCreepy

Jim C. Hines, the weirdo who is really, really, really interested in “helping” women who have been raped, tries to take Larry Correia to task for suggesting that women should be armed and able to defend themselves against rapists:

There’s nothing new in LC’s rant. It’s the same attitude we’ve seen
for ages, an attitude that conveniently puts the burden on victims to
end rape, oversimplifies the problem, and allows the rest of us to look
away and pretend there isn’t a real or widespread problem here, despite
countless studies showing otherwise.

Some of you are aware of the current conversation in SF/F fandom
about several Big Names who sexually assaulted hundreds of children, and
how fandom stood by and let it happen, despite there being multiple
eyewitnesses to these assaults. Call me a naive idiot, but I wonder how
many children would have escaped those assaults if others in fandom had
intervened or reported them or enforced any kind of consequences,
anything to teach the perpetrators that this kind of behavior was
unacceptable.

I wonder how many victims we’re continuing to turn our back on today
because we assume there’s no point in doing anything to intervene.

So, the guy who really, really, really likes to “help” women who have been raped is attacking the guy who actually helps prevent women from being raped. This raises certain questions about his motivations and is only one of the many reasons we know him as “McCreepy”. And here is McCreepy expressing his opinion of one of those Big Names who is known to have sexually assaulted several of those children:

“Great to see MZB’s Legacy Continue!”
– Jim C. Hines


Cheering on the legacy of a child molester isn’t exactly the most convincing way to help children avoid sexual assault. If deviancy apologists like Hines weren’t so busy celebrating sexual deviancy in SF/F, then perhaps some of those children might not have been abused by the sexual deviants in SF/F.

Contamination by association

In keeping with the argument presented by Tim Atkinson, I encourage left-liberal science fiction writers to not “give house room” to known child molesters and rapists. Atkinson writes:

Now, there’s a conversation to be had about how and whether to read authors with detestable views. I’m not pro-censorship, I’m pro-context. But putting someone prone to racist outbursts on a conservative voting slate for the shortlist for the prestigious Hugo Awards – that sends a entirely different message to the one I think you hoped it would.

Would Beale have gotten onto the shortlist for Best Novella – which he succeeded in doing – if he hadn’t had this kind of support? We’ll probably never know. But the point is that the Beale-boosting contaminated by association the conservatives-and-libertarians-overlooked-in-SF position the slate was intended at least in part to raise.

Correia mounts a mainly art-for-arts-sake defence for the inclusion of Beale on his slate (it’s a long post so I’d suggest scrolling or searching for it). Unfortunately, he presses onto deny both the racism of Beale’s statement and of the man himself, which seems at best naïve and at worst disingenuous in light of his public record….

I have been clear, I hope, that Correia is not supporting Beale over and
above putting him on his Hugos slate and is on the record that he
himself is not racist. My key point is that putting forward such a
divisive, controversial figure (to put it mildly and in terms you might
find acceptable) risks contaminating by implication
conservative/libertarian positions in science-fiction.

I find Mr. Atkinson’s concern about messages and contamination to be fascinating. Mr. Atkinson claims my comments made in response to a woman lying about me and repeatedly attacking me are “controversial” and risk “contaminating by implication
conservative/libertarian positions in science-fiction” while completely ignoring the fact that, by the same metric, the liberal/left position in science fiction has undeniably been contaminated for 15 years by the documented public evidence that Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the most influential and celebrated feminist authors that Pink SF/F has ever had, was an abusive, sexually aberrant child molester and incestuous rapist.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was convicted on a federal child pornography charge prior to her marrying the homosexual child molester Walter Breen and editing one of his books defending pedophilia. Bradley’s own daughter has publicly stated that her mother raped her on more than one occasion. One of Bradley’s lesbian lovers testified in a 1998 legal deposition that she was aware Marion Zimmer Bradley sexually harassed and tortured her own daughter, and raped her own son as well.

SFWA purged me from its ranks for a single tweet, but has not yet seen fit to purge Marion Zimmer Bradley despite her many sex-related crimes dating back to the 1950s. They have not revoked the two Nebula nominations given to a known child molester and a magazine named after her. SFWA still features an RIP notice for Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as a listing for Bradley’s literary estate and the agent for that estate on its Internet site. (However, it is interesting to note that SFWA never awarded her any distinction as a Grand Master or Author Emeritus whereas she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention in 2000, which suggests that some SFWA officers were probably aware of her problematic history.) But SFWA’s Nebula-winning members and former officers are still writing and publishing laudatory articles about the confirmed child abuser, some as recently as last week.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the 47 SFWA members who called for my expulsion and none of the 8 SFWA Board members who voted for it have ever openly condemned Marion Zimmer Bradley or called for the revoking of all awards and recognition given to her by various science fiction and fantasy organizations even though knowledge of her crimes has been a literal matter of public record for more than a decade. By the Left’s own transitive logic of contamination-by-association, until they do, it must be assumed that Steven Gould, Rachel Swirsky, Lee Martindale, Matthew Johnson, Bud Sparhawk, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (a self-described racist), John Scalzi (a self-described rapist), the Toad of Tor, Jim Hines, Jo Walton, Deborah Ross, Amal El-Mohtar, and dozens of other left-leaning science fiction and fantasy writers are morally degenerate individuals who celebrate homosexuality, torture, child abuse, child molestation, incest, and rape.

It appears not to be a coincidence that their books are so often packed with sexual perversions and crimes. It is beyond irony, and well into dark parody, to discover that this inclusive and tolerant crowd has long included, tolerated, celebrated, and even honored a felonious feminist child molester. In light of these facts, I sent the following letter to Steven Gould, the President of SFWA, yesterday:

Dear Mr. Gould and the SFWA Board


I have three questions in light of the recent public statements that
Marion Zimmer Bradley raped her daughter, and the legal depositions of Ms Bradley and Elizabeth Waters which are posted on SFF.net and indicate Marion Zimmer Bradley:

  1. was aware of her husband’s criminal sexual molestation of
    several underage boys
  2. tortured and sexually molested her own daughter
  3. raped her own son

First, as a tolerant and inclusive organization, does the
behavior which SFWA tolerates include abnormal sexual behavior
such as homosexuality, child abuse, torture, and incestuous rape by its
members? Second, will the SFWA Board be purging Marion Zimmer
Bradley from SFWA’s historical membership list and removing all
references to her, her estate, and her estate’s agent from the
SFWA web site? Third, will the SFWA Board be retroactively
expunging from the Nebula Awards list Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1976
Best Novel nomination for The Heritage of Hastur and
Mary C. Aldridge’s 1990 Best Short Story nomination for “The
Adinkra Cloth”, published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy
Magazine.


As a former life member of SFWA expelled by the current SFWA
Board for a tweet deemed inappropriate, I should be very interested to hear SFWA’s formal position
on homosexuality, child molestation, torture and incestuous rape by its
members. I look forward to reading your response.


Sincerely,
Vox Day

Some may find it shocking to learn that even after learning about the extent of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s crimes, members of the SFWA are still defending the woman and her work. I can’t say I’m even surprised.

In addition to the lives she harmed, MZB’s works saved the lives of
other people by speaking to them when other works and other people would
not and/or did not.

Truly.

Rachel E. Holmen, who worked as an editor for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine said about Marion: “When she visited cons, ten or twenty young women an hour would stop by
with stories along the lines of “Your books saved my life.””

There are other writers being published now who may speak to those
same hearts, but if MZB is still the author that would help them, then I
think it’s important that her work be available to do so. This doesn’t
diminish her very real (and very severe) failings.

Rachel’s quote points out why we need diverse books by diverse writers that speak to diverse audiences.

Additionally, MZB gave a start to a lot of women writers—a higher
percentage than anyone else in the genre at the time. Those writers
helped pave the way for even more female voices in the genre.

Keep in mind that the SF/F Left openly states that science fiction needs books by child molesters and rapists. Because diversity. And equality. And it remains enthusiastic about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s depraved legacy.

“Great to see MZB’s Legacy Continue!”
– Jim Hines, Hugo Award-winning SFWA member

I certainly wouldn’t say so. Would you? The Left always claims the Right is a collection of racist white supremacists. But how seriously can you take the accusations made by collection of child-molesting perverts? The only rape culture to be found in science fiction and fantasy is on the SF/F Left.

UPDATE: Deidre clarifies her position on Marion Zimmer Bradley and makes it clear that she is NOT defending the woman.

The entire reason I posted about Marion Zimmer Bradley at all is that
she did unconscionable things and enabled unconscionable things and
Tor.com was whitewashing that. Full stop.

Even if you disagree
with me about almost everything else, we probably agree that suicide, in
general, is a sad loss of life. There are a lot of people who’ve had
rough childhoods who feel suicidal and who have attempted suicide. If
MZB’s books help keep a few of them living long enough to get through
that dark patch, then I think that is a good thing.

It does not change the fact that I think she belonged in prison.

Now, I think she’s wrong as I do not believe the child molester’s books saved a single life, the various claims of attention-seeking drama queens notwithstanding. But regardless, it is clear that she is not defending Marion Zimmer Bradley, she is not claiming that the woman’s actions are justified by the impact of her books, and she should not be criticized for doing so. To the contrary, she should be lauded for calling out the ghastly MZB-glorifying actions of Tor.com and others.

A past SFWA resignation

I was sent this link to why the Babylon 5 guy quit SFWA:

I resigned SFWA (back before it became SFFWA) for the reasons you
cite, and over the whole Dramatic Nebula issue, which was for me the
defining moment and the proverbial straw across the equally
proverbial camel’s back. A number of us — me, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Mike Cassutt,
Harlan, others — attempted to get SFWA to restore the Dramatic
Nebula, which had been dropped for a number of years. In the course
of this, I received more abusive, vitriolic, hateful pieces of mail
and email than I can begin to describe to you. It rivals or exceeds
*anything* ever sent to me in any flame war. All from other SFWA
members. One quote I remember vividly is emblematic of the whole: “I
work my ass off writing for pennies a word, while all you hacks in TV
churn out crap for thousands of dollars a page. You and your LA
buddies will never get a Dramatic Nebula as long as I’m alive.”

And that was the nicest letter I got. It was explained to me, in mail, email and the SFWA journal, that
scriptwriting wasn’t really *writing*, it was just typing. That TV
writers weren’t really writers. That you can’t read a script unless
you’re trained, so you can’t vote on it. That since TV/film is often
a collaborative form, you don’t know who contributed what, so how can
you give a nebula? And there’s George Martin’s argument, that SFWA
should give Dramatic Nebulas to scriptwriters when WGA allows prose
writers to join.

And the responses to this…it *is* writing, you *can* read the
script easily, it’s just the margins that are different. Editors
often contribute structure and ideas and other material to the books
they edit, but I don’t see that stopping regular nebulas. And SFWA
was built around a particular *genre*, anything in that genre is or
should be acceptable; WGA is built around *form*, the script, and any
genre within that form is acceptable. We’re talking apples and
oranges here.

I was even willing to remove myself from all future DN consideration
to remove the notion that I was doing this to get one myself. It was
the principle, for one vital reason:

At that time, SFWA allowed scripts to qualify you for membership in
SFWA. Scripts were fine as far as SFWA was concerned as long as it
brought in more in the way of membership dues. If it brought money
INTO SFWA, then it was writing, and qualified script writers to join
SFWA. But when it came time to give out the dramatic nebula…nope,
suddenly it ain’t writing no more.

It was a clear contradiction, and a bald-faced double-standard.
Hypocrisy at its most blatant. So finally, when the move to restore the Dramatic Nebula was vetoed,
I quit. The final irony being this: over the 10 years or so I’d been
a member, I’d written maybe 7 or 8 letters to be published in the
SFWA Journal, which appears quarterly or monthly, I forget now.
There were (and are) people who had something in almost every issue,
often for pages at a time. I sent my letter of resignation to the
Journal, and it has never to this day been printed. Because once it
became clear that I was no longer going to continue paying dues
(though I was still a member at the time of the letter, and for
several months thereafter, until my prior payment ran out), they
really had no interest in hearing anything from a scriptwriter. They
later tried the excuse that it was too long, but it was exactly the
same length as the majority of letters that appeared in the Journal.

In fighting for the rights of script-members of SFWA on the DN
issue, and the perception of scriptwriters in general, I was
insulted, abused, targeted, slandered, ridiculed, threatened and
harrassed. While there are many fine individuals who belong to the
group, as an organization is is provincial and small minded and
insecure and jealous. Any John Norman GOR novel would theoretically
be eligible for a Nebula, but 12 Monkeys would not. If an SF novel
sells 35,000 copies, it’s a great thing; 100,000 is a *terrific*
thing, much ballyhooed by the SF establishment. B5 has a hardcore
audience of between 10 and 15 *million* people.

So bottom-line…yeah, I left SFWA because I got tired of the
contempt the organization and many of its members held (and still
hold) for scriptwriters. When it came time to accept the Science
Fiction Weekly’s award for “The Coming of Shadows,” I stepped into
the SFFWA suite (where they were to be given out) just long enough to
find the guys involved, and get out again. And the award was
presented out in the hallway, because I didn’t want it to happen
there. As I told the organizer, I wouldn’t go into the SFFWA suite
for this if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free
chemotherapy at the door.

And here I thought I was supposed to be the first SFWA member to ever attack another member in an official SFWA channel. In any event, the organization is clearly not a place for people with principles. And how typical is it of the cowardly little freaks that they didn’t print his letter of resignation. They still haven’t announced my expulsion either.

Now the freaks aren’t being snobbish about scriptwriters; they’re too busy trying to become scriptwriters themselves. They content themselves now with trying to look down on self-publishers, who they also insist are not real writers.