Tag: SFWA

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. 

Pink SF/F is worse than you think

By way of example, consider that one of the foremost heroines of Pink SF/F turns out to have been the very sort of monstrous sexual freak the pinkshirts so love to write about in their inclusive, people of colorful, sexually deviant fiction. This is a letter from the daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of SF/F’s most influential feminists, who was nominated for Hugo Awards in 1963 and 1978, for a Nebula Award in 1976, and given a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. A short story published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine was also nominated for a Nebula Award in 1990.

Hello Deirdre.

It is a lot worse than that. The first time she molested me, I was three. The last time, I was twelve, and able to walk away.  I put Walter in jail for molesting one boy. I had tried to
intervene when I was 13 by telling Mother and Lisa, and they just moved
him into his own apartment.

I had been living partially on couches since I was ten years old
because of the out of control drugs, orgies, and constant flow of people
in and out of our family “home.”

None of this should be news. Walter was a serial rapist with many,
many, many victims (I named 22 to the cops) but Marion was far, far
worse. She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind
sexually. I am not her only victim, nor were her only victims girls.

I wish I had better news.

Moira Greyland

This is the true heart of Pink SF/F. This is the twisted moral perspective they have been trying to push on science fiction readers as being imperative for more than three decades. This is the shamelessly hedonistic worldview they have been trying to assert as the pinnacle of the literary subgenres with their odes to dinoporn revenge and necrobestial multicultic rape fantasies.

Keep this in mind when the social justice warriors wag their fingers and lecture society on the burning need for tolerance and acceptance. This is what they seek to tolerate and accept. One wonders how many SFWA members not only knew about Ms Bradley’s behavior, but were part of that “constant flow of people” mentioned by Miss Greyland. Pink SF/F is the literary end product of sick, damaged, and twisted minds. It is not a coincidence that reading it so often feels like immersing oneself in a never-ending flow of sewage.

Lest you think I am exaggerating, have a look at who Tor.com was celebrating just last week. Tor attempted to bury the piece after being criticized for whitewashing Bradley’s personal history, but it can be found on Google web cache in its entirety.

On This Day   
Marion Zimmer Bradley Gave us New Perspectives
Leah Schnelbach, June 3, 2014

Marion Zimmer Bradley

For someone who considered herself more of an editor than a writer, Marion Zimmer Bradley managed to write an absurd number of books, and create a whole world that fellow writers have returned to for the last forty years.

Born in 1930, Bradley grew up in rural New York during the Great Depression, and became an enthusiastic member of SFF fandom that exploded just after World War II, beginning by writing letters to Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, and then writing, editing, and publishing fanzines, including Astra’s Tower, Day*Star and Anything Box.

She was married to Robert Alden Bradley from 1949 until 1964, and had one son. She married Walter Breen in 1964, and the couple had a son and a daughter. She earned a B.A. from Hardin-Simmons University in Texas the following year, and then took graduate courses at UC Berkeley from 1965 until 1967. Throughout this time she continued her work in fandom, and also became involved in a groundbreaking lesbian-rights group, the Daughters of Bilitis.

Bradley’s early professional work came in two areas. In 1958 her novel The Planet Savers was published, introducing audiences to the world of Darkover. Darkover proved to have a life of its own: she continued writing stories set in that world until her death, and her fans have kept it alive ever since; the most recent fan novel was published in 2013, and the Friends of Darkover still hold conventions each year.

Bradley also began writing lesbian erotica for pulp publishers in the 1950s, including the novels I Am a Lesbian and My Sister, My Love, under various pseudonyms. However, despite her involvement in the Daughters of Bilitis (and the scholarly work published under her own name, “Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Fiction”) she didn’t acknowledge these books during her later career.

In 1983, Bradley published what would become her most famous work, a reworking of the Arthurian legends told from the perspective of Arthur’s half-sister, Morgaine (Morgana le Fay) who fights to keep Avalon and Mother-Goddess-centered paganism alive in the face of Christianity’s rise in England. Rather than just writing a black-and-white story, Bradley delves into the complexities: Guinevere loves Arthur and Lancelot, and dedicates herself to a fanatical Christianity because of her guilt over this triangle. Arthur knows about their affair, and hates that his best friend and wife are in constant emotional pain, but has to ignore it for the health of the realm. Mordred admires Arthur, but also feels that he’s unfit to rule. The various priestesses of Avalon can be just as cold and unfeeling as the male rulers, and the male rulers can be compassionate toward their subjects. The Mists of Avalon is not simply a feminist statement: it is also a powerful work of storytelling. But it also isn’t just a story, it is an attempt to wrest control of history from the winners. Bradley returned to this methodology with her 1987 work The Firebrand, which sang the Trojan War’s classic song of ‘arms and a man,’ but this time with attention paid to a woman, Cassandra.

Likewise, the Darkover books took fantasy tropes and complicated them. Darkover is founded by stranded colonists from Earth. The Earthlings intermarry with each other and with the natives of the planet, giving birth to a population with psychic and psionic abilities, called laran. Because the original colonists were Scottish, Irish, and Basque, the idea that second sight was a possibility is passed down through the generations, making laran a prized gift, and keeping the Darkovans open to it. One of the most notable things about Darkover is that Bradley (who seemingly enjoyed playing Civilization on the highest difficulty setting) hemmed herself in with an extremely difficult geography, and then set her characters against it. Darkover is primarily an ice planet, with only a small equatorial pocket of habitable land. However, even this region is subject to extreme temperature, evergreen forests that produce a flammable resin, resulting in forest fires, and several different sentient native species that complicate life for her Terran survivors. Among the natives, the most notable group were the Chieri, long lived, six-fingered, hermaphroditic, and psychic.

Bradley used her fantasy to deal with gender roles and sexuality. One book, The Winds of Darkover, is explicitly about the aftermath of rapes, one physical, one psychic. With the extremely popular Renunciates, she created women who opted out of Darkover’s gender roles to instead form female guilds. Even within the guild Bradley plays with traditional roles, showing some members who are tough mercenaries and some who are healers. These characters inspired people in both the literary world (Free Amazons of Darkover is an anthology of all-Renunciate stories, written mostly by women and edited by Bradley) and in the more prosaic world, where women tried living in communes and occasionally changed their names to emulate those of the Renunciates, who go by a first, given name, and then use their mother’s given name as a surname, to remove themselves from a patriarchal line while honoring their mothers. Bradley started the Sword and Sorceress series of anthologies to encourage people to write more active heroines. Beginning in 1984, the 28th volume was released last year. And obviously her stories in Mists of Avalon and Firebrand rewrite popular Western mythology from the points of view of the women who are often sidelined in the traditional tellings.

For much of her career she was dedicated to promoting new writers, encouraging people to write in the Darkover world, and editing anthologies, particularly for female authors, to help new writers gain an introduction to the SFF world. One of her protégés, Mercedes Lackey, published early work in Sword and Sorceress, and co-wrote Tiger Burning Bright and Rediscovery with her.

She also helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1966, and is credited with naming it. After she moved to Staten Island from Berkeley she founded The Kingdom of the East, which currently rules over Pennsylvania, eastern New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. So she didn’t just give us books. She didn’t just give us a world that encouraged other writers to play. She gave us a literal kingdom. Or perhaps it would be better, in light of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work in promoting equality in science fiction and fantasy, to call it a queendom?

It is now more than obvious that science fiction’s equalitarian queendom is the evil product of an evil, abusive, and morally depraved woman. It is “is an attempt to wrest control of history from the winners”. Opposing these monsters and rejecting their deviant, corrupting creations is the moral imperative. It should be fascinating to see if the pinkshirts who have been so eager to read out HP Lovecraft, RE Howard, and Orson Scott Card from the genre will be as ready to eliminate the bisexual, child-molesting neo-pagan Marion Zimmer Bradley from it as well.

Notice that John Scalzi has never once condemned Marion Zimmer Bradley despite repeatedly attacking me and threatening to quit SFWA if I was not purged. And notice that the Tor.com publisher, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who also threatened to quit SFWA if I was not purged, is the individual responsible for publishing the Schnelbach piece. It is extremely informative to observe what the champions of Pink SF/F consider acceptable and what they do not.

UPDATE: Kate Elliott tweets: “And we know more about other people that no one wants to say out loud.”

Not a bad summary, actually

Our new friend Damien nicely summarizes the heart of the SF/F Left-Right divide on Twitter. A more succinct paraphrase:

Right-wing sci-fi is about shooting the Other. Left-wing sci-fi is about fucking the Other.

This does explain the incessant Pink SF/F obsession with necrobestiality. As well as, for that matter, Larry Correia.

Speaking of Twitter, John Scalzi is, as usual, spinning, ever spinning. There are spiders who look at him in awe, and wonder where on Earth he finds the energy.

Once in a while I check to see if the racist sexist homophobic dipshits
are still railing that I exist in the world. They are. I smile.

Sure you’re smiling, Johnny. That’s why you stopped reporting your annual numbers in 2013. That’s why you shut down your Quantcast reports. That’s why you don’t post a traffic meter anywhere on your site. That’s why you threatened to quit SFWA. No one is “railing that [you] exist in the world”. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find your constant snake oil salesmanship genuinely amusing. You’re the Bernie Madoff of science fiction and you’ve got the Participation Hugo to prove it.

Now, did you forget that you tried the “I’m so loving this” routine before you finally cracked and let your real feelings show? Look, there is nothing wrong with being upset and embarrassed about being caught out inflating your bio. But piling on lie after lie after lie just isn’t convincing very many people anymore.

June will mark the fifteenth straight month that my average site traffic exceeds your best month ever… by more than 120,000 pageviews. And the main reason your blog is in relative decline is because you lack the self-confidence to be honest with your readers.

But hey, keep smiling!

An angry terror

It appears we may need to petition the White House to classify angry black women as a terrorist movement. I tend to suspect President Obama would be more than happy to sign it himself.

N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin 7h
They’re already watching my group

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  Jun 6
Everybody’s got a bomb

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  Jun 6
So I have to make choices. Burning bridges is unavoidable; whose gets set on fire first?

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  Jun 6
Just offered to kill one of my oldest friends

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  May 28
It needs to be made clear that the privileging of straight white male voices at the exp of all others won’t be tolerated.

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  May 15
We kinda need to see some shit blow up.

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  May 15
One of my co-workers just came into my office, took one look at my face, and walked out. #RestingKILLFace

It is not surprising that Jemisin is against the rights of men. She is, after all, a faux equalitarian, a race-baiting coward who tries to hide behind the idea that she is hated for her genetics and/or her sex rather than for her ideas and her actions. There is no reason to despise the woman for her melanin content, especially not when there is already so much to despise about her dishonesty, her emotional incontinence, her pinkshirted progressive neofascism, her overrated fiction, her slander of the living and the dead, and her avowed opposition to legal self-defense as well as the Constitutional rights to a) free speech, b) free association, and c) bearing arms.

Consider her bizarre concept of “harassment” and keep in mind that this is the very same woman who was “harassing” me five years before I had ever even heard of her:

N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin Jun 6
I can’t do – not to my fullest – if I have to constantly interact with people who *hate* me, not b/c of my actions but who I am.+

Vox Day ‏@voxday 3h
@nkjemisin Never fear, Ms Fully Savage and Proud of It, we only despise you for your actions. Just like the other pinkshirted fascists.

N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin 28m
@voxday Oh, look, fresh harassment. Must have missed this handle of yours. Welp, blocking you now. Don’t talk to me again.

Her courage never ceases to inspire! And I never cease to find it satisfying that so many of those who attack me unprovoked end up running away, pretending I don’t exist, and desperately wishing that I’d never mention them again. After more than 10 years of this blog, you’d think people would have learned better by now, but there is always some brave new progressive champion who can’t resist the urge to stick his hand into the woodchipper.

Another science fiction fraud?

I quite like David Brin’s Uplift Saga, particularly Startide Rising. It is innovative, insightful, and original. While it does betray a few hints of what would, in many later SF writers’ less-capable hands, blossom into full-blown political correctness, such strands do not detract from the story. Unlike the award-winning pinkshirts of today, Dr. Brin never sacrifices the story for his ideology.

There is no question that David Brin is an accomplished science fiction writer. His various awards are well-merited. However, it is apparent that in the course of debate, he likes to throw his weight around as a credentialed scientist, which one gentleman who has had a run-in or two with him is now calling into question:

You have repeatedly used your qualifications as a scientist to denigrate those who disagree with you, particularly on this issue…. If you are a scientist, where’s your scientific publications?  Your public sources list 6 papers in the scientific field in which you trained.  Based on your published Bio, three-to-four were from your Master’s, and two don’t really count, since they constitute a two-part paper authored by your Advisor with you in the “courtesy student author” slot. 

You have one main publication obviously from your PhD dissertation, but absolutely nothing for the next 8 years – where was your scholarly output as a post-graduate professional scientist?

You have only four scholarly papers since your PhD – one was SETI, three in fields other than what you trained, and one of those clearly marked “speculation” – where is there any evidence of you doing science?

All of your academic positions are for “instructor,” “post-doctoral fellow,” “associate,” “visiting scholar.” Nowhere do you list any faculty or academic scientific positions, neither do you list any actual scientific jobs – so how are you a practicing scientist without working in science?

You have 4 scientific publications in over 30 years, and no publications relevant to your scientific training in over 25 years.  How is it that you can currently claim to be a scientist?

If what scientists do is science, and if it is true that Dr. Brin has published no scientific papers in more than 25 years, then David Brin is clearly no longer a scientist and should not be attempting to claim that he is, Wikipedia’s description of him as “an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction” notwithstanding. In such a case, a description as an ex-scientist or a former scientist would be more apt.

Especially given that one of his three featured “science” publications on ResearchGate is “Q&A: David Brin on writing fiction. Interview by Nicola Jones“.

If the writer has his facts straight and Dr. Brin has been appealing to his scientific credentials when he is no more actively involved in science than any other SF writer with an MA in English, that would be pathetic. For example, the astrophysicist who authored our recently published Astronomy and Astrophysics curriculum has more than twice as many scientific publications, more Impact Points, and is more than two decades younger than Dr. Brin. I was the founder of an award-winning, 3x Billboard-charting techno band signed to TVT but I do not describe myself as a professional musician, not when I haven’t set foot in a recording studio in 22 years.

Now, to be clear, I am not declaring that David Brin has, like John Scalzi, committed self-inflating biography fraud. We have not yet heard Dr. Brin’s side of the story; for all I know, he has published scores of landmark papers and is actively working on some ground-breaking science today. We would owe him the benefit of the doubt even if we did not enjoy his fiction. However, these are serious charges of misrepresentation, especially the charge that Dr. Brin has “lied about [his] affiliation with Caltech” and Dr. Brin has a responsibility to answer them, especially if he is the dedicated scientist he portrays himself to be.

UPDATE: Dr. Brin responds:

A brief, measured response.

1) When people engage in a public
pillorying, it is common courtesy to let the target know. Instead of
being offered collegial opportunities for response, I learned of this
blind-side assault fifth hand. The first order conclusion is that this
is not a person who was well-raised.

2) I admit freelance is an
easier life than the academic trenches. I have no need to burnish a
vita. Getting to be a sniff-everywhere scientific generalist and
cross-fertilizer is fun and fits my personality more than specialization
did. Sorry.

3) The Transparent Society is one of the only
public policy books from the 20th Century still in print, and selling
more every year. I now fly all over the world on this topic. Open it.

4)
Beyond fiction and nonfiction, I’m a speaker and consultant on
sci-technological trends. I’m on the board of advisors of NASA’s
Innovative and Advanced Concepts (NIAC) group as well as corporations
and intelligence agencies. So far this year, I consulted in the
Pentagon, for MITRE Corp, ODNI, the Atlantic Council, Google and many
others. Funny, they keep asking to run concepts by me. But I suppose
this blogger would do things differently. Close your eyes and picture
him in charge.

4) I’ll not discuss here my early work in
astrophysics and optics, or my even-earlier career as a microelectronics
engineer (helping to invent CCDs.) But over the last decade I’ve had
papers in (e.g.) evolutionary biology journals and the volume
PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM. I presented new ideas at the National Institute
on Drugs and Addiction and have extensive patents. I’ll likely moderate a
SETI panel at the AAAS in February. And funny, the University of
California named me a Distinguished Alumnus, instead of asking for their
PhD back. What fools

5) I suppose I should update my
publications list, and find and correct sites that mistakenly show me
now connected to my alma mater Caltech. But in fact, I… do… not… care…
much. I do have an official scholar position at UCSD. I guess I should
note that. Some time.

Sure, my role in science tends to be as
generalist/cross-fertilizer/consultant/gadfly/reviewer, more often than
via direct publication in specialized topics. But, scientific colleagues
make liberal use of me and that is satisfying enough. Getting to hang
with and exchange ideas with some of the best minds on Earth, my sole
regret is the time I just spent answering bona fide ninnies.

Come
on by http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ and meet a better community.
Better yet, keep exploring. These are great times for those with free
minds.

With cordial regards,

David Brin 

I have to admit, I am more than a little puzzled that Dr. Brin would consider drawing his attention to some questions that I’m told were posted to his own Facebook page is either a public pillorying or a failure to offer an opportunity for a response.

Speaking only for myself, I’m satisfied with his response, as I think there is considerably more to science than simply publishing papers and there is no reason to conclude he is an ex-scientist or that he is, scientifically speaking, pining for the fjords. I think it’s impressive that he has gotten involved in more practical engineering applications; as regular readers here know, I regard them as the only truly reliable science. That being said, his tone and his reference to “bona fide ninnies” does tend to indicate that it is not far-fetched to believe that he might occasionally be inclined to appeal to his credentials in lieu of actually presenting a valid argument when questioned by someone he deems, rightly or wrongly, his inferior.

After all, he freely admitted that his publications list is incomplete and that the ResearchGate assertion of a professional connection to Caltech is incorrect as well. If he thinks asking obviously legitimate questions somehow makes someone a ninny, well, I would say that insulting people simply because they catch you out is unwise. Substantive criticism should always be appreciated. My conclusion is that Dr. Brin is not a fraud, but is overly accustomed to deferential treatment and therefore occasionally finds himself involved in social media debates in which he is not truly prepared to engage.

No one is above being questioned. I answer questions I find painfully stupid on a regular basis. And while Dr. Brin may have found the questions of his critic to be stupid or irritating, I have to commend him for answering them directly.

Another whack of the Tetsubo

I’m beginning to get the impression that Larry is underwhelmed by the call to repentance, recantation, and self-abasement: 

Secondly, and this is going to be much more damaging for him longterm, he allowed himself to become very closely associated to Vox Day in the process. Ultimately people do judge others by their associations, and both Larry Correia and John C Wright have made very public declarations of support for Day, that I fear both will deeply regret in the long run.

One of the tactics I’ve seen them take is conflating my views with those of Vox Day. It doesn’t matter that I’ve disagreed with the man, and I’ve debated with him several times, but they sure love linking me to Vox. See, unlike me, they can actually find a couple of comments from him that they can manage to spin up some outrage over, and everybody knows righteous indignation gives libprogs super powers.

You have an issue with something Vox said, take it up with him. I did, and I found the guy to be a capable debater, and many of the insinuations about him floating around the internet were grossly exaggerated. (says the man who the Guardian has insinuated hates women and wants to keep fiction the exclusive domain of a group he doesn’t technically belong to, so I simply can’t imagine the internet exaggerating somebody’s beliefs.)

The woman Vox insulted with the infamous half-savage comment also has a long history of inflammatory racial statements, and had been throwing insults at Vox for years, but somehow she always gets a pass in these discussions about “divisiveness” (remember what I said earlier about the Ctrl H search and replace to put Jew instead of White Man in their tweets? She’s totally the best). I don’t think she likes me much either, because she gave a speech a little while ago and condemned Mr. Free Speech At All Costs… I think that’s supposed to be me, but personally I took that as a compliment, because you know, that part where I actually believe in free speech and stuff.

So I recommend a short story by somebody who made a statement they found racist? DIVISIVE! And Damien will condemn me in his newspaper. Meanwhile, an approved author writes tons of negative things about an ethnic group that it is cool to hate? Totally not divisive, and Damien will plug her in his newspaper. Now me personally, I think the concept of race is increasingly irrelevant bullshit, and I judge all humans as individuals, but I’m the International Lord of Hate.

Public declaration of support? By that Damien means I failed to join his lynch mob? Sadly I couldn’t find my jack boots in time.

One of the International Lord of Hate’s commenters pointed out what Damien was trying, and failing, to accomplish: “They want to slam Vox because he is the one nut they can’t crack, but
boy, if they can turn a few of his friends and supporters, that’s at
least along the lines of their goals.”

On behalf of Mr. Correia, Mr. Wright, and Mrs. Hoyt, I am offended at the idea they should be deemed any easier to crack than me. (As opposed to that notoriously soft and bendable reed, Col. Kratman, whose pastimes make Ramsay Snow’s look like embroidery.) Now, it is true that mi amigo latino has a different perspective on race than I do. I realize this may astonish white people, particularly of the SWPL variety, but we members of La Raza Cósmica do not necessarily think alike; some of us don’t even believe in the inevitability of Universópolis. Transmetachronopolis, yes. Universópolis, not so much.

As Larry says, we’ve even debated the matter in private, and while I did not convince him, I believe he did come to understand that my position is based entirely on sound genetic science and history rather than personal preferences. Since then, the publication of A Troublesome Inheritance by Nicholas Wade has demonstrated that my “controversial” views are entirely in line with current science and that the “Nurture not Nature” perspective is outdated and unscientific.

(Nota Ironica: the very concept of La Raza Cósmica is based on the idea that Darwinism was “created to validate, explain, and justify ethnic superiority and to repress others.” So, you see, this is why only fifth-racers like me “have the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the ‘universal era of humanity’.” Bow down, you colonial sons and daughters of the Old World, abase yourselves, you children of the Orient, kneel before me, you spawnlings of Darkest Africa. Bow to me, in the name of humanity!)

I love Larry. I have great respect for him. He’s the best action writer of our generation. But I don’t answer for him and he doesn’t answer for me. That’s one thing the Left will never accept: there is no guilt by association. A man can only answer for his own deeds, his own words, his own actions.

Which is one reason why Larry declined the opportunity to participate in the suggested auto-da-fe:

I’m quite serious about my suggestion by the way. I think if Correia wrote publicly to support the new diversity in the genre, and apologised for any perception he was campaigning against it, that might help him a lot.

Apologize for the perception? Apologize for being seen as an enemy of progress? That sounds suspiciously like the apologies Stalin used to have people sign right before he shipped them off to the gulag, so in response, Beria, er, I mean Damien, here are a few of my thoughts about what it really means when a libprog demands an apology.

Rule number one. Never apologize for something that shouldn’t be apologized for. Check out all the various firings, purges, boycotts, and cancellations. Apologizing for causing their outrage is you taking responsibility for their ignorance and inability to control their own emotions. Apologizing to the perpetually outraged means they own you. You have declared yourself guilty and vulnerable to their threats. It is like negotiating with terrorists. Give into their demands and you’re just encouraging them to blow something else up.

If I was the type of mushy headed fool that would issue an apology, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because as we’ve already seen my actual words and actions mean nothing compared to the agreed upon narrative, and that narrative is that I’m guilty of pretty much every vile thing they can think of. Luckily for me, I’m successful enough that these people aren’t particularly threatening, so I scrape them off my shoe and continue writing books.

Normal people only apologize for things that should be apologized for, like for example: “I’m sorry the Social Justice Warrior contingent of sci-fi is made up of a bunch of perpetually outraged adult children.”

I suspected that would be the outcome. As for me, I’m just wondering when all the pinkshirts and Social Justice Warriors who said less-than-flattering things about me are going to apologize to me now that N.K. Jemisin has openly admitted that she is not merely “half-savage”, but rather, “all savage and damned proud of it”.

And in the meantime, John C. Wright has produced the United Underworld Literary Movement Manifesto, complete with logo. Apparently I am the Supreme Dark Lord, Secret Warden of the Cosmic Fifth Race, and Eternal Champion of Universópolis.

The concern rabbit

There is no need for me to address Damien Walters’s latest attack on Larry Correia and me, since the big guy is going to be doing one of his monster fisks on it. I will link to it later. One Jared Garrett summed up the Guardian article succinctly: “This is one of the single stupidest pieces I’ve ever read. I
know who you’re referring to in this clownish rant and you have
absolutely zero clue. Either you’re too stupid to read and comprehend or
you’re being deliberately obtuse.”

What I found more interesting than Damien’s customary moronics was the rabbiting that took place in the comments, wherein Damien purported to be deeply concerned about the career of the very man he is publicly attacking and calling “not very intelligent”. Consider his comments of that follow the article.

  1. I think you’ll find they lumped themselves in with Vox Day. Why they
    wanted to do something quite so suicidal to their careers, we can only
    speculate.
  2.  I think Correia did two things. The first was appeal for
    votes on the basis of a perceived liberal bias in the genre. That was
    the basis of his campaign, a protest vote against liberal influence.
    That was divisive and did a lot to spark the backlash he’s still
    feeling. Secondly, and this is going to be much more damaging for him
    longterm, he allowed himself to become very closely associated to Vox
    Day in the process. Ultimately people do judge others by their
    associations, and both Larry Correia and John C Wright have made very
    public declarations of support for Day, that I fear both will deeply
    regret in the long run. I’m quite serious about my suggestion by
    the way. I think if Correia wrote publicly to support the new diversity
    in the genre, and apologised for any perception he was campaigning
    against it, that might help him a lot. Remember, we won’t know who
    missed out on shortlist places until after the awards. At that point
    Correia et al could find the response to them gets much, much worse even
    than when the story broke. 
  3. I’d suggest those 25 other writers work harder not to be associated with
    Vox Day. it seems to be doing the public perception of them a great
    deal of harm.
  4. The reactionary conservative movement in SF has many members, Corrreia,
    Wright and a number of others mentioned. Vox Day goes far beyond that.
    You’re welcome to defend his opinions if you wish, and good luck to you
    in the task. I think even the reactionaries would do well to distance
    from him if they have any sense.
  5. I have no clear idea what you mean by shunning or writing people out of
    the genre. I assume you’re bringing in baggage from other discussions.
    We have a genre growing ever more diverse, and a small clique of
    reactionaries behaving very poorly in response to that. And doing
    immense damage to their own careers in the process. Sad for everyone
    involved.

Meanwhile, the Blue SF/F market continues to grow, as do the submissions to Castalia, as does the readership of this blog. May 2014 marked the 14th straight month in which the average blog traffic was more than 100,000 Google pageviews more than Whatever’s best-ever month of May 2012. 

It’s fascinating to see how desperate the pinkshirts are to try to separate me from Larry, John, and everyone else. This is classic rabbit behavior; when they can’t exclude themselves, they try to convince others to perform the exclusion for them. Not that it would do any good anyhow. They don’t understand that Larry, John, and me are under absolutely no illusions that we agree on everything. Or even most things. We are three very different men who belong to different population sub-groups, different Christian denominations, we vote for different political parties, and we have very different interests and communication styles. Larry is the tetsubo, John is the rapier, and I am the Ka-Bar, best suited for close-in combat gutting. We simply happen to have earned each other’s respect for various reasons and to share a disdain for SF/F that elevates left-wing ideology over every other aspect of storytelling.

Nor are we alone. Damien doesn’t mention Tom and Sarah and Ringo and Amanda and Kate and the other Tom and Lou and Brad or any of the many other writers who have observed precisely the same problems with the left-wing infestation of SF/F that the Big Three have, (just a joke, John, I can see you wincing now) except to say that “the reactionary conservative movement in SF has many members”.  But that’s not the real issue, the real issue is that there are far more “reactionary conservative” readers than there are readers of the progressive Pink SF detritus that the mainstream SF/F publishers have been aggressively pushing on SF/F fans for the last two decades. And apparently two decades of a consistently shrinking market isn’t enough for them, because #weneeddiversebooks!

Damien is making the same mistake that Whatever readers did two years ago, the same mistake that CNN made in 1996, and the same mistake that Newsweek made in 1998. He is assuming, all the evidence to the contrary, that the numbers are on his side. Throughout his piece and his comments, he foolishly attempts to minimize the other side: for example, he refers to “little-known writers” even though Larry is a best-selling author, I have the best-trafficked blog in SF/F, and John C. Wright was voted the sixth-greatest SF writer alive.

Indeed, if there is not this institutional left-wing influence that we “reactionaries” all observe, and all oppose, how can anyone be “doing immense damage to their own careers” by opposing it? If it doesn’t exist, then how would being lumped in with me, in any way, be “suicidal to their careers”. Setting aside the humor inherent in an unpublished nonentity like Damien giving literary career advice to the Nebula-nominated Mr. Wright or the Hugo-nominated Mr. Correia, it should be obvious that Damien has assumed the very point that he was attempting to refute.

So, in the end, this is nothing more than a petty rabbit with a soapbox attempting to DISQUALIFY, DISQUALIFY. Again. The most offensive aspect of Damien’s latest attack is the insult to both Larry and John in the implication that they are any more susceptible to the Left’s blandishments than I am. I, for one, find it impossible to imagine either man being even remotely willing to submit to the Left’s ritual of public recantation and self-abasemen.

Why, one wonders, is it such an imperative for the Left to separate me from everyone else it is attacking?

Mailvox: the sterile wasteland

A foreign author observes the pinkshirts running amok in other literary genres than SF/F:

I found your blog yesterday and I just wanted to thank you for what you have done there. I’m a published author in an Anglosphere country, who has really been struggling with the prevailing SJW culture in my local literary community. What is going on here is actually horrifying, to the point where I have indulged in self-exile and given up ever publishing in this market again.

The entire literary community here has been transformed into a horde of politically correct zombies hellbent on sniffing out and crushing the merest hint of intellectual insurgency.

The types of writers arising from this mess are increasingly foisting upon the local and international public derivative works of insipid speculative fiction which amount to remixes of ideas from other better authors.

However, they all seem to be geniuses at networking amongst our small, left leaning liberal elites, and a small, well-networked coterie of these people occupies positions in the mainstream reviewing press, publishing journals and publishers. The result is that unanimous praise is heaped upon everything that is published by anyone attached to this network, and prepared to turn their novels into conduits for speaking power to truth.

One of these authors recently won a major international literary prize for a second novel which was so bad that I actually blushed when I read the first chapter. I have been completely unable to make sense of this, or the way that some big names in fiction have put their weight behind this person, while crowd-sourced reviewing sites have largely given the work the stick it deserves.

Reading through some of your blogs I now have a sense of the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that must accompany literary awards, and it has helped to develop a sense of what really goes on. I have always suspected that some rather dark Machiavellian maneuvering happens in the backrooms of Big Lit.

At any rate, this whole process is gradually turning our locally literary landscape into a sterile wasteland. Literary forums where writers used to interact have turned into barren wastelands because of the vigour with which any dissent is persecuted.

The people in the community seem oblivious to this fact, and now seem to interact mainly on Twitter where they retweet each others’ blind observations and compete to come up with interpretations of the world that are as thoroughly inverse to observable reality as possible.

I stopped engaging with these people over two years ago and now just observe them, as they make for an interesting study of the decay of Western civilization and values. I find myself coming up with theories in an attempt to make sense of and accept what I see.

One thing I have considered is that many not terribly bright people hold the art of novel writing in incredibly high esteem and consider it the ultimate status position in society.

This gives these people a very strong motivation to write books, and if these books are bereft of quality, those who possess suitable social skills have a strong motivation to use these skills to bring their work to prominence by hook or by crook. The result is that we’re seeing the survival of the cynical, while actual writing ability is coming uncoupled from literary success and renown.

It was a huge relief to find your blog, and to see that not every writer fits this mold. I’ve subscribed to your blog and look forward to participating in discussions on it. Thanks, you’re doing God’s work and beaming a light into the darkness.

It increasingly appears that we are the monks of the Grimdark Age. It is vital that we continue to read, continue to write, and continue to support those who are keeping the traditional literary forms alive, despite the mainstream’s descent into the literary equivalent of Ow! My Balls! and Ass.

Let’s face it, Redshirts, “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” and “All That Fairy Tale Crap” are considerably closer to Ow! My Balls! than to Dune, Foundation, or The Lord of the Rings.

I’m clearly not the only one who has picked up a book that has won awards or been given a quantity of rave reviews, then wondered what on Earth the readers were dropping to reach such obviously absurd conclusions. It only takes a few times experiencing this to realize that most reviewers these days are actually worse than useless. Which is why precisely we are in the process of turning the CH blog into the leading site for the review of independently published books.