Tag: SFWA

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. 

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.