265 thoughts on “2016 Rabid Puppies Picks”

1. Adding, I wish to co-sign everything Greg Hullender has said on the topic du jour.

2. You were talking about how people don’t talk about cannibalism in modern society and I said, hey, they do, at least endocannibalism, and Heinlein wrote about it, and now you’re getting all snippy because…uh…why?

   As I recall, Poul Anderson wrote a story about cannibalism. Ah, here it is: The Sharing of Flesh. He won a Hugo for it too.

3. @ Cheryl S.:

   My arthritis is barking at me to be cranky, but I’ll override it.

   Yes, you missed my suggestions for other potential topics for discussion-including one in the comment you yourself quoted. Aaron and another poster saw and commented on the last line of my comment, which you missed.

   My first comment, made slightly earlier, referenced topics of discussion about other nominees, RP2 tactics and so on. Mr. Hullender, in a reply to the comment you quoted, touched on the short fiction on the ballot.

   I typically don’t complain for the sake of complaining. Typing hurts too much for that waste of effort.

   It’s your prerogative to think however you like of me on any day. I would hope that you’ll do so fairly, but that’s outside my control. I just sweep out the place so I can sleep on the pool tables at night. 😉

4. Cannibalism-as-plot

   Wasn’t one of Anne Rice’s vampire novels spinning of ritual cannibalism or something? IIRC, some tribe who practiced it got conquered by one who didnt, and this somehow lead to deals with dark powers and vampires popping up?

   Really long time ago, so I can’t recall.

   Steven Erikson’s Malazan books had a disturbingly fascinating take on cannibalism, where a conquering empire were entirely cannibals. It was interesting, as they didn’t have any sopply line concerns, but as someone noted, it was an empire that only existed in the periphery – everything in the centre was consumed.

5. “I don’t think the Dan commenting here is the author of the much discussed article in question.”

   Correct, sorry for the confusion. I didn’t write the series of blog posts re pederasty in SFF. I just happened upon it today and was understandably horrified. Having seen what Delany wrote, I lost most of my hope in humanity. Seeing the attitudes here just about eliminated the remainder.

   But there is still hope! Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up to learn that the SMOD is on its way to fix this. Good night! I’ll dream of gigantic, planet-annihilating interstellar objects!

6. I just happened upon it today and was understandably horrified.

   /r/thathappened/

7. It IS funerary cannibalism! Though I’m skeptical about it having anything much to do with protein–that hypothesis always seemed a bit iffy, and has been outta favor for awhile (or was twenty years ago when I had a great professor on the subject–he went on to become the head of Indian Affairs in Brazil. One of the decent ones, I hasten to add. Mind you, it could be outdated now.)

   So you’ve got your beloved dead, and you want to keep them with you always and keep their knowledge and experience and certainly not just let them rot in the rainforest, but you generally don’t want to eat them outright–that way lies kuru. So you cremate them, powder the remains–this is important, not everything turns to ash when cremated, you have to pound things that don’t reduce, particularly in a fire not-as-hot as a modern crematorium–and mix the ashes with something–banana, say, or whatever starchy veggie you can reduce to a paste, and then eat that, with suitable ceremony. In at least one tribe–might have been the Yanomamo, but don’t quote me on that one, it’s been too long and memory is too fallible–once the person is finally eaten, it becomes a social taboo of sorts to speak their name–you have to refer to them by kinship “my sister” “my great-uncle three-times removed” because it’s just…crass…to use the names of the dead once the rites are over.

   Endocannibalism–when you eat your own people, usually after they’ve passed away–is far and away the most common one, by orders of magnitude, and I’d be very leery of trusting most reports of aggressive cannibalism, since it has a long and ugly history of getting used to make people look awful so you can justify wiping them out and taking their land. That said, there was apparently one reasonably well documented group that had…ah…aggressive endocannibalism? You’ve got your very large tribe, common language, but lots of conflicts between individual bands within it. So your band goes and raids another band, captures a guy, takes him back home, and treats him very well for up to a year. (I always got Summer King echoes off this one–humans do tend to return to some of the same patterns wherever they are.) Then he is expected to make a speech, at the end of his tenure, about how awesome he is and how much you suck, your children are scrawny, your people are starving, your limbs are so thin, your breath is bad, but wow, are you in luck, because look how awesome he is! (Imagine this bit sung by Gaston from Beauty & the Beast. This is absolutely a bragging session, and the better he brags, the happier everybody is.) Everyone listens respectfully to this speech, and then he gets whomped in the head with an axe. But–and this was the thing my professor used to rant about, waving his hands–you can ONLY do this to people in your own larger group, who understand what’s expected! You can’t raid other tribes, because A) they won’t get into the spirit of it and nobody likes a whiner, and B) practically every group in existence thinks they’re the most people of people, and you don’t want to eat people who aren’t…y’know…up to snuff. Because eating a person matters the way animals don’t, you’re getting their spirit and their status in there, and other tribes aren’t quite people enough. A sort of peculiar patriotism, if you will.

   Anyway, I think that was one of the Tupi language groups, (again, been awhile) but between gold miners and missionaries, that stopped a long time ago. But it’s very different than the notion that cannibals are just jumping passers-by to eat them. That’s just nasty propaganda, and historically It just ain’t like that most of the time. You want to be choosy about who you get that intimate with.

   (I’ve always wondered about family drama with endocannibalism, myself. Funerals have not always been drama free in my family. I can see one of the aunts stomping out growling that she’s not going to eat Mabel after what she said about Shirley, and I’ll bet you a dollar people are mostly people the world over in that regard, too.)

   Anyway, the end, inaccuracies my own and corrections accepted gladly (it really has been awhile!)

8. Greg Hullender – One never knows how one’s remarks may be misconstrued online.

9. Dan: I didn’t write the series of blog posts re pederasty in SFF. I just happened upon it today and was understandably horrified. Having seen what Delany wrote, I lost most of my hope in humanity. Seeing the attitudes here just about eliminated the remainder.

   implausible denial
   /Im’plo:zIb(e)l/ /dI’n^I(e)l/

   See also: “I’d never heard of the Puppies before, but after seeing what you all have written here on File770, I’ve become a Sad Puppy.”

10. I didn’t write the series of blog posts re pederasty in SFF. I just happened upon it today and was understandably horrified.

    You Pups lie so reflexively, its almost like breathing, isn’t it?

11. RedWombat: About endocannibalism.

    Some years back I helped to proofread the scans of a book for Project Gutenberg written by an explorer named Arnold Henry Savage Lander (double-barreled last name, sometimes spelled with a hyphen and sometimes not). He went to Tibet at the turn of the last century, when it was forbidden to Englishmen, got most of the way to Lhassa, was discovered, tortured, and sent home. The book is In The Forbidden Land, and our Victorian explorer, who I believe was trying very hard to be an honest reporter, but in this case was getting all his information from local informants, had this to say about a local funerary practice:

    For the disposal of the dead body itself, however, the Tibetans have curious customs of their own. The most uncommon method, owing to the great scarcity of fuel, is that of cremation, which is only employed in the case of wealthy people or Lamas, and is effected in exactly the same fashion as among the Shokas [described earlier, and actually witnessed by him]. Another and more usual plan is to double up the body, sew it into skins, and let it be carried away by the current of a stream. But the commonest method of all is the revolting ceremony which I now proceed to describe.

    The body of the deceased is borne to the top of a hill, where the Lamas pronounce certain incantations and prayers. Then the crowd, after walking seven times round the body, retire to a certain distance, to allow ravens and dogs to tear the corpse to pieces. It is considered lucky for the departed and his family when birds alone devour the greater portion of the body; dogs and wild animals come, say the Lamas, when the deceased has sinned during his life. Anyhow, the almost complete destruction of the corpse is anxiously watched, and, at an opportune moment, the Lamas and crowd, turning their praying-wheels, and muttering the everlasting “Omne mani padme hun,” return to the body, round which seven more circuits are made, moving from left to right. Then the relatives squat round. The Lamas sit near the body, and with their daggers cut to pieces what remains of the flesh. The highest Lama present eats the first morsel, then, muttering prayers, the other Lamas partake of it, after which all the relations and friends throw themselves on the now almost denuded skeleton, scraping off pieces of flesh, which they devour greedily; and this repast of human flesh continues till the bones are dry and clean!

    The idea of this ghastly ceremony is that the spirit of the departed, of whom you have swallowed a piece, will for ever keep on friendly terms with you. When birds and dogs do not shrink from feeding, it is a sign that the body is healthy, and fit for themselves.

    Revolting beyond words is the further fact that, when a man has died of some pestilential disease, and, owing to the odour, the birds will not peck at the body, nor will the famished dogs go near it, then a large number of Lamas, having made the usual exorcisms, sit down by it, and do not get up again until they have devoured the whole of the rotten human flesh! The relatives and friends are wiser and less brutal. They rightly believe that, if voracious animals will not partake of the meal proffered them, it is because the body is that of a sinner against whom God is angry. And who better than the Lamas could make peace between God and him? So let the Lamas eat it all.

    In the case of not finding sufficient Lamas to perform these rites, the body is either disposed of by throwing it into the water, or else, the relations having first partaken of a morsel of the flesh, it is bound to a rock to let animals or time do the rest.

    Note that his informants were quite possibly maligning the Lamas to the author (posing as an Indian pilgrim to Lhassa), as almost all the common people were starving while the lamaseries had food. Then again, they do say that relatives and friends took part. I know that wild-animal “burial” is attested in Tibet, but I’ve never heard of endocannibalism being attested there. Fascinating book, though. I recommend another of his books, Across Unknown South America, as well. He had a way with words.

12. @Dan

    It’s never to late to improve one’s literacy in English. If you do, you’ll see how nothing any of us said had anything to do with what you were alleging. Literacy is important; I urge you to acquire some.

13. @Robert Reynolds – Fair enough and thank you for your graciousness. As to the Rabid Puppies list, meh. When he isn’t actively working at being a pill, VD isn’t worth the time it takes to type his initials. Safe Space as Rape Room was pretty clearly written so as to be gamed onto the Hugo ballot and the rest of the picks are some form of trolling, popular picks that would likely be on the ballot anyway, or middle of the road Goodreads winners. It’s not a particularly interesting list and the commentariat would have probably given it as much attention as the press outlets if someone hadn’t been wrong on the internet.

    @RedWombat, @Cally, thank you. That was fascinating.

14. Regarding “Safe Space as Rape Room”. Lets not forget that the series include disgusting lies and guilt by association of pure Beale-standard.

    It attacks Arthur C Clarke and ignores that proof the Sunday Mirror said it had, confessions in a taped interview, turned out to be total lies. They could never produce any such tapes, even when they promosed. And this forced the Mirror to apologize. You will not find this in the Castallia-text. Because they aren’t trying to give a fair and correct picture. They want something to attack.

    To nominate this text is to say that you have absolutely no knowledge about the subject at hand and no interest in doing your own research. Or to say that you are an asshole that wants to defame others.

15. Saying “well you know, sometimes, in certain instances ,it is ok or has historically been ok” is the first step twoards saying it is ok.

    Not it isn’t. It is merely noting how it has been regarded in the past. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention but the general historical trend has been away from what we would now regard as legal pederasty and a general broadening of condemnation of what was legal but tolerated – with rock stars from the sixties and seventies now being reviled for sex with underage girls. Noting this uneven societal trend is not approval of instances where it was tolerated unless you can show actual approval. To suggest that this is a slippery slope towards tolerating pedophilia is ahistorcal and depends entirely on you voicing the opinions that have been voiced by no-one here and then condemning others for it. A kind of thought-crime that depends entirely on you doing what passes for the thinking.

16. I just happened upon it today and was understandably horrified

    Were you horrified by the fact that is uses the topic of pedophilia, a topic of so much pain and with so many real victims, as the vector for a cheap and shoddy hit-piece? Shouldn’t that enrage anyone who actually gives a shit about the horrors of the crime of pedophilia? Don’t Gamergate indulge in a similar repulsive tactic? Doesn’t Beale’s mimicry of said tactic speak to the seeping knock-off cynicism involved? What the hell is wrong with you and Josh that you would come here and lie to our faces that anyone here was defending pedophilia or even Delany’s views? Why would let yourself be the stooge and stalking horse for a person like that? Where’s your shame? Where’s your dignity? Fucking about with stupid genre awards is one thing but now you’re callously messing with abuse victims and survivors, using them as grist for the mill of a cod moral campaign. The insincerity that radiates off each of your lies that asserts that anyone here has defended pedophilia is nauseating. Grow the fuck up.

17. Well this thread ended up having little to say about the overall topic. What are fans of SFF doing today regarding possible pedophiles at conventions:

    Insisting Codes of Conduct (CoC) exist and be followed when problems crop up

    These cover pedophilia as well as a range of other problems. VD and many puppy leaders are against CoCs. Which again makes one wonder who is on the side of pedophiles and who wants to solve the problem. Is it those putting concrete steps into place and insisting concoms follow their CoCs. Or is it those who want the free for all of harassment at conventions to continue because they can’t figure out how to read a policy and follow it (behave without being a jerk in public) and are in total fear they’ll transgress the rules?

18. I wake up disappointed to realize that the SMOD has not annihilated us all. So I’ll add a few points:

    (1) I haven’t said one false thing on this thread. That mode (truth telling) is clearly incomprehensible to SJWs. Commenters here react to truth like vampires to sunlight. It is something to behold and I’m sorry you can’t see things from where I am.

    (2) I have visited Vox’s blog in the past and know some about him but I am not one of his minions, have never interacted with him, and I didn’t follow his blog to get to this stuff. I am sure many folks here are more up on him than me.

    (3) Consider me an emissary from civilization. As an emissary from civilization, I must report that the rest of the world regards child rape as pretty much the worst evil that there is. Even the worst people in prison look down on the pedos, ranking them below even the murderers.

    (4) When I said no other community would tolerate, let alone celebrate, such intense pedophilia advocates, take that seriously. Someone cited Roman Polanski. Well he isn’t out there being a vocal advocate for what he did. He isn’t out there arguing for it. If Polanski went around preaching that its good to rape children (and Dulany has been apparently been advocating this crap for like 30 years — its not new at all) then the film industry would go sour towards him fast. In any case, Polanski hasn’t been elevated to the top of film the way Dulany has been elevated to the top of SFF.

    (5) Why on Earth are the people here so morally ambiguous about this stuff? Those excerpts from Dulany’s writings would be utterly horrifying to any normal person. Folks here are strangely sanguine about it. I speak again as an emissary from civilization: you may lack the neurological hardware to see the problem, but trust the rest the of humanity when they tell you pedophilia is really bad.

19. Dan, as an emissary for civilization and all, I ask again–what would you do with Delany? He hasn’t done anything that can be prosecuted. Do you want his writings censored? What is your civilized solution?

20. @Dan

    Really, you need to work on your English language comprehension. You really have to in order to have a conversation, or you’ll show up claiming to tell a group of function adults that pedophilia is wrong, which, as functioning adults, we already know, and we’ve already shown we already know. Your lack of understanding of these basic words really make me urge you to stop using google translate to correct your lack of English comprehension; you’re obviously missing something.

    You speak about ambiguity, but you seem to not know the definition, seeing it in words where it is not present. I think it’s fortunate that you say you’re not one of Beale’s people, because they are far less kind to people like you who obviously don’t speak or understand English as a first language than the people here.

21. “SJWs always lie, but I’m not in any way connected to the person who is the ostensible topic of this thread who wrote a book of that name! Roman Polanski is not at all respected within the film world, and the film world didn’t rise up in almost-uniform horror when someone had the audacity actually to arrest him for his crimes! It is civilised and proper to attack the whole of SF fandom as paedophilia-apologists because one writer who was popular forty years ago has said something unpleasant in a work almost nobody has read”

    You’re not even *trying*.

22. Why on Earth are the people here so morally ambiguous about this stuff?

    Nobody here is being morally ambiguous, liar, not even you. There’s nothing morally ambiguous about fronting for someone who is using child abuse as a tool to smear people he hates.

23. Dan on March 23, 2016 at 7:26 am said:

    (1) I haven’t said one false thing on this thread.

    I do expect that you would pass a polygraph examination.

24. I haven’t said one false thing on this thread.

    Almost every thing you’ve said in this thread has been false, whether an intentional lie or simply the result of you passing on falsehoods in your cavalier and careless ignorance of the facts. I know you think that you’ve got a magic bullet in the whole “SJW’s Always Lie” thing, but the cold hard reality is that Beale’s “tactics” are clumsy and stupid, and following them doesn’t actually give you an edge. It just reveals your mendacious lying ways all the quicker.

25. Consider me an emissary from civilization.

    Dulany has been apparently been advocating this crap for like 30 years

    Whatever civilisation it was that sent you needs a higher standard of truth-telling. ‘Dulany’s’ interview, pretty much roundly condemned here, was in 2014, post-dating his awards. Unless you’re insisting that the fictional works cited count as advocacy (which you seem to be), in which case please show your work. For once. Unless your civilsation believes that assertion trumps proof or analysis.

26. Dan on March 23, 2016 at 7:26 am said:

    (4) When I said no other community would tolerate, let alone celebrate, such intense pedophilia advocates, take that seriously. Someone cited Roman Polanski. Well he isn’t out there being a vocal advocate for what he did. He isn’t out there arguing for it. If Polanski went around preaching that its good to rape children (and Dulany has been apparently been advocating this crap for like 30 years — its not new at all) then the film industry would go sour towards him fast. In any case, Polanski hasn’t been elevated to the top of film the way Dulany has been elevated to the top of SFF.

    Polanski is an admitted child rapist. Since then, he’s had an active career and won awards all over the world, including the Oscar for Best Director.

    Delany hasn’t been an active science fiction writer for over 20 years. His last major science fiction award was in the late 80s. A non-science fiction novel that was published in the 90s is apparently an issue for you. He made some statements in an interview in 2014 which many people in the science fiction community take issue with.

    And yet you reserve your approbation for the science fiction community.

27. Consider me an emissary from civilization.

    Which part? Germany? Italy? Japan? Portugal? Because a lot of what you are condemning would be considered fairly normal in all of those places (and many more).

    Dulany has been apparently been advocating this crap for like 30 years.

    It’s spelled “Delany”. If you’re going to make up crap, at least get the guy’s name right. At no point has Delany advocated raping children. You clearly haven’t actually read what he said, and have no idea what you are talking about.

28. Because a lot of what you are condemning would be considered fairly normal in all of those places (and many more).

    Just to say, I find the age of consent being set at anything under 16 a bit squicky and would generally lean for 18, with sensible Romeo & Juliet exceptions. On top of everything else, it gives people the chance of getting a proper education instead of being married off at 14.

29. @RedWombat on March 22, 2016 at 7:42 pm
    Fascinating! I wasn’t aware of that particular custom, but I love this quote

    practically every group in existence thinks they’re the most people of people

    It’s true. The second Pirates of the Caribbean movie really annoyed me for having “cannibalism” that looked like a 1940s Charles Addams cartoon.

    @Nigel on March 23, 2016 at 1:38 am said:

    I just happened upon it today and was understandably horrified

    Were you horrified by the fact that is uses the topic of pedophilia, a topic of so much pain and with so many real victims, as the vector for a cheap and shoddy hit-piece?

    I know I was. And this Dan thread is exactly what I expected when the original piece came out. It’s so damned obvious what the Rabids are TRYING to do with this.

    I’ll see your Roman Polanski and raise you a Catholic Church, if you want to talk about institutions with a history of protecting sexual predation on minors. Plus, the “Men’s Rights” types Beale pals around with are frequently on record as defending and even recommending sexual predation on female minors. Is Beale going to condemn his community for that? Is JCW going to condemn the Catholic Church?

30. Just to say, I find the age of consent being set at anything under 16 a bit squicky and would generally lean for 18

    That is certainly a reasonable position. But the point is that age of consent laws vary across such a range in places that are firmly within “Westernized modern culture” that anyone who claims there isn’t room for reasonable people to disagree is simply fooling themselves. The further point is that what Delany is being condemned for here is for having ideas that fall, at least in part, within that reasonable range of disagreement. I think 13 is almost certainly too young, but Japan, as a nation, disagrees. 14 is clearly pushing it, but Germany, Italy, and Portugal disagree. And so on.

31. Dan:

    1) Insulting people is not an argument. What the hell is an SJW? Someone who says something you don’t agree with?
    2) So you visit a racist blog sometimes. Ok.
    3) Ok. Whatever.
    4) What are you even talking about? Is that supposed to make sense? What did you mean to say? What was your point?
    5) Yes, pedophilia is bad. So we all agree. Was it something you wanted to say apart from that? Exactly what?

32. @Dan

    When I said no other community would tolerate, let alone celebrate, such intense pedophilia advocates, take that seriously.

    What “advocates?” I think we’re only talking about Delany. Using the plural is dishonest. He’s not even really an “advocate” in the sense that VD is an advocate for white nationalism, because he’s not trying to lead a movement; he simply expressed his opinion.

    In any case, Polanski hasn’t been elevated to the top of film the way Dulany has been elevated to the top of SFF.

    Delany doesn’t have any role in modern SFF though. He got a few lifetime-achievement awards a few years back, most likely from people who were unaware of this controversy. It’s not at all truthful to claim that he has been elevated to the top of SFF.

    What do you expect people to do? If there were an award named after him, it would make sense to lobby to change the name. (As with Lovecraft.) If he were on the board of the SFWA, it would make sense to lobby him to step down. I’d be surprised if anyone nominated him for any awards in the future. But, as it is, he’s an old man who mostly keeps to himself. There isn’t anything to be done. People express their distaste and they move on.

    What else do you expect them to do?

33. I’ll see your Roman Polanski and raise you a Catholic Church

    I think the practised response to this will be that you are now predictably engaging in Christian bashing. Being Irish and raised Catholic, I can tell you you’re not.

    Plus, the “Men’s Rights” types Beale pals around with are frequently on record as defending and even recommending sexual predation on female minors.

    Dan’s an innocent and naive visitor from a distant civilisation. We’re in the early stages of the first act of his visit when he’s been easily duped by a toxic community to go attack a different community. He thinks we’re vampires.

34. Problem with Dan is that he has admitted he knows absolutely nothing about what he is saying. He just found a text written by another person who didn’t really know much the other day and read it with no background knowledge. He has admitted this himself.

    And then he tries to spew talking points from this lack of knowledge. Makes him look kind of stupid.

35. McJulie: Yes, you are right, this thread is going through exactly the set of contortions the Castalia blog post was intended to trigger.

36. rob_matic at 8:24 am:

    Delany hasn’t been an active science fiction writer for over 20 years.

    As an aside, this isn’t quite true — his 2012 pornographic novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders was definitely science fiction. There’s even a Mars colony. I don’t think it was widely read, in fandom or otherwise, but it got a little bit of attention: Nick Mamatas* and Jo Walton both reviewed it, the latter kicking off a comment thread not entirely dissimilar to this one.

    *Nick’s review goes into more explicit detail about the various unusual sex acts and use of racial slurs in the novel, so I feel like it needs a content note. For those who would rather not look at that, I’ll excerpt my favourite moment of the review: “So, Spiders is gross. As a sentence-lover, I can read a well-written sentence about anything. And I’m pretty sure I spent the last two months doing just that.”

37. I’m most appalled by “Rabid Puppies 2016 Make the Hugos Great.” Can we talk about that? (a) No they don’t, and (b) changing to a year-based numbering, implying they’ve been around a lot longer than they actually have. This is the real thought crime, or perhaps even self-libel, going on here.

    /snark

    BTW I’m amazed Beale couldn’t come up with another short form editor. Doesn’t he or someone else at CH “edit” (loose definition) short fiction? Huh.

38. @Dan
    What are fans of SFF doing today regarding possible pedophiles at conventions:

    Insisting Codes of Conduct (CoC) exist and be followed when problems crop up

    If Delany is an active pedophile at a convention we now have rules in place to deal with such a situation. So far Delany has done nothing other than talk about his own abuse and how he believes his life would have been better if laws were different. I wish Delany had gotten therapy at the time of his abuse. I wish the world were not so racist and anti-gay when Delany was growing up (and still racist today) so he could have explored his feelings of homosexuality in an open and safe way while growing up. I believe he’d have very different opinions had the world treated people like him better.

    Do I agree with his opinions? No. Do I understand how he came to them intellectually? As a fellow sexual abuse survivor (age 3-13) who had to find her own way you bet I do. Whether the abuse is by a stranger or a parent it warps ones thinking and feelings. It doesn’t automatically turn survivors into abusers.

    There is a big difference between intellectual thought and action. In no case has Delany called for others to abuse young children. His 2014 article is painful to read and one wishes he were less wandering intellectual and more concise in his answers.

    Am I pedophile apologist? Nope. No way would I want to see another child harmed by sexual abuse. Moving past that kind of abuse is difficult even if you get immediate help. People like VD and you playing games with such a serious issue sickens me. It’s disgusting how little thought you give to real survivors while pretending to care. We can tell the difference you know. Please stop. Think about the people you are truly harming. We exist. We’d like you to stop.

39. P.S. I’m with @JJ on lack of condemnation of Delany, for similar reasons.

    BTW I haven’t read a single of his novels (which I don’t need to to determine my lack of condemnation, because Fiction). His novels always sounded like (a) experimental (b) literary stuff; that’s two strikes against them for me, since I’m generally not into that. I should probably read something, but at this point, the odds are low because Time + Disinterest (not because Moral Panic, though).

    (checking) Huh. I appear to own Atlantis (by Delany) and Radical Utopias (three stories, one each by Charnas, Russ, and Delany). Either of those any good?

40. (5) Why on Earth are the people here so morally ambiguous about this stuff? Those excerpts from Dulany’s writings would be utterly horrifying to any normal person. Folks here are strangely sanguine about it. I speak again as an emissary from civilization: you may lack the neurological hardware to see the problem, but trust the rest the of humanity when they tell you pedophilia is really bad.

    You do realize that cosplaying as Captain Moral Crusader in public just makes you look silly, right? Tying a cape around yourself and running around screaming about being a noble superhero in a fantasy land of supervillains is great if you’re six or seven (or Adam West), but by your age, not so great…

41. @Kendall
    Can’t answer your question on the Delany books you own. The only Delany I’ve read so far has been Dhalgren. It was a trip. Part of my reading POC project. It came up on sale and gets talked about and won/nominated for Hugo so I thought I should read it. I had no idea what I was getting into. No clue someone could write about some of the stuff he did. I expected the sex and drugs and streams of consciousness. I didn’t expect the boogers and defecating.

    Shortly after finishing it I read an author giving writing advice who said (paraphrasing) you can’t write about everyday stuff like taking a shit, eating, sleeping, every day and I had to laugh. You sure can and in the right context it works. I don’t plan on ever rereading Dhalgren but it has given me a different perspective on what you can and can’t do as an author.

    I do have Babel-17 and Nova as well as 3 more recent collections of his non-fiction to read. I’ve been sidetracked by Hugo reading.

42. @Kendall

    Excellent non-Delaney point. I hadn’t twigged to that. Also, he probably didn’t want to sound like a bad movie sequel – “Rabid Pups Too” is a straight-to-VHS clunker.

    I think he declared that Pournelle was the only possible choice in short form or something.

43. @Kendall – checking) Huh. I appear to own Atlantis (by Delany) and Radical Utopias (three stories, one each by Charnas, Russ, and Delany). Either of those any good?

    I haven’t read the Delany work in Radical Utopias, but the Charnas and Russ are foundational works and, unless the suck fairy has been really unkind, well worth reading.

44. He thinks we’re vampires.

    Will Smith will play him in a painful movie adaptation.

45. @RedWombat

    I would not be shocked if Kameron Hurley was relying on similar literature for parts the Mirror Empire books. There’s some similar rituals (different in some ways, but it’s at least reminiscent) of one of the cultures she creates there.

46. Kendall: The nomination for Pournelle, and no one else, in BESF was allegedly based on ‘only he is deserving’. But if this is the only anthology CH produced last year, there might well be no one else available – Mr Day had edited an anthology himself (along with Mr Marmot) in 2014, but nothing I know of in 2015.

    We should not complain; it means that even on the worst hypothesis there will be one category with non-RP nominees in it.

47. “You do realize that cosplaying as Captain Moral Crusader in public just makes you look silly, right?”

    Maybe Dan is one of those SJWs he’s screaming about.

48. @Tasha Turner: Thank you very much.

49. @Jim Henley
    Your welcome 🙂

50. @Mark (Kitteh): “Rabid Pups Too” is a straight-to-VHS clunker.

    LOL! And indeed, it is, isn’t it.

    @Tasha Turner & @Cheryl S.: Thanks for the feedback! Tasha, Dahlgren sounds quite bizarre.

    @Andrew M: Thanks; I’m not sure why I thought CH was more about short fiction. And yes, I shouldn’t complain – wasn’t complaining, really – and you have a good point. I should be grateful! I’ll stop short of thanking him, though. 😉

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