Pixel Scroll 2/23/17 We Scroll Not Because It Is Easy, But Because It Is Hard

(1) NAME THAT TRILOGY. The game show where you figure out the title of the third movie based on the first two! And who is our contestant today, George?

(2) NUANCES OF LESTER DENT. Cat Rambo’s new Doc Savage post — “Reading Doc Savage: The Spook Legion”.

Hideous and amazing! Let us begin. Leo does, of course, send off the telegraph and soon after Doc Savage calls on the phone. He points out certain subtleties we might have missed earlier:

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the appearance of the message then came out. Dr. Savage heard it through without comment then advised, “There is probably no A. N. Onymous listed in your directory.”

Leo Bell looked in the directory.

“No,” he said. “There is not.”

“The name was the result of a trick writing of the word ‘anonymous,’” Doc pointed out. “The dictionary defines an anonymous work as one of unknown authorship, which seems to fit in this case.”

Lemony Snickett has nothing on Lester Dent. Leo and the night manager discuss the mysterious telegram and then vanish from the book, never to be seen again.

(3) THEY’RE BLACK, AREN’T THEY? Blastr says “We’re finally going to find out what black holes look like. Sort of.”

We think we know what black holes look like. NASA renderings and sci-fi special effects artists usually imagine the eerie glowing ring of an event horizon around what appears to be an impenetrable dark chasm. It happens that they aren’t so far off from the truth — and a groundbreaking (sky-breaking?) telescope is about to prove it.

Supermassive black holes have long been suspected to lurk at the center of every galaxy, including ours. These mysterious phenomena were initially predicted by Einstein’s Theory of Gravity over a hundred years ago. Don’t get any time-travel ideas yet, but their gravitational power is intense enough to warp space-time. Activity that occurs at the edge of one of these dark leviathans can actually ripple through the entire galaxy it resides in. Despite their awe-inspiring power that has fueled pages and pages of brilliant science fiction and even an iconic Muse song, no one has actually ever seen one.

(4) SAVING TED’S HOME. Ted White’s appeal “Save My House” has funded. He asked for $15,000, and within two days 352 donors have given $17,948.

(5) LAWLESS AND DISORDERLY. “Stories ripped from the headlines” as it’s famously said about one TV franchise. Amanda Bressler tells readers of the HWA Blog how to profit from this strategy in her post “Horror in the Headlines: Using the News for Novel Ideas”.

Multiple points of view While good journalism tries to cover a story in a balanced way, you really never get the whole picture. Everyone involved in a tragedy or mysterious event will have a slightly different version of what happened. Fiction gives authors the ability to explore and create those various angles through multiple points of view. School shooting novels especially use this tactic as these encounters are so personal—the gunman, the victims, the bystanders are the friends, teachers, siblings, and classmates with whom there is history and relationships. Allowing for many first person accounts gives a fuller picture of this tangled web of high school connections and emotions that culminate in a horrific and terrifying event.

The book Violent Ends takes a unique approach to multiple points of view by giving 17 YA authors one chapter each to write from the perspective of a student in a high school that has been taken hostage by a fellow classmate. It achieves an even more complex study into what would drive a person to such violence, and the variety of styles throughout the book make for a more interesting reading experience.

(6) WHO KNEW? The President of SFWA may be mighty but she is not in charge of your Wikipedia entry.

(7) ODDS AGAINST. Meanwhile, a former SFWA President swats another fly – “Reminder: There’s No Such Thing as an Automatic Award Nomination”.

Over at Inverse, writer Ryan Britt is annoyed that two of his favorite science fiction books of the year, Death’s End by Cixin Liu, and Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey, are not on the Nebula list of nominees for Best Novel. His argument for both basically boils down to they’re both amazing so they should be obvious nominees, obviously, which to be fair is the same general argument anyone makes when they complain about something they love getting what they perceive to be a snub for whatever award they think the thing the love should be up for….

…It’s pretty much 100% certain this didn’t happen here; instead, people just voted for the novels they preferred, and preferred other books.

But Death’s End and Babylon’s Ashes were good books! Indeed they were. But there were five Best Novel slots available on this year’s Nebula ballot and dozens of SF/F novels (at least!) of sufficient quality to make the ballot. The two novels that Britt points out are only a couple of the novels that could have been on the ballot, from the perspective of quality, but aren’t. There are — thankfully — always more good SF/F novels in a year than may fit on a Nebula ballot.

And not just novels but novellas, novelettes, short stories, YA novels and screenplays, those being categories that SFWA awards annually. I mean, let me use me as an example: My novella The Dispatcher was eligible for the Novella category this year. It was very well reviewed, had a huge audience, and is already up for other awards. I’m a well-known and (mostly) liked science fiction writer, and former president of SFWA, so I’m also familiar to the folks who nominate for the Nebula. The Dispatcher should be a shoo-in for a nomination, yes? Yes! I say yes! A thousand times!

(8) THE FLY STRIKES BACK. Swatted is just a metaphor, of course, for while people were reading Scalzi’s fine-tuned mocking, his target, Ryan Britt, was busily (buzzily?) typing a reaction piece, “Science Fiction Awards are Basically Bullshit”. But he writes as if he suffered an actual rather than metaphorical concussion. Today, for a brief and shining moment, Britt seemed to understand how works get shortlisted for the Nebula, something he misstated in Tuesday’s post (“Two Huge Sci-Fi Novels Were Snubbed by the Nebula Awards”) —

In order for something to make it on the ballot of the Nebulas, it has to be nominated by members or associate members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. This is a little better than the Hugo nominating process, which is loose enough to create loopholes that let all sorts of bigoted groups to hijack the process. But still, the non-insider fan gets bamboozled: SFWA ignores great science fiction writing published outside of the places they usual look. The Nebulas and Hugos will nominate books about fantasy worlds and spaceships, but when the technological sci-fi speculation gets closer to home, those types of books tend to be overlooked. And this doesn’t mean they aren’t finding really obscure, indie sci-fi authors. Just the opposite. Mainstream literary fiction — which is totally sci-fi — gets snubbed by the Nebulas and the Hugos completely.

Unfortunately, by the last paragraph he was again telling people the Nebula finalists are the product of a “nominating committee.” His syntax was pretty groggy, too —

This year, the Nebula Nominations have proven again that they’re nominating committee is only seeing half the picture. With two huge science fiction novels nowhere on the list — Death’s End and Babylon’s Ashes — it feels like a good time for fans can start looking elsewhere for good science fiction book recommendations.

(9) USE YOUR PLACE AT THE TABLE. What to do after you’ve been to the ISS: “After Making History In Space, Mae Jemison Works To Prime Future Scientists” at NPR.

On encouraging more women and minorities to enter math and science

I think that there are really important things that we have to do with students to get them to succeed in science, to go on and stay with careers. And that includes the idea of being exposed to something.

So if you know that those things exist, it makes it easier for you to get involved. For example, it helps to know what an engineer is. It helps to know what a biotechnician is, so you’re not afraid of it.

Then, it’s experience. When you do hands-on science, you learn to — you learn about electricity by wiring a flashlight. And then it’s expectation. And that expectation is, we should expect our kids to succeed and to achieve. Children live up or down to our expectations. And so, I always call it the three E’s: experience, expectation and exposure.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 23, 1896 — Tootsie Roll introduced by Leo Hirshfield.

(11) YESTERDAY IN HISTORY

  • February 22, 1957  — Incredible Shrinking Man premieres.

(12) COMIC SECTION. John King Tarpinian recommends the LOTR joke in today’s Brevity.

(13) A BOLD DEFENSE. In Kate Paulk’s Mad Genius Club post she never names the person she is standing up for.

So when a controversial figure’s book deal is suddenly canceled because of a manufactured furor (not even over the content of the lies used to create that furor because the publisher has printed and supported far worse from those who happen to have not had the howling mobs roused against them) it impacts all of us readers and authors.

For the record, I don’t give a flying fuck what that – or any other author – does in privacy with consenting partners. Even if I would be squicked to high heaven by the details if anyone was crass enough to tell the world. I don’t care what he – or anyone else – believes as long as it’s not being shoved down my throat and nobody is being damaged by it. If I don’t like the author’s behavior or politics I don’t have to buy their books and I certainly don’t have to read them. I am sufficiently mature that I do not see the need for a legion of sensitivity readers to take their works and massage them into bland, tasteless pap.

What I care about is that someone who has – objectively – done not one damn thing wrong is the subject of a coordinated effort to not merely silence him, but disappear him. I’ve seen this happen in the past. It happened to Larry Correia. To Brad Torgersen. I didn’t get the full force of it last year, but instead got the cold shoulder of people doing their best to pretend I’d already been disappeared

(14) WRITERS GUILD AWARDS. SciFi4Me points out that Arrival hasn’t lost all the awards to its song and dance rival:

LaLa Land may be the heavy favorite to sweep the Oscars this year, but on February 19 the Writers Guild of America (WGA) awarded Best Adapted Screenplay to the underdog science fiction film Arrival.

Here are some WGA winners of genre interest.

FILM NOMINEES

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Arrival, Screenplay by Eric Heisserer; Based on the Story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang; Paramount Pictures- WINNER

TELEVISION AND NEW MEDIA NOMINEES

ADAPTED SHORT FORM NEW MEDIA

“Part 4” (Fear the Walking Dead: Passage), Written by Lauren Signorino & Mike Zunic; amc.com – WINNER

CHILDREN’S EPISODIC

“Mel vs. The Night Mare of Normal Street” (Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street), Written by Laurie Parres; Amazon Studios – WINNER

VIDEOGAME NOMINEES

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN VIDEOGAME WRITING

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Written by Neil Druckmann, Josh Scherr; Additional Writing Tom Bissell, Ryan James; Naughty Dog – WINNER

(15) NO BUCK ROGERS, NO BUCKS. Jim C. Hines continues to analyze the data from his latest survey — “2016 Novelist Income Results, Part 4: Impact of Marketing and Promotion”.

Does this mean the time and money I spent last year as a large-press author traveling to signings and conventions and doing online promotion was completely wasted? Not necessarily. We’re looking at overall trends, and any individual data point might buck a given trend. (Also, correlation =/= causation. I think I’ve said that on every post so far.)

There’s also the question about how you’re spending that time. 20 hours spent standing on a street corner wearing a BUY LIBRIOMANCER! sign probably wasn’t as effective as 20 hours spent researching reviewers and sending out targeted review copies of my book.

(16) SPACE STATION OF THE APES. First there were snakes on a plane. Now there’s a gorilla on the ISS.

Astronauts aboard the international space station recently had a surprise visitor, but it wasn’t an alien.

In a video posted on Twitter, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly dresses up in a gorilla suit and chases his colleagues around the space station.

Kelly’s brother, Mark Kelly, posted a video of the incident on Monday with the hashtag #ApeInSpace.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day bookworm1398.]

89 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/23/17 We Scroll Not Because It Is Easy, But Because It Is Hard

  1. (4) that’s good to hear.

    (10) hurray for Tootsie Rolls!

    (13) Somebody should tell Kate Paulk that children cannot consent. That’s one reason why what was done to MY (I have read he was abused by a priest) is as bad as what he advocates. Defending a person without naming them sounds like bravely speaking up in an otherwise empty closet.

    Good morning, Camestros!

  2. There’s an article in this scroll that’s tediously vague and non-specific, but I refuse to name it.

  3. Mark: There’s an article in this scroll that’s tediously vague and non-specific, but I refuse to name it.

    I was sure there were two. Keep looking!

  4. (13) A BOLD DEFENSE.

    I’ll post the same thing I posted on Timothy The Talking Cat’s blog:

    That is certainly a valiant attempt by Kate to rewrite actual history:
    What I care about is that someone who has – objectively – done not one damn thing wrong is the subject of a coordinated effort to not merely silence him, but disappear him. I’ve seen this happen in the past. It happened to Larry Correia. To Brad Torgersen. I didn’t get the full force of it last year, but instead got the cold shoulder of people doing their best to pretend I’d already been disappeared.

    Because, of course:

    1) attempting to rig awards by cheating (and just because the rules allow something, that doesn’t preclude it from being cheating; see Heinlein’s skunk)

    2) calling people all sorts of vile epithets, and falsely accusing them of horrible deeds in blog post after blog post and comment after comment over a period of years, simply because their political beliefs and/or literary tastes are different

    3) claiming that women, minorities, and LGBTQ persons who have been nominated for awards didn’t actually deserve those nominations, they were just beneficiaries of Affirmative Action

    … are certainly all shining examples of doing not one damn thing wrong. 🙄

    Also, Kate? I suggest you listen to the full, unedited audio. Because it’s just as incriminating as the edited version, and you look like a total fool for claiming otherwise.

  5. JJ on February 24, 2017 at 12:43 am said:

    (13) A BOLD DEFENSE.

    I’ll post the same thing I posted on Timothy The Talking Cat’s blog:

    And the thing is – if they get away with silencing Timothy then next they’ll silence you all.

  6. Msb on February 23, 2017 at 11:48 pm said:
    Good morning, Camestros!

    And good night to one and all 🙂

    I had a pleasant evening watching QI and now, when I grow up, I want to be Sandi Toksvig

  7. (2) NUANCES OF LESTER DENT

    I’m loving this blog series from Cat Rambo. Click through for a faintly disturbing segue about the ease of pulling off ears and whether the same applies to pigs.

    (8) THE FLY STRIKES BACK

    I feel sure that Britt is going to get exactly the attention he was looking for, so go him?

    (15) NO BUCK ROGERS, NO BUCKS.

    I’m also finding this series from Hines really interesting. The broad trends are often fairly obvious (e.g. self-pubs get more benefit from spending time promoting themselves than trad-pubs, because they’re starting from a much lower natural base of exposure) but it’s fascinating to get some solid numbers behind them.

  8. Ah, Puppies proudly defending a gay foreigner without actually naming neither him nor what its actually about, is a sight to behold!

    I can not remain silence, when something has happend to someone! I have to proudly speak up, so that something may never happen again!
    Someone did something and that had some consequences. Unjustified consequences, that were bad. And while these consequences were instigated by people on our side, they were wrong, because the people on our side only did them, because they somehow were controlled by people from the other side. And the people on the other side were wrong, because, while what he did, was objecionable, the consequences should have come from our side and not from the other side, using our side, to instigate their consequences to someone from our side. And thats why Liberals are evil.
    Read my books, because Im right!

  9. Mark-kitteh: I feel sure that Britt is going to get exactly the attention he was looking for, so go him?

    That must be the “Any Publicity which makes me look like a clueless tool is Good Publicity” maxim. 🙄

  10. 1 :Snort:

    13) It must be said that dancing around naming people is something that we’ve seen at MGC before, although as I recall, it was more the provenance of Ms. Hoyt to go that route. I’m not sure why this gains anyone anything. It would be irresponsible for me to speculate that by not naming Milo and avoiding direct mention of the accusations, readers can keep up the outrage against Libruls without having to think too hard about who is being defended and what he actually said.

  11. Camestros has been keeping half an eye on Puppy responses to the Yiannopocalypse over on his blog, if anyone’s interested. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it edifying, but if you’re in the mood to have some low expectations met, it will certainly do that.

    https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/

  12. Paul Weimer: It must be said that dancing around naming people is something that we’ve seen at MGC before, although as I recall, it was more the provenance of Ms. Hoyt to go that route. I’m not sure why this gains anyone anything. It would be irresponsible for me to speculate that by not naming Milo and avoiding direct mention of the accusations, readers can keep up the outrage against Libruls without having to think too hard about who is being defended and what he actually said.

    My take is that the Puppies do it that way so that later, when more information comes out showing just how wrong the Puppy is, they can claim that they weren’t actually attacking or supporting the unnamed person or deed that they were attacking/supporting.

    Also, it’s a handy way for them to engage in the extremely unethical practice of claiming that someone said or did something while applying their own creative alteration to it, without having to provide evidential links which would immediately make it clear that they are lying.

  13. @Steve Wright

    Cat Rambo’s post on Doc Savage actually deals with the pesky problem of invisible opponents, so it’s a twofer!

  14. bookworm1398 on February 24, 2017 at 3:45 am said:
    3) This really is a golden age for astronomy.

    Also applies to 16.

  15. re #13 I haven’t noticed that LC has disappeared at all. In fact I saw that he’s starting a big book tour soon to promote his new MHI book. His reaction to the conflict seems to have been to keep writing decent stories … perhaps the reason BT, JCW, et.al. seemingly disappeared is that their stories are pretty crappy? Less time begging for money to pay the bills and complaining about the system and more time at the word processor would seemingly solve the problem. In other words .. hard work.

  16. 2) from her post: It would be patently impossible for someone to have scaled the walls of the building and be listening from the outside, we are told, so of course Doc’s out there listening not in person but via a headset tuned to a device suction-cupped to the outside of the window. How the suction cups got attached to the window are swiftly elided over. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

    Cat, I’m greatly enjoying the equal measures of affection and snark that you’re lavishing on these books!

    Cassy

  17. The Nebulas and Hugos will nominate books about fantasy worlds and spaceships, but when the technological sci-fi speculation gets closer to home, those types of books tend to be overlooked

    Wait, what? The two books Britt is recommending, Babylon’s Ashes and Death’s End, are, as I understand it, both about spaceships. On the other hand, three of the books on the shortlist, All the Birds…, Everfair and Borderline, could, I think, reasonably be described as closer to home.

  18. 8) if Britt demonstrated any cluefulness about the Nebula process, it might be worth considering his opinion on the topic, but since he seems willfully ignorant of it, even after the process is pointed out to him, I’d say we can ignore his rantings, but we saw how well that worked for people who didn’t have a clue about the Hugo Awards.

  19. That gorilla outfit has been up there for years. A while back there was a discussion here about payload launch costs, and I googled up a site with a price breakdown that was primarily a site for the owner to complain about NASA wastes of money. In the post with the launch costs, the complaint was about the gorilla suit. In the comments, it panned out that most launches of any kind have some kind of underweight that has to be filled, so that low-priority stuff can be sent up to fill some of that weight, and the gorilla suit was one of those items. (And in satellite launches, there can actually be piles of (I think titanium) ballast bars loaded on to add weight, which is then allowed to burn up in the atmosphere.)

    I did a lot of googling and can no longer find the original site (hits are now overwhelmed by the new mentions of the gorilla suit) or my File770 post, but it is here somewhere.

  20. (13) Kate manages to display two of the signature characteristics of the Pups in one post: Cowardice and dishonesty. Color me unsurprised.

  21. (8): But he writes as if he suffered an actual rather than metaphorical concussion.

    I just want to hold that up and admire it for a while.

  22. I just read On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right, and it’s excellent.

    It makes a comment about Peter Pan (the book, not the movie) that I hadn’t been aware of.

    The reason the Lost Boys allow themselves to be stolen away to Neverland is that they want to live somewhere they will never have to grow up. By coincidence, that’s also the reason that a great many people voted to place a spray-tanned authoritarian in the Oval Office. Remember, though, that only Peter rules Neverland. What happens to the Lost Boys in that story if they ever start to build memories and change, if they ever started to become adults?

    They skipped this bit in the Disney movie, but, in the books, Peter kills them.

    (Thanks to Nicholas Whyte for the link.)

    It also made me realize that the biggest problem I have with the Puppies and the rest of the alt-Right is their immaturity.

  23. My tailor assures me visible invisibility is all the mode this year. I hear tell he’s even making a sweater out of those mysterious weaves to send to our leader. Then again, I suspect he is a monstrous liar – he claims to have killed seven with one blow.

  24. I’m finding some mention of the suit on the 6/15/16 scroll and a thread on Nasa Watch you linked:

    Thanks. I figured someone would dig it up.

  25. BTW, FWIW while searching for the links and trying to come up with key word sets unlikely to come up with lots of false positives, I found that the words “tungsten” and “gorilla” appear together surprisingly often.

  26. @8: if Britt didn’t sound like a total wanker I might wonder whether Mainstream literary fiction — which is totally sci-fi — is utterly stupid or just bad grammar (i.e., does he think all mainstream litfic is SF, or just that there is an intersection of the two that is being ignored?). @13, OTOH, requires no wonder, just a resigned sigh.

  27. A friend agreed to may or may not (depending on time) to edit a 27k-word novelthing (english). Id like to give her some money as payment, but have no idea what a reasonable rate would be. Can someone throw some ballpark figures at me?

  28. I do think that what Yiannapoulis said that got him banned was very close to what Samuel Delaney said with regards to NAMBLA. It is interesting to see how the puppies would think one was disgusting and the other one to defend.

    Which of course in some ways go in the other direction too.

  29. I think Yiannapoulis made the whole thing up. That there was no “Father Michael.” Notice how no one has claimed to identify that person?

    Milo made his career from being outrageous. This time, he just went a step too far. Pretending to be an abuse survivor and then using that to speak up for how great abuse is really does cross the line.

  30. (8) Maybe he can get the Nebulas King to tell the Nebulas Parliament to pass a resolution.

    (13)From my perspective, Milo’s downfall has more to do with a Republican Night of Long Knives than anything else. There was an interesting article recently about the confusion and depression among Milo’s followers as they realized they weren’t really the masterminds, but a bunch of brown shirts.

    So I can see how it might be distressing to a bunch of reactionary bloggers to contemplate that at some point in the future they too may no longer be considered useful idiots.

  31. I gather someone has informed Britt’s about the Nebula Committee’s role in the award nominations, which is something that stuck out in his first post. However, doesn’t the committee actually have the power to add worthy nominees in some cases? If so, Britt would be right that they could fix obvious omissions.

    I also wonder about the role of the Recommended Reading List in promoting the eventual finalists. I was very pleased to make an appearance there myself this year. How many finalists actually come from outside the list?

  32. 13) Lots of folks are invisible to me on an ongoing basis simply because I don’t read media that they’re covered in such and that’d be true of both strains of Puppy if I wasn’t reading this exemplary blog. We all select our media sources and that filters who and what we pay attention to.

    Britt’s pissed because his choices aren’t there, over at Scalzi’s b;pg, some commenters are pissed because his work wasn’t picked…

  33. @Peer Sylvester: A friend of mine who is both a 9-to-5 editor and a freelancer charges $4 per page, which would probably come out to about $200 for a novelette depending on font and formatting and stuff. 🙂

    (13) Excuse me while I throw up a little in my mouth. I feel like if the McCarthy hearings recurred in this day and age, he’d respond to the question, “Have you at long last no sense of decency?” with a long, slow stare, and finally say “I’m not sure what you’re talking about here,” before getting right back to the witch-hunting. 🙂

  34. @Cassy B – I’m glad you’re enjoying them!

    @Peer Sylvester – Here’s the guidelines I use, but I subtract down for a friends and family discount: http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php

    @Lela – However, doesn’t the committee actually have the power to add worthy nominees in some cases? Nope. http://nebulas.sfwa.org/about-the-nebulas/nebula-rules/

    The Recommended Reading List is there so people can point to the stuff they like, so the correlation between the two is unsurprising. My reasoning in making it public was that I wanted it to be available to help make good fiction more discoverable. I think I’ve told Mike in e-mail that many of my own personal recommendations to the list over the past couple of years were the result of mentions here on File 770.

  35. @Cat – However, doesn’t the committee actually have the power to add worthy nominees in some cases? Nope.

    Thanks. Good to know. Maybe the confusion comes from the Andre Norton jury, which can add to the ballot.

  36. @John Seavey and Cat Rambo: Thanks, thats very helpful !

    Pixels are like diamonds, they are scrolled, not filed

  37. Larry Correia is so invisible that he and Baen are getting ready to vacuum my wallet with:
    1] A collection of his short fiction. See: http://monsterhunternation.com/2017/02/15/putting-together-a-collection-of-my-short-fiction/

    2] Monster Hunter Siege:
    See: https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Hunter-Siege-Larry-Correia/dp/1481482556/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487962303&sr=8-1&keywords=larry+correia

    3] I think there is a third book in Monster Hunter Memoires with John Ringo in 2018. Sinners ended abruptly with a hinted big future battle where Chad dies.

    4] At Liberty Con it was announced that Sarah Hoyt and Larry were co-authoring a novel from Julie Shackleford’s perspective. But Sarah’s health problems may have delayed this.

  38. @airboy

    I applaud your principled disagreement with Kate Paulk’s claim that Larry has been disappeared. What did she say when you posted that at MGC?

  39. One of the great ironies given the puppies outpouring of outrage on the subject is that it wasn’t the ‘left’ that sank MY, but a faction of conservatives that were upset that the man was invited to the big conservative conference. It would seem that the advocates of unfettered free speech themselves have their limits.

    I’m not entirely sure that the analogy to Delany is as strong as many seem to imply it is. It’s true that both are pointing to the ambiguities around consent and age, arguments that are not exclusive to the two (see Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors) but Delany’s comments are far more restricted, much more contradictory, and have a lot more to do with personal experience than MY’s, who makes a far broader series of comments about the nature of consent itself. (For instance, I can’t imagine Delany making that particular comment about grad students and professors, but perhaps I’m wrong, or indulging in the fantasy of the seductive child.) I should note that I don’t mean that as a full defense of Delany’s comments, which were problematic, but I also think that the comments made by MY, despite being much worse than Delany’s are actually more ambiguous than they have been made out to be.

    In the spirit of recommending articles, I’d recommend the recent response by Richard Seymour on the topic. Warning: It does discuss the question of abuse and discusses individual incidents of abuse, none of it graphically, but some might want to avoid that. http://www.leninology.co.uk/2017/02/the-age-of-consent.html

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