Pompeii, Krakatoa, Sasquan — only one of them was a science fiction convention…
(1) Dilbert bypasses actual writing to work on social media marketing for his sci-fi novel.
Yes, sometimes there is a fine line between documentary and parody.
(2) SF Signal’s new Mind Meld “Exploring Fear in Fiction” poses this question to its participants:
How do you use the fears that fascinate you in your writing, and how do the things in those dark recesses and corners of your mind come to the fore? What authors evoke the fears lurking in your own head and how do they do it?
Rising to meet the challenge: Stina Leicht, Kendare Blake, Robert Jackson Bennett, David Annandale, Lisa Morton, Mercedes M. Yardley, Mark Yon, David Nickle, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Andrew Pyper, Kate Maruyama, Anna Yeatts, Tiemen Zwaan, K. V. Johansen.
(3) Camestros Felapton (Nick asks, is that your real name?) has produced a literal (did I use that word right CPaca?) map of the 2015 Puppy kerfuffle.
A map of the various websites and groupings involved in the on-going internet kerfuffle over the Hugo Awards. Most symbols don’t really mean anything. Groupings of bloggers under a heading in bold. Crossed swords represent places where a notable discussion/argument etc occurred. This may include Brad Torgersen explaining what he intended or some kind of deceleration of intent (e.g. a boycott) or somebody pointing out what somebody else had done.
Several people offered corrections and suggestions. The best is CPaca’s plaint, “What, you couldn’t have a little Tank driving off a cliff in Marmot Gulch?”
(4) Sarah A. Hoyt’s version of the past six months of Puppies, “The goat kicks back”, shuffles the cards and deals them in a way that makes sense to her. That generally means belittling critics, or treating them as if they don’t have agency.
Which brings up “I’ll walk with you.”
I like Vonda and read her long before I came here. And I’m sure all she’s heard is the game of telephone in her circles, the same nonsense that convinced the dim bulb Irene Gallo that we’re all “right wing extremists.” I’m just going to say she’s trying to be nice, and the reprehensible people in this equation are the ones who so “Othered” Sad Puppies as to convince her we’re some kind of bigots.
To borrow Mark’s description in a comment here: “It’s a whistlestop tour through puppy history, illustrated with out-of-context screen shots and bizarre conflations of different events, culminating in identifying a clearly satirical website as an attempt to trick potential puppies.”
(5) Chris Meadows sums up the Antonelli story for TeleRead and makes a reliable prediction:
This is really something in the nature of a pre-game show to the kerfuffle that will invariably follow the announcement of this year’s Hugo winners (or “No Award” votes, as the case might be). No matter who wins, or whether nobody wins, some people won’t be happy, and there will be plenty of ranting and grumbling from both sides. And the Puppies will emerge determined to do even better (or worse) next year—which they might well be able to do, since Worldcon bylaws mean that no change designed to rebalance the procedure can go into effect until two years after it was proposed.
I just keep thinking of the old aphorism about academic politics being so vicious because there is so little at stake. It occurs to me that could very easily describe the politicking over literary awards, too.
(6) Although Ann Somerville’s primary interest is rebutting selected statements by K. Tempest Bradford, in the process she distilled the latest kerfuffle into a few well-chosen, pungent words.
As letting Antonelli off the hook, this is simply bullshit. No one in the comments on that post is saying “Antonelli should be let off the hook or let’s wait and see or oh it was so long ago”. The only defenders of Antonelli I’ve heard about at all have been his Sad/Rabid Puppy fellow travellers. Even at the very start of this, when all we knew about Antonelli is what he’d done to Gerrold, his apology, and Gerrold’s acceptance, there were easily half of those commenting condemning him outright and saying the apology was self-serving. The others thought Gerrold had been generous and on the face of it, the apology matched the offence. The more information we have had about Antonelli’s behaviour, has meant those praising him for his apology have changed their minds, and more people have joined in to say the apologies are nothing but an abuser’s typical tactic.
No one is letting Antonelli off the hook, not even Sasquan. Whether he’s facing the full consequence of his behaviour is another matter. But the idea that he is being given a free pass is nonsense – and again Bradford knows this. She also knows the only reason Antonelli’s apology was given any consideration by serious people was because the only known (at the time) victim of his actions, accepted it.
(7) Lyda Morehouse in “Dirty Dogs, Old Tricks” on Bitter Empire pays David Gerrold several ironic compliments.
Amazingly, this so-called reaction to the way he thought he was being treated has resulted in… (drum roll, please)… zero consequences for Antonelli.
Yep, the way he’s been treated by his loyal opposition is well beyond fairly. A few more people know his name now, and, at worst, have crossed him off their to-be-read list. But, the folks running the Hugo Awards, the Sasaquan WorldCon Committee, have not banned him (though they really kind of wanted to). Guess why they didn’t?
Because David Gerrold asked them not to.
In fact, Gerrold has been calling for peace all over the internet and asking everyone to try to be more compassionate.
Wow, yeah, what a psychotic that Gerrold guy is.
Good thing the cops know to be on the alert. You wouldn’t want a raging wanker like Gerrold wrecking your party.
(8) Vox Day has his own notions about giving peace a chance:
As for Sasquan, we have no interest in disrupting it, but we do expect our attendees to be prepared for any SJWs inclined to violate the posted Sasquan harassment policy. That is why I encourage every VFM, Puppy, and Dread Ilk attending Sasquan to keep a recorder running at all times on your Android or iOS phone. If you’re subsequently subject to any verbal or physical harassment, you’ll have material evidence on hand to bring to the relevant authorities. More importantly, you’ll also have a strong defense to present against the inevitable SJW lies concerning your own behavior.
(9) Deb Geisler, chair of the 2004 Worldcon, puts in perspective what the 2015 committee is going through.
Today, there is a group of people who are starting their own week-long count-down to the World Science Fiction Convention. This one is in Spokane, Washington. Their convention has been fraught with difficulties. Many of their people are not laughing. They’re not even grinning.
They are still trying to build something special for fandom. They’re often not getting much satisfaction. In fact, some are sitting around right now, wishing they were somewhere else, dealing with something else. Perhaps at a villa in Tuscany…perhaps in Port-aux-Français (since that’s as far away as one can get from the Spokane Convention Center and still be on land) in the Kerguelen Islands (also known as the Desolation Islands – you can get to the irony of that on your own)….
What I will say is this: If you are going to the convention, say something nice to the people you meet with a “committee” or “staff” or “volunteer/gopher” ribbon. You don’t need to compliment them on things. Just say something nice. Or maybe something that will make them laugh. Or smile at them and say nothing at all. (This last works particularly well when you don’t much like them.)
For those of us who have slogged this slog, sometimes a smile from someone is better than a paycheck. Hell, it *IS* the paycheck.
(10) Anne Rice in a public comment on Facebook renews the argument that the limit on freedom of speech depends on a willingness to defend its least savory examples.
Signing off with thanks to all who have participated in our discussions of fiction writing today. I want to leave you with this thought: I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. There are forces at work in the book world that want to control fiction writing in terms of who “has a right” to write about what. Some even advocate the out and out censorship of older works using words we now deem wholly unacceptable. Some are critical of novels involving rape. Some argue that white novelists have no right to write about people of color; and Christians should not write novels involving Jews or topics involving Jews. I think all this is dangerous. I think we have to stand up for the freedom of fiction writers to write what they want to write, no matter how offensive it might be to some one else. We must stand up for fiction as a place where transgressive behavior and ideas can be explored. We must stand up for freedom in the arts. I think we have to be willing to stand up for the despised. It is always a matter of personal choice whether one buys or reads a book. No one can make you do it. But internet campaigns to destroy authors accused of inappropriate subject matter or attitudes are dangerous to us all. That’s my take on it. Ignore what you find offensive. Or talk about it in a substantive way. But don’t set out to censor it, or destroy the career of the offending author.
(11) And here’s an unsavory example you can practice on: Tangent Online Special: Androgyny Destroys SF Review of Lightspeed.
Therefore, Tangent Online will show how the philosophy, the core defining predicates of androgyny can be applied to non-fiction as well as fiction and how in other ways it should be applied to areas of our real world lives. Thus, the table of contents for the August issue of Lightspeed below will contain only story titles—no author names; for revealing an author’s name would give immediate rise to the same conscious or unconscious bias we find in so much of our fiction. As well, the name of the reviewer is not mentioned for the same reason. Following the lead of the special Women and Queers Destroy SF issues of Lightspeed, you will find an essay following the review. Its author is also nameless, as it should be. It is the content of the words which truly matter and not who penned them. Content over author or editor is the only way to go in the Androgyny Revolution.
[Thanks to Mark and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist .]
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For a more recent and very good Magical Girl anime try Princess Tutu(although PT is really a Magical Duck anime if you want to be specific)
@Tintinaus
I’ve heard good things about Princess Tutu, but I haven’t gotten around to watching it. Maybe I’ll move up in my queue.
Cubist,
Thank you for pointing this out.
My apologies to all. I was careless.
@Patrick May
Sad Puppies are all people who joined a movement led by a homophobic leader–Brad Torgersen–to put a homophobic authors–John C. Wright, Tank Marmot–on the Hugo Ballot, because Torgersen asked them to on the grounds that gay people or fiction with gay characters (or minority authors/fiction with such characters) can only win a Hugo due to affirmative action.
You advance as defense that many Sad Puppy supporters were publicly in favor of gay marriage.
So what? So was Brad. Yet he’s still homophobic. The Puppies responded to homophobic appeals to put homophobes on the ballot. If they don’t want to be mistaken for homophobes they should probably stop doing things like that.
And I will also point out that Puppies feel perfectly free to generalize about us in far more inflammatory terms with far less reason.
Heh. I see Cubist has beaten me to the point. 🙂
I can believe that the Pups, as a group, do not consist solely and entirely of rabid homophobes/racists/bigots/whatevers. But at the same time, it’s bloody obvious that a non-trivial percentage of the Pups are, in fact, homophobic or racist or otherwise bigoted—and, furthermore, that many/most/all of the Pups’ leading figures are, to a greater or lesser degree, homophobic or racist or otherwise bigoted. I mean, Vox Day, you know? There’s a reason the Sads have made efforts (however ineffectual & unconvincing those efforts may be) to publicly distance themselves from the Rabids.
One could argue that it’s not fair to tar a movement’s underlings with the sins of their leaders. But at the same time, I think it is fair to criticize a movement’s underlings for their willingness to ignore, overlook, excuse, or just plain deny the bigotry/homophobia/etc of the leaders they support.
Given that the Pups are more than happy to misinterpret um, you know, if you guys keep acting like friggin’ assholes, you’re going to find fewer people willing to return your calls as ‘evidence’ that the everybody-else side of the conflict wants to blacklist the Pups, it’s not surprising that Puppy pravda resolutely refuses to acknowledge the distinction between you guys support hateful bigoted asswipes (i.e., what the everybody-else side is actually saying) and you guys are all hateful bigoted asswipes (i.e., what the Pups pretend the everybody-else side is saying about them).
Lydy Nickerson:
The section at the end of your post about the local writer in RaceFail is fairly parallel to the opinion about Antonelli that I’ve been trying to defend here. Obnoxious – even harmful – behavior outside of the con, no evidence of harming anyone at cons, you deprecate the guy but don’t ban him.
Further up you wrote that Sasquan would have been within their rights to ban Antonelli. I agree. The decision was, moreover, one of discretion on their part. I think they made the wiser choice by choosing not to.
I cannot parse the above as applying to Lou Antonelli unless one considers attempting to use the Spokane Police Department as a means of harassing a GOH at the con not an example of an attempt to harm someone at a con.
Which is ridiculous on its face. What the hell, DB?
That makes it fair to characterize those particular individuals that way. It does not make it fair to smear every Sad Puppy supporter, including those who have were publicly in favor of marriage equality before the Puppy campaigns were a gleam in anyone’s eye.
Given that many of the Puppy leaders are quite homophobic, I don’t see how it is unfair to characterize the movement as such. Those who signed on to support the campaign voluntarily chose to follow it when part of the clarion call for support was that gay (and women, and minority) authors could only have won their awards in previous years via doubleplus secret affirmative action – and many voted for the poorly written homophobic (and misogynistic) screed Transhuman and Subhuman to be on the Hugo ballot. How is it unfair to judge a movement based upon who it chooses to follow, what ideology was used to recruit its adherents, and what works it chooses to support?
Aaron on August 14, 2015 at 11:44 am said:
Good point. If I was attempting to construct an argument that the Pups are not a bigoted, homophobic movement, I’m pretty sure I would not run with, “Sure, the Pups’ bigoted, homophobic leaders used bigoted, homophobic rhetoric to recruit people to help them get bigoted, homophobic works on the Hugo ballot—but none of that means the Pups are a bigoted, homophobic movement!”
Aaron,
It’s unfair to characterize everyone affiliated with the campaign based on what a few putative leaders have said. That kind of tribalism and identity politics is what makes the culture wars unending. People should be treated as individuals.
People should be treated as individuals.
Individuals who choose to follow homophobic leaders in response to a homophobic call for recruits to nominate homophobic works for a literary award. I am treating them as individuals: Individuals who made the choice to affiliate with a homophobic movement.
People should be treated as individuals…except when they heavily self-identify with a mass-movement that ironically embraces the idea of “faceless”-ness.
Yeah, just because a person joins the Ku Klux Klan doesn’t automatically mean that they’re racist! They’re just joining an organization led by racist leaders, founded on the basis of racism! But we need to judge them as individuals, even when talking specifically about their actions with the group!
Sort of like how GamerGate really was all about ethics in games journalism.
Lydia, that was fascinating, thanks. And good point about times when confidentiality really is a good idea.
Patrick May, I’m going to be curious to see how it goes, and thanks for kind response. 🙂
As others have indicated (with direct quotes, even!) the Pups most certainly do demonstrate racism, sexism, and homophobia. Not all three in every single pup, but each of these is clearly shown by their own words and deeds.
After all, when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas, no?
@Patrick May
It’s unfair to characterize everyone affiliated with the campaign based on what a few putative leaders have said.
“Putative”?
When the Pups quit laying Stalin’s crimes at the doorstep of everyone whose politics are to the left of Sarah Hoyt’s, maybe I’ll listen to this argument.
Thank you for that thoughtful post Lydy Nickerson
Simeon:
Carelessness costs lives, young man. Lives!
But the whole Puppy campaign is based on appeals to tribalism. The Puppy leaders – and there are leaders who pick the slates, pick the name, pick the logo – have said “this is part of the culture wars”. And they are fairly clear about which side of the culture wars they see themselves on – against ‘affirmative action’, against ‘poofy liberals’, against SJWs.
That’s a problem lots of people have with the Puppies. They took an award that is supposed to be about literary quality, however you define it, and said no, this is about politics, this is about culture, this is about tribalism. (Naturally they claim ‘the other side’ did this first, but evidence came there none) That’s how they organised a block vote – they didn’t persuade people that these were the best eligible works of the last year, they didn’t even try to persuade people that they were the best works that demonstrated particular literary qualities. They persuaded people that voting for the Puppy slates was a political action, something you should do if you agreed with the politics of the puppies and not the SJWs.
So of course people think, if you identify yourself as a Puppy, you more than likely share those politics. Because politics has been baked into puppy identity from the start.
Assorted reactions:
@RedWombat: (not-me Bob and the unicorn)
I feel a strange sense of investment in explicitly-not-me Bob’s saga, probably because he is defined in part as not being me and thus it kind of feels like there is a me somewhere in his world.
@various: (Hoyt’s claim that this community comes from privilege)
Uhm. The most polite reaction I can come up with is HA! It is true that I attended a prestigious (and expensive) private Christian high school for six* years. It is also true that I did so with substantial financial aid; they gave me a scholarship, which was the only way I could attend. Even so, I come from a single-parent home – they divorced before my first birthday, and Mom’s better off without him – and my mother worked two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Her father served in WWII and built her childhood home – by which I specifically do not mean that he paid other people money to construct it. He did it himself, complete with weird wiring decisions (three different fuse boxes?) and a custom-made library that became my bedroom after he died and we moved in. He worked for the power company, kept bees, and liked making things from a king-sized fruit dehydrator to violins. I know almost nothing about the other side of my genetic lineage, and prefer to keep it that way.
So, the closest I get to having a Privileged Background as Hoyt defines it is that I went to school with some kids that were privileged. I occasionally saw one of them on The Daily Show in recent years, but I don’t imagine his name would ring any bells here. (Although the magazine he edited would.)
* It’s a 7-12 institution, so six years is their full range.
@Patrick May: (SPs and sexism, racism, homophobia)
This reply got a little long, so I’m splitting it into its own (heh) message.
@Patrick May: “It’s my understanding that several of the Sad Puppy organizers support same sex marriage […] This is one reason why the “racist, misogynist, homophobe” narrative is inaccurate and unfair, by the way.”
Supporting gay marriage and not being homophobic are not the same thing – although I do grant that they frequently go together.
You mention that you participate at MHI; Correia’s fisking screed against “that post-binary gender column” is a prime example of transphobia in particular and anti-LGBT sentiment in general. Consider this excerpt:
(Emphasis added.) To Correia, non-cis people are not part of “the world [he] currently live[s] in” – they are “something different” that must be justified before they can be included in a story. That’s the very definition of erasure, and it indicates transphobia just as thoroughly as does his repeated ridicule of the term “cis.” Scroll down a bit to his mention of Diego (or just search; it’s faster) to see what he thinks of gay characters. If this article is any indication, Correia is not someone I would count (or want) as an ally for any of the identities covered by “LGBT” (or, to use a different term that I’m warming to, GRSM: Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minorities).
LGBT characters are part of the real world; intersex births are about 1:1500 or 1:2000, and that’s only one aspect of that T. There’s nothing wrong with or message-y about saying, for instance, that Male Scientist #4 has a boyfriend – no more than there is about describing him as Filipino or noting that he was assigned female at birth. (Seanan McGuire is particularly good at such unobtrusive inclusion.) It doesn’t have to be a big deal, and I actually think it works best when it’s not. Crisis happens, Steve says something about hoping his boyfriend’s okay, and that’s all it takes. A book I’m editing has a one-line reference to “Ben and Ronnie” as a couple, and I have no idea whether “Ronnie” is a Ronald or a Veronica. Doesn’t matter, either; that’s the only mention of the couple. Maybe Ronnie’s genderqueer and presents differently at different times; if that’s someone’s headcanon, I doubt the author (who declines to specify their own gender and answers to any pronoun) would have a problem with it. I also doubt that any clarification would be forthcoming…
Including a trans character takes a little more thought (and maybe research – oooh, scary!), and sometimes that aspect may not make it onto the page. Offhand, though, that could be as simple as showing the character taking hormones or mentioning a side effect of taking them – not necessarily something everybody would pick up on, but present nonetheless. The webcomic Questionable Content features a trans character, and while it’s come to the fore a couple of times as she started a relationship with a central character, most of the time she’s just another person with normal foibles.
See Aaron’s notes about Torgersen’s views (8/14, 8:05 am), and that’s both of the key SP organizers covered. I think homophobia is a fair assessment.
Nick Mamatas on August 13, 2015 at 8:19 pm:
Ah Nick, I must’ve cut you deep at some point. Was it your quip about old European ideologies, the one that backfired? I liked that one the most and from the mouth of a blooming Marxist too.
Stop lying. You know full well that I gave you a stream of consciousness while stoned as hell to show the kind of effort that would be required of me to edit that gobbledygook into something postable. Imagine editing that while smoking 1+ grams of primo weed a day.
I find your ablist language disheartening, I thought you knew better.
SJWs always lie.
P.S. I like the new guy whose voice sounds like a a badly translated Chinese asparagus sufferer. He’s got a really good point about the tolerance of this place. You’d probably exclude 90+ percent of the world’s population. Well, not so much exclude as mob, bully and pile upon until they exclude themselves but you get my point.
Imagine editing that while smoking 1+ grams of primo weed a day.
I’m high right now!
asparagus sufferer
This is my favorite thing ever.
You’re going with misdirection? Yup, I got you good.
@Patrick May, 8am:
@Patrick May, 9:19am, after Cat’s evidence of JCW and TB’s attitudes:
Penalty, improper movement of goalposts, twenty yards.
This “they’re talking about YOU!” shift is precisely the same tactic Beale used to fan the flames against Gallo. It was despicable then and remains so now. It’s also a very good way to make yourself look like a Puppy, despite your proclamations to the contrary. Plus, well, Cubist had a good point about how the rank-and-file aren’t exactly blameless. One need not profile every individual in 1942 Germany’s government to properly call that nation an oppressive racist regime. Either they’re guilty or they’re enablers, and neither is a particularly noble stance.
Are you an asparagus sufferer too, aeou?
@Nick, perhaps he’s just on the Aubergine Spectrum?
I used to be an asparagus sufferer, but I ascertained that if I put aspertame on it and aspirate I aspire to no further aspersions against it.
Nick dear, you were awfully chatty about me when you thought I was absent. I offer one counter and you retreat behind inept one liners. You wanna talk crap about me? Do it to my face and try to remember not to lie.
Snowcrash, I might have a touch of the old donkeyburger and it ain’t nothing to joke about. Unless it is funny.
Hmm. Patrick May has noted that he’s kinda sympatico with the Pups’ political leanings.
He’s been tryna refute charges that the Pup movement is racist, sexist, and homophobic.
He says that he wishes people would avoid “tribalism”, with the tolerably clear implication that the aforementioned charges are rooted more in this “tribalism” than in simple observation of Pups’ behavior.
I am not saying that Patrick May’s apologia for the Pups is, itself, rooted in “tribalism”… but if anyone did say that, how could May demonstrate that they were wrong to do so?
Ah-ha! Now we know where the new troll came from. He’s an attempt by aeou to write a native Chinese speaker with an autism spectrum disorder.
Aeou, did you say something worth addressing? I mean other than that you were high, and that you actually agree with me with regards the other pseud?
Will you be posting an image of your face?
Nicole: Didn’t I say “not at the con”? Whatever harm Antonelli may cause to happen at the con by his letter to the cops has already been set in motion. His personal presence or absence at the con will make no difference to it.
The topic is “should Antonelli be banned from the con?” His history – including the letter to the cops, and lots of other in-writing nonsense – shows no in-person harassment, to my knowledge. Banning him from the con would make no one any safer than banning literally hundreds of other hotheads would. Even John Seavey admitted that, and was reduced to arguing that, while Antonelli’s presence would make no one unsafe, it might make them feel unsafe.
Which I can totally understand, but banning someone on those grounds is awfully close to punishing thoughtcrime. The other argument for banning Antonelli is as punishment for the letter, which again is not about making people safer. It’s just the nuclear option of expressing disapproval of it.
Oh, I have it on the very best of authorities that anything concerning you is funny. Try not to be too precious about it.
He’s shy about that, because there’s no eye in aeou.
The Pups stand in a bunch, draw a line around their feet, and to put the cherry on top, many of them go on to accuse everyone on the other side of the line of tribalism.
Then again, these are people whose leaders despise education.
Nick:
He says after addressing me for the fiftieth time. You could try to defend your initial post or admit error, you lying coward.
Mike, there has alwayes been at least one eye in me. I had an eye operation as a child and had to wear an eyepatch in kindergarten and got severely bullied for it even kicked and beaten. Your comment reminds me of those days. Humans will be humans but they, at least, had the good excuse of being five or six years old. What is yours?
Cat, in the eighteen hundreds you learned Latin and Greek in 8th grade. Today we teach remedial English at college. What is not to despise about education?
Buwaya, you make really great points with a very distinctive voice. I can practically feel the alien Asian culture dripping off of your posts. If they claim not to understand it is to make you defensive or an immensely strong will not to understand. Do not get defensive. Do not endlessly try to explain.
One easy change you can do to sound less foreign is basically change all usage of the word one to you, we or they depending on context. Oddly enough swedish and malay seems to share the characteristic of using one rather often where the native English speakers almost never do.
I apologize if the above comes off as condescending.
Please keep posting. You and DB have made it worth reading here again
Simeon Beresford commented:
No, they’re a combo that gets beat. Slight difference.
As far as Vile Faceless Minions being smeared with the actions of their leaders; well, that’s one of the drawbacks of anonymity. Absent any other information, it only makes sense that you slavishly follow your leader.
(Cue a chorus of “No! We are all individuals!” and a recital of the Non-Conformists Oath.)
You could try to defend your initial post or admit error, you lying coward.
aeou: One thing I like to do when someone calls me a coward, chickenshit, or tells me to do something to their face is count the number of continents and/or oceans between me and my accuser. So…where are you actually from again? If I take your claim on faith, it is one continent + one ocean. Big talk with plenty of geography to cower behind.
Anyway, I believe that in what you call my initial post, I suggested that you were some sort of simpleton. As a defense, I’d like to point to every post you’ve ever made here.
PS: Latin is still commonly taught in middle-grades. Less demand for Greek.
@aeou:
So, Jame is a Kencyr, and the Kencyr come from another planet. This introduces something of a science-fantasy element to God Stalk, which is an interesting layer atop the Leiberesque urban fantasy-adventure tropes that inform the setting of Tai-Tastigon. And Jame begins the book with no memory of who she is or why she’s doing what she’s doing. It only occurred to me recently that there’s a certain echo of Dhalgren there, and now I’m wondering how deliberate it might be. After all, God Stalk is not similar to Dhalgren in literary method. It’s a (not especially) plain tale plainly told.
Obviously Jame is more than she seems – she’s the protagonist of a (science-?) fantasy novel! But the process of finding out just what more than she seems she might be will scratch every Fafhrd & Grey Mouser itch one might have. And while the storytelling does not go in for literary pyrotechnics, much of the prose is gorgeous. Just the opening paragraph is one of my favorite ever.
That’s why I think everyone should read it.
I would much rather learn ancient Greek than Latin. Either Homeric or Classical would be cool.
Jim Henley, a bit non sequitur don’t you think? But I guess you are trying to prove I don’t read SF again but by quoting fantasy. I have previously enumerated all fantasy authors I have read which is three. I have stated at least once that I don’t like fantasy and why. What are you doing?
Have you read Stand on Zanzibar yet? I wanted to just quote that oath at you and leave it at that but it is unlikely my dear moderator would let that through.
That passage should be on page 381 on Google books. For dear moderators benefit: about all trigger warnings apply. Bring the salts and fainting couches and lock the safe spaces around the women and manchildren. You have been warned one and all
David W: by no means do I think Antonelli gets a free pass for other regrettable behavior on his part. Only that the matter of his letter to the Spokane PD about Gerrold has been resolved by his retraction of it along with his apology to Gerrold.
You are mistaken; his retraction has not “fixed’ his violation of the Sasquan Code of Conduct.
Kurt Busiek: If you want Sasquan to punish Antonelli for sending Aaron an angry e-mail that had nothing to do with Sasquan, where do the lines get drawn?
Antonelli’s letter has a great deal to do with Sasquan. He has told the Spokane PD that during Sasquan in Spokane, there will be a person there who is dangerously insane and a possible incitement to violence. The fact that Sasquan and the Spokane PD have no doubt already had dialogue about the convention and its potential risks does not change the fact that Antonelli has escalated the perception of Sasquan attendees being threats in the minds of the members of the PD, increasing the possibility that a situation where the PD is called might result in a situation gone horribly wrong. This most certainly has something to do with Sasquan.
DB: But Antonelli’s appearance at Worldcon will not make any danger resulting to the attendees therefrom any worse. That’s why I argued originally that banning him from the con would be the nuclear option of punishing him, and not an act of preventing the attendees from harm. And you seem to agree: you wrote that he needs to “face the consequences.”
You’re missing the point. Antonelli violated Sasquan’s Code of Conduct — in a BIG way. By failing to enforce the CoC in such an egregious circumstance, they’ve made a joke of the CoC and their claim to take harassment seriously. They’ve sent the message that harassers should feel free to harass away. They’ve sent the message that people reporting an incident of harassment at the con cannot trust them to take it seriously and respond accordingly.
Wait, what is happening here???
…ooooh. I see. *golf clap*
JJ:
You’re not paying attention. We were talking about Antonelli’s e-mail to Aaron, as part of the “vicious stalking behavior.” The letter to the Spokane police was not stalking and thus not “vicious stalking behavior.”
As I’ve said numerous times, I’d have no problem with Sasquan bouncing Antonelli due to the letter. My interest is in the people who are very fervent about Sasquan punishing him for the non-con-related stuff, and what that would mean for CoCs for any convention.
It would be nice not to have to repeat this so regularly when a conversation that’s about one specific piece of things gets met with a response that ignores what’s being talked about entirely.
Do you have any idea how absurd this sounds? Sasquan has not made a joke of their CoC, stopped taking it seriously, or invited harassers to carry on. You have repeated this hysterical claim several times.
They didn’t treat the CoC in the way YOU want it enforced — as a kind of Dr. Strangelove doomsday device that goes off with the same full severity in response to any and all violations.
However, since this is not an argument I am making to win some abstract point, I will add it would have made perfect sense to me if Sasquan booted somebody who harassed the GoH whether that GoH intervened or not.
But as a conrunner who has known David Gerrold for decades I think it is very likely I would have honored his request, as the Sasquan committee did, no matter that the lightning of the internet would strike me as it has them.
I have no doubt that the optics of a puppy Hugo nominee being banned for an offense against the anti-puppy GoH & Hugo host would have been terrible. We’d be having at minimum the same amount of grief, just from the other side.
Looking at it from a pragmatic point of view, Sasquan were undoubtedly in a lose-lose position, but the difference as I see it is that if they’d banned Antonelli they’d have had an entirely explainable position – they point to their CoC and stand on it. By not banning him, they are left having to explain a decision in which they have balanced two factors – their CoC and Gerold’s opinion – without being able to detail one of the two. Not an enviable position, which is why I think they were wrong to admit a factor that they didn’t own.
(I also have concerns about how this plays as a precedent for more vulnerable victims than Gerold, but I’m working one angle at a time)
I also have no doubt that the con in no way deserved the lose-lose position that Antonelli placed them in, and think that it’s well worth repeating that this entire sub-kerfluffle, including forcing the con to make a decision that would inevitably upset someone, should be laid at the feet of Antonelli.
Mike Glyer: Do you have any idea how absurd this sounds? Sasquan has not made a joke of their CoC, stopped taking it seriously, or invited harassers to carry on. You have repeated this hysterical claim several times.
This is not “absurd” — even if you personally find it so. This is not a “hysterical claim”. This is a legitimate point of view — one which is obviously shared by a number of people here — and I would appreciate very much you not making the patronizing and untrue assertion that it is “hysterical” and “absurd” simply because you disagree with it.
Banning Antonelli from Sasquan would not have been a “doomsday device”. It is not a “nuclear option”. It would have been a logical, reasonable, and proportional result from Antonelli’s actions. As Laura Resnick has pointed out, characterizing a ban of Antonelli from one convention after a clear violation of their Code of Conduct as an outrageous, extraordinary, “nuclear” response is ridiculous.
Was Sasquan caught between a rock and hard place? Most certainly. Would any action they took have left them open to legitimate condemnation? Most likely.
But Gerrold was not the only one affected by Antonelli’s actions. Everyone attending Sasquan was affected. You are quite welcome to cede any interest in being affected — but the fact that you and Gerrold have done so does not give either of you the right to do so on anyone else’s behalf.
If a con harassment policy is to have any meaning, the concom has to show that it has meaning. Sasquan has failed to do this. It is entirely likely that there will be people at the con who feel that reporting harassment is an exercise in futility, precisely because of this.
The only winner here is Lou Antonelli, who has been sent the message loud and clear that he can engage in any sort of egregious behavior at Sasquan and get away with it, because Gerrold has forgiven him and he’s a Hugo nominee.
If that’s the message he thinks he’s gotten, and acts on it, he may be in for a surprise.