I’m still on the sidelines but improving. Meantime I thought it a good idea to create a space to leave comments on MidAmameriCon this week for those who are checking here.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
File 770
Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom
I think he is missing the point there. The question isn’t whether he is allowed to make a recording but whether he can publish/disseminate that recording.
Quasi-public comments in a quasi-public forum in a privately owned space but with admission to fee-paying public.
Let’s complicate it further: Every Worldcon attendee is a member of the organization running the con.
I think he is missing the point there. The question isn’t whether he is allowed to make a recording but whether he can publish/disseminate that recording.
Yes, broadcast is definitely a different kettle of fish than the act of making a recording for private use.
I wonder why Truesdale wanted a secret recording of the panel. What was he planning ahead of time that made that seem like a good idea?
Still here. Not dead, not at Worldcon. Have spent some time staring into the abyss. But also some time reading.
Clicky.
Testing.
If it stared back, I hope you got its autograph.
@Camestros It refused to sign. So add that to its account: Rude to fans.
@Jim Henley @James Moa
I’m planning on writing a short story called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” as soon as I can properly recreate the conditions of Argentina 1940ish. Do I need to restage the 1939 Buenos Aires Chess Olympiad and the invasion of Poland as part of that? Asking for a friend . . .
@rcade I suspect that if the audio comes out, it will make Truesdale look like even more of an asshat than people currently think.
@rcade
He might not be in violation of the state law for recording with intent to publish but it’s violation of the CoC. Under the CoC he may be expelled. Violating one conventions CoC may impact your attendance at other conventions as both a guest/panelists and a regular fan.
He was not acting as a Convention representative as they didn’t request he record. He also didn’t perform the job he volunteered for – moderator – instead he hijacked the panel although not for as long as planned. This was not billed as The DT hour.
Rcade, not every member of WSFS speaks for the con committee. Only designated members of staff speak for the con committee. Truesdale wasn’t one of them.
Someone left “secretly NOT Chuck Tingle” ribbons in our park. Snarfed one immediately.
I am puzzled by the extent to which people are equating being asked to leave a party to being found guilty in a court of law. He’s not been sent to death row, he is being expelled from a convention. Because he behaved like an ass. Seems fairly proportional to me.
come on guys you know that Truesdale is going to huff and puff about releasing audio, but never actually intending to do so. Rather claiming that he’s being silenced by the cabal etc …
@clif
Possibly. He may just put the full speach he intended to make and claim the SJW cabal is preventing him from including the audio of the panel up.
I should stop wasting my time on him. I’ve got a bunch of good books I could be reading.
I for one am gravely concerned at this development. If acting like a complete and utter prannock is enough to get you kicked out of a WorldCon, where does that leave people like me? Why, I wouldn’t be allowed within a thousand miles of one! (He says, from considerably more than a thousand miles away.)
In all honesty, it does sound kind of harsh to me… but I wasn’t there, I didn’t see Truesdale in action, I don’t know the full story, etc. etc.
I will admit to being somewhat cheesed off, because this year – and last year – I bent over backwards to give Tangent Online the benefit of the doubt, as a nominee; telling myself that it’s got a long track record, that just because it’s Puppy-friendly doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Puppy-tainted, and so on. But, really, how can I continue to regard Dave Truesdale as “not a Puppy”, if he’s going to start yipping loudly and leaving little puddles around the place?
I think he deserved to be expelled, but now he gets to be a martyr.
Why did he feel he needed a secret recording of the panel? Yes, it was legal to record it in MO, but is it legal for him to disseminate it (or a transcript, which wouldn’t have the audience reaction and can’t be double-checked)? It’s certainly rude and against custom AND against the con’s CoC to do either of those things. As is beginning the panel with a pre-written tirade that’s only tangentially (no pun intended) related to the topic. Was he hoping for just this?
I understand he claimed Strahan was “destroyed by PC” to Strahan’s face; Strahan certainly feels otherwise and has asked the panel not be posted. Truesdale might do it anyway b/c he needs to virtue-signal to his fellow reactionaries. If he puts out a transcript, it won’t be an honest one.
I don’t know as how Missouri law actually matters worth a damn here. The CoC would seem to override it. For instance, Missouri allows open carry of firearms, yet MAC2 banned them all. So the recording was probably against the CoC, as was the diatribe instead of moderation, and the mysterious “later incident”.
@Steve Wright: as long as you don’t ignore the topic of the panel you’re moderating, open with a bombastic pre-prepared statement and supporting props, then do something else bad, you’re probably okay. You’re more charitable than I; I had him in genus Canis already.
@rcade: Brad’s one of the leading sufferers of NHDS — Nielsen-Hayden Delusion Syndrome. Next he’ll be accusing them of poisoning his precious bodily fluids.
The convention center is a weapon free zone. This is independent of the con.
IANAL, but I wonder if he recorded a conversation that he was not a participant of. That would be illegal in MO(and most places).
lurkertype on August 20, 2016 at 5:53 pm said:
The juvenile canines have started in at Hines’s blog; one of them is claiming that Truesdale is “an important member of the science fiction community”.
(Yeah, right.)
I figure showing up with a long prepared speech, props to go with it, and a recording device already set up, is pushing the limits. It’s certainly something that should be cleared with the rest of the panel first. And when you’re told it’s no go, you should put it away and not do it.
Somebody told me of a, well, eventful panel with China Miéville?
From what I can tell, publicity. From his FB:
ETA: How long was his prepared remarks, if he didn’t even get to the meat of it? According to Hines, he had already used up the first ten minutes, how long was he thinking that a moderators opening remarks were supposed to be?
“We” won!
Mike Glyer won Fanzine & Fan Writer – John Hertz accepted
WTG OGH
FYI lots of comments in the more recent thread re. the Hugos, if you’d like to join!
Cora on August 19, 2016 at 7:24 pm said:
Yeah, I’ve long been mystified at the supposed “Soopergenius” angle purportedly at work here.
IF SRBI actually wins, it won’t be an embarrassment for the Hugos.
IF it wins -and we’ll know in a minute or so – all it will mean is that Beale has a penchant for gay erotica – as BEALE is the person who led the drive for its presence on the ballot.
(The only viable alternative explanation would be that Beale is some sort of pipsqueak liar, who DOESN’T actually think it’s the best short story published last year.)
So: GRBI‘s presence on the Hugo ballot shows ONLY that Beale has very ‘specialized’ taste in fiction; or that he’s dishonest.
Whenever Beale is mentioned, fans now associate him largely with his promotion of the work of fringe authors such as Chuck Tingle, Vox Day, and John C. Wright.
YAY MIKE!!!!
Also yay for John, his accepter, for the swanky outfit.
Good ceremony.
WOOT!! WOOT!!!
The Fifth Season
Jessica Jones
Cat Pictures, Please
Folding Beijeng
…and all the others. Congratulations to all.
ETA: and OGH…twice!!!!
Ugh. If you look at the stats for Best Related Work, the Piddling Canines knocked out Letters to Tiptree, You’re Never Weird on the Internet, Invisible 2, John Scalzi Is Not a Very Popular Author, and the biography of Lois McMaster Bujold.
Fortunately, the voters saw through that bullshit.
I heard that the Nielsen Haydens are the ones who faked Obama’s birth certificate.
Bonnie McDaniel: If you look at the stats for Best Related Work, the Piddling Canines knocked out Letters to Tiptree, You’re Never Weird on the Internet, Invisible 2, John Scalzi Is Not a Very Popular Author, and the biography of Lois McMaster Bujold.
Which is just more proof-positive that their claimed mission of “recognizing excellence in SF” is total bullshit.
It’s really sad that that so many worthy works missed out on being recognized because of the temper tantrums of a few spoilt children with an unjustified sense of entitlement. 😐
@Laura Resnick
ROTFL
@ Anna :
Indeed. I don’t know anything about Truesdale’s expulsion and have no comment on that, but I am always baffled by how “extreme” people in sf/f seem to view being ejected or banned from a con. It’s a weekend leisure activity, and there are cons all over the country every weekend, in a society where there are also many things to do with one’s leisure time besides attending a con. I have never behaved badly enough to get myself ejected or banned from a con, and I think that someone who does behave badly enough to get thrown out of or banned from an event should probably take a hard look at how they conduct themselves in public… but if I were to be banned or ejected, my life would go on pretty much as usual (apart from the embarrassment). It’s not as if my human rights or civil rights would be denied or violated by my inability to attend or to remain at a particular private convention/event based on the fact that I had behaved badly or violated the code of conduct.
@Anna Feruglio:
Somebody told me of a, well, eventful panel with China Miéville?
Anybody have more information on that?
The MAC II daily newsletter 9 includes the info on Truesdale’s membership revocation, including the statement quoted previously here, with a bit more info prefacing that.
It doesn’t sound like there was anything outside the panel at issue, rumors to the contrary. I suppose MAC II could be omitting details in the newsletter blurb, but it doesn’t sound like it. (shrug)
Anyway just FYI .
If Truesdale had simply behaved like an ass at the Short Fiction panel, I would agree with those who are opining that MAC II’s reaction was perhaps excessive.
However, his assholish behaviour was clearly premeditated; he had a *lengthy* written speech, he brought props, and he admitted later that he didn’t even come close to finishing his prepared speech — which was therefore probably at least 1/2 hour’s worth.
In other words, he deliberately planned, ahead of time, to violate his assigned role as moderator by taking over the panel and turning it into a one-man manifesto soapbox.
So I would say that MAC II’s response was proportionate and reasonable.
I would also hope that whoever on the MAC II programming team chose him as a moderator seeks out and gets some training in how to successfully do programming — because clearly, that programming person was phoning it in. If they had done their advance prep research properly, Truesdale would never have been put in a moderator position.
So, if Dave Truesdale was ejected from the convention, then he wasn’t allowed to attend the Hugo ceremony where he was a nominee (for TANGENT ONLINE, in the Best Fanzine category)?
Ooh, that’s gotta sting.
Bruce Arthurs: So, if Dave Truesdale was ejected from the convention, then he wasn’t allowed to attend the Hugo ceremony where he was a nominee (for TANGENT ONLINE, in the Best Fanzine category)? Ooh, that’s gotta sting.
Actually, it was probably a blessing for him, since his fanzine placed below No Award.
Throwing him out entirely because he deliberately derailed a panel seems extreme.
Throwing him off all his upcoming programming would be perfectly fair, though it may well be they’re wasn’t any to throw him off.
If the consequences for doing X should be bad, then the consequences for abusing a position of power in order to do X should be worse.
Not only did Truesdale derail a panel (in the way that someone in the audience might do), he abused his position as moderator of the panel to derail the panel. And in the process he wasted the time of everyone there, panelist and paying members in the audience alike.
Instead of letting the people get what they were there for, he tried to force onto them something else of his choosing rather than theirs, which he would not have been able to try to do had he not been the moderator of the panel.
One might also muse that the panel was on “The State of Short Fiction”, i.e., it was about story; whereas Truesdale tried to use it to deliver a message … </irony>
And as to making him a martyr? I’m going to guess that any consequence at all would have been used as an excuse to claim martyrdom.
I applaud MidAmeriCon II for their decision to revoke his membership, and to make it clear that such deliberate assholishness will not be tolerated. Anything less would, I think, have been insufficient.
@Anna Feruglio:
As far as I know, China Miéville was not at the convention.
I could see that leading to a fairly eventful China Mieville panel.
The Panel and the Panel: Two panels running in the same room, one with China Mieville and one without.
@Nancy Sauer,
That actually sounds like an intriguing thing to try to arrange and make happen. And it should of course be followed by The Party and the Party (two parties happening in the same room, etc).
Or if another Chine Miéville work is nominated, we might end up with The Hugo and the Hugo?
</silliness>
Pingback: AMAZING NEWS FROM FANDOM: 8/21/2016 - Amazing Stories
The Iron Panel, a dedicated group of revolutionary writers on a panel that will change the world caught in the timeless moment of being about to start.
Well, looking at the Hugo voting, I have come to a decision. Y’all keep Walter Breen and MZB, I will keep Jerry Pournelle and Theodore Beale. And when my team comes to my house for supper, I won’t have to make sure they are never alone with my grandchildren.
@Tim
Since the former two are dead, you won’t have to worry about that in any case.
Speaking of Jerry Pournelle, he’s at the table next to mine RIGHT NOW! (Talking Hainlein with a writer/producer of The Big Bang Theory.)
Enjoying the HELL out of WorldCon 2016.
@Nancy Sauer, @Christian Brunschen, & @Nigel: LOL, thanks. I’m on my first cup of tea, and this helps. 🙂
@Tim: I was unaware enjoying MZB’s books meant that I had to have her zombie come to my house for a meal. Is this a new Puppy Calvin Ball rule? Lordy, y’all keep changing things – I can’t keep up! ::eyeroll::
@Christian Brunschen: [Not sure why autocorrect wants to remove the “s” from your name, but my apologies if that’s happened before and I didn’t notice.]
ROFL, you need to attend more panels if you believe this could only happen because he was the moderator. 😉 It can make it easier, though, I admit! (As do other things, like being a big name.)
@Kendall,
Oh, derailing can absolutely happen in many ways and by many other people; but the position of moderator includes a responsibility to try to prevent and fix derailments, whereas in this case, the moderator used that position to deliberately derail the panel right from the beginning. That is an abuse of authority that and trust, which was placed in the moderator in question – a level of trust and authority beyond what anyone else in the room had: Even panelists are, after all, supposed to listen to the moderator.
Derailing is one thing. Deliberately abusing the trust of the people who gave you a position of authority in order to derail … that’s quite another.