Larry Correia Channels
His Inner Dogberry

Yesterday, when Larry Correia wrote “I Need Your Help (gathering links to SJW attacks in sci-fi for a news reporter)”, seeking negative remarks about himself to pass on to a pair of Breitbart.com writers, readers flocked to his aid.

I mentioned bias, and specifically anti-conservative bias among the voters. They asked if I had links to blog posts, comments, etc.

I don’t keep track of most of what these people say about us. Honestly you can only get called a racist hate monger by so many crazy people before it just becomes background noise. So if you guys don’t mind, would you please post your favorites in the comments below.

James May/Fail Burton specifically, I know you are like the archivist of their racist Twitter posts. Time to bust out the files.

Here are selected quotes from the comments —

CORREIA: O that he were here to write me down an ass.

FAIL BURTON: I am here. You are written down an ass. And I have more.

CORREIA: Fallible blessings on your prodigious quill.

FAIL BURTON: (Still quoting several hours later) — “…Evil, wretched man who calls himself a man of the cloth. Evil, wretched, EVIL, WRETCHED, EVIL, WRETCHED…”

CORREIA: Enough. They’re under deadline.

Today Breitbart.com published “The Hugo Wars: How Sci-fi’s Most Prestigious Awards Became a Political Battleground” by contributors Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopolous. (Trigger warning for copyeditors.)

Today, no-one is safe. Right-wingers like Theodore Beale face ostracization over accusations of racism (Beale is himself Native American), while even staunchly progressive authors like Bryan Thomas Schmidt are denounced as “cultural appropriators”; in Schmidt’s case, because he prepared an anthology of nonwestern sci-fi stories. Peak absurdity was achieved in 2014 when Jonathan Ross was forced to cancel his appearance at the Hugo Awards after the SJWs of SFF whipped themselves into a panic-fueld rage over fears that Ross might – might! – make a fat joke. Even the New Statesman, which sometimes reads like an extension of Tumblr, came out and condemned the “self-appointed gatekeepers” of SFF.

But while the examples of manufactured grievance may be absurd, few members of the SFF community are laughing. New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia told us that SFF is currently in the grip of a “systematic campaign to slander anybody who doesn’t toe their line,” which is breeding a culture of fear and self-censorship. “Most authors aren’t making that much money, so they are terrified of being slandered and losing business,” he says. The only exceptions are a “handful of people like me who are either big enough not to give a crap, or too obstinate to shut up.”

After years on the back foot, that obstinate handful are preparing to fight back.

The rest of the article explains that “fighting back” consists of getting readers to stuff the Hugo ballot box with their Sad Puppies slate of nominees, as if that was an awesome example of moral leadership under fire.

Bokhari and Yiannopolous also support their claims with historical examples from an alternate universe — obviously not the one we live in —

In the postwar period, conservatives like Robert Heinlein and liberals like Isaac Asimov were both among the leading figures of science fiction. Political tolerance, an idea loathed by radical activists, has ever been the norm in the community, and it has thrived because of it.

Yessir, happy kumba-yah political tolerance has ever been the hallmark of fandom … I’m sorry, Sam Moskowitz, what’s that? Oh, you remember kicking the Futurians out the first Worldcon because of the political flyers they were going to distribute? And Mr. Heinlein, you remember writing to Forry Ackerman complaining fans were avoiding the army in WWII? And Mr. Campbell, you say you were aware fans and writers divided over the Vietnam War?

Well, let’s not get enmeshed in trivia. Other than a few hundred exceptions, up until the end of the Twentieth Century every fan calmly tolerated every political opinion ever expressed.

However, I do remember Jerry Pournelle once complained about Isaac Asimov, “You’re allowed to make your own arguments, but you’re not allowed to make up your own facts,” an admonition Breitbart.com should take to heart.

Indeed, once readers discover Bokhari’s and Yiannopolous’ willful obliviousness to actual fanhistory, can anyone believe they are devoted to portraying a true and accurate account of today’s science fiction scene?

55 thoughts on “Larry Correia Channels
His Inner Dogberry

  1. So I looked up Mr Glyer, and he is the editor/publisher of a fanzine. That’s actually pretty cool. It should mean that he is also a fan of the genre, which would beg the question, why does the politics or views of the different authors matter. I would expect that a Fan is simply interested in the story…

  2. Mike McInnis: Didn’t you come to this discussion after reading Larry Correia or Vox Day commenting about it? How did you pick one of their blogs to read if you have no interest in authors’ politics?

  3. I was introduced to Larry Corriea’s Monster Hunter series by a friend of mine who shares an enjoyment of Sci-Fi. I also read his Hard Magic series, which is actually a very well told story. I started following him after reading Hard Magic as I was looking for other books he had authored. I have since read Dead Six and bought a couple books in the Shattered Shields (not sure the name is correct) series.

    So, yes I follow him on Facebook. That doesn’t mean that I agree with all his politics, in fact, I think he goes way too far sometimes when he rips up others. It doesn’t change the fact that I read his books well before I even knew he was on facebook, or knew what his politics were.

    So, yeah I followed a link that declared someone was talking about the Sad Puppies campaign, mostly out of curiosity, and thought the discussion interesting to take part in. I’m not sure why how I got to this page matters though?

    By the way, I can’t say as I have ever fully read a Vox day book, I simply don’t care for his story telling.

    So, in short, I follow Corriea’s facebook posts because he often posts about his next works there, and i truly enjoy reading his books (His last Monster Hunter book about Agent Franks is one of the very best Frankenstein lore based stories that I have read. You should read it with an open mind and write a review of it. That might be an interesting read.).

  4. Mike McInnis: I read Correia’s Warbound when it was nominated last year and liked it quite a bit. I was particularly impressed that throughout the long fight sequences that end the book I could always visualize where combatants were in relation to each other — something that rarely seems to happen outside a graphic novel. In fact, I speculated how much more comprehensible the battles in the Harry Potter series would have been to read if he could have done that part.

    I’ve read probably half a dozen pieces of Vox Day’s short fiction and found them enjoyable. He has a good handle on military sf, has thought about a lot of the psychology and details that add verisimilitude. Occasionally he defaults to tell rather than show, though not often. Everything is more enjoyable when you take it on its own terms, and it doesn’t have to live up to a Hugo recommendation.

  5. I actually thought Warbound as a stand alone nominee was decent, but that it suffered from not having the rest of the series with it. That Hard Magic series has a lot to like in it. Just looking at the Warbound book doesn’t allow you to understand the character development that he does through the rest of the series. I found the growth of the character very believable and endearing and I really enjoyed his alternate history. If people had given that book a fair shake, I don’t think he would have won, but it certainly deserved a nomination and it should have shown such.

    I actually think his Agent Franks book (the last Monster Hunter Series book) is a better stand alone story as it presents a very unique story about the Frankenstein mythos, which actually sucked me right in. The rest of the Monster Hunter series is more of Beer and Pizza Sci-Fi, but that one is an excellent stand alone story.

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