Dogs With A Blog 8/27

(1) Kate Paulk on Mad Genius Club “Yet Another Hugo Post”

I was going to mine the Intertubes for Nazi quotes that the Puppy-Kickers could have said if they’d been about Puppies or white men rather than Jews, but alas, even in translation Hitler and Goebbels are so much more articulate the comparison would be utterly unfair to the Puppy-Kickers (and remember, these are writers and editors – but the Nazis beat them on all fronts when it comes to articulating points of view. I suppose I should be relieved: pointing and shrieking tends to be rather less than effective as a means of converting the undecided).

Oh, and for those who are wondering? The reason I didn’t use quotes from Mao, Lenin, or Stalin was that an awful lot of Puppy-Kickers would be flattered to be compared to such luminaries of the world’s most lethal ideology.

So, let’s call them for what they are. Nasty, petty, bullying socialists who would fit in just as well with the Nazis as they would with their equally murderous Communist cousins. They even have a racial agenda, and while they’d deny it, they’re so US-centric it’s hilarious (as well as sad).

And what’s even sadder is this pathetic collection of power-hungry little Hitlers have destroyed what was once a genuinely respected award. Whether it can be resurrected by the Campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness or not, I consider the cause to be worthy.

Anonymous (who else?) in a comment on fail-fandomanon

Oh, dear. I hope the popcorn harvest this year is bountiful; looks like we’ll need it.

Kate Paulk in a comment on “Yet Another Hugo Post”

It’s not Godwin’s law if the comparison is legitimate, Mr Brandt.

(2) Mark Judge on Acculturated – “Political Correctness Puts Science Fiction on Trial”

John C. Wright losing to “No Award” is like the Rolling Stones losing to “No Award” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s a disgrace.

The blackballing of Wright brings to mind, yet again, the concept of punitive liberalism. The phrase was coined by James Piereson in his brilliant and groundbreaking book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism. Punitive liberalism, unlike classic liberalism—which was tolerant, thoughtful, and popular in America during most of the history of science fiction—is a product of post-1960s identity politics, is against free thought, against virile men of action (like the swashbucklers found in a lot of the Sad Puppies’ stories), against sexy ladies in pulp fiction (or anywhere else for that matter), against fun, and focused like a phaser on race, class, and gender.

It’s why John C. Wright, one of the best science fiction writers alive, is not sitting at home polishing his five Hugos.

(3) Sanford Begley on Otherwhere Gazette – “Congratulations to the winner”

The Hugo awards for 2015 are over. The clear winner is Vox “Machiavelli” Day. He pretty much got everything he wanted. He wanted Three Body Problem to win and it did. He wanted the Hugos to No Award everything and it mostly did. He wanted to help the SJWs in general and the powers behind the World Science Fiction Convention to look like screaming idiots and it happened. And he was given so much help that a casual observer has to wonder how many of the people he was destroying were secretly his minions.

Before I go into how thoroughly he won I would like to offer condolences to Laura Mixon, Guardians Of The Galaxy and the others who lost because of his machinations. Yes I said lost. You see, they will be forever tainted by the actions of the body bestowing the award. They will be the winners of the Year of the Asterisk. For those who don’t know it, a vanishingly small body by now, the asterisk is both a sign that they weren’t real winners and a symbol known in SF circles to represent the common asshole. The work they did was certainly deserving of being on the ballot, the way they won will forever brand them as not good enough to win honestly. And the fault lies not with them.  The fault lies in the machinations of a clique of mostly old, mostly white, mostly male morons who could not stand the idea that they were not the all powerful force they thought they were. Well, them and Vox Day.

(4) John Carlton on The Arts Mechanical – “Scalzi And Who’s A Jerk”

He [Scalzi] starts out saying that the puppies acted like jerks.  As if somehow the puppies created a world wide media smear campaign to smear the clique that ran world cons.  Or pressure authors to withdraw their nominations.  Or derided fans who nominated the “wrong books” as “wrong fans.”  The puppies did all that?  Actually no.  That was Scalzi and his friends.

His primary complaint is that the puppies created slate.  He’s all angry about that.  As if this was the first time that anybody had a campaign to nominate books.  As if He, himself had not campaigned to get his stuff nominated.  Or maybe it’s because he wasn’t this year.  Did he really think that he was ENTITLED to award nominations every year?  I guess so. Anyway, Lets look at his list and maybe get a grasp of the truth here.

(5) Tom Knighton – “What Puppies Want From Awards”

Awards should be indicative of quality.  We have maintained that the Hugos haven’t had that for a long time.

You want to know something though?  We can change that perception without anyone having to surrender.

This year, Three Body Problem won for best novel.  It wasn’t on any of the lists, but that was because none of us read it at that time.  However, a number of people on both sides of the divide read it and loved it.  It won not from just anti-puppy support, or puppy support, but from both camps loving the book.

Was that love universal?  No.  No book is universally loved, and 3BP has detractors.  Every book does.

But what matters is that this one book had enough support from two different groups that it won.  It’s proof that this world I dream of, where the good stories win regardless of anything else, can exist.

(6) Jay Swanson – “The Hugos as a Microcosm”

Hugos – How it Could Have Been

My real experience with the Hugos began last Saturday, even if I voted months beforehand (and only on like two things because I was too late to vote on most). So I’d like to address what I saw. I do think it was important, considering how everything had escalated, to send a message that said “It is not OK to hijack the Hugos.” That is a fair statement to make, and the “No Award” handed down as a result was not unfair. It was in how they were handed down that mattered.

It’s important to realize that real people were sitting in that auditorium, their hearts in their throats, their hopes burgeoning that maybe, just maybe, they would win something that night. It’s hard enough not winning an award. It’s doubly so when people applaud the fact that no one won it.

Rather than applaud (of which I’m guilty on a few counts), it would have been more appropriate had I simply nodded quietly in approval. In the same moment, it would have been good to reach out and offer comfort to one of the nominees if they had been nearby. Just to say, “Hey, I realize this sucks, but there’s always next year.”

(7) Jason Clark on Your Nerd Is Showing – “Kicking Puppies: The Promise of Sci-Fi vs. Anti-Inclusivity Brigade”

And then the No Awards began. This article is not a definite list of the winners. The Hugos have that themselves as well as many far more respected journalistic establishments. I’m only going to tell you the sweeping emotion that began to take me as I started sending messages to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to tell them the results. I was taken by the solidarity of the thing. There were many tolerable candidates on the Sad Puppies slate, but still, the voters hold firm. They would not negotiate with what they felt were bigots or terrorists. They would not put up with the kind of people who would leave a stack of vile papers on the freebies table, hoping to insult as many groups as possible while referring to the SFWA as the “Socialist Fiction Writer’s of America.” Overall, five No Awards were announced that night, bringing the total of No Awards given in the history of the Hugos to five. The Sad Puppies were almost entirely shut out, with the singular exception of “Guardians of the Galaxy” winning long form presentation. It was a category completely full of Puppy nominees and yet, enough voters had intended to vote for it regardless, that it still won. It struck me, sitting there, as the Sad Puppies’ greatest loss. It was the one that proved that voting weren’t just there to spite them. They were protesting the Puppies’ methods and tactics, certainly. But they weren’t beyond voting for a option that they agreed with.

(8) CiaraCat Sci-Fi “Tell me about the good SFF you’ve read/watched in 2015!”

So, now that a record number of fans have shown up to prove that the group barking “You are a tiny clique trying to block us completely out of the Hugo Awards” were, in fact, the tiny clique who themselves were trying to block everybody else out of the awards…. Let’s move on to what new SFF has been coming out!

(9) Miles Schneiderman on YES! Magazine “Sci-Fi Fandom Declares Victory After Reactionary Nominees Lose Big at the Hugos”

Aside from Guardians, the Hugo voters took every opportunity to award nominees not supported by the Puppies. And despite a deck stacked against women and people of color, the voters rewarded both. Chinese author Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem won for “Best Novel,” becoming the first translated novel ever to win a Hugo. The award in the “Best Graphic Story” category went to the first volume of Ms. Marvel, the comic book that features a teenage Muslim girl as its heroine. Julia Dillon won her second straight Hugo for “Best Professional Artist,” beating out four Puppy candidates. Meanwhile, Lightspeed Magazine beat two Puppy nominees for “Best Semiprozine,” and one of Lightspeed’s editors, Christie Yant, began her acceptance speech with a sardonic, “I’d like to thank the patriarchy.”

One of the most interesting winners was Laura J. Mixon, who won “Best Fan Writer” over four Puppies for her exposé on the notorious Internet troll known as Requires Hate. Mixon’s chances of victory had been uncertain, despite her exclusion from the Puppy slates, because Requires Hate turned out to be a left-leaning woman of color who had been nominated for the Campbell award in 2014. She earned her reputation by viciously attacking and bullying authors she perceived as misrepresenting her race and gender, and had been cited by the Puppies as a glaring example of leftist extremism. Mixon exposed and denounced her, and as a result, many anti-Puppy advocates were also anti-Mixon.

In her acceptance speech, Mixon stressed the importance of being inclusive, and while she didn’t explicitly call for the Puppies to be accepted into the fold, that sentiment could clearly be heard. She ended, however, by advocating for the powerless instead. “I stand with marginalized groups who seek merely to be seen as fully human,” Mixon said before leaving the stage. “Black lives matter.”

(10) Eric Offill on GonnaGeek – “World War Geek: Contemplating The Hugo Fiasco”

The Hugo organizers needed to listen to the dissent and try to answer the claims they are voicing. They need to create avenues of trust with those readers who feel marginalized because their taste in sci-fi isn’t trendy. Because whether they believe it or not, they can’t afford to lose these fans or the one these fans will generate. Larry Correia’s work (which I actually think is pretty good) matters. Orson Scott Card’s work matters. And if you don’t think that their voices aren’t trying to be silenced by the progressive side, ask yourself if Starship Troopers were written today, would it have even been nominated not to even mention win?

That said, the Puppies need to stop acting like victims of the establishment. Bear in mind while Sad and Rabid Puppies are two separate groups, the old adage still goes that if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. You associate with unsavory individuals, align yourself with news outlets of disrepute, not only do you have to fight the battle you picked, but you have to fight the appearance of malice. You can’t proclaim to be taking the high ground and get into the mud with your opponents. If you truly are interested in being the voice of the marginalized, start acting like a reputable activist and you’ll find allies. Otherwise you’re letting your opponents paint you as a petulant child throwing a tantrum, and they could be right.

But neither side has an excuse for the “No Hugo” reaction. This is beyond embarrassing to EVERYONE. Whether you agree with the nominees or not, they are still nominees and DESERVE to compete for an award and not to be denied simply because the voters didn’t like the choices.

(11) George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog – “The Hugo Losers Party”

Not all the losers were there, to be sure. I had a pocket full of invitations throughout the con, as did Parris and my minions Raya and Jo and Tyler, but even so, we missed people. I never saw Mike Glyer, who I was especially eager to invite, since he had attended the first Hugo Losers Party in 1976, and had done such a great job of covering Puppygate in File 770. But we did get Liza and the LOCUS crew, and it was Charlie Brown and LOCUS who named that first party the best at Big Mac. I looked for Toni Weisskopf at the Hugo ceremony, but never found her. I saw John Joseph Adams at the ceremony, but he somehow escaped me during the picture-taking afterward, and my efforts to track him down at the KC bash came to naught. I never found Jo Walton, though I got messages that she was looking for me. There were others I missed as well… and some who were not invited. NO ASSHOLES, the invite warned. We had a small list, and no, I won’t tell you the names on it… but we wanted this party to be about joy and celebration and togetherness, not division, anger, and ugliness.

In that we succeeded. We had a great crowd. Old and young, fan and pro, male and female, gay and straight and trans, losers and winners, editors and publishers and artists and writers, all dancing and laughing and drinking and having fun. It wasn’t as crowded as that party in Denver, no, but there were probably more people; the Glover is a lot bigger than Rusty’s suite was.

And yes, a number of the guests were on the Puppy slates, and yes, the losers included people who lost to No Award, which has to be an especially hard way to lose. Maybe the party helped in some small way. I have to say, if there is any hope at all of reconciliation with the Sad Puppies, it is much more likely to be accomplished with drinks and dancing than by exchanging angry emails over the web.

(12) Lou Antonelli on This Way To Texas – George R.R. Martin Thinks I’m An Asshole”

I ran into George at the “official” reception, and asked him about a non-Hugo related subject, an article I did last spring regarding his donation of a rare first edition of “The Hobbit” to the Texas AQ&M University Library System. He essentially blew me off; I realize now he was only there to find his chums and hand them the private invites. Of course, I had no idea what he was up to. And of course, he didn’t stop to hand me an invite. But I mean, if you read his blog post – I hardly think I would have been happy there. In his blog post, at one point he says: “Some who were not invited. NO ASSHOLES, the invite warned. We had a small list, and no, I won’t tell you the names on it… but we wanted this party to be about joy and celebration and togetherness…” Jeez, George, I may not be the smartest kid in class, but it’s easy to tell my name was on your Asshole list. You know what? At least I didn’t forget my working class roots.

(13) George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog – “What’s It All About, Alfie?”

And this year, thanks to the slates, we had more losers than ever before. This year, indeed, we were all losers. Some lost the usual way, finishing behind an eventual winner. Others lost to No Award, an especially galling sort of defeat. (Which also created five losers in those five categories instead of four). Even the winners lost, since their victories will always bear as asterisk in the minds of some because they triumphed under such unusual circumstances, over a weakened field, or whatever. (I don’t necessarily endorse this viewpoint. I think some of this year’s winners deserve an exclamation point rather than an asterisk. But I have heard a fair amount of the asterisk talk even on Hugo night itself). The Hugos lost: five No Awards is an occasion for mourning, not cheers. The genre lost: I don’t buy that even bad press is good, and we sure got a lot of bad press this year. Fandom lost: division and discord poisoned our annual celebration of love for SF, and left wounds that will be a long time healing. The nominees who withdrew from the slates lost; they walked away from a Hugo nod, a painful thing to do, and were abused for that decision. The nominees who stayed on the ballot lost; they were abused for that decision too, and some, who were NOT Puppies and never asked to be slated, saw their Hugo chances destroyed by the Nuclear option. Some nominees managed to catch flak from both sides.

And there was another class of loser, less visible, but still very much a victim of the slates. Those writers who produced outstanding work in 2014, and who, in a normal year, would have almost certainly received Hugo nominations. Some might even have won rockets. But this was NOT a normal year, and the usual word-of-mouth buzz and fannish enthusiasm that generally carries a story to a place on the Hugo ballot could not and did not prevail against the slate-mongering of the Sad Puppies and the lockstep voting of the Rabids. These were the invisible losers of the 2015 Hugo season. Losing is a part of life, and certainly of the Hugos… but it is one thing to be beaten in a fair contest, and another to be shoved aside and denied the chance to compete.

It was for those ‘invisible losers’ that I decided to create the Alfies. If one accepts that the Hugo has value, these writers had suffered real harm thanks to the slates. There was no way I could hope to redress that… but I could make a gesture. In the door of my room in KC in 1976, Alfie Bester told us that winners can become losers. If so, losers can become winners too. I would give my own awards… and of course I’d name them after Alfie. So that’s how the Alfies came about.

(14) Patrick S. Tomlinson – “One Final Thought on the Hugos”

The whole SP/RP phenomenon is a microcosm of this inability to recognize and cope with shifting attitudes and preferences within the fandom community. They simply refuse to believe that the silent majority really has moved on to new things, so they concocted a narrative to explain their failures where some secret cabal is somehow stacking the deck against them. How this is accomplished, considering both the nomination and voting processes are done through public ballot, is never clearly explained.

And much like the Wisconsin voter fraud case above, the Puppy slate voting was a coordinated attack (although within the rules of the award at the time) meant to counterbalance the SJW conspiracy locking them out of the nomination process. But just like the WI case, there was no conspiracy. There was no attempt to lock them out. They just weren’t that popular among the people who follow, vote for, and attend the Hugos. They thought they’d awaken a sleeping populist dragon that would swoop down and defeat the small clique of elitists holding them back. But the beast they awoke turned on them instead.

That’s a tough pill for anyone to swallow, but the ensuing results should make it very clear where the sympathies of the actual silent majority of modern fandom lay. Now, the question is, will the SP/RP’s take the time to do some self-reflection and learn from this lesson, or will they double down and comfort themselves with even more extreme conspiracy theories? Only time will tell.

(15) George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog – “The Alfies”

Two more Alfies went to ANNIE BELLET and MARKO KLOOS. Added to the slates without their knowledge or consent, both of these talented young writers found themselves on this year’s Hugo ballot, Bellet for her short story “Goodnight Stars” and Kloos for his novel LINES OF DEPARTURE. It was the first Hugo nomination for both of them, something that every science fiction writer dreams of, a day to be remembered and cherished forever. And yet, when they discovered the nature of the slates and the block-voting that had placed them on the ballot, both Bellet and Kloos withdrew, turning down their nominations. I cannot imagine how difficult and painful a decision that must have been. Bellet’s story actually had more nominations than any other short story on the ballot, regardless of slate, which suggests that she might well have been nominated even without the ‘help’ of the Puppies. And it was Marko Kloos’ withdrawal that opened up a space on the ballot for Cixin Liu’s THREE-BODY PROBLEM, the eventual winner. They lost their shot at a Hugo (this year, at least — I think both of them will be back), but their courage and integrity earned them both an Alfie.

The last Alfie of the night had… surprise, surprise… nothing to do with the slates, the Sads, the Puppies, or any of that madness. I wanted to give a token of recognition to one of the giants of our field, a Hugo winner, Hugo loser (if you look only at the fiction categories, he has lost more Hugos than anyone, I believe), SFWA Grand Master, former Worldcon Guest of Honor, and Big Heart Award winner… the one and only Silverbob. The coolest Alfie of all (the half-lucite one that lights up) went to ROBERT SILVERBERG, the only man among us to have attended every Hugo Awards ceremony since 1953. There has never been a Hugo given out without Silverberg watching. Just think of that!

(16) CCTV – “Chinese sci-fi hit wins Hugo Awards for the first time”

Chinese sci-fi fans were ecstatic when they learned that the Hugo Awards, one of the most prestigious science-fiction awards in the world, went to a Chinese novel for the first time.

The Three-Body Problem, written by Chinese sci-fi novelist Liu Cixin, beat out four other finalists and was announced the winner of the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel in Seattle on Saturday night local time.

The book’s translator Ken Liu accepted the award on the author’s behalf.

As one of the key international awards for the sci-fi genre, the Hugo Awards have been recognizing the best science fiction or fantasy works published in English since 1953.

The Three-Body Problem is also the first Chinese sci-fi novel that has been translated to English. Ever since it was first serialized in a Chinese sci-fi magazine in 2006, The Three-Body Problem, now a complete trilogy, has captivated millions of people in China for its magnificent space philosophy, and was unanimously hailed by sci-fi fans as “China’s best sci-fi novel.” In 2014, the English version of the trilogy’s first book was published in the US.

The second book, The Dark Forest, is planned to hit stores this summer, and the finale, Death’s End, will be out in January 2016, according to the trilogy’s publisher Tor Books.

(17) Don’t show this to the Gallifrey One committee!

(18) Makes me feel better about my own copyediting —

‘As You Know’ Bob in a comment on File 770

Three days after losing “Best Editor” to “NO AWARD” ….Beale self-publishes a book with TWO Chapter Fives?

Is there anyone in the entire universe who continues to question the collective wisdom of the Hugo voters?

Now a bestseller:

John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Compariative Popularity Levels – Kindle Edition

by Theophilus Pratt (Author, Editor)

Just look at these glowing comments:

More Chapter 5s Than Some Books !

ByTechnoLadyon August 27, 2015

Brilliant and, in all modesty, possibly one of the great works of the 21st century. I especially liked the Chapter layout and how they were sequentialized. This groundbreaking tome once and for all settles the matter of the perfidious John Scalzi’s popularity! This book actually has THREE bonus Chapter Fives, unlike some other lesser works which give you barely two. This NEEDS to be nominated for a Best Editor award next year!

Even the object of the parody admires the product:

And John Scalzi responded to File 770 commenters’ request that he voice the audiobook by dangling this bait“Charity Drive for Con or Bust: An Audio Version of ‘John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular’ Read by Me”

Short version: To benefit Con or Bust, a charity which helps fans of color attend science fiction and fantasy conventions, I will make an audio version of John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels, a parody of an actual book by a certain obnoxious bigot who is obsessed with me, if $2,500 is raised for Con or Bust by 11:59pm (Eastern), Sunday, August 30, 2015. You can donate to Con or Bust here. To goose the giving, I will gift-match for the first $500 in donations.

(19) A tweet from a celebrity Hugo presenter.

(20) Bringer Tom on Metafilter

There was a period in my life when my fondest dream was to be a professional science fiction writer. All I can think now is that I dodged a huge fucking bullet when that didn’t work out.

(21) You can check out any time you like….

785 thoughts on “Dogs With A Blog 8/27

  1. Too many Morlocks stock up on ammunition while ignoring Eloi.

    I thought seeds were unnecessary as Morlocks ate Eloi ?

    *incoherent screaming*

    FINE.

    So there was a place awhile ago that was selling like–patriotism seed packs. They were literally plastic tubes full of seeds that you could store for when civilization collapses, and there was an American flag on them, and people were buying these and burying them for when Obama came to take their guns AND THEIR SEEDS and I burned a trail of fiery rage like a particularly annoyed comet across the blogosphere because OH MY GOD you cannot just sell people across North America one Genuine American Seed Tube that will grow in every climate and these bloody IDIOTS were thinking that what were probably leftovers from the Burpee display at Home Deopt were going to be all they needed to survive in the coming Obamapocalypse and what the hell is wrong with you people, do you even hardiness zone, should you be growing short or long day onions, I don’t know AND NEITHER DO THE PEOPLE SELLING YOU SEED TUBES and what’s your dirt like can you even GROW carrots there or should you have been amending the soil and building raised beds for the last ten years to get your fertility up and hey, when you can’t get phosphorus because the goddamn southeastern US never got plowed under by a glacier and so was crap to begin with and then somebody stripped the dirt for tobacco and cotton for twenty years, what are you going to do then? Point a gun at the dirt for being phosphorus deficient? And how about that lack of iron? Hey, maybe put your Confederate flag over it, I’m sure THAT will convince your poor miserable chlorosis-riddled plants to straighten up and fly right! If civilization collapses, by god, you will be begging to trade ammo for composted cow manure and landrace beans that can tolerate powdery mildew and you’ll be out there picking pickleworms off your squash by hand and hey, do you even known how to save squash seeds so you don’t get an inedible mess on the second generation? WHERE IS YOUR SEED TUBE NOW, PATRIOTS?!

    …ahem.

    It is unwise.

  2. Jim: Michael Connelly has been one of my favorite writers for something like 20 years now. As I’ve commented before, his A Darkness More Than Night remains one of the few police novels to look head-on at how the post-9/11 national security state screws up law enforcement. Also, now that you mention it, yes, Use Of Weapons is very Le Carre in some ways. In particular, I think, it has some distinct structural things in common with The Honourable Schoolboy.

    I have a theory on why “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” enrages the Puppies. It’s this sentence: They’d grasp each other for comfort instead of seizing the pool cues with which they beat you, calling you a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not, shouting and shouting as you slid to the floor in the slick of your own blood.

    That is, the story doesn’t just say that it’s a bad thing to assault random strangers for presenting a dissatisfying image to you. It also says that people who are comfortable reaching for every darned insult in the book, without any regard for its relevance or truth in any way, may also be particularly comfortable assaulting random strangers for presenting etc etc. Now, just how many random and sometimes mutually incompatible things have the Puppies called the rest of us?

    They read that sentence, I think, and see it as something far more specific than a general attack on the acceptability of assaulting random strangers. They see it as an accusation that their sort of people, in particular, are menaces to civil society at large.

    Reading:

    I’ve been recharging my sf/f palette, and indulging in various bits of interwar and World War II-related reading. Singled Out:
    How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War
    , by Virginia Nicholson, is fascinating. I’ve only ever seen very brief discussions of the topic before. I am, halfway through, really wishing that someone of the sort who’d appear in Heather’s history links compilation would do a supplemental treatment, because I find myself wondering about the queer part of the society. Nicholson several times drops the briefest mentions about women in same-sex relationships, but that’s it. I also wonder what trans women and trans men did, and how the constraints of that historical moment shifted their choices from what they were before and after. But what Nicholson does cover, she covers really well.

    I also re-read the book version of The Great Escape, which remains mighty fine competence porn, though again, I find myself wondering about the experiences of trans and gay/bi internees.

  3. “which simply must be some sort of agenda.”

    The fix was in with Mad Max, of course, and all those uppity women characters subverting the pure and masculine American Hero.

  4. – @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

    “Oh please. A, Machiavelli was a genuinely smart guy, quite successful in his lifetime, and despite what people who have never read him think, definitely not a psychopath. B, he could fucking write. He was capable of subtle and sophisticated thought, he was articulate, and he was very, very much in touch with reality. He also had a sense of humor.
    #dontyoudaretouchmeniccolo”

    If you haven’t read them, you will likely like the treatment of Niccolo’s character in the Heroes In Hell series

  5. @Ann

    God, that movie deserves an extra award for outing misogynist assholes and leaving them standing alone in the spotlight while everyone else was having a good time.

    That and another award in the Not Using CG category. 🙂

  6. Kurt Busiek: I’ve never listened to the podcast, myself, but I’m starting it tonight.

    You are in for a treat.

    Re: Rick Moen –

    It’s one thing to have a negative opinion of a story and state it as such. But I think it’s quite another thing to express that opinion as an off-hand statement, kind of between the lines, phrased as though presenting incontrovertible fact that all in the conversation are presumed to agree with, inserted into a discussion of a totally different circumstance surrounding the story. The latter is underhanded and, as another poster said, tacky. Nasty, even. Reads you just can’t pass up an opportunity to get your digs in, and you want to do it in such a way that calling you on it would be awkward and off-topic.

    It was an unpleasant little turd to step in on my hitherto untroubled stroll through what had appeared to be a reasonable and blameless discussion. Kind of like the earlier hints that MRK had done something unsavory but you didn’t want to provide details substantiating your hints because that would make you look hostile to her. Again, underhanded and tacky and nasty and icky.

    Yay for Stylish I guess?

  7. @Bruce: Honourable Schoolboy is exactly the referent in my mind! Really, Honourable Schoolboy crossed with A Perfect Spy. Even though Perfect doesn’t run backwards.

  8. To (probably unnecessarily) revisit the Meg Frank discussion, I think the problem is one of terminology, at most. The core issue is that the Sasquan committee forgot that a crime impacts both the immediate victim and society as a whole (where society = Worldcon in this case). They thought they were done when the immediate victim said he forgave, but they didn’t take into account their responsibility to protect the rest of society, which would almost certainly require banning Antonelli from the con.

    At that point, it sounds like Ms. Frank took the only option remaining in an attempt to fill the gap – filing a harassment complaint on her own behalf. If it’s a bad fit with our understanding of harassment (and I tend to agree it is), that’s because the system already failed to deal with things the right way.

  9. Thanks for the reminder about the wiki, zakur! I’d been meaning to add my list of anime series worth considering so far to it, but never managed to remember it when I had enough time to actually do something.

  10. I have a theory on why “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” enrages the Puppies. It’s this sentence: They’d grasp each other for comfort instead of seizing the pool cues with which they beat you, calling you a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not, shouting and shouting as you slid to the floor in the slick of your own blood.

    That is, the story doesn’t just say that it’s a bad thing to assault random strangers for presenting a dissatisfying image to you. It also says that people who are comfortable reaching for every darned insult in the book, without any regard for its relevance or truth in any way, may also be particularly comfortable assaulting random strangers for presenting etc etc. Now, just how many random and sometimes mutually incompatible things have the Puppies called the rest of us?

    And then there is the famous statement about ‘real men’ having an almost uncontrollable urge to beat gay men with tire irons. Bruce, I think you may be on to something.

    I read the story and didn’t get a ‘southern redneck’ vibe either, which says that may just be a bit of projection on the part of whoever suggested it was there.

  11. The real-world incident I associate with the sparse cues given in the passage is the case of a Portuguese-American woman who was gang-raped in a Connecticut bar in, I want to say, the 1980s. The case made the national news and featured both the usual special pleading – “Was she asking for it?” “If you demonize the rapists you hate immigrants!” – and pushback against those and other tropes of rape culture that came up.

    I’m sure the case involved a pool table. Gin was not specifically mentioned in any report I recall. All of which just goes to show that people really do have lots of different referents in their heads.

  12. Ken Burnside asked what I thought about cheering at the Hugo Awards. I told him that, as a cheerer, it broke my heart. I would rather give awards than have garbage on my stuffed ballot.

    It sounds as though others have told him the same.

    I really do hope he gets one some day. Just not that day.

  13. Gin is not a southern marker. If she’d said Dickel, then, okay, somebody might have a good jumping off point. Moonshine, sure. Crappy scuppernong wine? Absolutely.

    Gin, no.

  14. RedWombat on August 28, 2015 at 8:06 pm said:

    Too many Morlocks stock up on ammunition while ignoring Eloi.

    I thought seeds were unnecessary as Morlocks ate Eloi ?

    *incoherent screaming*

    FINE.

    …..you will be begging to trade ammo for composted cow manure and landrace beans that can tolerate powdery mildew and you’ll be out there picking pickleworms off your squash by hand and hey, do you even known how to save squash seeds so you don’t get an inedible mess on the second generation? WHERE IS YOUR SEED TUBE NOW, PATRIOTS?!

    …ahem.

    It is unwise.

    But, but…but it doesn’t *have* to be cow manure! Compost it long enough and just about any animal poo will do!

    (Oh, and I agree with a lot of what you said about Carol Deppe, but it’s still a fascinating book and if you read it carefully it shows you growing food is work. And she does get you started learning about seed saving on squash. I don’t have space or time to maintain squash lines (and I do love Sunshine kabocha even if it is a hybrid) so I purchase my seed, but I figure financially supporting seed savers is good, and if everything falls apart I have a year’s supply on hand to give me a start at keeping my own. I wish some SF authors just doing hand-waving about colonists or post-apocalyptic survivors raising their food would pay attention to how much WORK it is! )

  15. Gin & Dinosaurs:
    The dinosaur really does have legs; long after its publication, nomination & not winning, we are still talking about it. The writer posted some thought regarding gin as a class marker & there was discussion. I have tried & am unable to comment on it because the spam-defeating protocols defeat me, but IMO, gin was not a class marker at all.

    My first image is that of lab geeks drinking gin & tonic because that was what we did for Friday after-work drinks at a previous workplace. My second is that of Ladies-who-Lunch sipping their cold drinks at a swanky waterside bistro. My third is that of Victorian’s in a dingy pub drowning their sorrows. If it is a class-marker, it’s certainly not an obvious one to me. “Booze-soaked” may be a better alternative phrase if a change (which I think is unnecessary) must be made, but the rhythm isn’t nearly as good.

    Re:gardening.
    My garden is a bit embarrassing right now as it’s still winter, not helped by me doing most of my gardening by neglect; a lot of natural selection in action. I’m also lazy, so I tend to plant the sorts of things that are hardy, and where you can use the whole plant. So we have planted parsley, rocket (a.k.a. arugula), coriander (a.k.a. cilantro), mint, lettuce, chives, and bokchoy.

  16. @ Red Wombat–
    Thank you for the (prepper) seed rant! As a Master Gardener living in a tiny microclimate in the maritime Pacific Northwest, I’m painfully aware that almost none of the Burpee’s rack crap will grow here worth a damn, with or without soil amendments (and 8-foot deer fences). The “survival seed packet” scam has always reduced me to hair-tearing frustration as well.

  17. Unless anyone is terribly worried about how Londoners from the 1750s are referred to, I don’t think the hidden meanings of gin are a problem.

    (Yes, Hogarth again. What can I say, don’t mess with the classics.)

  18. Funny though, I’ve seen Puppy types pre-emptively hating on the new Star Wars since none of the three central protagonists are white men, which simply must be some sort of agenda.

    What ? That boggles my mind.

  19. My own thought was that gin-soaked was a nod to history, Hogarth indeed.
    And it’s also a clever ducking of exactly the kind of detail that would create a specific association.
    The best I could drag out for gin would be martinis, or the kind of fizzy girlie drinks my mom liked.
    But unless you are thinking London slums, drunk for a ha’penny, dead drunk for a penny, or James Bond, or the ladies who lunch, gin doesn’t give you a clue.
    There’s no reason to believe gin characterizes the working-class or southerners – it’s a non-starter.
    What’s really interesting is how people specifying the identity of the attackers are merely revealing their own prejudices in the matter.

  20. I’m only on page 12 (of what, at last count, was 14) of this once-again epic roundup. All the comments I’ve read today on the continued silliness perpetrated by puppies has almost entirely depleted any interest I have in discussing that, but I’m happy everyone is talking books and dramatic presentations.

    First, to almost deplete the puppytalk in my head, a question about the nominations for the 2016 awards: it just isn’t valid to nominate the SP3/RP movement as a whole for best dramatic long presentation, is it? I so want to. I’ve seen people here talk about doing so, and it seems like a great idea to me.

    And lastly, pupwise, I just started and finished John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels, by Theophilus Pratt. Very enjoyable. Silly, but a quick read.

    I’ve been on something of a book binge in the past couple weeks. It took me a couple (few?) weeks to finish God Stalk because I just didn’t have time to read. This was a bummer because it was my first non-Hugo reading in well over a month. I found my lack of reading time depressing and ended up overcompensating in the past two weeks.

    I’m a little over half way done with Uprooted, which is completely blowing me away. I love the elements of horror a la Evil Dead, and the writing is skilled – neither too simple and workmanlike, nor overly-flowery and ornate. The magic system seemed a little hand-wavy and annoying at first but I’m warming up to it. I actually hurt myself a little bit last night staying up far too late reading it (and drinking beers, which were the true cause of today’s pain).

    Before that I devoured Station 11 (over the weekend, I believe). It was near the top of my TBR pile because of GRRM’s recommendation, and then a friend who doesn’t normally read SFF highly recommended it, which bumped it to the top. An excellent book, and I probably would have voted it number 1 for the Hugos if it’d been nominated.

    And just before that, I read The Library at Mount Char, which was super fun. I don’t normally go for Urban Fantasy (I think that’s what it fits into), but really dug this. Also another File770 rec.

    I’m not sure what I’ll latch onto next – Uprooted was my third attempt to get into something after I’d already tried a couple other File770 recs. I wasn’t in the mood for any of the others, but immediately became immersed in Uprooted. Which reminds me – any word on Novik’s other novels? The premise of the Temeraire novels (or at least, the first one) doesn’t sound exciting to me, but that doesn’t mean much at all if the writing and story are great.

    Once I plow through all the File770 recommendations, I look forward to getting back to David Drake’s Northworld series, which I started a short while before deciding I really had to vote in the Hugos this year, so I’d better get to doing my homework.

    Recommendations for BDP. I don’t have much time to watch TV or movies, generally, unfortunatly, but: Morty and Rick. Some dark humor, but pretty funny. An average-to-somewhat-dim boy and his sociopathic mad scientist grandfather have adventures. Very sci-fi in nature. Oh, animated, too. I’ve been told Gravity Falls is good, but I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.

    Now to finish reading this thread, then curl up in bed early with Uprooted and hopefully not end up reading all of it before I fall asleep.

  21. I’m still about ten hours behind in the comments, but since I’m at the end of a page for the moment, a few thoughts:

    1. If Beale will claim anything and everything as a victory condition, then we can ignore him without consequence. Yes, he will slate. Yes, he will attempt to rig his slate to play mind games with “the other side.” Kinda hard to do that if we don’t show up to his soiree, isn’t it?

    2. Similarly, between Beale, Paulk, and Hoyt, I consider it rather likely that the 2016 ballot will have a lot of Puppy Picks when the nominations are counted. For each finalist, there are four possibilities across two axes:

    2a: Non-Puppy, award-worthy.
    2b: Non-Puppy, substandard. Might be good, might be bad, but not excellent.
    2c: Puppy, award-worthy. After this year’s shenanigans, this would be a pleasant surprise.*
    2d: Puppy, substandard. Again, anything short of “excellent.”

    Here’s the kicker. If a finalist is award-worthy, in the voter’s estimation, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Puppy pick or not. Rank it above NA as you see fit. The Puppies can rant and rave and throw all the tiresome tantrums they want. We don’t have to participate. Once the ballot is locked, let us simply vote based on the quality of the work.

    3. None of the above should be construed in any way as meaning that we should give up in the nominating phase. Quite the opposite. I think we should nominate, and nominate the very best work we can find. If the Puppies bring shit to the table again, that’s on them. Let us not do likewise. Instead, let us simply decline to play their mind games, keeping our focus where it belongs: on the work.

    * ETA: Not saying that every 2014 Puppy Pick was execrable, but so much of it was that the few exceptions came out smelling the same way.

  22. An “agenda” that was present in the first Star Wars movie. Okay, having Leia handle a gun and snarking everyone involved in her rescue, and sprinkling a few female incidental characters in amongst the Rebellion in positions of competence (though the female pilots ended up on the cutting room floor) isn’t terribly progressive by our standards, but by the standards of the day I think was more progressive than the norm in media.

    It was something that struck me at the time, all these women (well, one or two) doing Rebellion stuff in the background without being particularly marked in any way. Took me way longer to realise that there don’t seem to be any women in positions of responsibility in the Empire at all. Not an accident, I think.

  23. I immediately & not very consciously placed “If You Were a Dinosaur” in Montana (or possibly northern Idaho) because (a) that’s where you go to dig up dinosaur bones and (b) I’ve spent a small amount of time in the area, and while there’s a whole lot that’s wonderful about it, you can more plausibly set that story there than anywhere else I know.

  24. Kathodus:

    it just isn’t valid to nominate the SP3/RP movement as a whole for best dramatic long presentation, is it?

    The rules refer to “Any theatrical feature or other production.”

    I wouldn’t think the Puppy movement fits, however, Hugo administrators are famously ruled by the dictum vox popoli, vox dei (the Latin phrase, not the blogger).

  25. @Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: Yay for Stylish I guess?

    Certainly your privilege to have whatever blocklist you wish.

    I really had no idea people would throw a fit over that passing adverb mentioning my view, which, yes, I would have thought uncontroversial, that there was vanishingly little story, i.e., plot, in Swirsky’s story. I don’t even know why that was believed to be derogatory, let alone underhanded, let alone nasty, let alone tacky. Especially when my actual post was about Hoyt’s criticism of the piece utterly lacking foundation in Swirsky’s text. Of all the things to try to pick a fight over, that seemed really strange.

    And if it’s a surprise to you that rough and unpleasant politics occurs in small organisations, I strongly recommend you never get involved in any.

  26. @Shao Ping: “I feel his story could be the basis of some extremely interesting fiction.”

    The first idea that comes to my mind is… what if he wasn’t pretending? Refugee from a parallel world, perhaps…

    @Jon F. Zeigler: “This is that Jo Walton? Somehow I never made the connection with the woman who wrote for SJGames twenty years ago. Man, this is a small world sometimes.”

    Yeah, funny how those SJGames folks keep popping up, ain’t it? 🙂

    @Matt Y: “I keep forgetting about the eBooks in my TBR pile as physical books come in from the library for me. It’s just out of sight, out of mind.”

    I have the opposite problem. My Kobo has a nifty feature in that, when you turn it off, it shows the cover of the book you’re currently reading – or the last one you opened that isn’t marked Finished. I have a not-so-nifty feature that doesn’t want that display to be inaccurate. These combine to create an overwhelming urge for me to chain-read ebooks and never get to the physical stuff. In fact, some of the physical stuff has been stacked long enough to become useful as furniture, which has the perverse side-effect of making it difficult to disturb the stacks by actually getting a book out to read… so they just keep aging.

    To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, I can read the spines on one of five columns along the wall between my bed and the door. (The stuff that goes into my pockets when I leave the house – wallet, phone, etc. – sits atop the opposite column.) Selections include two Indiana Jones tie-ins (1991), a Fantastic Four prose-not-graphic novel (2008), two Universal Monsters novels, the Star Trek: Terok Nor trilogy (2008), and a couple of Star Trek: Vanguard books (2007-2009). The dated entries were bought brand new…

  27. @Mike Glyer

    I wouldn’t think the Puppy movement fits, however, Hugo administrators are famously ruled by the dictum vox popoli, vox dei (the Latin phrase, not the blogger).

    Honestly, voting for VD’s temper tantrum as a theatrical production feels like it’d be hilarious. I would even do it, regardless that it doesn’t qualify, except that feels to me like taking nominating too lightly, and that’s what started this mess in the first place.

    Plus, the story arc is, what, still a decade in the making and apparently somewhere just in the middle. I wouldn’t want to vote for it without knowing how it ends.

    I have no idea what this whole CORNY thing is about, but this made me lol:

    @UrsulaV @seananmcguire RUN, WOMBAT RUN! I'LL SUMMON THE REST OF THE FILE770 CREW (we'll use some as bait) HANG ON. FILE770'S COMING FOR YA.— gregmachlin (@gregmachlin) August 28, 2015

    @gregmachlin @seananmcguire Oh, yeah, that's gonna work. They'll see a book store on the way and it'll take five years.— Vague Wombat UrsulaV (@UrsulaV) August 28, 2015

  28. @Simon Bisson: “Currently reading: Kill City Blues, Richard Kadrey’s magical LA noir”

    I’ve read the first Slim, and own more… just haven’t gotten back to that ‘verse yet. I did, however, just finish Simon R. Green’s sixth “Ghost Finders” book, which is either the end of the series or the capper for one heck of an arc. The best way I can describe it is, I think, “gleefully dreadful” – the prose and dialogue strikes a wonderful balance between wisecracking banter and “OMG we’re all doomed.” That note isn’t unique to this series; I hear it quite often in his “Secret Histories” and “Nightside” books… but I think this time he’s outdone himself. I enjoyed it so much – both on its own and as the capstone to its arc – that I’m seriously considering it for my shortlist next year.

    And no, I’m not unmindful of the irony that this is exactly the sort of stuff the Puppies claim to want recognized. It’s kind of like Butcher’s “Dresden Files” work, in that it covers shadowy forces out to imperil the planet and nobly scrappy heroes out to stop it, but the writing just speaks to me in a way Butcher’s doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong; I like the Dresden saga just fine… but I think Green’s a solid notch above.

    @MurryTheClown: “I would try my hand at it, but even just thinking about it is like trying to figure out what a tesseract *really* looks like”

    Hey, stay away from my blueprints! I was up all night making those with Drafting Dan!

  29. @Michael Kube-McDowell: “I have to wonder if any Puppy anywhere got up on Sunday morning, looked at themselves in the mirror, and said, “Well, that didn’t work. Guess it’s time to re-evaluate the underlying assumptions.””

    K-Mac! VERY long time no see! (Fidonet, SF-lit, 1988 – with DeJohn and DDB’s bytestick and… well, you know the gang. It was the summer of The Warrior Lives.)

    I trust you’ve been well?

  30. Mike: Is being my own contributing editor kind of like self-publishing?

    You can have as many Chapter 5s as you like.

    Ginger: Do we have to reprint those 28 words of Rev. Bob? (Something something not repeat?)

    We really ought to Latin those up.

  31. @Mark: “declaring chapters 5”

    I like the cut o’yer jib, lad.

    @Ann Somerville: “A snowflake, of course”

    Yers too, lass. 🙂

    @Ginger: “you have to ask what the motto is? Do we have to reprint those 28 words of Rev. Bob? (Something something not repeat?)”

    You, on the other hand… maybe I’ll let the corn be the judge. 😉

    [Oh, my… I’m almost caught up! With this post.]

  32. And if it’s a surprise to you that rough and unpleasant politics occurs in small organisations, I strongly recommend you never get involved in any.

    I don’t think such things are really a surprise, so I don’t think you have to keep savvying us. FwiW, I found you denigrating someone, then falling back to Secret Wisdom as a dodge when you were asked why (after making further snide remarks about poor public communications by other in that organisation!) to be in poor form.

    But hey, it’s just ankle biting. I’m sure you’ll take it in stride.

  33. @NelC
    An “agenda” that was present in the first Star Wars movie. Okay, having Leia handle a gun and snarking everyone involved in her rescue, and sprinkling a few female incidental characters in amongst the Rebellion in positions of competence (though the female pilots ended up on the cutting room floor) isn’t terribly progressive by our standards, but by the standards of the day I think was more progressive than the norm in media.

    As we left the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back, my friends and I were discussing what we’d seen, and they vehemently rejected the notion that, to me, was made blindingly obvious in the last reel: that Leia was the “another” referred to by Yoda earlier in the film. My female friends objected the hardest.

    More progressive than the norm in the day, indeed.

  34. @Kathodus: “First, to almost deplete the puppytalk in my head, a question about the nominations for the 2016 awards: it just isn’t valid to nominate the SP3/RP movement as a whole for best dramatic long presentation, is it? I so want to. I’ve seen people here talk about doing so, and it seems like a great idea to me.”

    I don’t see why it wouldn’t be valid, and I’m one of those intending to do so. I am tempted to “credit” the Kerpupple to Beale and Torgersen, but I freely admit that said impulse derives greatly from the notion of awarding them a Hugo for the last reason they’d want one.

    It’s dramatic. It’s a piece of work, both in the colloquial sense and in terms of being made up of mounds upon mountains of blog posts that were published online. And oh, is it ever long-form. Why wouldn’t it qualify?

    @Nigel: “We really ought to Latin those up.”

    Egads.

  35. @snowcrash:

    falling back to Secret Wisdom as a dodge when you were asked why

    So, what, you advise I violate confidentiality out of concern for my popularity with you? Sorry, don’t think so. (I said, and meant, I regretted the allusion: I remembered that details of what I heard were in confidence only after making it.)

    Also, I will also stipulate that, if we were in a position to discuss that small org’s internal affairs here, you might judge particular tactics fine that I had found questionable, or we might in good faith disagree on underlying factual details. And I might be wrong. Or you might be. Differences of viewpoint; hey, they do happen.

    I try to assume good faith. Most days, at least. The moment I say something you don’t like, though, per you what I’ve said is a ‘dodge’ or ‘poor form’, and you sneer about my trying to pass off things as ‘Secret Wisdom’. OK, have fun with that.

  36. Rick, You’re right that you shouldn’t have made the claim in first place. When you were asked for details, you could have either withdrawn the comment or ignored the request. You did say that you did not intend to be hostile, but then followed that up with a comment on poor public comes by others in the organisation in question.

    When someone said that regardless of intention, your comment did come as hostile (IIRC), that’s when you claimed to be substantiated by privileged information (ie, Secret Wisdom)

    Now. No one is asking you to breach confidentiality. I’m pretty sure you realise that, as you don’t strike me as having poor reading comprehension. Given your concerns about professionalism in public communications, you should have both been more cautious in your own postings, and perhaps a bit more willing to withdraw your public claims,especially when you can’t back them up in public.

  37. Rick Moen —

    So, what, you advise I violate confidentiality out of concern for my popularity with you?

    Referring to Sekrit Knoledge in any interaction is poor form, and will cause your argument to be rejected by anyone with any experience… of anything.

    Anything could be on that secret card and no-one has any way of gainsaying it, since — conveniently — you’re not allowed to show it. The lurkers support you in email, the Moon is eclipsed by the Sun, you have Marshall McLuhan right here, therefore you win, but no-one’s allowed to verify it. And if it’s not verifiable it’s not a valid argument. Therefore you shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.

  38. Finally caught up on this comment thread! Some replies which are rather old by this point…

    Personally, I really want an asterisk from Sasquan because I’d like a nice physical token to remind me of the year I finally got involved in Worldcon, after many years of being interested, but just not interested enough to take the plunge.

    That’s why I picked one up (well, one of the reasons). It works quite well as a large keychain fob.

    The booing seemed to come from the front of the theatre, to our right.

    This would explain why I, on the far left of the theater just a few rows from the front, didn’t hear them. The speakers’ podium on stage, and most of the nominee seats, were over on the right-hand side of the theater.

    The cheers for No Award made perfect sense: the audience largely voted for No Award, and were happy to hear that their choice won.

    Best interpretation I’ve read!
    Go Noah Ward!

  39. then falling back to Secret Wisdom as a dodge when you were asked why (after making further snide remarks about poor public communications by other in that organisation!) to be in poor form.

    He may be referring to this, and subsequent fallout:

    “I spent four years in office and the first year I almost quit because I got so tired of getting hate mail. Then I realized that it was coming from the same dozen people, every single time. All the other members were lovely. It was easier to shrug off being called “impertinent,” or “wannabee” (Did I show you the Hugo I won since then), or “Nazi,” when it became clear that the vitriol didn’t represent all of SFWA, just a dozen rabid weasels.

    However, I am sick to death of putting out the fires that you people start.

    Please quit. And by “quit” I mean, please quit SFWA in a huff. Please quit noisily and complaining about how SFWA is censoring you for asking you to stop using hate speech. Please quit and complain about the “thoughtcrime” of asking people not to sexually harass someone. Please quit and bellyache about the good old days when people could be bigoted jerks. I want you to express your opinions clearly so that everyone knows them and knows that you are quitting because the other members of SFWA want you to Shut the Fuck up.”

    Anybody with even a passing acquaintance with MRK knows that she is not given to swearing or losing patience. When she this, this is the extent of her rage and the amount of insult she is capable of.

  40. BTW, there was then much frothing at the mouth about MRK in a forum open only to members of the /SFWA. Somebody, whose identity I think was never fully established, leaked some of this forth to the general public. There was then much frothing about how utterly, utterly scandalous and wrong and horrible it was to disclose forum posts that only about two thousand people could read, and only because it was a bit mysoginistic and generally ugly. The forums have hence been detached from any association with the SFWA, IIRC. That MIGHT be why Rick is unwilling to violate privacy.

  41. @RedWombat:

    If civilization collapses, by god, you will be begging to trade ammo for composted cow manure and landrace beans that can tolerate powdery mildew and you’ll be out there picking pickleworms off your squash by hand and hey, do you even known how to save squash seeds so you don’t get an inedible mess on the second generation? WHERE IS YOUR SEED TUBE NOW, PATRIOTS?!

    *standing ovation*

    *innocent expression* And what do you think about the gold hoarders?

    *ducks and runs*

  42. If fairytales in the Twenties are your thing, I’d strongly recommend checking out Genevieve Valentine’s The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. Not SFF, but it is nonetheless a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. In, yes, the Roaring Twenties, with dancing and sneaking and so on and it’s so good.

  43. And what do you think about the gold hoarders?

    Man, I keep burying the gold seeds (“nuggets”) in my back yard but they never seem to come up. What am I doing wrong?

  44. Neil W. Gosh, I dunno. <shiftily> Email me your address and I’ll sneak over and dig it up see if I can diagnose your problem…

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