Houndation 6/7

Posted on by

aka “Let’s get Sirius!”

In today’s roundup: Andrew Liptak, Jim C. Hines, Damien G. Walter, Tom Knighton, David Gerrold, Irene Gallo, Brad R. Torgersen, Sarah A. Hoyt, Vox Day, Michael Z. Williamson, Markov Kern, bhalsop, sciphi, Jonathan LaForce, Cedar Sanderson, Amanda S. Green, Jon F. Zeigler, C. E. Petit, Lis Carey, Rebekah Golden, Mark Ciocco, amd George R.R. Martin. (Title credit belongs to Whym and Anna Nimmhaus.)

Andrew Liptak on io9

“Women Dominate The 2015 Nebula Awards” – June 7

Takeaways from this? With the exception of the Best Novel award, women swept the slate in all other categories, notable in light of the Sad/Rabid Puppies controversy with this year’s Hugo Awards.

 

Jim C. Hines

“Puppies in Their Own Words” – June 7

I’ve spent several hours on this, which is ridiculous. I don’t even know why, except that I’m frustrated by all of the “I never said…” “He really said…” “No he didn’t, you’re a lying liar!” “No, you’re the lying liar!” and so on.

An infinite number of monkeys have said an infinite number of things about the Hugos this year. People on all sides have said intelligent and insightful things, and people on all sides have said asinine things. The amount of words spent on this makes the Wheel of Time saga look like flash fiction. File770 has been doing an admirable job of posting links to the ongoing conversation.

I wanted to try to sort through the noise and hone in on what Correia and Torgersen themselves have been saying. As the founder and current leader, respecitvely, of the Sad Puppies, it seems fair to look to them for what the puppy campaign is truly about…..

So are Brad and Larry racist? Sexist? Homophobic? What about their slates?

I don’t see an active or conscious effort to shut out authors who aren’t straight white males.

I do see that the effect of the slates was to drastically reduce the number of women on the final ballots.

Torgersen made a now-infamously homophobic remark about John Scalzi, which he later apologized for. I don’t see this as suggesting Torgersen is a frothing bigot; it does suggest he has some homophobic attitudes or beliefs he should probably reexamine and work on.

More central to the Sad Puppies, when I see Brad railing against “affirmative action” fiction, I see a man who seems utterly incapable of understanding sometimes people write “non-default” characters not because they’re checking off boxes on a quota, but because those are the stories they want to tell, and the characters they want to write about. Dismissing all of those amazing, wonderful, and award-winning stories as nothing but affirmative-action cases? Yeah, that’s sounds pretty bigoted to me.

 

https://twitter.com/damiengwalter/status/607618525813829633

 

 

David Gerrold on Facebook – June 7

Here’s how self-fulfilling paranoia works.

Decide that something has been taken away from you — even if it hasn’t. And even if you were never entitled to it in the first place.

Then, find a group of someones to blame for taking it away from you — even if they had nothing to do with your perceived loss. (Women, LGBTs, People of Color, SJWs, liberals, whatever.) Make sure it’s a big important group with big important members.

Appoint that group — it has to be a group — the enemy. Accuse them of horrible behaviors. This is the important step. You can’t be a victim without a persecutor. So you have to say or do something so egregious that the other guys will have to respond. Their response is the proof that you are being persecuted. Even if their response is, “Huh? Who are you?” — that’s just evidence that they’ve been deliberately ignoring your importance.

As soon as you engage that very big, very important group in a dialog, you achieve credibility — theirs. You are obviously just as important as they are. The more they engage with you, the more they respond to you, the more important you are. Therefore — you must continue to escalate so as to use up more and more of their time, so as to prove just how truly truly truly big and powerful and important you are.

When the other side brings out facts, logic, evidence, rational thought, and methodical deconstruction, you must repeat your original claims, change the subject, make new charges, or point to this as evidence of their continuing persecution. The more you do this, the more followers you will attract. Everybody loves the underdog — it’s your job to be the persecuted underdog.

This tactic works for any political or social position. It worked for extreme-left activist groups in the sixties and seventies — it eventually marginalized them out of the political process. They had to grow up or get out.

 

Irene Gallo on Facebook – May 11

[Here is a direct link. Perhaps it was always public and I just didn’t scroll back far enough when I searched yesterday.]

 

Irene Gallo in a comment on Facebook – June 6

Not friends, rest assured. And ZOMG, teeth! Somehow this got dug up from early last month and pitchforks are out. And since then more people are aware of, and excited about, the upcoming Hurley book. So as long as the thread lasts, we’re spreading the good news.

 

Brad R. Torgersen in a comment on Facebook – June 6

Irene Gallo, I am going to ask a question, and I expect a response other than a cat picture non sequitur. How did you arrive at your conclusion that Sad Puppies is “neo nazi”?

 

Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt

“Shout it from the rooftops” – June 7

However, let’s be clear: mud sticks. Get something associated with unspeakable sins like “racism, sexism, homophobia” and the idiots will go on repeating it forever, no matter how often it’s disproved. This is how they came up with the notion that Brad Torgersen is in an interracial marriage to disguise his racism, or that Sad Puppies is about pushing women and minorities from the ballot, even though the suggested authors include both women and minorities. And I’m not sure what has been said about me. Echoes have reached back, such as a gay friend emailing me (joking. He’s not stupid, and he was mildly upset on my behalf) saying he’d just found out I wanted to fry all gay people in oil and that he needed a safe room just to email me from. Then there was the German Fraulein who has repeatedly called me a Fascist (you know, those authoritarian libertari—wait, what?) and her friends who declared Kate and I the world’s worst person (we’re one in spirit apparently) as well as calling me in various twitter storms a “white supremacist” (which if you’ve met me is really funny.) A friend told me last week that he defended me on a TOR editor’s thread. I don’t even know what they were saying about me there. I make it a point of not following all the crazy around, so I have some mental space to write from.

However, enough people have told me about attacks, that I know my name as such is tainted with the publishing establishment (not that I care much, mind) and that some of it might leak to the reading public (which is why G-d gave us pennames.)….

This feebleness of mind was in stunning display recently in the Facebook page of one Irene Gallo, Creative Director at TOR. (I hope that’s an art-related thing. Or do they think authors need help being creative?)….

Note that those statements are so wrong they’re not even in the same universe we inhabit. Note also that when she talks about “bad to reprehensible” stories pushed into the ballot by the Sad Puppies, she’s talking about one of her house’s own authors, a multiple bestseller, and also of John C. Wright who works for her house as well.

Note also that when one of my fans jumped in and tried to correct the misconceptions, she responded with daft cat pictures.

 

https://twitter.com/voxday/status/607571265537363969

 

https://twitter.com/mzmadmike/status/607257593824845824

 

 

 

bhalsop

“Tor and Sad/Rabid Puppies” – June 7

There is a war going on in the blogosphere between certain employees of Tor, the once great publisher of scifi/fantasy, and the proponents of alternate slates for the Hugo, the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies. I have watched it with some interest, since I am undoubtedly one of those the Puppies in general would not like, but I have found their position actually has merit.

There was a time, many years ago, when one could buy a book honored with the Hugo award and know that the book would be well written, well edited, and thought provoking. This has not been the case for several years, I am sorry to report. In fact, there was a time, again many years ago, that one could buy a book published by Tor, and have a good read that might be thought provoking but was at minimum a good story well told. This is sadly no longer the case. I used to buy a Tor book even if the blurb wasn’t particularly inviting, because I trusted Tor. This is no longer the case.

Tor employees have attacked the Sad/Rabid Puppies as racist, misogynist, right wing whackos. The fact is that this reviling became much louder after the Sad Puppy slate won most of the Hugo niminations. What? They outvoted you? Doesn’t this sound like the Republicans after our current president was elected? Are you sure you want to go there?

 

sciphi on Superversive SF

“Irene Gallo, #Sadpuppies, #Gamergate and Tor” – June 7

What I find particularly insulting is that I have been following #Gamergate for quite a while, since at least Internet Aristocrats original Quinnspiracy videos, and I am extremely right wing (Nazi’s and Neo-Nazi’s aren’t though, fascists really were/are kissing cousins of socialists), and I can tell you for a fact that the talking heads of #Gamergate like Sargon of Akkad are thorough going leftwing moderates, they just aren’t frothing at the mouth SJW’s (I guess that makes them “far-right” in SJW land). I’m insulted as an arch conservative and reactionary to be regarded as basically the same as such thorough going hippies.

 

Jonathan LaForce on Mad Genius Club

“Dear Tor” – June 7

Tor, let’s face facts: that you repeatedly allow straw man makers like John Scalzi to have a place in your stable, even as he vainly justifies his arrogant idiocy is absurd.  To allow bigots like NK Jemisin bully pulpits without regard for fact or truth is wrong.  To encourage people to put one-star reviews on Amazon, simply because you don’t like an author’s politics, rather than because you didn’t like the story is not only disgusting, it is a willful manipulation of the Amazon rating system.

Whereas I believe in the principles of the free market, I don’t want to see somebody create new laws over this.  We already have government invading our bedrooms, our computers and our bank accounts daily.  No, ladies and gentlemen, instead I ask you this:

Don’t buy anything made by TOR. Not pamphlets. Not novels, not audiobooks.  Not even if it’s free.  Let Tor know that they do not decide what we want as fans of science fiction and fantasy.  Instead, I ask that those of you whom trust my opinion cease to buy their products ever again.  Show them that in the end, the consumer drives the market. Why? Because nobody can make you buy anything.  Not health care, not books, not movies. NOT A SINGLE DAMN THING.

In older times, a bard who couldn’t sing or orate well, much less properly play an instrument (in short, when the bard could not perform well, the crowd kicked him out. And he went hungry until he got better or he died from starvation. Or he found a new profession that he was actually good at.

 

Tom Knighton

“Tor Creative Director bashes Tor authors among others” – June 7

Based on how she phrased this, she’s implying that that both Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies are extreme right wing to neo-Nazis.  Now, I generally don’t defend Rabid Puppies because Vox is a big boy and can fight his own battles, and since I’m not part of that group I really can’t speak for it. Vox has seen this, and I suspect he’ll jump in soon enough.

As a Sad Puppy, I’m freaking pissed.

First, I’m sick of being called “unrepentantly racist, mysogynist, and homophobic” simply because I don’t like their taste in books or because I disagree with them about what the government should spend its money doing.  It’s funny, because these are the same people who bitch about “slut shaming” or “fat shaming” or whatever, but now they’re trying to “thought shame”, like we’re horrid human beings just because we don’t trip over ourselves on identity issues.  No evidence, no examples, nothing except libelous rhetoric.  Nothing….

I’ve read multiple times that Tor isn’t so much a publishing house as a series of editorial fiefdoms, a confederation of miniature publishing houses under a single roof and a shared marketing and art department.  If that’s true, then there probably isn’t a lot of oversight on these kinds of things, so I really don’t think there will be any kind of change.

 

Cedar Sanderson

“Fear and Loathing at TOR” – June 7

Almost since the advent of the internet, there have been warnings about what to say – or not – on it. The internet is a vast and mostly public arena. Imagine, if you can, standing in Grand Central Station and screaming slurs at the top of your lungs, while the sane people standing near you back away slowly. Online, this doesn’t happen. One person starts screaming and frothing at the mouth, and others are drawn like moths to the flame to scream along with them.

This is disturbing and upsetting, but it is easy enough to avoid this kind of behaviour if you want to (and some like to troll-bait. Personally, I find it unkind to taunt the mentally ill and don’t stoop to pillorying their personal lives). On occasion, though, we are not dealing with a lone individual, but one that is tied to a corporate identity. And this situation is why most reputable companies have policies in place about the use of social media. Because when a person using their real name, which can easily be tied to their workplace, starts to cast slurs on their own colleagues, not to mention large sections of the business’s client base, that can reflect very badly on their employer.

 

Amanda S. Green on Nocturnal Lives

“Interrupting my vacation and not happy about it” – June 7

But what galls me is how she calls us “Extreme right-wing to Neo-Nazi”. To begin with, if she were to really look at who wound up on the final ballot, especially those backed by the Sad Puppies, she would see that there are conservative, libertarian AND liberals represented. There are women and minorities. If I remember correctly, not everyone on the ballot is straight. (I don’t remember because I don’t care what a person’s sexual preference. It has nothing to do with their ability as a writer.)

Then there is the personal reaction. Ms. Gallo doesn’t know me and I don’t know her. So she doesn’t understand what sort of wound she opened for my family by calling me “extreme right-wing to Neo-Nazi”. My family comes from Germany and the Netherlands. Fortunately, the family was here before Hitler came to power. But they remember what it was like living in parts of this country and having to defend themselves because they had a Germanic last name. Nazism is and always will be a personal anathema to my family and to be called a follower of that hated philosophy/government is beyond acceptable.

Did she commit slander or libel? No. Did she consider the impact her words would have on other people? I don’t know. Part of me wants to believe that she did not but I have my doubts. She used a number of “trigger” words in her response, words meant to create a negative impression. She did not consider or care about how her allegation would impact fans of those authors she was condemning nor did she apparently think or care about how such a hateful allegation could possibly lead to termination of employment.

 

https://twitter.com/JFZeigler/status/607566847681134593

 

C. E. Petit on Scrivener’s Error

“Pre-Road-Kill Link Sausages” – June 6

There’s a proposal to tweak Hugo voting rules somewhat jocularly labelled E Pluribus Hugo that I cannot support, for three reasons. First, it depends upon accepting the proposition that a popular vote among those who pay a poll tax to vote is the best way to determine actual quality. (I’d be probably be more supportive if the Hugos themselves were renamed from “Best” to “Favorite.”) Second, it does nothing whatsoever to deal with the far-more-serious problems of source restrictiveness and the inept calendar (really? for an award issued in late August, we start nominations in January?). Third, at a fundamental level it fails to engage with the dynamics of cliquishness (for both real and imagined cliques, I should note) that are at issue; in fact, it bears a disturbing resemblance to the evolution of voting patterns in Jim Crow country following passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1964, if not with the same obvious discriminatory animus.

I think this proposal has been put forth in good faith, in a highly conservative attempt to retain, and even reify, a particular (and wildly inaccurate) fannish/SMOFish perception of what the Hugos “are” and “mean.” The irony of that characterization is intentional, especially compared to the various canine complaints; it is obvious, disturbing, and all too typical of attempts to tweak selection mechanisms without pondering what is being selected… and whether that requires a farther-reaching change.

 

Rebekah Golden

“Reviewing; Meta Post” – June 7

This goes back to my post about Totaled. It was a good story. Had some interesting ideas. Didn’t do it for me and I think the reason why not has to do with compelling questions. Look at Ancillary Justice and the story is full of compelling questions. Then there’s Mono No Aware.

Cutting for spoilers about Mono No Aware, Totaled, and me….

 

Mark Ciocco on Kaedrin Weblog

“Hugo Awards: Short Stories”  – June 7

My feelings on short stories are decidedly mixed, because most of the short fiction I read is from collections that are, by their very nature, uneven. As with Anthology Films, I generally find myself exhausted by the inconsistency. Also, as someone who tends to gravitate towards actual storytelling rather than character sketches or tone poems (or similar exercises in style), a short story can be quite difficult to execute. A lot must be accomplished in a short time, and a certain economy of language is needed to make it all work. There are some people who are great at this sort of thing, but I find them few and far between, so collections of short stories tend to fall short even if they include stories I love. In my experience, the exceptions tend to be collections from a single author, like Asimov’s I, Robot or Barker’s Books of Blood. That being said, I’ve been reading significantly more short fiction lately, primarily because of my participation in the Hugo Awards. I found myself quite disappointed with last year’s nominated slate, so I actually went the extra mile this year and read a bunch of stuff so that I could participate in the nomination portion of the process. Of course, none of my nominees actually made the final ballot. Such is the way of the short story award (with so many options, the votes tend to be pretty widely spread out, hence all the consternation about the Puppy slates which probably gave their recommendations undue influence this year). But is the ballot any better this year? Only one way to find out, and here are the results, in handy voting order:

  1. Totaled by Kary English – Told from the perspective of a brain that has been separated from its body (courtesy of a car accident) and subsequently preserved in a device that presumably resembles that which was used to preserve Walt Disney’s head or something. In the story, this is new technology, so the process is imperfect and while the brain can be kept alive for a significant amount of time, it still only amounts to around 6 months or so. Fortunately, the disembodied brain in question was the woman leading the project, so she’s able to quickly set up a rudimentary communication scheme with her lab partner. Interfaces for sound and visuals are ginned up and successful, but by that point the brain’s deterioration has begun. This could have been one of those pointless tone poems I mentioned earlier, but English keeps things approachable, taking things step by step. The portrayal of a brain separated from the majority of its inputs (and outputs, for that matter), and slowly regaining some measure of them as time goes on, is well done and seems realistic enough. One could view some of the things portrayed here as pessimistic, but I didn’t really read it that way. When the brain deteriorates, she eventually asks to be disconnected before she loses all sense of lucidity (the end of the story starts to lilt into an Algernon-like devolution of language into simplistic quasi-stream of consciousness prose). I suppose this is a form of suicide, but it was inevitable at that point, and the experimental brain-in-a-jar technology allowed for a closure (both in terms of completing some of her research and even seeing her kids again) that would have otherwise been impossible. I found that touching and effective enough that this was a clear winner in the category.

 

Lis Carey at Lis Carey’s Library

“Galactic Suburbia, presented by Alis, Alex, and Tansy” – June 7

http://galactisuburbia.podbean.com/

Another Best Fancast Hugo nominee.

Speculative fiction, publishing news, and chat. This podcast comes to us from Australia, and as far as I can find, they do not reveal their last names anywhere on their website. That’s a shame, because these are very engaging people, and they mention up coming book launches. (Feel free to enlighten me in comments. Please!)

 

George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog

“Reading” – June 7

I also read LINES OF DEPARTURE by Marko Kloos. This was part of the Hugo ballot as originally announced, one of the books put there by the slates… but Kloos, in an act of singular courage and integrity, withdrew. It was his withdrawal that moved THREE-BODY PROBLEM onto the ballot. This is the second book in a series, and I’ve never read the first. Truth be told, I’d never read anything by Kloos before, but I’m glad I read this. It’s military SF, solidly in the tradition of STARSHIP TROOPERS and THE FOREVER WAR. No, it’s not nearly as good as either of those, but it still hands head and shoulders above most of what passes for military SF today. The enigmatic (and gigantic) alien enemies here are intriguing, but aside from them there’s not a lot of originality here; the similarity to THE FOREVER WAR and its three act structure is striking, but the battle scenes are vivid, and the center section, where the hero returns to Earth and visits his mother, is moving and effective. I have other criticisms, but this is not a formal review, and I don’t have the time or energy to expand on them at this point. Bottom line, this is a good book, but not a great one. It’s way better than most of what the Puppies have put on the Hugo ballot in the other categories, but it’s not nearly as ambitious or original as THREE-BODY PROBLEM. Even so, I read this with pleasure, and I will definitely read the next one. Kloos is talented young writer, and I suspect that his best work is ahead of him. He is also a man of principle. I hope he comes to worldcon; I’d like to meet him.

Discover more from File 770

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

519 thoughts on “Houndation 6/7”

  1. There were barely any fantasy novels (not counting mainstream stuff with “magical or supernatural elements, just genre fantasy) published before 1980. The number of fantasy novels published per year today is so many times higher that I just can’t see how you can make a claim it’s not way more diverse in every aspect.

  2. Jeffro and company:
    If you want an exploration of a B&N in a small town, I’ll try to hit the one in Ridgeland/Jackson, MS.

    I think it would be harder to find one in a smaller market.

  3. I think it also might be worth noting that changes in publishing and distribution have had beneficial effects on classic SFF too. Small presses do comprehensive collections, making classic material available again — in editions that may hit few bookstore shelves, but still reach fans. And this like the Wandering Star/Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections (and the British Conan collections from earlier) made REH available in purer form than much of what had been intermittently available prior.

    Bookselling and book publishing is changing dramatically, and what’s available at B&N is not really a measure of what’s available to fannish genre enthusiasts.

  5. @David W.: I was going to mention Uncle Hugo’s, but as I’m local to the Twin Cities it felt a bit like bragging. 🙂 But oh my yes, it’s glorious. Dreamhaven does most of its business online these days–it’s not the kind of wander-around-and-browse store it was when I was in college–but it’s still very nice. I try to buy something from them whenever I’m at a con.

  6. Sarah:

    Never mind him; recommend some to me. Ghost in the Shell: SAC is probably my favorite SF anime of all time, and I’d love to find something like it.

    The very closest thing that springs to mind would be Psycho-Pass.

    Depending on what you especially like about GITS, you might also like Gatchaman Crowds, Paprika, Summer Wars, or Serial Experiments Lain.

  7. https://file770.com/?p=23008&cpage=7#comment-277837

    I’ve seen all of those except Nadesico (that’s Martian Successor Nadesico?) If it’s not a harem anime like Tenchi Endless Reboots I might look into it. I’d like something more cyberpunk-ish (I’ve seen Lain) or space opera-y (like Knights of Sidonia) or something elegant and thought-provoking like Ooku or Mushishi.

  8. Nick

    I’m not going to argue with the nihilistic kid about what VD thinks nihilism means. I am happy to defer to your knowledge of VD, and your conviction that, if someone presented VD with a text in which the Christian priest was happy to create zombies to enable mass murder, VD would be happy to publish it…

  9. XS:
    >>Paizo put out those and a ton of early, long out of print pulpy fantasy and scifi under their Planet Stories imprint. From CL Moore to Wellman to Henry Kuttner, it covered a good range I think.>>

    I have a couple of the Night Shade volumes of the complete stories of MWW. They’re wonderful.

  10. Apparently my long-running discussions with Dave Freer have won me a very special prize:
    http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/06/08/communication-subjectivity/

    We have a commenter from there, here, last week – Mark, who takes that whole new level. If I say coal is black, Mark will tell you I am a racist and I just said so. If you counter this he will demand you prove it. Proving to Mark that you said nothing of the kind will take you five hundred words and several detailed explanations in which you will quote the relevant science, and mention that yes, you see it as black, so does everyone else you have ever been able to ask. He will dismiss all of it as “Oh, personal anecdotes.” If you have the patience to deal with that, he will not say, ‘Okay, you’re right’, but start on the next strawman. The goalposts have so far circumnavigated the globe 15 times. If I could only attach a zeppelin to them, we could have cheap fast intercontinental transport.

    Anyway, Mark desperately wants me to say which authors should not have won Hugos. He is of course the hall-Mark of what is Hugo-worthy, and intends to use MGC as a forum to tell us what is wrong with the Sad Puppies selection and that coal is white. I am telling you so that you’re all braced.

    Actually, his “hall-Mark” joke has improved him in my estimation.

  11. McJulie:

    Starting sometime in the 80s, it gets harder to find Turkey Reading material. Stuff is still bad, but it tends to be bad at a more professional and polished level, where it’s dull rather than hilarious to read out loud.

    Thog still seems to be able to find material among today’s works, though all he wants is a sentence or two at a time.

  13. I don’t doubt good stuff was published in the Old Days. But I’m kind of busy keeping abreast of new stuff so I can nominate for the Hugos next year.

    I realize that the Puppies–you among them, I understand?–are planning to make that effort pointless on my part. I guess I’m just stubborn, because I’m going to go my own way and do it anyway.

    If I can fit some of the old stuff in around that, I’ll probably do it; _Doorways In The Sand_ sounds interesting, for instance; but that will have to wait until I’ve read all the Hugo nominees, including (ugh) the stuff the Pups block-voted onto the ballot this year. I’m having a hard time forcing myself to it, and interesting books lying around would make that worse.

  15. @Jeffro

    “The blogger at Blood of Prokopius has celebrated Lovecraft as being sort of a reductio ad absurdum that “proves” the Christian world view. The encounter with the implications of a evolutionary/materialistic reality drives almost every one of his characters to madness.”

    Interesting take, I guess, but it’s not what most people get out of Lovecraft, nor does it strike me as an apt reading of the text.

    You could certainly use Lovecraft as a vivid illustration of the sickness unto death, and then reach outside his world (which is of course fictional) for salvation. But there’s nothing within Lovecraft’s work that even vaguely points to a Christian worldview — no transcendence, no benevolent spiritual reality, no ultimate meaning, etc.

    But it sounds like you might be arguing for the nihilism of a work as having more to do with its subjective effect on the reader, than with the actual content of the work itself.

  16. @Petréa Mitchell

    Oo, yes, Paprika is great.

    @Sarah

    Yes, that’s it – its a parody of other animes, so iirc it has elements of harem but is mostly making fun of them.

    What about Bubblegum Crisis?

  17. My anime recommendations would be:

    Serial Experiments: Lain
    Revolutionary Girl Utena
    .hack//Sign

  18. Doorways In the Sand is a favorite of mine and was the first novel I read by Zelazny. Hard to believe it’s been almost 20 years now (this upcoming Sunday, I believe, IIRC).

  19. @ Aaron: “One might wonder if the Pups really are the iconoclastic rebel free-thinkers they claim to be, or if they are actually the easily led sheep their actions seem to reveal them as.”

    Oh, I don’t think one need wonder. I think the easily-herded explanation is pretty self-evident in Puppy antics.

    And: “The Pups really don’t seem to have much of anything to say. Every blog post they make is an incoherent screed that mostly amounts to yelling about SJWs and elitism and Marxists.”

    You forgot hurt feelings. VD has said here on File 770 that he’s doing all this because someone hurt his feelings on a blog 10 years years. Correia has stated that he started Puppying because his feelings were hurt at the Reno WorldCon.

  20. “Doorways in the Sand” is a great book, by the way. One of my favorites by Zelazny.

  21. @Cat “Doorways in the Sand” was one of those books that my parents happened to have a copy of, so I read over and over and over while growing up and I still re-read it every couple of years.

    I hope you enjoy it when you do get to it.

  22. Not to rain on the appreciation for J. J.’s relatively civil participation here, but when he said,

    (paraphrasing, because it’s several pages back)

    “I wouldn’t expect you to defile your consciences by visiting the Castalia House blog”

    it really rubbed me wrong. It read like such a snide and disingenuous dismissal of the wide range of valid reasons people have to not visit or post to a blog owned by Theodore Beale that it pretty much soured me on any expectation that he’d discuss anything in good faith.

    On a purely tonal level, it read a lot like “Wouldn’t want you to sully your beautiful minds by reading dissenting views,” and “Wouldn’t dream of asking you to get your hands dirty,” at least emotionally.

    If he didn’t mean it to sound that way, he could have chosen another way to put it. “I know Beale upsets you, and for good reason, so I totally understand you don’t want to go over there” would have been another way to put it. “I know that you might not feel safe posting there because of his history of doxxing threats” would have been another. But no. “Wouldn’t want you to defile your consciences.” Felt a lot like getting an insult in under the radar.

    And then the whole thing about how, nevermind Beale’s stated positions on PoC and women and rape and terrorism and the like, all of which has been well documented before, but nevermind that, he treats J. J. like a superstar, and that’s all that matters – “thrown under the bus” doesn’t begin to describe how I feel, on my own behalf and those of many about whom I care deeply.

    So I’m afraid I don’t appreciate J. J.’s participation as well as many of you do. He has for me exemplified how “polite” and “civil” are not synonyms. You can word it as politely as you like, but when you say “He argues that there’s no such thing as marital rape, and that throwing acid in women’s faces and gunning down children can be politically justified and even admirable, and that black people are half-savages, but who cares about that? He treats me well,” your behavior and position cannot be remotely described as civil.

  23. @ Jeffro:

    Please correct me if I’m wrong, but what I am hearing from you is that:

    1. You very much enjoy books that were published before 1980ish that have also stood the test of time and remain popular today, as well as secondary authors or titles of that era who might be out of print, and only available in used bookshops.

    2. Bookshops now carry a narrow selection of those perennial favorites, as well as an almost overwhelming number of new titles, many of which don’t seem to be to your taste, but you don’t really know, as you are still catching up on Appendix N books.

    3. You would like to read more Appendix N-type books, even those contemporaneously published, but since you are overwhelmed or confused by modern distribution, and are still catching up. (At the same time, you have hitched your wagon to the Castalia horse, based on a mission statement. I won’t comment, other than to wish you luck with that.)

    Overall, I get this. I spent a good 2 years as a professional reviewer, and it seemed like *every, single title* I received from publishers as a review copy was urban fantasy. I came to hate, despise, and loath vampires, werewolves, et cetera with fire a thousand burning suns. (I got over it, but I’m still not enamored.) Sometimes the crap seems neck deep and getting deeper, and you just don’t feel like shoveling.

    However.

    I encourage you to continue your project, and to continue to learn. I also encourage you to read deeper, because your reviews have potential, but they are currently rather shallow and superficial.

    When your current project is finished, and you have time to explore, I hope you to go back to the shelves of your local bookstore, to Amazon, and to sites like this filled with total-SFF-reader-geek fans, to ask for recommendations of current books with similar ideas and themes. But, (caveat!) you will need to be able to identify and articulate what those ideas and themes are. And yes, you will discover books you don’t like, or terrible books, because there are always those books–the Appendix N books were not the only SFF books published from 1740-1980. The vast majority of books published fall into complete obscurity within only a few years. Most are ephemeral entertainment at best, and utter shitshows at worst.

    The issue with your project, in regards to certain P* stated desires and the mission of your publisher, versus the Hugos, is that the Hugos cannot predict with accuracy which books will still be popular or be considered important or influential in 2050. Yes, many past Hugo winners have done so, but all literary awards are young, and all genres change with the times. The SFF of 1980 is not the SFF of 1930. Calling for the exact same books to be winning the same awards, under a different title, 35 years later is a cri de coeur doomed to failure.

    The pain of reading widely is that inevitably one will read much that one doesn’t like, doesn’t suit, or is just crap. Which is how authors are born, and why Kameron Hurley and NK Jemison and Ann Leckie also write, for the same reason you and I do: we write what we want to read. That there might be an audience for it is icing. That the audience might think a story or book is worthy of significant notice (i.e. an award of some sort) is the cherry on top.

    But your reading and your writing will never deepen and become better if you only restrict yourself to books written 50 years ago by authors that you already know you like. You don’t have to write about the books you dislike, but you need to learn to understand your own reasoning and motivation, your biases and inclinations, so that you can also fully understand why you like what you like, and what that means within the larger context of being an Earthling.

    Don’t limit yourself; be brave; risk failure, revulsion, incomprehension, exhaustion, and nervous breakdown. Read romance novels and mysteries; read the Tale of Genji and the Bhagavad-Gita. Go deeper and wider. Read more. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck where Mr JC Wright is: one good idea turned into one semi-decent series, and then a rapid descent into foamy incoherency and irrelevancy.

    Good luck and godspeed to you, in any case.

  24. Oh, I don’t think one need wonder.

    I don’t think my snark came through quite as well as it could have.

    You forgot hurt feelings.

    The Pups do seem to be having a competition for who can claim the title of “thinnest-skinned person in the world”.

  26. Mark – The goalposts have so far circumnavigated the globe 15 times.

    Geez Mark, you’re going to have to go faster. The Puppies are 700 laps ahead of you and you’ll never catch up at this rate.

  27. mintwitch wrote:

    The pain of reading widely is that inevitably one will read much that one doesn’t like, doesn’t suit, or is just crap. (….)

    But your reading and your writing will never deepen and become better if you only restrict yourself to books written 50 years ago by authors that you already know you like. You don’t have to write about the books you dislike, but you need to learn to understand your own reasoning and motivation, your biases and inclinations, so that you can also fully understand why you like what you like, and what that means within the larger context of being an Earthling.

    Don’t limit yourself; be brave; risk failure, revulsion, incomprehension, exhaustion, and nervous breakdown. Read romance novels and mysteries; read the Tale of Genji and the Bhagavad-Gita. Go deeper and wider. Read more.

    Hear hear!

    The entire post was great 🙂

  29. Sign me up as another fan of ‘Doorways in the Sand’; I got into Zelazny when it was quite hard to get his books in England. I mentioned that on Usenet, and after a brief email exchange a fan dispatched me a copy of it, and wouldn’t take any money for it.

    Today is my birthday and I’m glad that you’ve reminded me of just how wonderful fandom can be.

  30. Have you done Manly Wade Wellman yet? If not, try his “Silver John” stories; they’re terrific. They echo for me today in Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa novels — not the same thing, but a similar feeling of the numinous, bound up in music.

    I *love* the Silver John stories … read and reread them some twenty years ago! Hmm … wonder if I still have those old book club editions somewhere in storage …

    thanks for refreshing my memory on MWW!

  31. @Nicole

    I will freely admit that part of my motivation is that I hope giving out cookies to people who don’t march in wailing about how mean the mythical SJWs are to them might encourage imitators. I’m very tired of that one, you see.

  33. I fetched that Jeffro quote just so its clear what was said and we can’t be accused of twisting words:

    That does not offend me in the slightest. I would not encourage anyone to defile their conscience. Especially not over a four dollar paperback from the sixties.

    Which was in reply to:

    Hi Jeffro,
    I liked your other writing, but I won’t read anything you place on the blog of a childmurder apologist.

  34. Standback – I really like SH’s reviews. Gonna go read this one now

    Damn man, SH had the knives out:
    ‘What the Puppies fail to understand is that they haven’t been shunned because of prejudice, rather they’ve been talking to themselves. Now, having created a bully pulpit for themselves, it becomes clear that they don’t have anything to say.’

    I liked Totaled better than they did, though I do think they make a good point about the priority of the children in the story, I too was left wondering who was caring for them as it seemed their mother was single or at least never mentioned a relationship.

    I don’t think SH would change their final paragraph even if they read the Novelettes and Novellas. There were at least three that were snippets of larger work and never got around to having a premise within the confides of what was told.

  35. Because I must beg to differ. Without even mentioning the terrific work by those tainted by/with the “SJW” brush (not that I agree with that taint), we still have

    Robin Hobb

    Wait, Robin Hobb isn’t? Um, have we read the same books? The Fool is a pretty non-standard representational character, not to mention the intelligent ships!

  36. Lis, thank you so much for coming to visit Craig. Last night was tough on him. Hope he wasn’t getting too worked up about what he was reading here.

  37. I had no intention to give offense to Hampus Eckerman. He has said nice things about my Dying Earth piece. He loves a vintage game that I get a lot of enjoyment out of, too. I was not trying to be snide. I was trying to show respect to his feelings, beliefs, and decisions. Even when he was saying something that I could have chosen to take offense at.

    I can’t help what people read in to some of the things I write, but if I wanted to be ugly there are plenty of other people that I would have said something nasty to. But I let things I perceived as being slights pass. I continue to let things that rub me the wrong way pass. Yes, I will invariably rub people here the wrong way. But I don’t know what else I could do to put forth an effort to meet people here half way.

  38. “I find all these discussions so weird. As a reader, I have never looked at what publishing house a book is published.”

    I don’t know if this counts but as a kid I searched for the books with the Winston Rocketship on the spine.
    But as far as publishers today-no.

  39. @Jeffro

    Thank you for the clarification. 🙂 That’s how I read it, but its always good to have extra reassurance.

  40. A few anime recommendations for the pile:

    Planetes. The setting is the late 21st century, when orbital travel has become routine…and there’s been the inevitable disastrous collision of orbital liner filled with people and old debris. Clean-up becomes a big international deal…for a while. But it’s got to keep being done, and it gets less and less glamorous. So here we are, decades later, and this vitally important work is terribly dull and done by a mixed crew of losers. In the course of the series, some of them get to fulfill their hopes, and some try and fail, and some have complicated outcomes. It’s warm and compassionate. Also, the animation is much Western-y than many anime, with fewer than usual of anime tropes regarding stylization and exaggeration that can pull inexperienced viewers out of their engagement, so it’s a good gateway drug. The opening credits set the style.

    Wolf’s Rain. Future-set fantasy, always a rare delight. Some generations from now, wolves have pretty much been hunted to extinction, and the last werewolves live in hiding in human cities. Some of these last survivors set off in search of paradise. Things get complicated. This is a deeply bittersweet story, and be prepared to lose a bunch of engaging protagonists along the way. But the payoff is a great one.

    Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. This is a self-contained movie, set in an alternate recent past where Japan won its part of World War II. A soldier in the elite internal security force falls in love with a girl just trying to make her way in the world. To quote Lord Dunsany, “the tale is one of those that hath not a happy ending.” The trailer shows the style.

    Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. An astonishingly good work of sf, with heavily cyborged soldiers and spies dealing with a near future weighed down by inherited challenges and brand-new ones emerging from cybertech. The writing is unusually thoughtful and diligent with its speculation, heavy on “ask the next question” extrapolation. It also benefits from a score by Yoko Kanno, including this song sung by Origa (in Russian).

  41. @Jeffro

    I’m not sure if I missed you replying – did you say if you’d had a look at the Retro Hugos?

  42. @jj @Noah Body

    JJ, the link you posted (in commenting on Charlie Petit) is a defamatory anonymous attack website set up by someone who tried to scam Conlan Press last year using a forged document. When he failed to get away with it he started spouting the crap posted on that site, and only stopped when I publicly outed him. I am currently suing the son of a bitch and I can’t wait to have him in front of a judge and jury. People interested in the truth will find it here:

    http://www.conlanpress.com/fansagainstfraud.html

    Charlie Petit has a long track record of doing good things for authors as an attorney. (He was one of the lead lawyers who beat AOL for Harlan Ellison, and without his advice and insight Peter S. Beagle would never have gotten the six-figure settlement he received in 2011 to compensate him for nearly three decades of unpaid LAST UNICORN video royalties; nor would Peter be in line for any of the Very Big Paydays that we are negotiating as part of Broadway musical and live-action feature deals.) The negative material that the attack site links to is significantly incomplete and sourced from online materials posted by a group famous for stealing from writers, some of whose criminal associates Charlie Petit was directly involved in putting behind bars. That fact that Charlie is on their shit list is evidence he’s one of the good guys, not the other way around.

    Also, in 10 years I’ve never known him to be wrong on a point of law, which is not something I can say about any other attorney I’ve ever dealt with.

  44. Hi Jeffro,

    I haven’t taken any offense of what you have written here. Well, thats not strictly true. I became kind of pissed of that you were writing for Beale, but thats another thing. I will look forward to your writing in other places.

  45. Oh, Jin-Roh was a fantastic movie. So sad though that I haven’t dared to watch it again.

  46. Connor, I’m glad you showed up here. By coincidence, I was just contacted by a woman who’s been waiting on an item from Conlan Press for a while– I was going to contact Charles, as we’ve had discussions before re: Harlan’s legal case, but I’m happy to speak to you as well. What’s the best way to contact you?

  47. Get well soon, and rest up, so you can come back here to play, Craig!

    Mark, so even persistence can’t get a puppy to be specific? Good on you for trying.

    Mintwitch, that was brilliant. I, too, came to learn.

    Jeffro, many happy adventures in reading. What do you think of Islandia, for example? It was published in the 40s, and so might be up your alley.

  48. I reread Doorways in the Sand on 9 May ’15 and while on the whole I thought it stood up well, there was one aspect to which I took exception: I couldn’t find an English edition more recent than 1991.

  49. @Glenn Hauman

    Hi, Glenn — best way is my business email, [email protected]. Would actually love to chat directly, too. Send me a note and I’ll send you my cell number.

  50. Oo Wolf’s Rain sounds amazing! Will have to check that and Jin-Roh out, I think.

    Anyway mostly I just wanted to echo the love for Serial Experiments Lain, and to throw Ergo Proxy into the ring too, as another (relatively) philosophicalish anime.

Comments are closed.