The Dogcatcher In The Rye 6/17

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aka The Summer of our Manufactured Discontent

In today’s roundup: Sarah A. Hoyt, Vox Day, David Gerrold, Steven Brust, John Scalzi, Peter Grant, Laura J. Mixon, Laura Resnick, Spacefaring Kitten, Chris Gerrib, David Gerrold, Adam-Troy Castro, Lis Carey, Larry Correia, Brad Johnson and mysterious others. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Nigel and DMS.)

Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt

“Fun House Mirrors” – June 17

But I’ve been on a slow simmer since the Irene Gallo comments, and that was brought to a boil yesterday.

Why yesterday, you ask?

Because the hypocritical scum (I apologize to any scum I might have offended) who runs file 770 has been gleefully linking anything of mine that even uses the letters H-u-g- and o in the same paragraph, but yesterday I wrote about his hypocrisy in taking a sentence of mine out of context and linking it with a clever-daft punchline of the “Hydrophobia that falls on you from nowhere” to imply I was homophobic.

Did he link yesterday’s post? Are you kidding? Even though he’s fairly sure his blinded followers will rarely click through, he couldn’t afford to explode his narrative. He’d on the flimsiest of “evidence” – i.e. my refusal to go into details on same sex marriage and other accommodations for more “exotic” orientations in a post to which it wasn’t even incidental – declared me homophobic, and he couldn’t risk the narrative being exploded.

I confess that when my Baen colleagues were making fun of file 770 and going on about “Mike Glyer, Fifty Hugos” (the number of nominations he’d had) I thought they were being a little mean. After all, the man was just well-intentioned and blinkered, and believed the narrative.

Guys, I was wrong, you were right. He’s not deceived, but he willfully deceives. He is not a useful idiot, but one who would seek to make idiots out of others. He’s not the sheep, but the judasgoat.

Why does that matter to me? Why do I get so upset if it’s not true? Isn’t it an axiom (at least on the left side of politics) that you only get upset if it’s secretly true?

[I reminded Sarah A. Hoyt the roundup titles are a trope, not a comment on the writers quoted. She did not take me up on my offer to run another excerpt, so I can only commend the entire post to you — “Dispatches From Another World” – June 12.]

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Updates” – June 17

Since many of you have been asking, no, no one has received any response from anyone at Tor Books or Macmillan. We know at least some of the emails have been read by the recipients. Be patient, we have to give Macmillan time to investigate the situation and discover for themselves just how dysfunctional and unprofessional their U.S. subsidiary is. Remember that Julie Crisp, Editorial Director of Tor UK, left the company “following a review of the company’s science fiction and fantasy publishing” in May, and her public behavior was unobjectionable in comparison with that of Irene Gallo, Moshe Feder, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

Also, Jagi has asked that when you send her your pictures of your Tor books, please tell her what state or country you are from. She’s received them from 65 people to date.

David Gerrold in a comment on Facebook – June 17

So, Vox Day has declared a boycott of Tor Books.

I expect this will be as effective as the Baptist boycott of Disney World.

Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man

“The blindness of the ideologically bound” – June 17

And so, when Ms. Gallo accused me – me – of being ‘unrepentantly racist’ purely because I happened to support the Sad Puppy cause, that was the last straw.  I’d heard that lie from SJW’s before, of course, and been able to get over it . . . but lies like that are like the Chinese water torture.  Sooner or later, something’s going to snap.  Her accusations were, to me, unforgivable;  and since she’s never seen fit to retract them, they still are.  Since her employer has seen fit to allow her, and others like her, to pontificate about something of which they apparently know absolutely nothing, to make false accusations and toss denigrations around like confetti, doing so on company time and using company computers and networks . . . that employer is complicit in the whole mess.  Hence my outrage against Tor.  Hence the boycott for which I will call on Friday if Tor and its holding company, Macmillan, don’t act against those responsible.

I won’t take this any more.  I know I’m far from the only Puppy supporter who’s had enough of the SJW’s lies and slanders and libels.  They want a war?  They can have one.

Laura J. Mixon

“I stand with Irene Gallo, and I stand with Tor” – June 17

Bullies and abusers rely on the larger community’s desire for comity—our willingness to live and let live—to impose their will and silence dissent. In such a case, it’s incumbent on people with standing in the community to speak up against them, providing a counterweight to their destructive ideas. By speaking when she did, in my view, Irene was doing what other thought leaders in our field like N. K. Jemisin, John Scalzi, and the Nielsen Haydens have done: guarding the health and well-being of our SFF community by standing up against hate speech.

Some feel the stark terms Irene applied to the Sad and Rabid Puppies movements in her FaceBook post—racist, misogynist, homophobic, neo-nazi—were too harsh and too broadly applied. That she spoke out of turn and had no business criticizing the Sad and Rabid Puppies campaign while promoting a Tor book. They protest that their views are not extreme, and using such terms unfairly maligns them, by lumping them in with someone they don’t support. Some members of the Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns have indeed distanced themselves from Beale, and perhaps they were initially unaware of just how extreme his views were.

I believe that communities can grow and change. People can learn; viewpoints can shift. I have a seed of hope that someday, through continued dialog and education, we can find a way through this and mend some of the rifts that this conflict has exposed.

But there is no getting around the fact that a misogynistic, homophobic white supremacist, who has spoken approvingly of shootings and acid attacks on women, and of Hitler and the Holocaust, who has called a respected SFF scholar and popular writer an ignorant, “not equally human” savage, stands at the heart of this conflict. Beale’s followers and fellow travelers may not themselves hold all the bigoted views he does, but information on who he is and how he feels about women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and others has been widely shared by now. If people are emailing you calling for Irene to be fired, they are unavoidably supporting Beale’s hate-filled agenda.

Laura Resnick on Facebook – June 17

I’m guessing that, for a raft of reasons, Tor and Macmillan will not meet any of these demands, and so it seems likely the Puppies will boycott the biggest publisher in our genre starting on Friday. I’m skeptical that a few hundred people will have an effect on a program the size of Tor, and also skeptical that their numbers will grow. So I’m more concerned about what persons, organizations, or businesses will be the Puppies’ next target. I didn’t think they would stop with the Hugos, and I’m skeptical they’ll stop with Tor, either.

https://twitter.com/tuesdayreviews/status/611230746921963520

Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring Extradimensional Happy Kittens

“Answering Peter Grant” – June 17

Sad Puppy activist Peter Grant was one of the most vocal people pushing for this week’s hatemail campaign directed at Tor….

He says:

I’ll do my best not to stoop to name-calling, with the exception of referring to the other side as ‘social justice warriors’ or SJW’s. I do so only because I have no other name in my vocabulary to adequately or accurately describe them. If anyone can suggest a better, more acceptable alternative, I’ll be grateful.

I replied in the comments that the best alternative would be Happy Kittens. Sadly, it seems like my comment was deleted.

I’d like to rephrase my suggestion here: please drop the SJW and start using Happy Kittens if you insists on having a handle for the people who are critical of Sad Puppies. It’s not offensive. It’s kind of funny in the same way as Sad Puppies. It looks ridiculous in an angry sentence. Plenty of good reasons.

Chris Gerrib on Private Mars Rocket

“Puppy Bites Woman AGAIN, Pictures at 11 !!!!” – June 17

I find a notable fact buried in the piles of puppy-doo.

I’m going to dig said fact out and clean it up for you. I’m doing this because facts have been one thing in short supply in this debate. For the most part, what we get are vague statements that some unnamed person committed some undefined offense sometime during a large event. But now we have a fact.

Per Vox, 765 individual people emailed Tor complaining about Gallo. That sounds like a lot, except, 79,279 people bought a copy of Redshirts in 2013. So, if you take 765 and divide it by 79,279, you get .00964. In other words, less than 1% of the people who bought one book from Tor are complaining. You’d have to magnify that complaint number by an order of magnitude to get anybody’s attention.

David Gerrold in a message on Facebook – June 17

A friend has pointed out to me that any attempt to calm people down is doomed unless everyone involved wants to calm down. He then went on to point out that too often there are individuals who will have a vested interest in escalating the uproar. It increases their visibility — and their illusion (delusion?) of power.

It is — according to my very wise friend — a kind of ferocious madness that has to reach a peak before it can burn itself out. It cannot be calmed and those… efforts are doomed. It has to be inflamed by those who are enraptured by the heat they can generate and like any addiction, the dosage has to be increased, they can only crave more and more — until the whole thing becomes a bonfire and they are finally, ultimately immolated in the flames.

He might be right.

I’ve seen flame wars online that have destroyed whole forums — and I’ve seen the perpetrators of these flame wars move from forum to forum, leaving a trail of ruined relationships behind them. I cannot think of a single instance where a call for peace was effective. Even Gandhi died by a bullet.

Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – June 17

I have heard more than one person say that they’re dreading Worldcon.

I won’t say that this is what the Sad and Rabid Puppies want as a group, even if I do think it’s what of a couple of the individual standard-bearers want. I will say that it is certainly what a great number of the trolls slamming so-called SJW writers on their behalf want. (And I do think it would tickle Beale the Galactic Zero no end. This is the guy who cheers spree killers, after all.)

Alas, I am not going to Worldcon this year. It would take an unexpected windfall of colossal proportions. Maybe next year, or the year after.

But if I was, “dread it”? To hell with that. I go to have fun, to catch up with old friends, to make new ones, to find treasures in the Dealer’s Room, to talk about my pop-culture obsessions and to hear others talk about my pop-culture obsessions. I’d be going, this year, to see my friend David Gerrold in his Guest of Honor gig and to see him and my friend Tananarive Due nail their Hugo-hosting gig. You think, if attendance was in my cards for me, I would waste more than one millisecond of brain energy on the premise that some no-neck gibberer with a fixation on his own imaginary oppression might say something nasty to me?

Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring Extradimensional Happy Kittens

“Cedar ‘Go Buy A Shooter Bimbo Shirt’ Sanderson” – June 17

Cedar Sanderson is the third member of the Mad Genius Club in this category, and she has produced what is probably the single best blog post in the voters packet I’ve read so far that has actually something do with SFF. In it, she ponders the shortcomings of generic fantasy on the lines of Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland which is a book I should probably read sometime. The text would be stronger if Sanderson had gone into specifics and given some more concrete examples of bad fantasy, but it’s not bad as is.

H.P. on Every Day Should Be Tuesday

“Review of Rat Queens vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery by Kurtis J. Wiebe” – June 17

ratqueens

Each of the four members has her moments, the story is intriguing enough, and the comic is genuinely funny. They’re foul-mouthed, horny, and have a distinct tendency to cause disproportionate property damage. And can drink their rival adventurers under the table as easily as they kill their enemies. They’re joined by a host of cool minor characters, from a long-suffering captain of the town watch who’s sleeping with one of the Rat Queens to the friendly rival adventurer group named the Four Daves (exactly what it says on the tin) to a villainous local merchant to one very annoying town watchman. All in all, it probably has the best combo of awesome female characters around.

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Best Editor, Long Form — 2015 Hugo Award Nominees” – June 17

[She reviews all five nominees. I excerpted the one that struck me as the most favorable.]

Sheila Gilbert: Ms. Gilbert is, with Betsy Wollheim, Publisher at DAW. Ms. Gilbert did provide both a list of edited works, and sample chapters. Her writers include Seanan McGuire, Julie Czerneda, and Jacey Bedford, and the sample chapters include both science fiction and fantasy. Within the limits of my ability to assess her work as an editor, I’m very impressed. There are also some new works added to my To Be Read list.

Font Folly

“Hugo Ballot Reviews: Graphic Story” – June 17

[Preceded by reviews of all nominees.]

Rat Queens is hands-down the winner of slot number one on my Hugo ballot in this category. And with Zombie Nation at number five, the only thing left up in the air is where how I’m going to rank Saga, Sex Criminals, and Ms. Marvel, because I want all of them and Rat Queens to take home an award, dang it!

Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation

“Somebody sent me a Sad Puppies holster” – June 17

I’ve not been saying much about the Sad Puppies controversy lately, because right now it is out of my hands. Some employees of a publishing house said some pretty outlandish things, and their customers are ticked and writing lots of letters. I’m staying out of that one.

But some author friends had this made for me and sent as a gift. I’m pretty sure they don’t want to be identified.

Sad Puppy 1911 Holster Right Hand

Sad Puppy 1911 Holster Right Hand

https://twitter.com/Cherokee_Viking/status/611347536373157888

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1,023 thoughts on “The Dogcatcher In The Rye 6/17”

  1. gaffi8ted: “@Tom Galloway, not apocryphal. I heard the story first-hand from the person who stopped Bradbury.”

    I heard the story during that Worldcon. Which isn’t proof it happened, but at least that makes it a story that was contemporaneous with the event, rather different from your ordinary bit of apocrypha.

  2. @Gabriel F: Well, we try to lead you astray often enough. Which is not to be confused with stray puppies, which is another thing entirely.

    Regarding retractions: Beale says we shouldn’t apologize! And Jesus never apologized for anything!*

    * Which is probably because Jesus never sinned, and therefore had nothing to apologize for. I’ve apologized for things that I’ve done, and I get mistaken for Jesus a lot more than you do.

  3. IDK:

    “Anyone remember a relatively old pulpy series of books featuring a protagonist named Blade who jumped from world to world?”

    Yep, read those while younger. I guess I still have them. In swedish though.

  5. Re: animal POVs

    The Heavenly Horse From the Outermost West and Piper At the Gate, by Mary Stanton. (I definitely fall on the equine side of that spectrum.)

    Author: Judith Tarr. She’s on Book View Cafe and has several animal-oriented sff books at the site.

  6. (Back from a long night of teaching Twilight Struggle to a friend and catching up on File770 even though I should be asleep)

    @redwombat: ““I shall dine out for years,” I said, “on the story of how I trampled Neil Gaiman on the way to the nacho bar.”

    Thank you for this glorious story, for it did indeed make me laugh.

    @idontknow: I’ll also add my thanks for your choosing to stick around. I’ve enjoyed your contributions. I also loved Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H..

    @Jenora Feuer: I’ve also loved Evan Dorkin’s work, Pirate Corp$ most of all! I believe I even have a copy of his rendition of The Lottery as re-enacted by the Fisher Price Little People.

    @Mark: I took a gander at the graphic novels currently being offered up on storybundle.com and I can’t say that any of them have me scrambling for my wallet On the other hand, 4000+ pages of work for $20 sounds like a pretty good deal – especially considering some of the creators involved. Still saving my $$ for the next TPBs of Rat Queens and Saga for the moment.

    And to all of the lurkers that continue to delurk: welcome! If this keeps up, I fear we’re going to have to get ourselves a proper forum before we create a wordpress commenting singularity.

  8. I’m trying to imagine a puppy-view, where there are two sides in a vast culture war. On one side, you have people claiming that Hugo winners didn’t deserve the award.

    On the other ‘side’ you have Nick Mamatas and Ann Somerville.

    Wait. WHAT?

    (Sorry if this isn’t funny to anyone else.)

  9. malclave: “Can you clarify how a subtitle like today’s reference to ‘Manufactured Discontent’ is NOT a comment on (certain of) the writers quoted?”

    It absolutely is, don’t you think?

  10. idontknow on June 18, 2015 at 8:26 pm said:

    @Iain Coleman

    The problem with that is Vox Day’s abuses are already on public record and people have already made up their minds whether they can stomach them or not. Requires Hate was exposed because she’d adopted a much softer persona and in that persona, she was starting to get published. I think Laura Mixon decided that people needed to know the kind of person they were reading when she did the work she did. People already know what kind of person Vox Day is.

    There was a time when Vox was the harsher persona for Beale. It was in the comment section of the outing of said pseudonym where the first shots were fired in the great Scalzi/Beale wars.

  11. re: animal POV, I’m not sure if Judith Tarr’s A Wind in Cairo counts, since the animal is a human transformed into a horse, but I liked it. Its a a historical fantasy/romance, and well worth the read.

  12. Zelazny’s Doorways in the Sand has been mentioned in many previous threads, but I want to give it a nod for the ‘animal’s POV.’

  13. Mike Glyer on June 18, 2015 at 10:58 pm said:

    malclave: “Can you clarify how a subtitle like today’s reference to ‘Manufactured Discontent’ is NOT a comment on (certain of) the writers quoted?”

    It absolutely is, don’t you think?

    Given that the two big topics up there are Sarah Hoyt choosing to be offended by something not targeted at her and the Tor/Macmillan boycot, I’d say it’s well chosen.

  14. @May Tree

    That was delightful. I liked your use of rot13 for Juliette Wade’s lines particularly. 🙂

  15. If we’re talking about great animal stories, there’s the Harvey Award for “Best Single Issue or Story” winner, Hawkeye #11, “Pizza Is My Business”, starring Pizza Dog.

  16. OMG, May Tree — that riff on Chicago was magnificent.

    I managed to hold it together until I got to Juliette the Rot13arian.

    I hope Mike will consider it for tomorrow’s roundup.

    <invoice for new keyboard submitted to May Tree>

  17. re: animal POV, I’m not sure if Judith Tarr’s A Wind in Cairo counts, since the animal is a human transformed into a horse, but I liked it.

    Oh! And that reminds me of Deanna Durgin’s Dun Lady’s Jess et sequelae, about a horse transformed into a human. Durgin does the horse’s personality quite well.

    And then there’s Kockroach, by Tyler Knox (who Wikipedia says is a pseudonym of William Lasher, which would explain why I couldn’t find any other books by Knox). As the title implies, it’s a reverse Kafka: one morning, a cockroach wakes up to discover he has been transformed into a grotesque pink giant with his carapace on the inside and his middle legs missing.

    oh, and #11 of Matt Fraction’s run on Hawkeye is done entirely from the viewpoint of Hawkeye’s dog.

  18. Meredith on June 18, 2015 at 3:56 pm said:
    “For some reason around here Puppies seem to come in shifts. We rarely have more than one at a time, and never for very long. I don’t really know why. They almost tag team out sometimes.”
    It is the same on our blogs save for that your side is even less likely to wade into enemy territory.

    It is because we have other social places and being attacked by 10-30 commenters is exhausting if fun. Even some of your social bonding noises cause friction because we find them to be pants on head crazy.

    Go over to VP, Torgersen or Correia and see how you do.

  19. @Peace “Thank you kindly, but I am on an ipad and cannot use those functions.”

    Sure you can! Go up to the address bar and type in your search term. Wait a second until the drop down list appears with the suggested links, then scroll to the bottom of that list and it will give you the option to search within page.

  21. Gabriel F: Can someone explain to me why Larry felt the need to say “I haven’t talked about Puppies much, but here’s a gun holster that friends who want to be anonymous gave me.” Like… is the link there supposed to be vaguely-but-too-vague-to-take-offense threatening or just… what?

    The person selling the holsters did so on eBay, and I noticed that they haven’t received a single feedback from any Puppies who purchased a holster, which I thought was odd. But I guess it’s because they don’t want to be identified.

    I doubt that it’s a threat so much as the usual paranoia that flows so freely through the Sad Puppy side.

  22. @Viverrine –
    “Also, any good SFF recs featuring animals?”

    Ohh! I can recommend a Pathfinder book!

    Master of Devils by Dave Gross. It’s an homage to wuxia movies and includes an intelligent hound. You do not have to know anything about the game system to follow the plot.

  23. @aeou

    I think I was unclear. We never have two puppies at once for very long. Puppy #2 turning up makes Puppy #1 disappear almost as reliably as asking Torgersen questions makes Torgersen disappear.

    I have no interest in going to the blogs of people who save IP addresses and use them for stalking, and I find culture wars boring. I’d rather talk about books, and that’s much easier to do here.

  24. aeou on June 18, 2015 at 11:18 pm said:

    Go over to VP, Torgersen or Correia and see how you do.

    No thanks. Well, I’ve been to Torgersen’s place. Aside from James May it wasn’t that bad.

    Any thoughts on the boycott numbers? 765 individuals seems awfully small to make a difference to me, especially if they weren’t buying more than 5 books a year each before the boycott. That would mean something like 10 less books per day.

  25. Even some of your social bonding noises cause friction because we find them to be pants on head crazy.

    And everyone always said that Social Justice Bard was a totally useless class!

  26. No thanks. Well, I’ve been to Torgersen’s place. Aside from James May it wasn’t that bad.

    I wonder if thats the purpose of James May? To make anyone else’s comment look sane and reasonable by comparison.

  27. I wonder if thats the purpose of James May? To make anyone else’s comment look sane and reasonable by comparison.

    The Puppy Overton Window

  28. Early this morning when people were naming the first sf book they ever read I was almost sure it was a title mentioned. Now I’m in doubt.

    I can’t remember the title. Just that there was an alien character named Tex-Star, the protagonist was a child, and there was a trip into space. Does this ring a bell?

  30. Scott Frazer: Any thoughts on the boycott numbers? 765 individuals seems awfully small to make a difference to me

    Not to mention that I doubt that a) those are 765 unique individuals, b) less than half of them have probably shelled out for Supporting Memberships; indignant e-mails are free.

  31. Meredith on June 18, 2015 at 11:34 pm said:”
    I think I was unclear. We never have two puppies at once for very long. Puppy #2 turning up makes Puppy #1 disappear almost as reliably as asking Torgersen questions makes Torgersen disappear.

    I have no interest in going to the blogs of people who save IP addresses and use them for stalking, and I find culture wars boring. I’d rather talk about books, and that’s much easier to do here.”

    By design I’m sure. Why not just come out and call us sock puppets instead of positing a causal relationship without saying it?

    If that was not your intent then I guess the reason is that if someone is wrong on the Internet and RAH or idontknow corrects that I do not have to. If you guys are left to your own devices you get boring, echo chamber-y and start lying too much and I must engage. If someone else is already doing that I don’t feel the same need.

    We know you can not stand ideological impurity and harsh language. We are counting on it.

  32. aeou: Are you ideologically impure? Then how did you ever pass the File 770 Licensed Troll exam?

  33. Meredith, if you were talking about alauda/clamps he is the stalker. He was asked to not comment and did so anyway including going after VD’s wife. His local police department seems to agree with Vox that alauda is the stalker.

    Don’t be a SJW, meredith. Don’t lie.

  34. Follow-up question for aeou:

    Do you think having Vox Day at the helm of the boycott helps or hurts it?

    I’d argue “hurts” for two main reasons:

    1) It’s too easy to google him and discover the horrible things he’s on record as saying (assuming the people you’re writing haven’t heard of him in the first place)

    2) He heads a competing publishing house. That’s not as obvious by merely googling him, but I’m pretty sure the anti-slate people who’ve emailed in have pointed it out in their emails. It would be hard to take a boycott of Coca-Cola seriously if it was headed by the guy who makes Go2Cola.

  35. I caught up!! And have forgotten half the things I wanted to say. I’ll stick to the kitten.

    His personality is becoming apparent and I may have to find a fearless adventurer name for him.

    I had a cat named Linus who died last year age 15. He would come whenever I called and took care of me like no other. His full name was “Little Linus Larabee, my own leading man.”

    We have another cat named the Dread Pirate Robina but she came with the name Pirate and is my spouse’s cat and he chose to keep the name.

  36. aeou on June 18, 2015 at 11:59 pm said:

    Meredith, if you were talking about alauda/clamps he is the stalker. He was asked to not comment and did so anyway including going after VD’s wife. His local police department seems to agree with Vox that alauda is the stalker.

    Don’t forget that Vox also threatened to dox someone who left a review on one of his amazon pages based because he believed she never read the book. His evidence for this was that he’d never sent a book to the state he believed she lived in. Which doesn’t speak well to his ability to think things through.

    Why should someone risk that?

  37. Also, haven’t decided if I’m going to Spokane for the weekend of Sasquan (can’t miss work for the whole thing) but if I do go then I’m in for a meetup.

  38. Mike Glyer on June 18, 2015 at 11:53 pm said:
    “aeou: Are you ideologically impure? Then how did you ever pass the File 770 Licensed Troll exam?”
    My comment was directed at SJWs and you are no SJW even if you have tendencies. You live too much in the real world and show too much tolerance for opposing views. You have some sort of minimum intellectual honesty that is completely lacking in a full blown SJW like Glenn Haumann or poor Aaron.

    If you want to claim the title for yourself at this time the only reason would be to give me more rope.

  39. Speaking of books the pronoun use in Ancillary Justice/Sword didn’t bother me at all. I’m more interested in who the character is than what’s between their legs so by and large I barely even noticed.

  40. Scott Frazer on June 19, 2015 at 12:04 am said:
    aeou on June 18, 2015 at 11:59 pm said:”
    Don’t forget that Vox also threatened to dox someone who left a review on one of his amazon pages based because he believed she never read the book. His evidence for this was that he’d never sent a book to the state he believed she lived in. Which doesn’t speak well to his ability to think things through.

    Why should someone risk that?”
    I have not forgotten that which I have not read. But I do get a vague signal when I put that through mu reverse SJW-filter. Perhaps something about maybe taking legal action at some dishonest reviewer?

    Link me to the man’s own words and I will tell you what I think.

    Risk what?

  41. Oh yeah, and I replied here:
    http://grrm.livejournal.com/430377.html?thread=21814057#t21814057
    But my comment is in screening (maybe because I haven’t logged into LJ in years) so:
    “If you look through File770 every day, you’ll see toward the bottom of the roundup, a variety of people’s evaluations of the various nominees and, sadly, they are predictable evaluations. They are either outright dismissals or they are flatly hostile to the works.”

    I wish people who didn’t believe I was putting in good effort to read these works honestly would come and converse with me about what they found appealing about them or let me know what about my reviews are unclear.

    I’ve worked very hard not to be dismissive. My goal in writing reviews is to show that I am putting thought into this whole process, to try to model my own ideal Hugo Awards voting behavior. I will remain honest to my own reactions but if those reactions seem unfounded or nonsensical I’m very happy to discuss the Hugo Award nominees over on my blog (or here when I manage to catch up).

    All I ask is that the people who dislike my reviews actually talk about the works I’m reviewing. I read it, you read it, we talk about what we read, quote a little, maybe agree, maybe agree to disagree.

    Seriously, I would love conversation with people who like these works. Could someone who liked Transhuman and Subhuman explain why? Or for any work I’ve read that has had a negative review? Or positive reviews. I like to talk about SF/F.

    It may be slow, my conversations are interrupted by sleep and work days and adorable kittens but we have well over a month before we need to vote.

  42. Scott Frazer: There was a time when Vox was the harsher persona for Beale. It was in the comment section of the outing of said pseudonym where the first shots were fired in the great Scalzi/Beale wars.

    My participation in fandom waxes and wanes, but I pretty much came back for good thanks to the outing of Vox Day as Theodore Beale. I was reading mostly political blogs back then, including the blogs of two friends who both outed Day as Beale at the same time (along with, if I’m remembering right, two other political blogs who also figured it out on the same day, or very close to it). I started reading SF blogs again to follow the story and haven’t stopped since.

    It’s been a decade since his persona was outed and we’re still dealing with him. I’d predicted the article at WND that got him fired would have been the last we heard of Beale, but boy was I wrong.

  43. Source Decay:”It’s been a decade since his persona was outed and we’re still dealing with him. I’d predicted the article at WND that got him fired would have been the last we heard of Beale, but boy was I wrong.”

    That bastard just won’t stay tolerantly shunned. How horrible!

    And with that, I flounce!

  44. aeou: “I have not forgotten that which I have not read. “

    Someone translate that into Latin and embroider it on a blazer badge, stat!

  45. aeou on June 19, 2015 at 12:14 am said:

    I have not forgotten that which I have not read. But I do get a vague signal when I put that through mu reverse SJW-filter. Perhaps something about maybe taking legal action at some dishonest reviewer?

    Not legal action. His words:

    I noticed that the number of fake reviews of my books on Amazon declined considerably after I tracked down the woman from Minnesota and posted her address on this blog.

    You can find that here: http://voxday.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/to-sign-or-not-to-sign.html

    And the post where he doxxes her here:

    http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-rabbit-bites-back.html

    Risk what?

    I would have thought that was obvious, sport.

  47. VD: I noticed that the number of fake reviews of my books on Amazon declined considerably after I tracked down the woman from Minnesota and posted her address on this blog.

    Whoa. That is seriously fucked up.

    Why would anyone want to continue in a campaign where they’re associated with such a psychopath?

  49. You’re forgetting JJ, Vox can’t be a psychopath. He has too much empathy.

    Or was that his defense against sociopathy? I can’t remember and I’m a bit tired of wading through his bad-comicbook-villain-schtick of “superintelligences are incomprehesible to rabbits” (or whatever) to find it again.

  50. I’m beginning to think that the 2016-puppy-campaign should be named:

    Flouncing puppies

    considering all the flouncing they do.

    This “trying to score a hit and run”-thing they all do is kind of amusing but also pretty tiring.

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