It’s a midnight ride for today’s Sad Puppy link roundup….
Brooke Gladstone on On The Media (WNYC)
“The Sad Puppy Takeover” – April 17
The Hugo Awards are science fiction writing’s highest honor, and this year conservative fans, concerned with the liberal leanings of recent awards, banded together to nominate their sci-fi ideals. Brooke speaks with actor and writer Arthur Chu about how the awards controversy reflects a larger history of cultural backlash
Edward Carmien on Black Gate
“Fantasy Literature: Murder Hobos, Sad Puppies, and Change” – April 18
Enter the Sad Puppies (SPs), who hijacked the Hugo Awards this year. Read more about them here.
For the SPs a spaceship with guns blazing used to mean adventure; now it may contain a novel that, gasp, addresses colonialism. A novel with a cover depicting the quintessential Space Marine may in fact bring up gender issues. The horror.
To radically foreshorten the SPs argument, they want the River to not move — more to the point, to have stopped moving some decades ago. But without going into great detail on another topic, let me amend that to say instead “to have stopped moving some imaginary decades ago.” For not only has the River moved all this time, but the River always contained references to colonialism and gender issues. The SPs lamentation for a lost yesterday of SF & F rings as hollow as those who wail for a cultural return to Leave it to Beaver; neither ever existed.
John C. Wright
“Harlan on the Hugo” – April 18
No, he is not talking about Sad Puppies or Rapid Puppies. He is talking about the 1994 awards, which is roughly when the current Inner Ring of Morlocks started taking over. In other words, he is talking about the exact same people we are talking about, but he saw it coming way ahead of time, because he is an irate genius.
John C. Wright
“I AM SPARTICUS! Stand with the Badgers, Write an Email” – April 18
Support the Honey Badgers and join the #GamerGate email campaign against the sponsors of Calgary Expo. Send one email, just one to start.
John C. Wright
“An Outbreak of Peace” – April 17
I concur with the peacemakers, and urge my fellow fans to whom science fiction is beloved and for whom the Hugos still recall an echo of dignity to adopt a less belligerent posture.
Remove or silence those among you who see science fiction as a tool of social engineering and to whom entertainment is subordinate to political correctness, and I will break my saber over my knee and throw the shards in the sea.
Here are my terms: Halt the libels and lies and keep a civil tongue in your mouth, and there will be peace.
I offer no concessions in return because I have none to offer. When you and yours leveled the accusation that I was a White Supremacist Misogynist Hatemonger you knew it was false, as did every honest onlooker.
John C. Wright
“Why We Fight” – April 18
Sarah Hoyt holds forth her experience in the science fiction field, her conclusions, her resolve.
Remember as you read her words, this is the woman the Morlocks are trying to destroy. The fear she escaped is the fear into which our foes which all writers and readers to be bound.
The lack of interesting science fiction, the inability of writers to make a living, or win awards, the sheer boring dreck infecting the field is not an illusion produced by your nostalgia nor is it some unaccountable and inexplicable loss of talent and imagination in our field.
Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt
“If This Goes On” – April 16
They started out with the Creepy Pasta at Entertainment Weekly, Guardian, Wired. When that failed to stick because of who we are and because accusations of racism/sexism/homophobia are self evidently stupid in our case (I think I have more gay fans than Lackey does, and most of those who contact me become friends over time) they’ve now descended to the Stalinist tactic of associating us with VD who copied the logo and some of the slate. They have their big names — the names that even non-sf people recognize, like Martin and Willis and Gerrold — come out and punch down. There is an element of the macabre in this as most of these people are on the other side of the age divide. They came in when the field was fairer; they are if not internet illiterate, internet naive; they get pointed at the Daily Kos and think it is in any way a credible news source. (It’s like when the village kids yelled a triggering sentence at the old lady, then hid, to get her to throw things at the next group of kids who walked by.)
Some of this has hurt me, just as it hurt me when people I thought were sane lost their sh*t when I pointed out they couldn’t win elections with a third party absent a massive cultural trauma (like us getting all our major cities bombed) and consequent fracture (and that third party then would more likely be totalitarian, not pro-freedom.) Those people didn’t argue the idea, they attacked me and called me names.
In the same way, these people are not in any way trying to credibly pretend there were no cliques and no secret slates before (whereas ours wasn’t secret.) Martin admitted there were. No. They are attacking us. It started with being wrong fans having wrong fun. But it always defaults to calling us racist/sexist/homophobic. Even if they have to tie us by third degree association to someone else, to do it.
And that part hurts, because some of the people acting most crazycakes are people I’ve enjoyed and admired and I keep thinking “I remember when they were sane.”
However — however — remember this for when the Hugo war comes to whatever you like to do; whatever your hideout and corner of fun; whatever your sacred space and privacy is: there is no backing down.
There is no backing down, because each battle the beast wins, each area they take total control of, causes them to want to devour more. And having seen the totalitarians up close and personal, having seen how they’re willing to speak power to truth and punch down and obliterate characters and careers JUST to keep their power and their fake prestige, I can’t let it happen. Yeah, I’ve been through the wars, but the battle is still going on, and so I must continue fighting.
A good question: should we exclude the excluders…?http://t.co/GOLoJrCzDo
— Jack Dann (@jackmdann) April 18, 2015
Thanks to some more donors, I have 100 supporting memberships to WorldCon to give away. http://t.co/HvKvpvUjWc
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) April 18, 2015
Pep and Jose on Two Dudes in an Attic
“The 2015 Hugo Imbroglio” – April 17
I will say first that I am irate that the American Culture War has jumped the firebreak into SF. I would much prefer to enjoy my exploding spaceships in peace, but one has to fight these battles on every front or we will never conquer. And conquer we will. Anyone feeling too down about things should read The Emerging Democratic Majority, which takes on US politics, but is really about everything. SF is growing younger, more diverse, and more inclusive at an increasing rate. We can’t be passive about things, and there will be ugly moments, but it won’t be long before our numbers are overwhelming. People of all colors, genders, persuasions, and world views are joining the conversation; this is one brand of squeezable ketchup that isn’t going back in the bottle. The Glitter and Pan-Asian Cuisine Gang is the wave of the future. (It’s also healthier and more delicious. Teriyaki for everyone!) Valiant Brad fears that we are crushing Tradition under our sparkly boot heels, but I have every confidence that we can appreciate the heritage of SF while taking it to new, exciting places.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“A letter to Popular Science” – April 19
Dear Editor, I am writing to demand a retraction and apology for the libelous article posted Apr 17th, 2015 at 3:00pm by Mike VanHelder….
Some of these additional errors include:
- Gamergate is not anti-feminist.
- Neither Sad Puppies nor Rabid Puppies courted any assistance from GamerGate.
- The extent of the collaboration between the THREE groups, (not two, as in the article) is not difficult to quantify. There are precisely two GamerGaters who are also Rabid Puppies, myself and Daddy Warpig.
- It is false to claim “No nominated author has ever before withdrawn their work after making it onto the Hugo ballot.” It is actually not uncommon for an author to withdraw one of his works after getting more than one nominated in a category. To give a few examples, Harlan Ellison withdrew his Hugo nomination in 1968. Jack Gaughan withdrew his nomination in 1968. Fritz Leiber withdrew his nomination in 1971, as did Robert Silverberg in 1972.
- Therefore, the action of withdrawing a nomination is not “unprecedented”.
I will appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog
“Once More, Into the Kennels” – April 17
One last question. You say you want inclusion. You say you want democracy. And you have already announced Sad Puppies 4, aimed at the 2016 Hugo Awards at Big Mac II. I understand that Kate Paulk of MAD GENIUS CLUB will be running things next year. I presume the mechanism will be the same — a call for suggestions, which will then somehow be winnowed down to a slate. (If that’s wrong, do correct me, I want to have the facts).
So maybe my last question is for Kate Paulk rather than you or Mr. Correia. I don’t know. But it’s a simple question. When you open up Sad Puppies 4 for nominations…
Can I nominate? I read a lot of books and stories. I have editors and fan writers and artists I think are shamefully overlooked, same as you. I am a fan too. Can I nominate my own favorites, and be assured that they will be given equal weight to Larry Correia’s nominations, and Brad’s, and John C. Wright’s, and all the other Puppies?
Kate Paulk in a comment on Not A Blog – April 17
Yes, you can, and yes, your nominations will get the exact same consideration as anyone else’s nominations. I’m planning to open for suggestions for the final list after this year’s winners are announced, in the form of open threads on as many blogs as will host me. If you’re willing to host a guest post at that time and allow me to take suggestions for Hugo-worthy works in any of the categories, I’d be honored to do so.
Lothlorien in a comment on File 770 – April 18
Now many RP/SP supporters are blaming the SF Establishment for bullying [Annie Bellet] into withdrawing (even though she claims they did not) and blaming the exclusion on them. They claim that Annie is a talented and deserving author (hence her inclusion on the Slate) who would have made the list anyway, but fail to realize that NOBODY WHO WAS NOT ON THE SLATE HAD A CHANCE. You pointed out earlier that instead of bringing new authors to the table, as they claimed was their goal, they kicked the table over and are doing what they claimed was being done to them: Excluding worthy and deserving authors.
I’ve been looking at all the blogs trying to find anyone who has brought this point (with the new data available which proves the point) and havn’t found anything. THIS is why Slate Voting hurts everyone, even the ‘deserving’ author themselves.
Helen Lewis in The Guardian
If you were going to build a world, there are a million ways you could make it strange and captivating. Throw in some elves, a mermaid, a few robot monks; dream up a land where dinosaurs still exist or the Nazis won the second world war.
But for some science fiction and fantasy fans, none of these riches of the imagination are enough: the alternate universe they most crave is the Good Old Days. SFF is in the grip of its own culture war, with a group of authors suggesting that the recent success of female and non-white writers is proof that political correctness has spread its tentacles so far that it is now ruining stories that include actual tentacles. Like many culture wars, the specific details – orcs! busty maidens! angry bloggers with baroque facial hair! – make it seem faintly absurd, but the underlying arguments are vital. We shape our culture and it shapes us, and the struggle for an artistic voice is part of the struggle to be seen as fully human…..
Puppygate will force a reckoning in the SFF world, just as Gamergate did for videogames, and next year the debate will simply mutate into another form. “If you want a picture of the future,” as Orwell didn’t write in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “imagine a finger pressing refresh on an angry blogpost – for ever.”
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Eh, there were already implicit slates based on affinity, so Lothlorien’s remark is disingenuous. Nobody who was not on the extant implicit slates had a chance if it had been a usual Hugo year. But I guess it’s fine if the slate is only 40 votes strong and still keeps quality works from getting nominated? Apparently? The problem only comes in when it’s 100 votes or more, it would seem, even more than political aspects. I think shooing people away from the Hugos so intensely that 40 votes can hold so much power barring the Sad Puppy efforts is much worse than Sad Puppies.
What the heck is an “implicit slate based on affinity”? Identical slates that just spontaneously appear in the minds of people that feel affection towards each other?
I have only been followning this baloney out of the corner of my mind, so to speak. Despite tens of thousands of words written on the subject of the Sad Puppies and this year’s Hugos, nothing really new has emerged since the early days of the debacle. But having slept on the matter for some time, it becomes clear to me that the purpose of the Sads is not to democratize the ballot, but to pre-clear it … that is, to have their own Hugo nomination process that make the real decision, then presents a fait accompli ballot to the common mob. It’s like an election in Egypt or the old Soviet Union. No matter who you vote for, a member of the “correct” party is elected to office. In point of fact, the second “election” hardly matters because the elite have already decided. To put that in plainer language, the Sads wish to be the elite and reduce the formal vote by the hoi-polloi to one that doesn’t matter. Doesn’t sound very democratic.
I couldn’t help but laugh about Sarah’s line I remember when they were sane. That is the exact same thing I sometime think about her and some of her fellows at The Mad Genius Club. I used to be a regular there and while they were on the conservative side of opinions, I used have a lot of common ground with them. Not now though. They have flipped and I would say now live up to at least the second word of their name in spades.
Mike, my congratulations!
Two laughs in the same post. First the Sarah Hoyt one and then the juxtaposition of Day and Wright.
First Wright rallying up support for GG and the Mens Rights Activist group Honey Badgers where he quotes Day also rallying the troops. Then Day denying that GGers are sexist and that they don’t have anything to do with the good puppys, no siree.
An absolute classic.
Okay, so the hugos are broken because things like The Water That Falls On You Like Nowhere and If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love, and The Ink Readers Of Doi Saket are products of a decadent culture that can not produce talented individuals of enough insight and wisdom to write something great, so you try to get Opera Vita Aeterna of all things on the ballot?
Whatever you say, John.
John Wright does bang on a bit doesn’t he? Never afraid to use 1,000 words where ten would suffice.
And Sarah Hoyt’s persucution complex is almost as funny as Torgensen’s fantasy of being sent to the Gulag because people were mean to him on the internet. For being such rough, tough dudes these people sure are thin skinned.
In Hoyts words:
” They have their big names — the names that even non-sf people recognize, like Martin and Willis and Gerrold — come out and punch down. ”
I mean, doesn’t she think that Martin, Wills and Gerrold might have opinions of their own? And wanting to express their opinions in their own blogs or facebook accounts?
This conspiracy thinking, that it has to be organized. Sending out evil goons to punch the poor puppies. When it’s just that people are angry and a bit sad and want to write down their feelings. Both famouns and non-famous.
@ Hampus Eckerman –
“I mean, doesn’t she think that Martin, Wills and Gerrold might have opinions of their own?”
Well, yes. I imagine that everyone who is a writer who has ever had works under consideration for the so-called “fan-voted” Hugo has an opinion as to what sort of works should be considered.
You will also remember that Willis was considered to present the JWC award this year – and she called the SPs “cheaters”, pointing to a Daily Kos article for support. (That article was actually far more indepth than a number of things which have been cited as authority in this debate, but surely no one actually expects a reference to a DK link to be considered anything but highly partisan. Common sense and self-awareness would have required at least a second link to *something* middle-ish.)
Gerrold has also repeatedly hammered on his role as MC, and noted his intended use of the mic to shape the presentation of awards. (I wonder if he considers that “speaking truth to power”…)
Neither of them has been acting as a equal peer of the broader fannish community – GRRM, at least, has been attempting to talk with instead of dictate to. I also note Mary Robinette Kowal for making several attempts at bridge building. (She has stumbled hard on a couple of these tries, but she is making a strong and repeated effort.) There are others – but not Willis, Gerrold, nor Chu and Hurley. More attention should be paid to the bridge builders.
keranih: Well, in my eyes, they are cheaters. There’s a lot of names on the slates that never would have been nominated, if it weren’t for ballot stuffing.
And let me tell you and Hoyt this: I wasn’t sent out by a secret cabal to say this. I just voiced my opinion on a blog. Same as Martin, Wills and Gerrold weren’t sent out to punch down on people. They just voiced their opinions as a lot of people do.
I have no idea what you mean by “acting as a equal peer of the broader fannish community”, but if I understand it correctly, you mean they shouldn’t speak about their own feelings or how they are affected by the rabies flocks slate voting.
How do you mean that Martin, Gerrold and Willis have been dictating to people? Please tell me.
“How do you mean that Martin, Gerrold and Willis have been dictating to people?”
We’re seeing a lot of complaints about tone now from the Puppies — about how those taking offense to their actions are being unfair to them and should watch our words. Pros like Martin, Gerrold and Willis are simply stating their opinions as Hugo voters and people who cherish the institution, but to Puppies like Sarah Hoyt this is “punching down.”
So not only are they entitled to the Hugo Awards, but they are entitled to be exempt from criticism from people more prominent than them in the SF/F community.
I think there is a question of definition in John C. Wright’s claim:
It is false to claim “No nominated author has ever before withdrawn their work after making it onto the Hugo ballot.” It is actually not uncommon for an author to withdraw one of his works after getting more than one nominated in a category. To give a few examples, Harlan Ellison withdrew his Hugo nomination in 1968. Jack Gaughan withdrew his nomination in 1968. Fritz Leiber withdrew his nomination in 1971, as did Robert Silverberg in 1972.
There are quite a few people who have withdrawn their works, but (to the best of my recollection) these were before the ballot was announced/issued. I believe that this is the first year when people withdrew after the ballot was announced.
You believe correctly, per the Hugo Awards website: “This year is the first time in the history of the Hugo Awards that a finalist has withdrawn a work after announcement of the finalist shortlist.”
Have anyone listened to Arthur Chu’s interview? Does he expand on his theory about Torgersen’s wife and daughter being shields?
@rcade:
>So not only are they entitled to the Hugo Awards, but
>they are entitled to be exempt from criticism from people
>more prominent than them in the SF/F community.
It must be entertaining to build a strawman and argue against it.
I don’t think what we’re saying could be any clearer. You have to be willfully blind to not see what’s going on.
SJWs are saying the same thing over and over again: they won’t review men, they won’t review white men, stop reading heterosexual white men for a year, help me “de-white” my library, aren’t you tired of reading white men, no all-white convention panels, no all-white T. of Contents, SFF used to be all white men and on and on. Conversely, SJWs are promoting work according to what they see as the opposite of straight white men. There is no style of literature in play there, no politics, no ideology – just race and sex.
What we’re engaging with is the complete opposite. We are objecting to words spoken, to literary styles, to ideologies. The race and sex of who’s doing those things are immaterial to us. Our argument is a principled argument, not a racist and sexist one. We are asking literary and ideological questions, not ones of race and sex.
For some oddball reason, there are media stories and blog posts that are straight up lying and saying the opposite is true: that we object to more women and non-whites in “our” arena and that SJWs are promoting good literature that just happens to be a demographic spike of non-Western, non-white and female.
When is obvious obvious and how dumb is dumb?
SJWs keep talking about one or two guys – meanwhile, you have an entire Klan, complete with its own awards, webzines and mainstream media support straight up lying and engaging in – SURPRISE – racial incitement. Gee, who saw that coming?
You gotta cut these racists loose. They’re poison.
Talking about strawmen…
“Implicit slates based on affinity” is one thing, but those “implicit slates” were so ineffectual that they couldn’t even manage five nominees for the Short Story category per the 5% rule. That “implicit slate based on affinity” has such a wide pool of options for the nominators that they can’t get enough people to nominate five candidates to meet the threshold.
Please explain to me how that’s at all comparable to the RP slate and Mr. “Day’s” statement at its head:
“What follows is the list of Hugo recommendations known as Rabid Puppies. They are my recommendations for the 2015 nominations and I encourage those WHO VALUE MY OPINION ON MATTERS RELATED TO SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY TO NOMINATE THEM PRECISELY AS THEY ARE.” (emphasis mine) Mr. “Day” also refers to blowing up the Hugos at the bottom, after the list.
He doesn’t say, “Read these and, if you like them, nominate them”, he says, essentially, “Copy MY LIST EXACTLY”. His list dominates the ballot. Please explain to me just how any “implicit slate” is even remotely close to the kind of thing Mr. “Day” did here.
http://voxday.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/rabid-puppies-2015.html
RP was a list compiled by ONE man, weighted heavily with works connected to a publishing imprint he edits and where he thus has a vested interest. These aren’t “recommendation”, they are a whistle to the pack and marching orders.
This is getting to be a waste of time. Why don’t we declare time out and continue fighting after the Hugo results are announced in August.
What conspiracy? The fact you’re unfamiliar with the terrain you’re defending only makes it a secret from you.
I need to devote my attention to writing the obituary of one of the finest fans who ever lived, Art Widner, not shoving the edge of the conversational envelope back where it belongs. I have just removed a set of comments and as you go forward please ask yourself:
Does my comment make Gerald L.K. Smith look like Socrates by comparison?
Does my comment set off a Wordpess warning that zeppilins of narcissism have entered blog airspace?
In the only two comments I have ever posted did I call another commenter names?
If you are unable to discern those fine points yourself then I will assist you in finding the exit.
@Eckeman
“Well, in my eyes, they are cheaters. There’s a lot of names on the slates that never would have been nominated, if it weren’t for ballot stuffing.”
I had to look up the term “ballot stuffing” on Wikipedia just to ensure that my definition and the common-sense reading of those two words was not, somehow, at variance with common usage.
I doubt that the SP and RP actions could even be called vote buying. It’s more akin to representational democracy as practiced in many countries, at least in my opinion. Next time around those who do not like SP and RP can do the same. The only apple carts that were upset, it would seem to me, were those of the people who ran their little whisper campaigns, if such existed.
(Full Disclosure. I have been reading Science Fiction since about 1968.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud#Ballot_stuffing
See also John Scalzi, Robert Reynolds, and ask yourself this – when Scalzi openly pushed a slate that suited his own agenda, and got nominations and wins because of it…why wasn’t there a self-correcting outcry from all corners? Why was Harlan Ellison the only one to identify it as a cheapening of the award back in 1994, before any of the puppies were even a twinkle in the eye of Cerberus?
Black Gate has withdrawn from the ballot.
I suspect it will still appear on it, though. The administrators have sent the ballot to the printers.
Beyond Anon:
They CAN do so, but that would mean to go against what the Hugo award stands for. Namely, voting for the best SF you have read. Not the best SF some other person has put on a bill. Slate voting is giving one person 100 votes on the SF he/she likes.
That would be the death of Hugo if everyone did that. Party politics instead of fans. The rabies flock has started the destruction, I sincerely hope no one will follow.
“They CAN do so, but that would mean to go against what the Hugo award stands for.”
Oh, so you are a reactionary, then?
You know, progress means change. Of course, some people don’t like change.
JCW: ;Remove or silence those among you who see science fiction as a tool of social engineering and to whom entertainment is subordinate to political correctness, and I will break my saber over my knee and throw the shards in the sea.’
Remove and silence? Even if these straw people existed and the other straw people with the power to remove and silence them also existed, this isn’t exactly building bridges. It’s like you won the war and now don’t know how to win the peace.
Beyond Anon:
You are calling me a “reactionary” because I want to keep party politics from the Hugos and want people to actually have read what they vote for?
Well, let me quote the sage:
“I do not think it means what you think it means.”
xdpaul: Show me proof that Scalzi or anyone else you would care to point fingers at doing precisely what Mr. “Day” has done here (i.e., put forward a defined list and exhorted people to nominated HIS LIST in toto, without any deviation) and you have a point. Scalzi has a blog. Provide proof that he did exactly what Mr. “Day” did here. If all Scalzi did was say, “This is what I have written which is eligible for the Hugo. If you liked it and you want to nominate me, cool” is a far cry from “Follow my list precisely as written”. Words mean things. Mr. “Day” was quite clear in his phrasing. Show me Scalzi saying the same.
“You gotta cut these racists loose. They’re poison.”
I agree. Day and the lot need to go.
Can somebody post me a link to John Scalzi’s slate. There’s a good chap. I’ll be waiting right here.
@Milt Stevens:
>This is getting to be a waste of time. Why don’t we
>declare time out and continue fighting after the Hugo
>results are announced in August.
Yep, that’s my impression too.
I don’t know John C. Wright. I’ve never met him, never corresponded with him, never read any of his fiction. A blank board to me, until now.
Now I see he’s positively batshit.
That he would post a Harlan Ellison video criticizing the alleged “buying” of Hugo and Nebula votes through Internet begging considering what he and his coterie have done to is jaw-dropping.
That he thinks the greatest champion of the New Wave of s.f. would approve of the Puppies’ retrograde notions of science fiction is a clear sign of ignorance of the history of the genre.
That he would have the ineffable and insane gall to write the phrase
is going to earn him a curb-stomp beating by a short, ill man in his ’80s who is tougher than all the Puppies put together.
Beale’s #2 in the quote is pretty funny considering he’s made comments here about how they’ll ‘win’ because they have the gamers on their side. Not to mention the top of his blog has this motto right at the top: #SadPullies oderint dum metuant #Gamergate which is pretty much saying ‘Sadpuppies let them hate, as long as they fear #Gamergate’.
That’s adorable.
David: I’m trying remove allusions to physical violence from the dialog, even the improbable ones that might be administered by writers who are not fully youthful anymore.
Also, I seem to have become so inured to the toxicity that when I see someone called “positively batshit” somehow it seems like nothing, however, that is exactly what I don’t want to see more of.
From our long acquaintance I know you combine a strong sense of justice and ability to empathize with people’s feelings, and I am counting on you to balance those impulses.
Beyond Anon — “progress means change”, yes, but change does not equal progress.
Some people have been objecting to terms like “cheating” and “ballot stuffing.” Maybe we could phrase it differently. What if we said……
YOU FUCKED WITH US!!!!!
Is that better? If you are willing to admit you did this, I’m willing to accept the change in terminology.
@Milt Stevens
Sure, if it makes you feel better…
Well, it’s nice to have Beale on record that he thinks calling someone “anti-feminist” is libelous.
“Not to mention the top of his blog has this motto right at the top: #SadPullies oderint dum metuant #Gamergate which is pretty much saying ‘Sadpuppies let them hate, as long as they fear #Gamergate’.”
“Burma Shave”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Vox Day is convinced that anything that makes him look bad, no matter how true it is, is libel.
Man, he should check out that Vox Populi website. It’s always running things that make him sounds like a horrible, hateful human being.
Generally, if a statement is true, that’s a defense against libel. If a statement is presented as opinion and not as a fact, that too, can be a defense against libel.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist.”
I find that even better.
Also didn’t realize I’d referred to them as SadPullies. That wasn’t to suggest they need Pully pull up dog diapers because they’re poorly house broken and tend to get so excited or afraid that they often urinate all over everything. It was just a typo.
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that Beale is either just throwing the word “libel” around because he thinks it will sound good to his followers (“the leftists at the Grauniad libeled me!”) or is hoping for a jurisdiction friendlier to libel suits than the United States. It wouldn’t be obviously unreasonable for him to sue in England, where the Guardian is published; it might also make sense for him to sue in whichever European country he is formally resident in. But lawyers, Finnish, Swiss, or English, cost money.
Mike, I’m sorry, and I won’t do that again.
t’s just that was so astounding to say that Harlan was an analog to Day….
In all the galaxy there is nothing so amazing.
Mike, I’m sorry, and I won’t do that again.
t’s just that was so astounding to say that Harlan was an analog to Day….
In all the galaxy there is nothing so amazing.
P. S. Thank you for your recognition of my dual senses. You honor me, sir, and I will endeavor to live up to that recognition in future comments, I give you my word.
And I’m very sorry to read of the death of Art Widner. I never met him but I certainly knew of him. He should shine in all our memories.
@David K. M. Klaus It’s not that unusual for them to equate themselves with much better writers. We’ve had a “G K Chesterton” wandering round the comments section here spouting pro-puppy guff.
And John C. Wright joins the VD/TK duo in the “If you just do what we want, we won’t fight you any more” camp.
I cannot understand how these people do not see that they are bullies — actually, permit me to edit that. I can* understand it — because, from their point of view, they are, simply, correct; and so, there’s no reason for them to give up anything. Mr. Wright is *correct* in what he says about gay people, so calling him a homophobe is just slander. (As a side note: I notice that whenever he complains about what he gets called, he always narrows it down to race. I cannot put my finger on any specific racist thing he has said — demonstrative of massive *cultural* bias, yes, but racist, no. I will happily argue that John C. Wright is no racist; merely a sexist homophobic religious bigot. Better?)
Part of this, I suspect, is the very “right-vs-left” division that (if you believe some of the Sad Puppies) isn’t what this is about at all, while for the Rabid it quite clearly is.
If you bifurcate the world into “R vs L” or “Story vs Message”** then bloc/slate voting makes perfect sense; it’s how your side wins. And, since it makes sense for your side to do it, it makes sense for the other side to have done it, because how else could they have won over such *obviously* superior fiction?
(I submit that anyone who finds “Yes, Virginia” clearly about story and “If You Were A Dinosaur”*** clearly about message fits the above bill.)
When you view the world through such glasses, that’s the result you get. I have noticed that Mr. Wright is willing to grant some credit to writing craft from “the Left” — but the fundamental point remains.
*I have excised “I can’t imagine…” from my vocabulary; I’m an SF/F writer; it’s my *job* in part to imagine why unimaginable thing X might be true.
** I recommend everyone who makes that distinction read Chip Delany’s “About 5,750 Words” and get back to me.
*** Chosen not least because every time I see a Puppy complain, it’s either that story or a Scalzi book. As if they were somehow the graven-in-stone proof that the Hugos Are About Message.