Larry Correia won’t be one of the guests when the Origins Game Fair takes place June 13-17 in Columbus, OH. Shortly after publicizing that Correia had been added to the lineup, John Ward, the event’s Executive Director, received so many negative social media comments (on Twitter, particularly) that he announced Correia’s invitation has been rescinded.
Ward wrote on Facebook:
I want to discuss our invitation to Larry Correia a guest at Origins. By all counts he is a very talented author.
Unfortunately, when he was recommended I was unaware of some personal views that are specifically unaligned with the philosophy of our show and the organization.
I want to thank those of you that brought this error to our attention. Origins is an inclusive and family friendly event. We focus on fun and gaming, not discourse and controversy.
I felt it necessary to recend [sic] his invitation to participate in the show. I apologize again to those of you that were looking forward to seeing him at Origins.
John Ward, Executive Director
Many of the critical tweets mentioned Correia’s history with Sad Puppies.
Correia subsequently responded on Facebook with a statement that begins:
So I’m no longer the writer guest of honor at origins. My invitation has been revoked. It was the usual nonsense. Right after I was announced as a guest some people started throwing a temper tantrum about my alleged racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever (of course, with zero proof or actual examples), and the guy in charge (John Ward) immediately folded. He didn’t even talk to me first. He just accepted the slander and gave me the boot in an email that talked about how “inclusive” they are….
His statement also says “none of these people can ever find any actual examples of me being sexist, racist, or homophobic.”
BEFORE AND AFTER:
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I see this thread has degenerated into book discussions. I swear.
@Mister Dalliard: I dunno, I betcha one o’ them old Electrolux jobs could really cave in a few skulls. Sturdy, they were…
Maybe that’s it. The dude who was terrified of having his skull crushed was plenty tough – he could dig his feet into the deckplates of a starship. He wouldn’t be afraid of the candy-coloured Dyson I have at home.
Mike Glyer: However, when you look at the 2015 Hugo Best Novel voting runoffs
There were at least 350 Puppy voters in 2015 (435 people put VD above at least 1 other editor in the Long Form Editor category). The Three-Body Problem won by 200 votes over The Goblin Emperor. It’s not at all unreasonable to think that the Puppy voters pushed 3BP over the line.
Dear Rev Bob and Mr. Dalliard,
I think a lot of authors don’t really appreciate how difficult copyediting/proofreading is. Most of us who are moderately competent wordsmiths can get it ALMOST right… and a lot of top-notch authors can’t, it’s got nothing to do with literary merit nor skill.
The problem is that “almost” isn’t anywhere close to “good enough.” You can hit 99.9% and there would still be 100 errors in a typical novel, one every three pages.
A piece of advice I give to any newbie going the independent route is that they need to have a professional proofreader. If they’re really diligent, they can hit the 99.9% mark on their own. Maybe even 99.99%. There are lots of fans who are good enough proofreaders and won’t charge unreasonably large amounts (a few grand). Much like spellcheck programs, they don’t have to be infallible — they only have to be able to catch what the author fails to.
– pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. Dragon Dictate in training! ]
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— Ctein’s Online Gallery. http://ctein.com
— Digital Restorations. http://photo-repair.com
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Rose Embolism:
Oh, I know, but I like to make them say it out loud so they see how stupid it sounds.
Kip W.: On a long enough timeline all threads degenerate into book discussions.
Here “long enough” is around six posts.
I run each of my self-pub books past four proofreaders…and stuff STILL gets through. It’s a never ending struggle.
Copyediting/proofreading is a really tough job. Once when I worked in a theater our season poster listing all the movies we were showing that quarter was proofread by no less than eight people and when it came back from the printer there was a glaring typo smack in the middle of the thing in bold letters. Sigh. We still did better then the people the previous year. Their poster came back with two entire columns transposed.
And since several people have indicated an interest in the Benevolent Airships idea, I will try to look into the possibility of teaming with an existing organization in the United States that I know. It will have to wait until next week though. I have to survive finals this week and all the grading. Eek!
@Mister Dalliard —
Preach!
I mean, cmon, Jon — this genre is called SCIENCE fiction for a reason!
@Rev. Bob —
Ohhhhh, so THAT’s what he meant.
ROFLMAO.
What was it in Wonder Engine? Stoat?
Typos / oopses can be such wondrous beasts 🙂
@Camestros: The Three Goblin Emperors Problem was an excellent winner.
The Radch Emperor really should’ve thought twice before splitting into multiple goblins.
Three Goblin Emperors can’t be the problem. They’re the solution.
I want the Benevolent Airships to donate lotsa Wombat (both names), and “Peasprout Chen”, and authors wot are on the YA Award Hugo list and other YA SFF awards, like the Andre Norton Award. And “Goblin Emperor” and some of Jim C. Hines, and of course TGE. Plus the “Young Wizards” series (all of them, Millennium editions), and the Other Ursula. Not forgetting graphic novels like “Lumberjanes”.
@Rev. Bob: On neural nets, Scalzi didn’t invent the concept, and I came across something just the other day that had a very similar concept by the same name. IIRC, there was the thing in… was it “Neuromancer” or an earlier Gibson book, where people rented out their bodies while their brains were turned off? And of course the comic book where rich people had spiffy robot bodies and never went outside and poor folks were the only ones who were biological all the time… “Surrogates”.
Must admit I voted Ancillary #1 that year and TGE #2, but would have been happy with either. No Award got employed there.
@Nate Harada: thanks for the insider info. One would hope they’d learn from this year, but one would also doubt it, given your description of last year’s debacle immediately followed by this year’s debarkle.
@Rev Bob: How do you stand reading anything by Baen? I too am a compulsive copyeditor, and there are so many, many errors in (lack of) proofreading that they hurt. LMB and Lee/Miller turn in clean copy so there aren’t many in their books, but everyone else doesn’t — so Baen’s openly stated lack of editing* makes their stuff worse than many independent books I’ve read, who actually do get a copy editor to take a gander at it. Even ones who’ve never been associated with professional publishers.
And there’s no less-oppressed person in America than a SWM, married with children, a big house, a successful career, who’s a right-wing Mormon in Utah.
As such a big gun guy, you’d think Larry would know better than to keep shooting himself in the foot.
*Weisskopf literally said that their audience doesn’t care about typos and errors, so they don’t bother to fix them. Bully for you, then, I guess?
Ian Scott:
Even someone who prides himself on telling it like it is and insulting people publicly often does resort to dog whistles and winks when it comes to admitting to racist attitudes. Larry Correia is loud about guns and about Secret Cabals and about Message Fiction and about non binary genders – this doesn’t mean he won’t be careful and winking in his racism.
Racism also often involves an *unconscious* bias, sometimes revealed by accident when speaking because one has absorbed and then broadcasts a dog whistle (As another example, people who say they have no issue with Hispanics then talk a lot about “illegals”. I’m pretty sure their definition of what an “illegal” is doesn’t default to an International student who accidentally overstayed a visa while studying in a prestigious university.) Correia may well try to be non-racist ion his daily dealings, but still harbour some internal ideas about the standard European inspired fantasy and magic systems, and American white cultural values, making the “best” books.
_________________
The Goblin Emperor was my favourite, followed by Ancillary Sword, and I was one of the oddities who read it before reading Ancillary Justice. Skin Game was next. The Three Body Problem was after that. I DNF’d but mainly because I ran out of time before the end of the voting period *and* the library return dates both, then never picked it up again. I think no ill of those who reverse that order or have a different order.
Loved, loved TGE and I seem to have just forgotten to finish 3BP (no, seriously).
And it’s time for my yearly rant on the real victim of the worstest ever robberying at the Hugos(1): it was The Curse of Chalion. This is my hill, and I will willingly suffer mild contusions and surface abrasions for it! American Gods was a lot of fun, but tCoC was nearly perfect.
I have no comment on puppies, except to note that our current guest appears to quite literally not know what the word ‘objective’ means.
1) pace recent poster’s point about fair voting and everything by the rules
Jumping on The Goblin Emperor bandwagon. I adore that book with a mad blazing fury (and also adore her Melusine series).
I own the e-book of TGE or I probably would have read it to pieces by now–for a while there, it was an almost constant comfort read, though I’ve slowed down a bit now. I love the worldbuilding (which is mostly the culture of the Imperial Court), the way in which Addison develops Elves and Goblins in ways that avoid all the stereotypical fantasy tropes (including incorporating steampunk elements), the ways in which she upends the “lost heir” plot (child raised far from court in obscurity who is suddenly elevated to kingly rank), and the emphasis on the aspects of rulership that very few fantasy novels touch on (probably because a lot of people don’t want to read about the details of governance! and the mind-crushing weight of responsibility). And yes, lots of information conveyed–but since I found it all fascinating (unlike lengthy descriptions of weapons and ship tech and casualties) and since Maia needed the information to even begin to do the work, it works for me (possibly in the same way that a lot of Tolkien’s very expository and conversation-laden chapters–yes, including the “Council of Elrond”! work for me). I loved Maia as a character–especially his relationships with the various women–SO MANY AMAZING WOMEN–and the spirtual/religious elements of the story, as well as the way in which the novel dealt with class and racial hierarchies.
I bounced hard off The Three Body Problem like others in the thread.
I’ll have to go back and re-read, but while I remember one person disliking both, has anybody talked about liking or loving them both?
Rev. Bob: On neural nets: if you (and your co-worldbuilder) write a story, the chances are that by the time you’re through, even if people do see a similarity in the tech, it will be a case of comparing the two wildly different takes. People ring changes on other stories and tech ideas all the time.
I’m in the middle of looking over a few different critiques/sensitivity reads, and preparing to work on the next draft, of a story which starts with the basic concept: A woman has to go through a mysterious maze to get to the location at its heart and save a loved one captured by a mysterious sorcerous person. On the way, she meets a variety of strange beings, some of whom help and some of whom hinder. Most of my older drafts are even saved under file names that use the word Labyrinth (even though it is most definitely a maze and not a labyrinth). I* think that’s a much more obvious similarity to an existing property than one tech idea.
But by the time I was through with the concept, Jim Henson could not even vaguely consider suing me. Certainly none of the critiquers have expressed the slightest concern about it, and most of them are fans of Henson. (And one did have some concerns about some Buffy references cutting too close to copyright)
@Maximilian: American Gods was a lot of fun, but [The Curse of Chalion] was nearly perfect.
I agree totally! Ditto Paladin of Souls!!!!!!!
@Ferret – Please tell me that Yalbag had his tongue planted so firmly in his cheek that it was coming out his ear. “The significance of this is clear” forsooth!
Wait, and Hoyt had to go independent because *Baen* was oppressing her glorious Objectivist truths?
Or is our guest as accurate about that as everything else he’s said?
I really liked both Goblin Emperor and Three Body Problem.
@Elisa – Don’t talk to me about Stoats!
(For those who did not read the Clocktaur War Books—owing to pure stupidity on my part, a pre-proofed version briefly went live through Draft2Digital with live typos, most glaring of which was the main character, Slate, suddenly becoming Stoats during the climax. What was hopefully an anguished scene of wrenching emotional choices, suddenly invaded by weasels…My only solace is that non-Amazon sales are well under 5%, so I only embarrassed myself in front of a small proportion of the readership…)
And it’s time for my yearly rant on the real victim of the worstest ever robberying at the Hugos(1): it was The Curse of Chalion. This is my hill, and I will willingly suffer mild contusions and surface abrasions for it! American Gods was a lot of fun, but tCoC was nearly perfect.
I’ll stand on that hill with you!
@Hampus – You didn’t like the main plot of TGE…? Are you saying it *had* a plot? I just remember lots of Elvish courtiers, Court dress, Court history, and characterization coming out the ears- and I loved it.
RedWombat, if it makes you feel any better, my copy of The Clocktaur Wars was entirely mustelid-free. Unlike Summer in Orcus, which we’re still reading over on Forumania should you (or anyone else) be inclined to wander by….
@Maximilian
Well, he did get Mercedes Lackey mixed up with I presume Marion Zimmer Bradley, so I guess the answer is yes.
I liked both The Goblin Emperor and The Three Body Problem (they were 1 and 2 on my ballot): both were a glimpse into a different world, one fictional, one real that I don’t know enough about. With 3BP, I don’t know how much was the author and how much was the translator – I got the same feeling I do with Murakami in translation, that I’d get a lot more out of it if I could read it in the original language.
Cora: Well, he did get Mercedes Lackey mixed up with I presume Marion Zimmer Bradley
Oh, is that what he was on about? I couldn’t figure out what it was Lackey had done, that he was dragging her into the discussion.
I’m still waiting for him to explain what was the very best novel [of 2015, I think? hard to tell from his word salad], and according to what “objective” criteria. It’s so non-obvious that no one seems to know what book he was talking about.
@Cassy B – Oh. I’m so glad you reminded me! I have spent some happy time reading through people’s comments!
@Rev. Bob
I can come up with three good bad examples of formatting problems in e-books, two of which are from major houses.
a) Drop cap that insists on being in the next line of text from where it should be; I know it’s not the first character in the section/chapter, but it is the first character in the paragraph. (I haven’t figured out what’s going on yet.)
b) single-line paragraphs that are right-justified rather than being indented (and they’re obvious).
c) mostly a problem in cookbooks: tables and illos that are two-page spreads in the original, and split across consecutive pages (generally badly) in the e-book. (I’ve also seen lines that somehow ended up two pages before the paragraph they belong in.) Poor line spacing happens, also, especially with recipe and chapter titles – I think they didn’t run any eyeballs across some of these books before they hit “publish”.
I will say that I haven’t seen these in the books you’ve done!
Lin McAllister: With 3BP, I don’t know how much was the author and how much was the translator – I got the same feeling I do with Murakami in translation, that I’d get a lot more out of it if I could read it in the original language.
My reactions to all of the translated Chinese SF I’ve read thus far (which is admittedly a small number of stories) range from “meh” to “blech”, and the perception that character development is mostly an afterthought to plot. I’m not sure whether that’s a function of the “strong Chinese SF tradition” about which I’ve seen people talk (write), or just my reactions to those particular stories. And of course the problem with that is that it doesn’t make me want to read even more of it to find out which.
JJ on May 15, 2018 at 7:07 pm said:
I think his “Saladin” must be Saladin Ahmed, but I could be wrong about that.
P J Evans: I think his “Saladin” must be Saladin Ahmed, but I could be wrong about that.
Oh, no, I was genuinely referring to his “word salad”, not to his word “Saladin”. 😀
Maximilian:
It might help to know something about the venue of his essay: “Speculative Grammarian is the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.”
Pixel Scrolla: Appertained by discriminating filers everywhere.
Official beverage of the Wretched Hive
When you come down to it, that’s just special pleading. Every time one of the slated novels was eliminated, all the novels above it gained redistributed votes. Including TGE.
Rev. Bob, your argument you just posted sounded a fair bit, at least, like what I remembered. I’m sure I talked back to you some, but more in the seeking to understand mode.
Mark, so?
Meredith, that was one of the reasons to complain about the stale world before the Net. Too many dragons. I like dragons, bit it got way excessive.
Hoyt is currently indie and Baen, I think. I have not read that many of her books. I sometimes go over to her According to Hoyt when I get an Instapundit link that looks interesting. But, logically, she’d have to be talking about something earlier.
In between the Racist Homophobic insults and the flying whatever insults, I’ve not seen too many rightwingers at File 770. You have been civil, so thank you for that. Its rather like Hollywood, I suspect, in the old days. One out of three conservative actors in Hollywood gets to be President.
I did mention a number of books to you in my preening over my massive read pile. But, for LitRPG, about the best I’ve seen is the series Play to Live. For one thing, it really helped me see the Russian POV. No American author is going to casually give advice to young men….you need to learn a foreign language, so you can be ready if a job comes by, and you need to learn how to shoot, so if you see a policeman harassing someone, you can shoot the policeman. It was a Luck favors the Prepared Mind speech.
Even the editors at Baen would pass out if you tried to slip that past them.
Rev. Bob again, I read Fear no Evil and Number and Job a long time ago. Fear was probably the best of the three, but none of them were very good. Supposedly, once Heinlein got to be big enough to avoid editing, his work went downhill.
Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke were widely considered grandmasters, but it seems clear to me they benefitted from PR over decades.
The Koolaid was Coke. I’m a Southerner. We bow toward Atlanta. As to the rest, you’re gaslighting me, or attempting to do so, but with no particular style or verve. “There’s no gatekeepers. Nope, not a one. Its just that conservatives are really terrible writers. That’s the ticket.’ Yeah, okay, whatever dude.
Also, most folk are not compulsive copyeditors. Weiskoph is probably right that it does not matter that much. A good story that’s not boring matters far more. And for you, that’s not acceptable, but you’re in the minority.
Its not that Burger King is going to replace a fine dining establishment. Its that Panda Express, Chipotles, McD’s, Taco Bell, a hundred other famous names, and a bunch of one or two shop cafe’s are going to replace the college cafeteria. Your vaunted Establishment is not very good. Its boring. Its confined. Its overpriced. Its a …lot of bad things.
PJ Evans, you can keep selling that line. I’m not buying. And neither is any other conservative or independent or alt-right or even the flaked out weirdos or the anarchists. We can see with our own eyes.
Christopher Davis, a Ferrari is better because I can sell it, buy a truck, and have a lot of money left over. The real answer for a book would have to do something with wit, and deep insight, and accuracy to Reality.
Bruce, I’m sorry if I’ve been too polite and haven’t cursed out anyone. Heh.
Ctein, probably have something more to do with ‘those people are being uppity, pa.’
Bruce Baugh, this does happen. But I don’t see how that applies to bestselling authors.
I thought I was done. I wanted to be done. But some people here comment seemingly without actually having read what they’re commenting about.
Rev. Bob quoted me:
.
“@DKMK: ‘I don’t read Mr. Correia’s weblog, so I don’t know what he writes there’”
.
Rev. Bob said:
.
“You keep going back to that, as if your personal ignorance should affect what a convention does or excuse your continued defense of Correia’s multiyear Sad Puppies campaign to destroy an award revered by a large portion of not only fandom, but SF/F readers in general.”
.
In my very first sentences in my very first comment, I explicitly stated my disapproval of the Sad and Rabid Puppies campaigns, especially the latter neo-fascist one. I did so because I wanted to make clear that my personal disapproval of what the Origins committee had done had nothing to do with Puppyism. I disliked the Puppy campaigns intensely. I dislike any attempt to encourage slate voting for the Hugos. A Hugo vote is supposed to be an expression of what that individual voter thinks has been the best in that category for the year, the voter’s own opinion, not someone else’s. Slate voting violates the whole idea which the Hugo Award is supposed to represent.
Please don’t let your personal ignorance of what I actually wrote give you cause to think I wrote what I didn’t.
My statement that I have never read Mr. Correia’s weblog was, again, only to emphasize that I was a disinterested (*) party. I wasn’t defending anything Mr. Correia has done wrong or may have written with bad intent, either of that which I was aware (Sad Puppies) or that of which I wasn’t (his weblog). To repeat, I was trying to make clear that my concern here was what the convention did.
The ideas which I have seen here attributed to being in that weblog, of course I disapprove. But given that I do hate the ideas his words are said to represent, I haven’t read his writing them. I have no desire to put energy into hating a man who’s done nothing to me or those I most love just on other people’s say-so.
What prompted my concern was the desecration of the phrase “Guest of Honor” due to apparent cowardice in the face of a Twitter mob on the part of those committee members responsible (for the selection/invitation and then rescinding that invitation), and the embarrassment and emotional / reputational / possibly financial pain that would cause to writers, artists, musicians, and fans in the future, if that started to be considered a standard behavior option.
There’s an old fannish saying that anything fans do three times is an Established Tradition. This is the second.
Based on my own observation of other Twitter mobs and mobs on LiveJournal, I have little doubt that much of it was probably made up of people themselves too cowardly to give their right names, and/or didn’t read sf/f but liked to to use Twitter to dump on other people and/or whose spelling and grammar indicated they possibly didn’t have enough knowledge of the English language to read any of the books in question, and/or spam attacks by people who can’t help but cheat to create large numbers against whatever they’re attacking.
I am in no way saying that none of those who objected on Twitter weren’t real people, who read sf/f, who actually can read, and who are courteous, proper users of communication tools, although sometimes even such people can be swept up in the enthusiasm of the moment. It’s just that the composition of any mob is mostly not of people with good intentions. That’s why we disapprove of mobs in the first place.
.
(*) In the correct, dictionary definition of the word, not the common mis-usage. Look it up, especially the “Can be confused” part:
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/disinterested
Mike Glyer: When you come down to it, that’s just special pleading. Every time one of the slated novels was eliminated, all the novels above it gained redistributed votes. Including TGE.
I don’t think it’s special pleading. If the Puppies hadn’t bothered with the voting process, 3BP would have had less support due to the absence of slate voters. The number of slate voters who supported TGE was almost certainly marginal (as one Puppy put it, the protagonist was a “loser”).
I’m not contesting the legitimacy of 3BP’s win. I’m pointing out that Puppies unquestionably helped with that.
So vociferous objections constitute a “mob”, and so can be ignored. Presumably, if objections were sparse enough not to constitute a “mob”, they could also be ignored as isolated grumblings. That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
If I remember correctly, Hoyt treats Baen like it’s such an exception to the rest of traditional publishing that, much like Steve in The Monster Squad, it doesn’t count.
Well, ok, who do you think the gatekeepers are? I mean, specifically? And how are they doing it?
Lurkertype said…
Well I guess that’s eventually true once the messy copy drives out everyone who can’t stand it. But it does limit your growth potential…
Rev. Bob:
I had been told otherwise about the content of Tim Bolgeo’s e-zine, and if I had ever seen what you explicitly describe myself, I wouldn’t have wanted to ever see it.
I accept that you know better what was in it than what I had been told was in it. (“I swear, it was only one bad joke,” said one person without quoting it whose judgment at the time I trusted and who I asked for an opinion when I was told he received the e-zine.) I always prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, and from your direct quotation, I was mistaken about the ‘zine, which like Mr. Correia’s weblog, I have never read.
And to head accusations of hypocrisy off at the pass, I haven’t read here any direct quotations from Mr. Corriea’s weblog, only allegations. Were there any direct quotations and I missed them here? If not, since direct quotation has more importance in weighing opinion than simply “He said bad things!”, would anyone care to provide me education with direct quotation, since I’m such a supposed bad person for not having read it?
Getting back to the Archon kerfuffle, since you know Mr. Bolgeo personally, do you think he deserved the public slap in the face he received because of the self-anointed crusader from Chicago and his campaign? (I’m not exaggerating about him, I’m describing his
screamingwriting that I read myself in the now-defunct Archon Facebook group.) Was Mr. Bolgeo’s behavior (to your personal knowledge) ever a racist danger to anyone as was alleged, or was what you saw which he put in the ‘zine otherwise any justification in your opinion to publicly rescind his Fan Guest of Honorhood after it had been announced?I still think a public rescinding is a terribly embarrassing and harsh thing to do to a person and a bad precedent if there was no danger to anyone. I also wrote at the time that a teachable moment was ignored as programming about racism in sf/f and its effects would have been preferable over a public shaming and no good being done.
@Maximilian: I would describe TGE’s plot as a coming of age story though a non-traditional one in that there is no quest!
Obscure but funny, 10 point for Ravenclaw.
@JJ
MZB would be the logical choice, especially considering the other names he listed. But maybe Eric can confirm which author he meant.
David K. M. Klaus: I haven’t read here any direct quotations from Mr. Corriea’s weblog, only allegations.
You said that you are aware of the Puppy situation, but apparently it is only a very superficial awareness. Are you really expecting the people here to comb through several years of comments and educate you, because you weren’t paying attention back then?
The fourth comment on this thread was an example of a racist comment Correia made about one of his contemporaries, as well as being derogatory to fans.
Are you even actually reading the comments?
Baen have Lois McMaster Bujold and Tim Powers. This means war.
In some jurisdictions it could also mean that their product is not fit for purpose and a consumer buying one could be entitled to a refund.
(Anyone got a link to a source for the Wieskopf quote?)