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so many negative social media comments (on Twitter, particularly) that he announced Correia’s invitation has been rescinded.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 My invitation has been revoked.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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Eric Ashley:
You mean “Opera vita aeterna,” which title is just one of several craptastic abuses of Latin in that craptastic opus. It should be “Opera/opus [works/work] vitae aeternae [of an eternal life].” Like I said, I rate failures in basic Latin very very seriously, but then again I nearly threw Edith Wharton across the room when I discovered botched classical Greek in one of her stories…but it was on my Kindle so I forbore. Just to indulge myself in your own tropes, one would think your side would insist on a better handle on one of the mainstays of Western culture, but, ironically, your side seems as badly afflicted by the fallout from Vatican II as the rest of western culture.
Damn, I keep missing these memos! Seriously, I read one of his stories once a long time ago, chuckled a little, and have never had any desire to read any of his other stuff. He is much further off my radar than Honor Harrington (I’m a great fan of her).
@Red Wombat
All books are improved by the addition of “and then the weasels began.”
@Hampus Eckerman: In person, you struck me as a polite fellow. 🙂
In blog comments, I use the person’s handle (occasionally the first name, if using it within the comment, not just as the tag/intro). To me, it’s odd to say Mr./Mrs./Ms./etc. ___ here – it’s a blog comment. It’s like a con suite. 😛
Names/honorifics in person or on the phone in the U.S. – ugh one of those Everyone Is Different things. I see weird variations between companies and industries, and even cultural and gender variations. Really, no consistency anywhere. Even within a company, they may not be consistent.
(Where I work is casual: all first names, including the head of the company, including contractors, and including when I deal with Important People at Big Customers.)
@Maximilian: I would describe TGE’s plot as a coming of age story though a non-traditional one in that there is no quest!
I’m not so sure that’s true. Isn’t Maia’s quest to learn how to be the Emperor he wishes to be?
Ctein: I could be wrong, but I swear I’ve seen your disclaimer about Dragon Dictate in training for months, if not longer. Just how long does it take to get it right? Is it just a crappy product, or is voice recognition still that immature a technology that nobody is really getting it right reliably?
I was wondering that was well since I’ve seen it for at least a few years. I just figured it was a particularly difficult dragon.
rochrist: I’m not so sure that’s true. Isn’t Maia’s quest to learn how to be the Emperor he wishes to be?
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. He’s on a quest to master court intrigue, politics, and bureaucracy — a truly terrifying quest, indeed.
Poor sod. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. I cheered for him at the end. 🙂
JJ:
It’s not “difficult” to compare the two. It’s nonsensical to do so. Jesse Owens won the race by all rational, objective measures. He won according to the rules.
Just out of curiosity, what book are you claiming was “best” that year? By what measures?
Cassy B:
RedWombat, well, obviously you put them all on a track and fire a starting gun and the first one across the finish line is the best book. Isn’t that how it works?
Well ipso facto, the fastest book wins, doesn’t it? Nothing is faster than light, therefore all future Hugo winners will be published by Lightspeed Magazine.
No, wait, tachyons are faster than light, in which case, all your Hugos are belong to Tachyon Publications.
It’s really quite simple. (And I don’t make the rules.)
By jove, Soon Lee, I think you’ve cracked it! 😀
“Bigotry or the notion that Certain People Should Not Be Allowed to Do Certain Things is alive and well in America.”
I’m only an Australian, so I have to watch the madness that the American public arena has descended to from the outside (which is very much where I like it, thanks) but this, and the multiplicity of whines I have read from the right-leaning side of the blogosphere/media, completely confuses me. Their complaints are that left-wingers:
– won’t buy our books
– laugh at our jokes
– vote for our politicians
– have sex with us
– make movies about us
– praise us for our movies, presidential choices, MAGA hats, and cool pick up lines
– give us awards on demand
– support our life choices in every way
– won’t stop making fun of us
Which all boils down to a single unifying complaint – non right-leaning people just don’t want what the right-wing are offering.
Every solution to this according to the complainers, involves force. If they whine enough, protest enough, bully enough, shoot enough SJWs, ram their nominees for awards through by gaming the system, rape enough unwilling partners, run enough over in cars, starve enough, lock enough up in detention of some kind….
Then at last the non right wing hold outs will have to admit that yes, at last, they adore the right wing views, mentality and offerings, and will no longer resist.
What I want to know is:
– what is so appealing about left-wing awards, women, votes, move-makers, customers, that you would build a world where you can only have affection through brutality?
and
– would any of this work on the right-wing? And if not, why is it supposed to work on anyone else?
Forcing two kids to hang out together when they hate each other, never ends well. Same applies to adults, and adult adjacent activities. It’s not love if someone grits their teeth while telling you they love you.
Scrolly Droptables?
Eric Ashley:
Well, I’ll point out that this is a nice example that the various breeds of Puppy aren’t a lock-step hive-mind, since many of them greatly and vocally admire Heinlein. And it does sound like you picked none of the best Heinlein to read. His early stories are the best and most influential; I never liked much of his books past The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (and I never finished Stranger in a Strange Land, which was very much not my cup of coffee), though I did like Job a bit. However, my favorites are Double Star, “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag,” and slightly less many of his other short stories.
As for the Big Three in general, as a youngster age 12 or so, I found Clarke was far and away my favorite, especially his short stories (his novels never grabbed me), followed closely by Asimov; I didn’t like Foundation and the sequels, but I did like the robot stories a lot and some of the novels (End of Eternity and Currents of Space especially). Now I like Heinlein somewhat better than Asimov, but Clarke is still far and away my favorite of the Big Three, though only his short stories. I do find the revelations about his doings troublesome in the extreme, but that doesn’t show up in his stories, so I’ll gladly read them used.
Of course, to put my tastes in perspective, my favorites overall in SF are probably Sturgeon, Zelazny, and Tiptree, so I’m sure I violated several Puppy taboos right there; might even have caused a few faintings with the vapors. But I also love Silverberg and Wolfe and like Niven a lot, and they’re all conservatives, so I probably also followed some of the Puppy rules, right?
Dear Bruce and rochrist,
It’s there for self-defense. Voice recognition is, indeed, still an immature technology. Its accuracy rate is at best 99%, regardless of what software is doing the recognition, and usually it’s worse.
Dragon is not, in fact, a particularly great product, but there is nothing better. The best dictation tool I found, for authors, was IBM ViaVoice, but it’s long been orphaned.
The disclaimer alerts people to the possibility that what they are reading is NOT what I meant them to be reading. Sometimes the errors are harmless, but sometimes not. It is especially bad when it drops a negative, which can happen. E.g., sometimes it hears weren’t as were. Much hilarity ensues. Not.
I proofread everything before sending it out, but that doesn’t mean I catch every error. You think proofreading for typos is difficult? Try proofreading for voice-o’s! Every single mistake will be a real word. It’s even likely to be the correct part of speech; it will always be grammatical. It just won’t be right!
Why do I use it? Because I am a slow and crappy typist who can think and compose far faster than he can peck at keys. Voice transcription can keep up with my thoughts — I can write about three times faster this way.
– 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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I enjoy a Scalzi’s fiction but never got *that* into it until the space-opera one. Collapsing Empire sold me largely on the strength and… clarity? of the prologue. Loved it. Redshirts is surprisingly better than a glorified meta-joke about Star Trek has any right to be.
I’d go and re-read almost any random Vorkosigan book before going back to the Old Man series, though.
@Mister Dalliard & @Kip W, I’ve re-worded it some.
Tsundoku’s Law: “As a File770 thread grows longer, the probability of book recommendations approaches 1”
Dear Ann,
And a +1 to you!
Furthermore, their attempted co-option of the word “bigotry” is most simply and correctly described as vile. While my considered opinion is that Eric is butt-stupid enough to sincerely buy into it, most of these despicable folk are misusing it intentionally. Not just so they can attempt to claim victim status but because they get to diminish the moral evil that is true bigotry at the same time. E.g., equating racism with not getting a book contract (see the aforementioned Eric). They are malevolent and mendacious little weasels** who inflate their pathetically tiny injustices at the expense of genuine human injustice.
**(I say this with no insult meant to Ursula’s stoats, who are noble and honorable creatures.)
– 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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@Red Wombat
Well, it wouldn’t be the first piece of writing that suffered from (accidental or otherwise) overuse of weasel words.
Not even that non-traditional IMHO. I immediately think of two CJ Cherryh books with the same plot (Cyteen and Finity’s End).
An outsider is catapulted into a hostile society and has to win his/her place.
Like the Cherryh books the story ends when that place is found, even though one could happily read as much again detailing the Great Things they are now in a position to achieve.
Also, now that I think about it, Mansfield Park. Though at least in TGE and FE, the protagonist is likeable. Cyteen… she is at least admirable, even if abrasive as hell.
Much of the cast of The Wind in the Willows disagrees.
80$ + freight for second-hand! o.O
I guess I’ll have to wait for a while.
@Hampus: Are we talking Confession? Amazon UK shows New & Used editions for £6.81 plus £2.80 shipping (from the US to the UK). Don’t know if they’ll go to Sweden at the same cost. Can’t really see why they shouldn’t.
Sorry to say, they do not ship to Sweden. I’ll have to do some searching in our stores for used comics.
Nobody cursing me for being honest in stating I haven’t seen Larry Correia’s weblog has bothered to provide the URL of it. If someone provided it, I would be a hypocritical asshole if I didn’t read any of it myself. Since nobody has provided it, I can’t see why it’s wrong for me to regard any of those cursing me as hypocritical assholes for not writing the URL so I could read any of it myself.
In the meantime, based on my own current knowledge and belief, it is no more fair or appropriate for a Twitter/Facebook mob to frighten a convention committee or for a convention committee to be frightened into dropping Larry Correia as an already-announced Guest of Honor than it is fair or appropriate for a Twitter/Facebook mob to frighten a convention committee or for a convention committee to be frightened into dropping [cited only as one potential example of victimization] B______ W_ as an already-announced Guest of Honor.
Opinions are always subject to change depending on the obtaining of knowledge not currently available.
If I ever do read Mr. Correia’s weblog, maybe I’ll think he writes with sugar plums and candy canes. Maybe I’ll think he writes like the genetically mis-copied clone of a bastard son of T_______ B____ aka V__ D__. I as a matter of ethic have no opinion about it until I’ve seen it, or have read direct quotations from it forwarded to me by a source I trust to be honest.
This is what everyone cursing me (including the coward who spews venom not under his honest name but with the anonymous letters “JJ”) have failed to understand.
@ Mister Dalliard:
A candy-coloured Dyson sphere? How unexplainably awesome! How much paint did it take? And did you build the sphere yourself, or is it a custom order?
Oh, you mean the Dyson vacuum cleaner? Not nearly as cool.
@ Hampus:
If it’s comics, would it be worth visiting Staffars?
@ Ingvar: Yes, the vacuum cleaner. Sorry. I know it sucks.
Some models are mostly spherical.
@MrDalliard,
Hitting someone with a vacuum cleaner at least has the advantage of adding a new dimension to the phrase “sucker punch”.
@JJ:
I’m sure that helps, a lot. I know there were writers whose stuff I dreaded having to work with. It was especially fraught for me because I had to pay them with thanks and the reminder they were serving the community. That meant I had to deal with a lot of grief from people who were sure their writing was perfect.
But let me delve into the mind of Toni Weisskopf, who I have never met or talked to, and see if there might be an additional reason for Bujold’s nice clean books.
If I were Toni Weisskopf, and I knew some of my writers wanted heavy editing and some wanted a very light touch, and I knew there was roughly the same division among those writers’ readers, I would put people on those books who would do that kind of job for that particular book, writer, and audience.
So perhaps Bujold’s books get the treatment she wants them to have from the people at Baen who work on them, and perhaps the people who work on them are doing a different job than whoever takes (an example I’m making up which is surely false*) Larry Corriera’s manuscript and dumps it right into an ARC without even looking at it.
Just a possibility, which makes business sense, for you to consider.
*But plausible, if you’ve only read that first Monster Hunter book, which I DNF’d on GP. I’ve sampled later stuff–he or his editor or someone got better.
I’ve not actually read it, but read so much *about* it, that i’m left wondering: is Redshirts to Star Trek what Rosencrantz And Gildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet?
Ferret Bueller on May 15, 2018 at 11:38 pm said:
(…) I nearly threw Edith Wharton across the room when I discovered botched classical Greek in one of her stories…but it was on my Kindle so I forbore.
Million-dollar idea: an AR app that lets you virtually fling a book across a room.
Yep, one of the places I intend to visit.
– “’There’s an old fannish saying that anything fans do three times is an Established Tradition. This is the second.’”
.
“No, it’s at least the fourth, to my knowledge, in modern times (for the purposes of this conversation, anything that happened in the previous century is ancient history)**. That doesn’t make it a common practice. There’s a good reason for that. It’s damned embarrassing for the concom.”
Oh, yes, I had forgotten convention W_____; I don’t know the other although I remain curious.
I don’t remember my exact wording at the time, but I wrote something to the effect that a teachable moment was passed up by W_____, which could have offered programing dealing with sane discussion of how science fiction illustrated the real world issues over which the committee and their chosen guest had such large differences, and the roles of women in some of the areas they later said bothered them, differences of which they would have been easily aware if they read the invited Guest’s books or simply looked at her LiveJournal.
I don’t recall the W_____ committee being particularly embarrassed, but rather self-righteous, but as I said before, I am not omniscient, and maybe they were embarrassed when and where I wasn’t looking.
They certainly created a great example of the otherwise almost non-existent “SJWs” which Puppies, GamerGaters, and Breitbart imagined into their created reality. It was as if the W_____ committee wanted to be exactly what the propaganda usually falsely described.
.
“I think your concern is misplaced. You’ve been focusing on what happens to the GoH as if that’s the most important aspect of the problem. It’s not. The convention is being put on for the attendees, not the guest of honor nor the concom. The attendees’s experience is paramount. When the concom and/or the guests start to think that their experience is more important, you’ve got a problem. It’s been known to happen.”
.
My concerns are that this doesn’t become a standard of behavior because it’s dishonest and diminishes the “honor” of being invited. How can any convention committee be trusted if they treat a GoH invitee this way? It diminishes what the honor means to others they invite as well.
Also, it’s an invitation to 4-chan types to try to disrupt a convention with a directed attack for the lulz. Any convention committee which does this has invited the worst of the worst net denizens to try it on them again to see if it can be forced again, and on other convention committees they perceive as vulnerable, whether those committees actually are or not.
It isn’t about how the Guest of Honor feels, it’s about a violation of the social contract within the fan community, about the social customs established nearly eighty years ago when conventions first began having Guests of Honor. It wasn’t supposed to be something done lightly, or casually canceled before the convention began.
Does the Sad Puppy mess make Mr. Correia so radioactive now that he doesn’t deserve to be invited to any conventions? That insufficient time has passed for letting the past be past? Has he expressed regret over the slate-making? None of that is for me to say. I do see schadenfreude here that it happened to him, and schadenfreude is a social behavior disorder which approaches the level of mental illness. And I don’t know how much difference between a regular con and a gaming con there is to make his attendance more acceptable and positive for the latter over a regular convention. I just know this has been a terrible precedent to follow and further continue.
Yes, certainly conventions are places for fans, to celebrate what we are and not put on just to give egoboo to the guests. They’re not there to insult and embarrass the guests, either, or to become targets for 4- and 8-chan.
.
“Which, if their assessment has been correct, means that a whole bunch of attendees will have a less good time than they would have otherwise….”
.
Will they? Will his presence affect the enjoyment of the gaming? Will it make for a worse convention in and of itself? These are questions which I suspect weren’t fully considered given the panic and fear which took over.
@David K. M. Klaus: That’s treading awfully close to the Geek Social Fallacies.
And most times, schadenfreude is the only closure we’ll ever get.
@David K. M. Klaus
I don’t think I’m going to be paying attention to you after this.
@Kurt Busiek
I went with the generic term children’s libraries accidentally. Regionally here that does default to school libraries. The county library told me that they don’t purchase that many children’s books because they expect the school libraries to have a substantial collection. Also they tend to use donations as books for resale to raise funds and not add to the collection. However the poorer school districts in the county don’t have big school libraries thus the need for donations. I know in another state I lived in the school libraries were quite small and the kids were sent to the town library to get books. This is why I want to talk to an existing organization because they will have a much better idea were the donations will be kept in the collection and do the most good.
I love the suggestions so far as to what to include. I will provide updates on what I find out in the pixel scrolls unless there is a better place to post them.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I am seeing a number of people who have experienced consequences in fandom as a result of their behavior, expressing sympathy and defending other people who have experienced consequences as a result of their behavior.
Because of course, those people never think that the consequences they experienced were justified; they were always the innocent victims of “political correctness” or “oversensitivity”.
I don’t see any reason to believe that rescinding invitations to Guests of Honor is going to become the norm. ConCarolinas and Origins Game Fair have a huge amount of egg on their face right now, because their failure to do due diligence on GoHs has put them in a position where their only choices consisted of “bad” and “worse”.
Just as the various harassment fiascos have resulted in increased duty-of-care on the part of conventions, I think that these GoH FUBARs will spur a greater awareness in fandom of the importance of vetting potential guests before issuing invitations. I think that a lot of conrunners are taking note; I’m seeing discussions in various places where conrunners talk about these things.
It’s a continual learning process for fandom. Sometimes the same mistakes are being made by several different organizations before the publicity is wide enough and the lesson finally sinks in enough for processes and procedures to change pretty much across the board.
JJ has been here for years. Your “hiding” claim tells every user here who doesn’t use a full legal name that they are unwelcome. I reject that and I think most of the community here would as well. Just because some of us choose to be identifiable doesn’t mean everyone should be obligated to do it.
You wouldn’t have to ask this if you acquainted yourself with the facts of how he’s acted. You keep faulting people for their negative reactions to his behavior without looking at how he’s behaved. The blog posts where he attacked Mike Glyer and others are still online. Go read them.
He’s apologized for nothing. Instead, when challenged over his antics he usually doubles down and increases the personal abuse.
They set a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. And then the weasels began.
A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard. And then the weasels began.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13. And then the weasels began.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. And then the weasels began.
Checks out.
@Bruce Baugh
Seems legit.
Geez, Bruce, I’d managed to forget the scene where weasels in the echo chamber around Deckard’s head squealed into his ears till melted wax seared his tympanum.
re Honorifics:
Back in the glory days of AZAPA, the newly minted OE, Ugly John Carver, wrote an editorial introduction to an issue to answer the thorny question of how to address him. I don’t remember the exact numbers, and may have other details wrong (that’s a paraphrase of this tattoo on the back of my hand here, when I remember to look at it), but some of it went like this. In order of preference:
1) Ghod
2) Exalted One
3) Ugly John
4) Mr. Carver
5) U.J.
…
15) “That’s the man, Officer!”
16) The Late Mr. Carver
GOOD TO KNOW.
David K.M. Klaus:
I’ve been using fannish forums since AZAPA, and have been dealing with names since the 70s. I know (for text-only values of the word) people who use their real names and who I have met personally. I met you at Iggy, for instance. I know people who use their real names and who I have never met, but are known to people I’ve known for years or decades. I know people who use what look like real names, but I don’t actually know if they are, and I’ve never investigated. I know people who use what look like pseuds or partial names (like mine—staying with my last initial most of the time isn’t exactly a serious security measure, but it’s like a bike lock that will make stealing my bike a little more work than it would have been if I’d simply left it out somewhere where it was the most appealing bike to take).
I tend to trust a number of people who are in those last two classes about as much as those in the second, and even some in the first, provided I’ve been seeing that handle or name for some period of time, and provided it’s clearly been the same person (or a very clever syndicate/dog/three elves in a trenchcoat/whatever) the whole time. Handles can be as certain an indicator of brand™ as true names, when used in good faith.
How do you know about good faith if you’re entering a forum you haven’t been frequenting? Good question, Kip! I guess you can lurk for a while, or you can read back issues, or you can Google it. You can sometimes tell by how other members respond to them. At Making Light, you can click on “See All By” and review a commenter’s history. Here, you can click on a name (if it’s in blue) and see that commenter’s blog, or click on a Gravatar and see (in my case) a screen that stays blank for a long time and eventually disgorges both my blogs, one of which is really meant for my family. Huh.
Anyway, JJ is not “hiding.” Camestros is not “hiding.” When I use only my last initial instead of “Williams,” I am not “hiding.” -2 points for your imputation, even though you were a genuinely nice and caring person that time back in Phoenix. I’ll give you one back for that. If you wish to deduct one from me for being patronizing, I guess I can take it.
Kendall:
“In person, you struck me as a polite fellow.”
Indeed, few are more polite than someone who is worried that they are not being polite. The ones to watch out for are the ones who are abs convinced they’re as polite as they will ever need to be.
James Moar:
Authors shouldn’t write books for the benefit of the characters. That’s where Mary Sues come from.
Kip W: Here, you can click on a name (if it’s in blue) and see that commenter’s blog
… or you can do a simple Google search:
“by JJ:” site:file770.com
“JJ on * at * said:” site:file770.com
“Bill Ruhsam” site:file770.com
“The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it. It was minus fifteen degrees Celsius and a storm had passed just hours before. The snow stretched smooth in the wan sunrise, only a few tracks leading into a nearby ice- block building. A tavern. Or what passed for a tavern in this town. And then the weasels began.”
Yup. That makes it much better. And enough more SFnal to cancel out the tavern in the snow.
I wonder if snowflakes have pet weasels? maybe that needs to be investigoated.
JJ
I said Google! It’s up there in that huge mass of text I disgorged up there, somewhere. It would have been shorter, but I started by adding it to a comment I’d already posted, and the edit window slammed shut on it, and it came out longer the second time.
Kip W: I said Google!
Yes, but if you just generally Google my nym, you get a bunch of hits for some nobody named Abrams. 😀