Pixel Scroll 1/25/18 Side Effects Of Pixel Can Include Enlarged Mt. TBRs

(1) CELEBRATING A HALF CENTURY OF BRITISH COMICS FANDOM. Rob Hansen also sent a link to Blimey! The Blog of British Comics where you can get a free download of Fanscene, “a monster (300+ page) one-off fanzine done to celebrate 50 years of comics fandom in the UK.”

It’s only available in .pdf form and download links can be found here: “Celebrate the 50th anniversary of UK fandom with FANSCENE!”

Rob Hansen’s piece starts on p.133 in part 2 of the download links.

(2) CAST A GIANT SHADOW. The members of the actual 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award jury are:

Dave Hutchinson, Gaie Sebold, Paul March-Russell, Kari Maund, Charles Christian; and Andrew M. Butler (chair)

(3) BADLY MISUNDERSTOOD. Cara Michelle Smith explains “Just Because Voldemort Assembled an Army of Warlocks to Destroy All Muggles, It Doesn’t Mean He’s ‘Anti-Muggle’” at McSweeney’s.

Look, I know how things might seem. When it comes to being sensitive to Muggles, Lord Voldemort doesn’t have the best track record, and now he’s gone and mobilized an army of 3,000 warlocks, witches, and wizards and instructed them to destroy any and all Muggles they can find. I also acknowledge that he’s drummed up a fair amount of anti-Muggle sentiment throughout the wizarding world, with the way he’s referred to them as “filthy vermin” and “shitheads from shithole lands.” But did it ever occur to you that despite the Dark Lord having vowed that the streets will soon run red with Muggle blood, Voldemort might as well be, like, the least anti-Muggle guy you’ve ever met?

Let me tell you a little something about the Dark Lord: He loves Muggles. Seriously, the guy’s obsessed with them. They’re all he talks about. He can’t get enough of the funny way Muggles are always babbling about things that are completely foreign to wizards like him — things like student debt, and being able to afford healthcare, and not being systematically murdered by people more powerful than them.

(4) STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE. And McSweeney’s contribute Drake Duffer offers a list of “Things That Begin a Sentence That Indicate You May Need to Refrain From Finishing That Sentence”.

I won’t steal any of his thunder, but you’re going recognize all his examples.

(5) JUNIOR STAR TREK. This video has been on YouTube since 2008, however, it’s news to me!

Back in 1969 ten-year-old Peter (“Stoney”) Emshwiller created his own version of a Star Trek episode using his dad’s 16mm camera. The, um, fabulous special effects were created by scratching on the film with a knife and coloring each frame with magic markers. The movie won WNET’s “Young People’s Filmmaking Contest,” was shown on national television, and, all these years later, still is a favorite at Star Trek Conventions.

 

(6) GOING DOWN TO STONY END. The “Oldest Modern Human Fossil Ever Discovered Outside Africa Rewrites Timeline of Early Migration” reports Newsweek.

An international research team working in Israel has discovered the oldest-known modern human bones ever found outside the African continent: an upper jawbone, including teeth, dated to between 175,000 and 200,000 years old. It shows humans left Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than we had thought.

The scientists unearthed the fossil at Misliya Cave, one in a series of prehistoric caves on Israel’s Mount Carmel, according to a Binghamton University press release. This region of the Middle East was a major migration route when humans spread out from African during the Pleistocene. A paper describing the findings was published in the journal Science.

“Misliya is an exciting discovery,” co-author Rolf Quam, an anthropology professor at Binghamton University, said in the press release. “It provides the clearest evidence yet that our ancestors first migrated out of Africa much earlier than we previously believed. It also means that modern humans were potentially meeting and interacting during a longer period of time with other archaic human groups, providing more opportunity for cultural and biological exchanges.”

(7) CORRECTION. Rob Hansen sent a correction about the date of Ron Ellik’s death: “I’ve subsequently been informed I got the date of his death wrong and that he died not on the 25th but on the 27th. sigh

Andrew Porter also sent a link to Fanac.org’s scan of his 1968 newzine SF Weekly #215 with complete coverage. Ellik was killed in an auto accident in Wisconsin while moving to St. Paul, MN. He had been planning to be married shortly after the move.

(8) HARRIS OBIT. Mark Evanier paid tribute to the late comics editor in “Bill Harris R.I.P.” at News From ME.

Comic book writer-editor Bill Harris died January 8 at the age of 84.

…One of his innovations when he was in comics was that he was one of the first editors to recognize that there was a promotional value in comic book fanzines. Many of the early zines of the sixties featured letters from Bill, telling fandom what would be forthcoming in the comics he edited. Few others in comics at the time saw any value in that but Harris predicted correctly the growing impact that fanzines and comic conventions would have on the field.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Chip Hitchcock found a medical examiner working in a fairy tale in today’s Bizarro.
  • Chip also spotted a hero who’s made a career change in Bliss.
  • Mike Kennedy saw a kind of Fountain of Youth in Baldo.

(10) WORD. Vox.com has a post “Remembering Ursula Le Guin, Queen of Sass”:

And in 2016, More Letters of Note, Shaun Usher’s most recent collection of important letters written by important people, unearthed another classic Le Guin smackdown. In 1971 she was asked to blurb Synergy: New Science Fiction, Volume 1, the first of a four-volume anthology series that aimed to publish “the most innovative, thought-provoking, speculative fiction ever.” Le Guin was less than amused by the request:

Dear Mr Radziewicz,

I can imagine myself blurbing a book in which Brian Aldiss, predictably, sneers at my work, because then I could preen myself on my magnanimity. But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of a new series and hence presumably exemplary of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.

Yours truly,

Ursula K. Le Guin

(11) DENIAL. JDA cannot allow himself to believe that his behavior rather than his politics provokes the criticism directed his way, and so, after Jennifer Brozek spoke out about him (some quoted in yesterday’s Scroll) he blamed others for pressuring her to express those opinions: “How Terrible Gossip Destroys Friendships – My Story With Jennifer Brozek” [link to copy at the Internet Archive.]

(12) APING APES. Scientists in China successfully cloned monkeys, which is the first time primates have been cloned — “Scientists successfully clone monkeys; are humans up next?” Remember Mark Twain’s story about why God created the monkey – “He found out where he went wrong with Man.”

The Associated Press also did a video report:

For the first time, researchers have used the cloning method that produced Dolly the sheep to create two healthy monkeys, bringing science an important step closer to being able to do the same with humans.

From New Scientist — “Scientists have cloned monkeys and it could help treat cancer”.

The female long-tailed macaques represent a technical milestone. It should make it possible to create customisable and genetically uniform populations of monkeys, which could speed up treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer. But the breakthrough will inevitably raise fears that human cloning is closer than ever.

The monkeys hold such huge potential because they all inherit exactly the same genetic material, says the Chinese team that cloned them.

This would enable scientists to tweak genes the monkeys have that are linked to human disease, and then monitor how this alters the animals’ biology, comparing it against animals that are genetically identical except for the alterations. It could accelerate the hunt for genes and processes that go wrong in these diseases, and ways to correct them, the team says

Kendall sent these links with a comment: “Reading elsewhere about how some fruits and veggies have been quasi-ruined by doing this, I got a little nervous reading the New Scientist say, ‘It should make it possible to create customisable and genetically uniform populations of monkeys, which could speed up treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer.’ Even though they’re not talking about replacing the world’s monkeys with one strain of monkey. Still, this got a little dystopian-animal-cloning idea whirring around in my head.”

(13) HARDER THEY FALL. Here is the I Kill Giants trailer.

From the acclaimed graphic novel comes an epic adventure about a world beyond imagination. Teen Barbara Thorson (Madison Wolfe, The Conjuring 2) is the only thing that stands between terrible giants and the destruction of her small town. But as she boldly confronts her fears in increasingly dangerous ways, her new school counselor (Zoe Saldana, Guardians of the Galaxy) leads her to question everything she’s always believed to be true. I Kill Giants is an intense, touching story about trust, courage and love from the producers that brought you Harry Potter.

 

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Kendall, Rob Hansen, Carl Slaughter, JJ, Will R., and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

124 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/25/18 Side Effects Of Pixel Can Include Enlarged Mt. TBRs

  1. (4) Hey, some of those sentences can end well! I spotted at least one that I would happily conclude with ‘… I live under a mountain of crippling debt’ and another that could easily end with ‘… should go to jail.’

  2. (5) JUNIOR STAR TREK.

    Peter “Stoney” Emshwiller is, of course, the son of Nebula, PKD, and WFA Award-winning SFF author Carol and Hugo Award-winning artist Ed Emshwiller, as well as an actor, novelist, and essayist in his own right,

  3. God, 11 is just pitiful. If you read between the lines of disingenuousness (disingenuity?), harassment and projection, there’s a story* of a guy whose career was starting up quite nicely until he had whatever bizarre marketing epiphany that led him down this route, and has now alienated everyone who was working with him for the sake of a heavily politicised audience which, as has been noted when representative individuals pop up here, doesn’t seem to read much. There are literally zero winners from this.

    *The story, once these things are removed, is about three paragraphs long and mostly quotes.

  4. 11) does seem to be the closest he’s yet come to showing that he’s being discriminated against because of his politics. While “Leave the politics at the door, you’re going out to other people’s spaces to talk about the work” seems like the kind of advice that only an utter twit would ignore, it at least shows that people were aware that his politics would alienate half of his audience.

  5. In reading news, Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire removed the socks from my feet and placed them in an orbit somewhere around Saturn. Seriously, if not for a random insult towards dogs at the end, I’d assume she’d been harvesting my thoughts to find the ultimate combination of things I personally relate to. Ocean worlds! Fat-but-athletic girl rep! Baking philosophy! YES. And it’s packaged in a way that’s probably still enjoyable even if you’re not me.

    (If I ever find my own door, it will be basically the world we live in, except there will be less violent conflict and discrimination, climate change will have been addressed, and that world’s McGuire will be a dog person…)

  6. (11) DENIAL.

    Well, that’s long. And wrong. What’s notable is that pretty much every time he bothers to provide evidence it actually contradicts what he says it is.

    e.g. The unnamed assistant says

    Not because of your opinion, but because you were disrepectful on someone elses page.

    Which he claims was “The first warning I would be blacklisted for having the wrong politics” when she’s specifically said it’s about disrespect not opinion.

    Or when Cat Rambo says

    “Your e-mails are unwanted and unsolicited. This and any further e-mails will be forwarded to my attorney.”

    He describes it as “pure vitriol”. I mean, does this leading author even know what “vitriol” means, because a calm request to stop is pretty much the opposite.

  7. From Jon Del Arroz’s blog:

    She called my writing “egregiously stupid”, which, in her capacity as SFWA president, going and calling a debut author’s blog that is a conflict of interest at the very least. It was hurtful as well! Here I was just trying to sell books, and SFWA’s president is condemning me on a gossip site? Her entire job is to promote and foster the science fiction market, in theory. I took exception to this and we had a couple fights on twitter. This was Cat’s first time attacking me, and it was out of the blue …

    Del Arroz keeps misleading people about Cat Rambo. She didn’t attack him. She didn’t attack his blog. Here are the facts.

    On June 8, 2017, Del Arroz wrote a blog post in which he claimed that the “old guard” in science fiction publishing has this mentality:

    You can only buy fiction at 6 cents a word. You can only sell fiction at 6 cents a word. You must wait for an agent to give you the nod and take 15-25% of whatever they can sell it for — if it can sell at all. Scoff at anything else. Scoff at everything else. If the gatekeepers don’t buy it, revise revise revise and resubmit! Keep going in the slog, keep not making money, keep getting outraged. Repeat.

    In a discussion on File 770, Rambo made this comment in response:

    The egregious stupidity of pretending anyone is saying writers should only be paid 6 cents and never more made me snort while I was drinking coffee and that hurt.

    This is obviously not a personal attack. It’s a rebuke of an opinion Del Arroz expressed on his blog. I think most people on File 770 wouldn’t even regard Rambo’s comment as particularly harsh, yet he’s continuing to act as if he suffered grievous personal harm because she wrote a single sentence mocking an idea he expressed on his blog.

  8. @Contrarius:

    11) What is it with these guys and their talents for self-delusion??

    ISTM that certain political strains in the US concluded a few decades ago that they could use the public’s delusions (especially about being abused by their fellow citizens and endangered by the rest of the world) better than it they could its rationality, and has been encouraging delusiveness (delusionality?) ever since. We’re not yet at the stage of Knight’s The Analog Men (aka Hell’s Pavement), in which there weren’t enough sane people to keep basic services going without a frequent dose of delusion, but we’re trending there. (And Knight was talking primarily about delusions relating to greed; I wonder whether he ever reconsidered that idea when he was old.)

    @Arifel: is it that JdA’s remaining fans don’t read much, or that they only read very narrowly?

  9. @Chip Hitchcock I may be ungenerous for believing the first (on average, happy to allow for exceptions), but honestly it’s not a case where I feel super bad about that.

  10. I Kill Giants looks like a lot of fun, but I’ve never liked the theme of ‘fighting to save the day but everyone thinks you are crazy’. Hope it isn’t as prevalent as the trailer makes it seem.

    JdA’s blogpost- wow. The only reason he can think of for someone speaking out against his harassment campaign(s) is if he is, ‘a threat to their careers’, and not, you know, being against harassment.

    And The Federalist as ‘center-right’?! Actual LOL.

  11. (11) I think “pitiful” sums it up well.

    Also… where does he see himself being maligned in Brozek’s blog? Or mentioned at all?

    I read Brozek’s post the other day when it was linked here. I also read the SFWA blog post to which her post linked. In all of that… I saw no mention of JdA.

    His raging about how she has done him wrong with her post makes about as much sense as if you or I (also not mentioned in her post) raged that she maligned us in it.

  12. @rcade

    Well picked up there. I suspect that any of his claims – if scrutinised – would fall apart like a house of cards, but of course his tactic is to yell “oppression” so quickly and about so many things that no-one has the time or energy to deal with them all.

  13. @Chip —

    “is it that JdA’s remaining fans don’t read much, or that they only read very narrowly?”

    My impression is that it’s both. I have no firm evidence, but from talking to various pup-types, I get the vague impression that they think reading 10-12 books a year is an impressive feat.

    I remember one exchange with Phantom in 2017, around September or October, in which I mentioned that I had already read more than 100 books since the beginning of the year. He seemed extremely skeptical, and made some indirect reference to asking for my purchase receipts as proof. When I mentioned that all he’d have to do to verify my claim would be to check out my Goodreads book lists and reviews, he shut up pretty quick.

    These guys don’t seem to understand that a lot of sff fans READ.

  14. Anne Goldsmith LOL

    I was seriously taken aback about the Paris one. I guess I am odder than I thought because I like hearing travel stories and looking at vacation photos. I also like baby pictures and pet pictures. 🙂

  15. I suspect that any of his claims – if scrutinised – would fall apart like a house of cards, but of course his tactic is to yell “oppression” so quickly and about so many things that no-one has the time or energy to deal with them all.

    That does seem to be the goal, and it appears to work on a few people from the looks of his Twitter feed and blog comments. I suspect that some of the people spreading his accusations on their own blogs don’t care whether they’re factual or not. They just want to nurse their favorite grievances.

    I’ve posted a tweet about this, for people who might be misled by Del Arroz’s claims about Rambo.

  16. @rcade: “It’s a rebuke of an opinion Del Arroz expressed on his blog.”

    Heck, I’d say it’s not even that! It’s a rebuke of someone misinterpreting or misrepresenting reality. He made a foolish claim about what a group of people believe, and she pointed out how stupid it is to say that. Because it’s simply not true!

    – – – – –

    As far as the rest, I quit reading his silly post when I hit the part where the publicist essentially said, “Dude, you’re hurting your own book launch. Please don’t. At the very least, please put it on hold!” and he took it as being blacklisted for his politics. GAH! She’s begging you not to shoot yourself in the foot right before your book launch, and you can agree or not, but it’s not unreasonable to tell you that. You’re just hurting yourself and your publisher, and why would you want to do that?! Le sigh.

    Also, it’s quite hypocritical to claim you’re being attacked, blacklisted, etc. for your politics . . . and in the same post, insult your editor for her politics! Gah x 2!

    The stupid, it burns.

  17. Arifel: has now alienated everyone who was working with him for the sake of a heavily politicised audience

    The other day, when someone asked the name of the artist* who did the cover (which I actually think is very good) for his steampunk novel, he refused to reveal their name because, he said, that person is no longer speaking to him.

    * the artiist’s name is Shawn King, and his art can be seen here

  18. @NickPheas: The advice JdA got was not that he should stop expressing his political opinion on his own wall – just that going to other people’s walls who were expressing fear of the upcoming political landscape and proclaiming that they were wrong and unhelpful for doing so and that HE’s the only one being threatened was not going to be helpful to his book sales. IMO, regardless of your political persuasions, that’s dickish behavior.

  19. So yesterday I decided we need a new category of Puppies, either Stalker Puppies or Creeper Puppies. It just fits how their obsessive behavior is less about politics, abs more about personally stalking people.

    The conspiracy to limit authors’ pay seems to be one of the foundations of the __ Puppies, as a justification for being independent. Of course as a founding member of the Creeper Puppies, JDA mainly uses this as an excuse to creep on people. Like he does with anything else. I think it’s a good thing the people he’s obsessed with live outside of easy physical reach.

  20. So yesterday I decided we need a new category of Puppies, either Stalker Puppies or Creeper Puppies. It just fits how their obsessive behavior is less about politics, abs more about personally stalking people.

    The conspiracy to limit authors’ pay seems to be one of the foundations of the __ Puppies, as a justification for being independent. Of course as a founding member of the Creeper Puppies, JDA mainly uses this as an excuse to creep on people. Like he does with anything else.

    As a charter member of Team Dog, I vote that we find another name for them than puppies. What did puppies ever do to you??

  21. The long, dark Scroll of the soul.

    In other news: The HATE-kickstarter I mentioned a little while ago is underperforming all other miniature games from that company. Appently SJW-hating boardgamers (commenting gleeful on the campaign) are not invested enough to spend a lot of money on a game…

  22. @Peer

    It may be worth noting that the “underperforming” project has still already tripled its goal, and seems to be on track to break $1m per BackerTracker’s numbers (which are usually more accurate that KickTraq, which shows a trend towards $1.5m).

  23. JJ on January 26, 2018 at 9:51 am said:

    Arifel: has now alienated everyone who was working with him for the sake of a heavily politicised audience

    The other day, when someone asked the name of the artist* who did the cover (which I actually think is very good) for his steampunk novel, he refused to reveal their name because, he said, that person is no longer speaking to him.

    That is really sad, as is his attack on Brozek. There are all sorts of people who have given him genuine, tangible help with his career in terms of making his work better (again: Star Realms-Rescue Run is not bad) and his going out of his way to alienate them. Then find writers he admires (apparently genuinely) and alienate them also.

    The payoff in attention and approval from one segment f society keeps delivering him a misleading affirmation of his strategy.

  24. Soooo….a couple of qualifiers.

    – We (USAians, at least) live in a society that favors bombast and sarcasm over a serious discussion. This is not progress.

    – Having seen some of the shenanigans behind the JdA curtain, he isn’t worth defending.

    That being said, there is a bit of hypocrisy on display. Can anyone (aside from me, natch) claim that they would not have been ebullient in response to a Clinton victory in the election? Would anyone have thought to be a bit restrained in expressing their pleasure at such an outcome?

    Or would it have all been “booyah!”, “woot, woot!” and “in your face!”? Not a good…or particularly unifying…look after that candidate wrote off half of the country as “deplorable”, IMHO. I’ve no doubt that JdA didn’t restrain himself, in any meaningful measure, in his response to the election.

    I take JdA’s allegation that his journey began with one (or perhaps two) person responding inappropriately to his open and enthusiastic support for Mr. Trump seriously. I believe that there is more than a kernel of truth there. Sure, the con wanted to change up their lineup to keep it fresh. But if one of the organizers had a personal ax to grind, what better way to abuse their position than by “innocently” boosting JdA to the top of the list to be delayed for a later year.

    His continuing responses as things have unfolded…multifarious trollery writ large…were the worst choices he could have made because it undermines any meager sympathy that might have been extended his way. I certainly don’t blame the SFWA for not wanting his flavor of trouble in their tent.

    Has anyone read his book? Is it any good? I’m unlikely to read it as steampunk isn’t really my thing.

    FWIW, I can manage 40-50 books a year. Just too many other things going on in my life.

    In other news, I recently finished The Fell Sword from Miles Cameron. It’s better than the first installment in a couple ways. But it is in the middle of the series, so part of it is setting things up for later books. The series is worth recommending. I regret that I won’t get to the fifth book in the series that was published in 2017 so that I could add it to my Hugo nom list this year.

    I started Devil’s Night Dawning from Damien Black. This is an SPFBO finalist in the current competition. It is a finalist for good reason. Damien has done a fantastic job with world building and storytelling. It is fast moving with multiple POVs.

    Regards,
    Dann

  25. @Stewart:

    @contrarius: When I was a teenager I read 10-12 books a week.

    So did I — although being stuck in a small city with nothing to do but study (not much), build sets, and haunt the library had something to do with it; a lot of us did things as teenagers that we aren’t up to now. My log for 2017 has 214 books finished (and another ~dozen skimmed or punted) — but being retired helps with that. (I estimate I was doing around 100/year when I was working.)

    Speaking of books, a brief review: I just finished Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares, which I’d been reading in small chunks after encountering a string of stories running further into horror (or very dark fantasy) than I tend to be comfortable with. As usual in Datlow’s books (but uncommonly for themed original anthologies in general), I recognize almost all of the authors and felt all of the stories were well-written; some writers seemed a little too constrained by Carroll’s great inventiveness, trying to fit too closely to Wonderland, but several took enough liberties to make good stories without losing connection to the original. I especially liked the ones from Seanan McGuire (the Cheshire Cat carelessly comes out of the rabbit hole and lives as a human — for all that she puts Sir Toby through, McGuire seems to me less flippant and more heartfelt at shorter lengths), and Katherine Vaz (a gut punch without being horror, or even any kind of fantasy). Delia Sherman’s was fun, and Catherynne Valente’s was fascinating, especially since I’ve bounced off much of her work. Books like these are why Datlow got the short-form editing Hugo last year.

  26. What strikes me about JDA is how pathetically eager he is for positive affirmations. He begs people to say that he’s a good person and a great friend. Any negative feedback, no matter how justified or mild, is an attack on him deserving of massive retaliation.

    He really is a sad, little man desperate for the adulation he feels he deserves without doing any of the work. His claim to be the leading Hispanic voice in Science Fiction is laughable. He’d be a minor joke but for his tendency to lash out and harass people.

    JDA is the epitome of cluelessness. He’s building walls and then complaining about them. I’m glad the SF/F community is acting to punish him for his actions.

    In happier news, Star Trek Jr. was amazing.

  27. I read the post by JdA because I was looking for something to put off vacuuming the bedroom and this one line struck me:
    She said she was happy with the no awards result, which kept her in the good graces of the in-crowd who was opposed to almost anyone on the slate by association.
    I predict that, if asked and she denies saying that, he’ll point out that it wasn’t actually a quote because there were no quotation marks but that her meaning was clear.
    Other than that it was his usual masterful mish-mash of misquoting, conflating, “more-in-sorrow-than-anger” knife in the back remarks about people he ‘admires’ and whining that people are mean to him and he hasn’t done anything.

    There needs to be a drinking game where someone reads a long post from JdA or MGC aloud and you take a drink everytime they say “in crowd”; “gate keepers”; “Marxist”; “identity politics’ or “SJW”.

  28. Camestros Felapton: Then find writers he admires (apparently genuinely) and alienate them also.

    I’ve seen him do this with numerous really popular, good-selling authors as well as upcoming authors on Twitter now. He Follows their account, says he really liked their book, they respond with “Thanks!” and a friendly comment and Follow him back — and then he barrages them with tweets about how they should totally be publicly defending him and speaking up for him against SFWA and Worldcon… followed shortly thereafter by an avalanche of tweets whining about how terrible it is that he’s been blocked by them! after he’s done so much to support their career! And then he’s off to find another target. 🙄

    It’s absolutely a deliberate strategy on his part. I am unable to fathom the sort of despicable personality who thinks that systematically burning industry bridges in this way is actually a fun and worthwhile use of their time and energy, as he so clearly does.

  29. That is really sad, as is his attack on Brozek. There are all sorts of people who have given him genuine, tangible help with his career in terms of making his work better (again: Star Realms-Rescue Run is not bad) and his going out of his way to alienate them. Then find writers he admires (apparently genuinely) and alienate them also.

    It is sad.

    Brozek edited his book, heaped praise on it and gave him a platform on her blog to promote it in 2016. She called his book a “great tie-in novel” and obviously had a lot of goodwill for him back then.

    Instead of spinning a conspiracy theory on his blog for why she has become “terrified” to speak out against him (her word), he should consider the actions he has taken the past year that could make a former friend and colleague feel this way.

  30. Dann:

    “That being said, there is a bit of hypocrisy on display. Can anyone (aside from me, natch) claim that they would not have been ebullient in response to a Clinton victory in the election?”

    Me. I have made it clear many times that I’m not a fan of Clinton.

  31. Dann: there is a bit of hypocrisy on display. Can anyone (aside from me, natch) claim that they would not have been ebullient in response to a Clinton victory in the election? Would anyone have thought to be a bit restrained in expressing their pleasure at such an outcome?

    On my own Facebook wall? Sure. But to go onto the walls of other people who are expressing dismay at the results, to gloat and chide and gleefully rub it in (which is what JDA did)? Not a chance — and none of the people I’m friends with would behave that way, either.

    I mean, I guess it’s good that you openly admit that you are that sort of hypocrite. But you don’t get to claim that other people would do that, just because you would.

     
    Dann: I take JdA’s allegation that his journey began with one (or perhaps two) person responding inappropriately to his open and enthusiastic support for Mr. Trump seriously. I believe that there is more than a kernel of truth there. Sure, the con wanted to change up their lineup to keep it fresh. But if one of the organizers had a personal ax to grind, what better way to abuse their position than by “innocently” boosting JdA to the top of the list to be delayed for a later year.

    Oh, please. Baycon sent a shitload of 2016 panelists the same e-mail that JDA got, saying that they’d been rotated out of the lineup for 2017, but were on the list to be a panelist again in 2018.

    Stop casting aspersions on people, based on accusations from someone who has demonstrated over and over again that they do not even have a passing acquaintance with anything remotely resembling the truth. You yourself have already skated into that territory far too often here on File 770.

  32. Sure, the con wanted to change up their lineup to keep it fresh. But if one of the organizers had a personal ax to grind, what better way to abuse their position than by “innocently” boosting JdA to the top of the list to be delayed for a later year.

    This is a goofy conspiracy theory. Baycon told him in an email, “You are definitely on our guest list for 2018 and we hope very much to see you there.” No malicious con organizer (that ferocious beast of myth) would express their hatred of a pro by extending a future invitation to that person.

  33. That being said, there is a bit of hypocrisy on display. Can anyone (aside from me, natch) claim that they would not have been ebullient in response to a Clinton victory in the election? Would anyone have thought to be a bit restrained in expressing their pleasure at such an outcome?

    I’d have been openly and vocally delighted.

    If I went to the Facebook pages or blogs of conservatives and snarfed at them about it, though, I can easily imagine a publicist telling me that’s a bad look.

    Especially if I was a beginning novelist.

  34. @Dann–

    Or would it have all been “booyah!”, “woot, woot!” and “in your face!”? Not a good…or particularly unifying…look after that candidate wrote off half of the country as “deplorable”, IMHO. I’ve no doubt that JdA didn’t restrain himself, in any meaningful measure, in his response to the election.

    No, Dann, Clinton did not write off half of the country as “deplorable.” That is factually incorrect, a fact not changed by how heavily the false version has been promoted. The very worst that can be taken from what she actually said is that she wrote off half of Trump supporters as “deplorable.”

    I’d be a lot more receptive to the rest of your post if you were riffing off the factual version rather than the fictional version.

    I take JdA’s allegation that his journey began with one (or perhaps two) person responding inappropriately to his open and enthusiastic support for Mr. Trump seriously. I believe that there is more than a kernel of truth there. Sure, the con wanted to change up their lineup to keep it fresh. But if one of the organizers had a personal ax to grind, what better way to abuse their position than by “innocently” boosting JdA to the top of the list to be delayed for a later year.

    As noted above, he wasn’t singled out by the con. He was one of a long list that got exactly the same email. Speculation that he was put into that list (The “not this year, but next year,” list) for malicious reasons is pure speculation grounded in his certainty that resentment marketing is his best shot. He gets no sympathy for the fact that he’s chosen to politicize as persecution of him for political and ethnic reasons things that have nothing to do with him.

  35. Dann on January 26, 2018 at 11:19 am said:

    I started Devil’s Night Dawning from Damien Black. This is an SPFBO finalist in the current competition. It is a finalist for good reason. Damien has done a fantastic job with world building and storytelling. It is fast moving with multiple POVs.

    I need to check out some of the SPFBO books. I’m keen to support indie authors but there is a real wheat/chaff problem – this seems a potentially useful endeavour for people like me.

  36. @Harold Osler

    There needs to be a drinking game where someone reads a long post from JdA or MGC aloud and you take a drink everytime they say “in crowd”; “gate keepers”; “Marxist”; “identity politics’ or “SJW”.

    That’s not a drinking game, that’s an elaborate form of suicide that involves alcohol poisoning.

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