(1) DOWN THESE MEAN TWEETS. Less than 24 hours after The Self-Published Science Fiction Competition announced its new “SPSFC Code of Conduct” (linked in yesterday’s Scroll), the SPSFC management announced they were removing a writer named Devon Eriksen from the contest for violating the CoC. They did not specify why, which in these post-JDA-lawsuit times is regarded as wisdom. However, it’s clear what the host of Indie Book Spotlight believed:
And this exchange being on X.com, large numbers of people claimed to be unable to understand the problem, beginning with this fellow:
So the Indie Book Spotlight host put up a screenshot with a lengthy quote by Eriksen showing what they had in mind, which I’m not going to repost but which can be read here.
Devon Eriksen’s public response to being banned was (1) to claim he wasn’t aware he was even entered in the contest, and (2) to mock the whole proceeding at length, which you can read at X.com or in File 770’s screencaps — image-1, image-2, image-3, image-4, image-5, image-6. Or not at all, if you prefer.
(Credit Camestros Felapton with the scoop: “Different Thing”.)
(2) THIS IS THE END, MY FRIEND. “Apocalypse stories: Everything Must Go by Dorian Lynskey explores why we love skipping to the end” – a review and commentary by Slate’s Laura Miller
“The worst is not. So long as we can say ‘This is the worst,’ ” go the lines from King Lear quoted in Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel Station Eleven. Any stories we tell about the end of the world will have to be fictional, since once the real thing occurs, no one will be around to describe it. As the British journalist Dorian Lynskey relates in his erudite, delightfully witty, and strangely cheering new book, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, the fact that we can only ever speculate on the subject makes us speculate all the more frantically. “There is simply no end of ends,” Lynskey writes of the books, movies, TV shows, pop songs, and video games we’ve created to depict the apocalypse—or its near misses and the aftermaths thereof….
… Apocalyptic narratives are, of course, always more about the vexing present than the enigmatic future. Everything Must Go encompasses the stories told by doomsday cults, scientific Cassandras, pulp novelists, video game designers, and Hollywood movies. The idea that the world will one day come to an end is an especially Western notion, Lynskey points out, with its roots in the Book of Revelation. That strange document, with its psychedelic signs and portents, Lynskey writes, “supplies the Bible with a narrative arc and gives humanity’s story a theatrical finale.” Other cultures steeped in different religions may view time as cyclical, but the Judeo-Christian tradition sees it as an arrow, going in one direction, to an inevitable conclusion. As terrifying as the prospect of apocalypse can be, Lynskey writes, “it rescues believers from the endless mess of history by weaving past, present and future into a coherent, satisfying whole with an author, a message and an ending.”…
(3) THOUGHTS ABOUT AWARDS VOTING. BSFA’s Vector has republished Jo Lindsay Walton and Polina Levontin’s article “Gender, Democracy, and SF/F Literary Awards” from Foundation 149 (winter 2024).
This article explores cultural and design dimensions of non-governmental voting systems, focusing on science fiction and fantasy (SFF) literary awards voted for by fans, with a focus on the British Science Fiction Awards. The design of such voting systems needs to juggle a range of goals, one of which is fairness with regard to gender — acknowledging that ‘fairness’ is not straightforward to define, particularly given such awards are embedded within broader gender inequalities. Our analysis suggests that men have been more likely than women to vote for works by men, and also more likely to vote in ways that amplify the influence of men’s votes under an Alternative Vote System. We suggest that SFF awards are cultural spaces which lend themselves to experimentation with new democratic forms, and briefly offer potential sources of inspiration. Just as SFF has aspired to be a space to think about the future of technology, gender, the environment, and many other issues, SFF award spaces could be spaces for thinking about the future of democracy. We also offer recommendations to SFF awards designers and communities to address gender bias (emphasising reflective practices over technical solutions), and to continue to explore how aesthetic and cultural values and identities are constructed and negotiated within SFF award spaces, and beyond….
(4) ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY RECOMMENDED. [Item by Steven French.] In “What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in January” authors and readers tell the Guardian which were their favorite books read last month and first up is …
Eimear McBride, author
Everyone else got there a long time ago but I’ve only recently read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s sci-fi masterpiece Children of Time. Cautionary, richly imaginative and deeply, unexpectedly humane, it was both utterly unputdownable and a welcome relief from the current resignation to dystopia.
I’ve also been taking delight in Edward Carey’s glorious novel Edith Holler. Set in a Norwich that is at once fictional, historical and fantastical, he transports the reader into the world of brilliant 12-year-old Edith who is cursed to never leave her family’s tumbledown theatre … until fate decides otherwise. Filled with the author’s witty, curious observations and alive with his own illustrations, it’s a novel like no other.
(5) CARL BRANDON SOCIETY 2024 ACCOMPLISHMENTS. SFWA distributed this report with the latest Singularity newsletter.
Thanks so much for your continuing support of and interest in the Carl Brandon Society. In these parlous times, we depend on you, and we want you to be able to depend on us. In the past several years, we’ve all been through a lot. Our focus—as individuals, as an organization, as countries within the world—has shifted. At the Carl Brandon Society, we’re slowly working through how we need to position ourselves during and after that shift.
We’re moving from a small, social organization of readers and writers with big dreams but essentially no money to a still-small organization with some tools to accomplish some of those large goals. With Covid reduced but still circulating, we’re figuring out how to be safe at in-person events, while expanding our online events, which allow us to serve writers and readers in the wider world, not just in the United States.
2024 Accomplishments
- Awarded Octavia E. Butler scholarships to students at Clarion and Clarion West workshops
- Held three online workshops: Cosmic Horror with Premee Mohamed, DIY workshop with Suzan Palumbo, and Decolonial Worldbuilding with Helen Gould
- Held a children’s book fair in conjunction with Seattle Public Library and Mam’s Book Store
- Distributed books left after book fair to several Seattle area school libraries
- Hired Program Director Isis Asare out of a pool of outstanding qualified applicants
We are determined to stay focused on our work despite the current political climate. We believe it’s important, and we believe you think so, too.
Sincerely,
K. Tempest Bradford, Jaymee Goh, Susheela Bhat Harkins, Shiv Ramdas, Victor Raymond, Kate Schaefer, Nisi Shawl, and Yang-Yang Wang
The Carl Brandon Society Steering Committee
P.S. We’re sending a donation of $1000 to Octavia’s Bookshelf, the Black-owned bookstore in Los Angeles that has stepped up as a community resource in the wake of the devastating fires. Octavia was one of our founding members. Please consider donating to the bookstore to help rebuild that community.
And please consider supporting us with a donation as well. Thanks so much!P. O. Box 23336
Seattle, WA 98102The Carl Brandon Society is recognized by the IRS as a qualified 501(c)3 organization, and all donations to it are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. No goods or services were provided in exchange for this donation. Our federal tax I.D. number is 27-0140141.
(6) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
February 4, 1993 — Groundhog Day film (premiered this day)
By Paul Weimer: One of the pinnacles of time travel movies is a movie that doesn’t think that it’s a genre movie: Groundhog Day.
Consider: We have no reason, no mechanism, nothing we can point to as to why Phil Connors (Bill Murray in peak mode, having shed some of the questionable elements of his Ghostbusters character and just playing an unpleasant weatherman but without some of the sleazier elements from the prior movie). We are not meant to like Phil at the beginning. He is dismissive, arrogant, cruel and I wouldn’t want to spend an hour, much less a day, with him on a road trip.
And so, after getting trapped in Punxsutawney the night of Groundhog Day thanks to a blizzard he didn’t accurately predict, he wakes up on the morning of February 2nd again. And again. And again and again.
Murray’s Phil does what many of us would do in this situation at first. He tries to escape the town by any which means he can. When that fails, when his universe shrinks to the horizon of the town, he then takes subtle advantage of the situation, seeing what he can do. He goes through cycles of mania and depression and tries to kill himself, to no avail. He tries to kill Phil the Groundhog, figuring he is the reason for the time loop.
Nothing works.
And then comes the slow turn. Phil decides, with an eternity of the same day, to make use of his gift. He learns things, ranging from flipping cards to literature to French to chiropractic back adjustment to playing the piano. What starts as a sleazy way to seduce Andie McDowell’s Rita turns into a genuine romance. The wacky comedy of the first part of the movie turns into a more considered romantic-comedy-drama of a man who over thousands of days learns to do better and be better.
But the movie shows it can’t all go his way, and is surprisingly nuanced for it. Consider Phil’s multiple attempts to save a dying homeless man’s life, to no avail. No matter what Phil does, the man ultimately dies, each and every time. It’s a poignant philosophical, or even religious look at fate, destiny, and the limits of what we can change…but an acknowledgement that, what we can change for the better, we MUST change for the better.
Fantasy, comedy, philosophy. And wonderful performances all around. A beautifully filmed movie of a town that was already locally famous (I had long heard of it and its annual celebration but it was too far away to ever visit) but it became globally famous thanks to the movie. The movie is a pinnacle of early 1990’s filmmaking. It never thinks it’s a genre movie but it is genre enough that we are invested in Phil’s slow transformation.
And so, after thousands of tries, after a day spent helping the town, Phil finally breaks free of his time loop, ending his purgatory (or maybe it’s a Bardo) as inexplicably as it began.
One of the pinnacles of time travel movies is a movie that doesn’t think that it’s a genre movie: Groundhog Day.
Consider…
(7) COMICS SECTION.
- Bliss eavesdrops on a very small writers room.
- Brewster Rockit isn’t having an emergency after all.
- Non Sequitur shows a retired superhero’s early days.
- Savage Chickens learns what’s on a cat’s mind.
- The Argyle Sweater brings us the Acme training regimen.
(8) TOP 5 OVERRATED SF WRITERS? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Outlaw Bookseller has a bit of a click-baity offering on his followers’ most over-rated SF writers. (Actually, I have some sympathy with a couple of their choices — but what do I know?). This came out just a couple of days ago but already has had nearly 8,000 views… “Your Top 5 Most OVERRATED SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS- I respond to your comments”.
Steve asked for your views on which SF authors and books receive undue praise and here are the results…and as ever, he responds to your comments in kind….
(9) COMIC RELIEF. Camestros Felapton has had a busy day. Thanks to another of his posts, “Extra Scuttlebutt”, we’re now aware of the insulting things that Larry Correia has been saying about Jon Del Arroz, and the low esteem in which Vox Day holds Correia – because Vox publishes comics by JDA and therefore feels obliged to run interference for one of “his” authors. Below is Vox’s rationalization for violating omerta; then you can read a selection of Correia’s vituperative quotes at Vox Popoli’s post “Churchill, FDR, and Stalin” [Internet Archive link].
Back in the days when the Sad Puppies were the #GamerGate of the science fiction world, I reached a gentleman’s agreement with Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen, two of the first three leaders of the Sad Puppies, after they decided that they did not want to be directly connected to me or the group that became known as the Rabid Puppies. I told them at the time that this separation was a mistake for them, and that there were more Rabid Puppies than Sad Puppies, but they refused to believe that and insisted it was necessary for reasons that I will leave to them to explain.
However, they did agree that given the amount of media scrutiny we were all under, it would serve little purpose for us to attempt to speak for, or about, each other in public. All three of us knew that the media was going to try very hard to utilize anything that we would say to undermine the others. To their credit, and to mine, none of us gave the media any material for ten years.
Unfortunately, I have now concluded it is time to end that gentlemen’s agreement because a) it is now clear and undeniable that these are two men who are not, and perhaps never were, on the side of what is right or what is true, b) they are not gentlemen, and c) they have been repeatedly lying about one of my authors for several years….
… Now, to a certain extent, this is a tempest in a teapot. Literally no one in our greater community has given a quantum of a damn about what Larry Correia thinks ever since he opted out of leading the Sad Puppies more than a decade ago. Being a flagrant Never-Trumper, a civic nationalist, and a Mormon, he’s as irrelevant to the tens of thousands of Castalia, Arkhaven, and Unauthorized fans as I am to his readership. And I doubt more than two percent of our community has ever even heard of Brad Torgersen.
But nevertheless, as we’ve seen again and again, what permits wickedness to thrive is the tolerance and the silence of those who know better. And what Larry and Brad have been doing for years, the twisted rhetoric they have been repeatedly attempting to pass off as the truth, is neither good, nor beautiful, nor true. They no longer merit respect or restraint on my part….
(10) NOT JUST ANY RUBBLE. [Item by Steven French.] An elegiac and timely piece on collecting space rocks: “It came from outer space: the meterorite that landed in a Cotswolds cul-de-sac” in the Guardian.
With a population of 5,000, Winchcombe is a pretty town of honeycomb-coloured limestone and timber-framed buildings. The Wilcock family home is a neat 1960s detached house on a quiet cul-de-sac on the outskirts of town. Early in the morning of 1 March, Cathryn Wilcock, a retired primary school teacher, opened the curtains of her living room and noticed a pile of dark lumps and powder at the edge of her driveway. It looked as though someone had upended an old barbecue.
The Winchcombe meteorite had probably travelled more than 100m miles to reach our planet. Had it landed just a few metres to the left it would have fallen into a thick privet hedge and probably never been discovered. Had it landed a few metres closer to the road, Cathryn would have assumed it was rubbish churned up by a passing car and swept it away. Instead, her husband, Rob, went out to investigate.
Rob immediately recognised that something strange had occurred. He got together some rubber gloves, old yoghurt pots and plastic bags and went outside to pick up the stones.
(11) FANTASTIC 4 TRAILER LIVE RELEASE EVENT. [Item by Marc Criley.] I think this pretty much caught most all of us in Huntsville by surprise!
The Fantastic 4: First Steps Trailer release was held at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama — the “Rocket City” — and was live-streamed on YouTube. All four stars were present beneath the Saturn 5 rocket exhibit as they and the crowd counted down to the trailer release.
The trailer is shown at the end of the release event video. However, if you want to cut to the chase…
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Marc Criley, Jeffrey Smith, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern. Title footnote [1] From Marvel comics/movie: “Ego the Living Planet” in the Wikipedia.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
(2) I suppose she’s right. I mean, “The missiles came down. Those of …us…that…weren’t.. turned into.. vapor…or…peanut butter… are just doing slowly……arrrrrghhhhh.” End.
(9) All of them are scum, but… after being out in the streets in DC in front of the US Treasury building (with a few thousand friends of America, and some Senators and Congresscritters), I think I need this…”,,,Being a flagrant Never-Trumper, a civic nationalist, and a Mormon,” left me chuckling.
(10) No, it’s not just Any Rubble, and it’s not just Barney Rubble, it’s SPAAAACE RUBBLE!
(9) Oh how cute: he thinks he’s in a majority group.
(6) Groundhog Day should be allowed to think it’s not a genre movie. It’s a hard world, and we all need an illusion or three to help us keep going.
It’s still a really enjoyable time loop movie.
(1) Thanks for the background. I was literally looking at far-right accounts to see what impact (9) was having in those spaces and instead, all their heads were on fire about (1) and it was all outrage rather than relevant information.
What was interesting for the heads-on-fire crowd was this idea that people can’t do things-like-that-now. Well, yes, people can still say you aren’t welcome if you are unpleasant.
(9) Let them fight.
(1) I admit I’ve read only the initial long tweet and there are my two cents: His approach of ‘antibodies’ can be seen as long ago as freikorps vs spartacists I guess and it is overly simplistic and therefore IMHO wrong. As for the statement about ‘unclean’ it sounded like a quote from Warhammer 40k, up to using the word xenos…
(4) Tchaikovsky is great, I’m glad that he becomes more popular
Re Groundhog Day: Dick Lupoff would like everyone to read his 1973 short story “12:01 PM.”
@jeff That got made into a movie, too, didn’t it?
Both a short film and a tv movie
9) is one of those “reverse Alien versus Predator” moments, isn’t it? Beale versus Correia: whoever loses, we win.
10) “… had probably travelled more than 100m miles to reach our planet.” From where? Amazon’s central meteorite dispatching office? The thing had been orbiting in space since it was originally created (maybe knocked off some other planet in a collision, maybe part of a comet, maybe even a remote bit of matter that was left over when the solar system formed) – millions, perhaps even billions, of years ago. So, yeah, I think it’s probably travelled more than a hundred million miles. In the same way that the Pacific Ocean is probably larger than a raindrop.
(9) The Puppies of Kilkenny.
(6) A beautiful movie.
(7) The Savage Chickens comic reminds me of one of my favorite Terry Pratchett quotes:
“The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He’d been working on it for three months. It wasn’t easy. He’d got as far as ‘Oook’.”
9) Personally, I have no puppy in this fight.
I am one of the team leads in the SPSFC and the person who did all of the intake on the 178 books in this year’s competition. It was a way bigger amount of work than I realized, but isn’t everything you volunteer to do in SF fandom?
We are learning some hard lessons about not having a Code of Conduct in place before an issue arises about someone’s behavior. We are also challenged by the looseness of our organizational structure.
Founders Hugh Howey and Duncan Swan stopped being involved after SPSFC 2. The contest exists today because the people running the judging teams wanted to see it continue. Self-published SF authors need all the publicity they can get and we receive some fantastic books as entries from writers with a startlingly small number of reviews in places like Amazon.
The volunteers in SPSFC are entitled to take action based on our values in what we do and what we accept from others. Ultimately that’s what happened here. When SPSFC 5 takes entries this fall we’ll be sharing our Code of Conduct with prospective authors and contest volunteers, so people can decide whether to participate.
(1) & (9) Speaking of Jon del Aroz and Larry Correia… is there any reason you haven’t covered the latest row between them and Baen Books?
JDA may be a common Internet shit gibbon, but his recent reporting on Larry, Baen Books, Ark Press, et all? Mostly accurate. I’m shocked there isn’t more coverage from reputable outlets about Baen struggling financially, a new publisher backed by Peter Thiel poaching authors and editors, writers complaining about late pay…
Hell, how has Ark Press, which seems reactionary enough to make even Baen look like Pravda, escaped any coverage? They have a launch title that’s an alternate history of Rhodesia for crying out loud.
How come it hasn’t been touched or reported on?
1) Eh. It’s a bit turgidly dramatic for my taste. A bit too much ‘I studied the blade/have a poster of Rorshach on my bedroom wall’ but I think positioning it as a ‘call for violence’ is equally melodramatic. His response was funny, though.
3) Like a lot of things of that nature, this seems like a solution in search of a problem.
6) An absolute banger than still holds up today. The ’90’s/early 2000’s were a golden age of cinema and, were I inclined to expend any more energy than it takes to type this sentence on the topic, would die on this hill.
9) To be fair, everything Larry is quoted as saying about JDA is supported by evidence. Also, comparing yourself to Stalin like it’s a good thing is a bold move and betokens what I can only assume is a…unique view of history.
11) Like George Costanza, I am totally down for this. You can mark me as down.
(6) And it shares with Gaslight the distinction of having found its way into everyday use, to the point that people don’t always know where the term came from.
1 “Or not at all” is such a great option, isn’t it? Some people don’t get vetted early in life, and we’re stuck civilizing them. Or trying to. This is unfortunate. I’m sure it’s an awful lot of work to organize and administer, rcade. People playing nice should surely be something that takes care of itself. Or not, alas.
6
Ugh, here we go again.
8
The trick with sf is that any list like this will be only big names, because even in the field, few writers are appreciated enough. If known at all. Someone said the world at large can only keep one sf author in their head at once, which position is probably currently held by Frank Herbert.
9
I guess this is what happens when your enemies stop engaging: when you get a bee in your bonnet, you have only your friends to turn on. I will point out I think the language here is telling. High dudgeon, low stakes. He does make ten thousand sound like a horde even though it’s more akin to a rounding error in the national census.
Jack Flash, if there is a lack of coverage, I’d point the finger at Baen. At some point, it’s no longer worth the hassle to report facts and figures and face the backlash. They alienated readers. I’m not surprised their numbers are down.
Robert says Jack Flash, if there is a lack of coverage, I’d point the finger at Baen. At some point, it’s no longer worth the hassle to report facts and figures and face the backlash. They alienated readers. I’m not surprised their numbers are down.
Let’s make one thing clear. We have no idea what the financial numbers are for Baen. They don’t report to the public what they are earning, so we can’t say if they making less compared to say five years ago. In fact we don’t know what the financials are for any genre publisher.
(6) The continuing adventures of Phil, Needlehead Ned, and the gopher.
(11) The retro-futuristic style shown in the trailer combined with the vivid blue jumpsuits totally makes me think Fallout! Which is not a bad thing–the recent TV adaption has been very well received, and a couple of the games (3 and NV) are among my very favorites. But it did make me chuckle! 🙂
That said, I’ll believe they’ve made a decent FF film when I see it. Been burned too many times before. But from the trailer, I’m willing to believe that it’s possible that we’re finally getting the adaptation I’ve been hoping for!
1) Sorry about the delay. Busy work week.
Also, it’s frequently productive to let events unfold before commenting.
At this point, at least 8 authors have requested that their books be removed from the this year’s SPSFC. Several have pointed out that they disagree with Mr. Eriksen’s posts, but believe the right to speak is more important than using a CoC in this manner. I’ve bought several of their books as their virtue should have some modest reward.
FTR, I find Mr. Eriksen’s post (referenced above) to be a curious and somewhat perverted version of modern political horseshoe theory. Lots to discuss. Lots to disagree with. Nothing worth the attempt to cancel his works. His response to the SPSFC removing his book from the competition is classic!
Given the eliminationist rhetoric of the last few years over Covid [not getting the vaccine should mean losing one’s job, being denied health care, being tossed in a prison camp, being outright murdered], and given the tendency of many leftists to reflexively respond to the slightest of disagreements with perfunctory and baseless claims of various -isms and -phobias, nothing that I’ve seen from Mr. Eriksen should budge the needle towards removing him from a competition…or polite society.
Unlike SPFBO, I’ve yet to find a SPSFC winner that was an impressive read. If the CoC reflects the priorities of the participants and operators, then I suppose the lack of quality in the winners is understandable.
8) For those that don’t have 45 minutes to spend, the five “over rated” authors mentioned in his list (via the transcript as I also don’t have the time) are:
5) Robert A. Heinlein
4) John Scalzi
3) Isaac Asimov
2) Cixin Liu
1) Frank Herbert
Sigh…just…no.
Regards,
Dann
I suppose if you misspell “sorcerer”, it’s a sorcerror? – LK Lohan
It’s interesting to see how freedom irks some people.
They complain when organizations are allowed to decide who they want to associate with, and how hot they want to serve their coffee, and cry censorship when organizations decide who they want to hire and where they want to buy advertising.
A lot of those people appear to have spent no time acquainting themselves with the things he’s been saying on social media. Including yourself. Until you do, it is of course easy for you to say no action should have been taken.
People who have participated in the judging process of an SPSFC, such as the File 770 team in the first contest, know that there has been no desire to consider the social media behavior of authors.
But like every science fiction convention has learned, the outside conduct of participants is eventually going to become an issue — including what they post on social media, especially if they have a large following.
SPSFC exists because volunteers do the hard work necessary to make it happen. Everyone has the right to represent their own values in what they do and what they accept from others. That goes for SPSFC as much as it does the authors who dropped out over our decision.
@ rcade
I disagree. We are talking about a contest where the only significant qualifications are that the book be self published and science fiction.
Creating a post hoc CoC to justify removing a work from the competition is extraordinary, IMO. Those that think the action was appropriate should provide the extraordinary justification. [For my part, I’d like to know who brought this to SPSFC’s attention and what their interest might be.]
I’ve spent a little time running through his X feed. He uses a lot of hyperbolic language as is the modern habit of everyone from all perspectives. I’m generally opposed to that habit and find some of his posts to be “debatable” – avoiding hyperbole.
With respect to the SPSFC volunteers, they are (IMO) obligated to run a fair competition and to read/judge the works as presented within the confines of the SPSFC.
They, like everyone else, are fully entitled to represent their own values outside of that context.
Would those running SPSFC accept a judging team running through the social media feeds of their group’s authors and then downgrading works from authors who express support for socialism or communism? [both of those ideologies being far more noxious than anything I’ve seen in my limited review of Mr. Eriksen’s X stream]
Alternatively, I suppose an extra P for Progressive could be added into SPSFC somewhere so that there might be some truth in labeling and the entire project could become a literary backwater.
@ Carol Enwright
Just as long as you recognize that the same works in the opposite direction. Such as crying censorship when organizations decide not to purchase certain books, etc.
Regards,
Dann
We adore chaos because we love to produce order. – M.C. Escher
Thanks Dann. I don’t recall whining about censorship ever (I’m not the one who felt deprived unjudgely when McDonald’s choose to change its coffee). Let’s be clear: When Ed Sullivan hampered Jackie Mason’s career due to an apparent miscommunication that was bad for Mason – but wasn’t censorship. When CBS decided that rural sitcoms were beneath its dignity, that wasn’t censorship. When the SEP decided that Norman Rockwell’s liberal leanings didn’t fit with their image, that wasn’t censorship. When Bob Hope was told by his sponsors to stop being so pro-gay, that wasn’t censorship. I didn’t hear any whining from them (unlike from Roseanne Barr, James Woods, Tim Allen, and many others) either.
When armed police arrested George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, or when agents of the government refuse a woman entry into the adult section of the library just because she’s carrying a baby, or when a President talks of shutting down television stations because he doesn’t like what they say – that’s censorship. If you can’t tell the difference between private choice and government action, I suggest you read some libertarian literature
@ Carol Enwright
Fair point.
In this case, I don’t recall framing SPSFC’s actions as “censorship”. I have said it is unjustified based on the context of our times and the statements/posts that I’ve read.
Regards,
Dann
‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.’ Ray Bradbury
@Carol Enright “When Ed Sullivan hampered Jackie Mason’s career . . . I didn’t hear any whining from them”
Jackie Mason sued Ed Sullivan for $3,000,000
Pingback: Top 10 Posts for February 2025 | File 770
SPSFC judges evaluate the books based on their contents. Before books are assigned to teams we check for conflicts of interest and other issues that might affect the perceived fairness.
There’s also a score of NMS (Not My Style) available, which a judge can use to bow out of judging a book during reading. NMS does not affect its score, so this means the other judges make the decision.
The expulsion of an author from the contest had nothing to do with their book.
Whether someone who says extremely offensive things on social media actually means them, or just says them as hyperbole, doesn’t matter. People are entitled either way to decide that it is not something they want to support.
Did Kanye West mean it when he put swastika T-shirts up for sale? Nobody needs to read his mind before deciding they won’t put up with that from now until the heat death of the universe.