(1) WILL KOSA LEAD TO DELETION OF ONLINE QUEER CONTENT? Charlie Jane Anders’ latest Happy Dancing newsletter warns “The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse”.
…For now at least, you can still talk freely about being trans or queer on the Internet, without fear of overt censorship*. You might well face online harassment and violent threats, and you might even face real-world consequences if you get on the radar of the worst people. But the Internet does not suppress the trans and queer stories that are being violently removed from schools, libraries, and other public spaces in much of the country right now.
That’s about to change — unless we all take action.
A new bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is sailing towards passage in the Senate with bipartisan support. Among other things, this bill would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue Internet platforms if they allow any content that is deemed harmful to minors. This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don’t even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people.
The right wing Heritage Foundation has already stated publicly that the GOP will use this provision to remove any discussions of trans or queer lives from the Internet. They’re salivating over the prospect.
And yep, I did say this bill has bipartisan support. Many Democrats have already signed on as co-sponsors. And President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass this bill in the strongest possible terms….
(2) WRITER’S NATIONAL FRONT CONNECTION RECALLED. David A. Riley announced to readers of his blog on June 19 that his 11,600-word sword and sorcery novelette “Ossani the Healer and the Beautiful Homunculus” “has been accepted for publication – and by one of the most prestigious markets I have ever appeared in.” On July 5 he revealed that the story “will be published sometime later this year in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.”
Today someone who noticed the F&SF sale news connected Riley with his history of having once been part of the UK’s National Front.
Christopher Rowe is referring to F&SF publisher Gordon Van Gelder and editor Sheree Renée Thomas.
David A. Riley’s history with the UK’s National Front became common knowledge in 2016 after Riley was included on HWA’s Bram Stoker Award Jury. The HWA appointment became news at a time when questions were already being asked of Riley due to his involvement in the relaunch of Weirdbook. Riley reportedly answered in a no-longer-available Facebook thread. The davidandrewrileyisafascist Tumblr hosts a screenshot of the comment, which says in part:
I think I need to put the record straight. Yes, I was in the National Front for ten year from 1973 to the middle of 1983. During that time I never regarded the party as fascist, though it did have minority elements within it that undoubtedly were. …I have never regarded myself as a fascist, and certainly not a nazi. The term ‘white supremacist’ is one I don’t recognise and certainly repudiate. If you saw me associating with my ethnically diverse neighbours in Bulgaria you would not level that at me then. I know this will not convince some people, and, quite honestly, I accept that….
The relationship between Riley’s past political views and organizing activity, and his current views, and whether he should be serving on an HWA awards jury, became subjects of intense discussion. Before long HWA President Lisa Morton said he was taken off the jury by mutual agreement.
Riley was interviewed by David Dubrow shortly after the 2016 kerfuffle (“Interview With David A Riley”.) Here is a quote:
Do you feel as though you have anything to apologize for in regard to your politics, past or present?
Who should I apologize to? To those who have been baying for my blood? Most of the people involved in this debate come from the States. Since I have never been involved in politics there I should certainly not have to apologise to them. Do I regret having spent those years that I did in the National Front? Yes. If I had my time over again I would not do it. But the early seventies were a different time….
Today s. j. bagley commented on Rowe’s report about Sheree Renée Thomas’ statement:
And Rowe expressed this concern to another author:
(3) AI TRAINING PUSHBACK. [Item by Bill.] Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has taken down the prominent “Books3” dataset, that was used to train high-profile AI models including Meta’s. “Anti-Piracy Group Takes AI Training Dataset ‘Books3′ Offline” reports Gizmodo. Despite being removed from their original host site, the dataset is available elsewhere on the internet.
One of the most prominent pirated book repositories used for training AI, Books3, has been kicked out from the online nest it had been roosting in for nearly three years. Rights-holders have been at war with online pirates for decades, but artificial intelligence is like oil seeping into copyright law’s water. The two simply do not mix, and the fumes rising from the surface just need a spark to set the entire concept of intellectual property rights alight.
As first reported by TorrentFreak, the large pirate repository The Eye took down the Books3 dataset after the Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance sent the site a DMCA takedown. Now trying to access that dataset gives a 404 error. The Eye still hosts other training data for AI, but the portion allotted for books has vanished….
(4) PURLOINED VOLUMES. And the Guardian is quite familiar with what’s in Books3: “Zadie Smith, Stephen King and Rachel Cusk’s pirated works used to train AI”.
… More than 170,000 titles were fed into models run by companies including Meta and Bloomberg, according to an analysis of “Books3” – the dataset harnessed by the firms to build their AI tools.
Books3 was used to train Meta’s LLaMA, one of a number of large language models – the best-known of which is OpenAI’s ChatGPT – that can generate content based on patterns identified in sample texts. The dataset was also used to train Bloomberg’s BloombergGPT, EleutherAI’s GPT-J and it is “likely” it has been used in other AI models.
The titles contained in Books3 are roughly one-third fiction and two-thirds nonfiction, and the majority were published within the last two decades. Along with Smith, King, Cusk and Ferrante’s writing, copyrighted works in the dataset include 33 books by Margaret Atwood, at least nine by Haruki Murakami, nine by bell hooks, seven by Jonathan Franzen, five by Jennifer Egan and five by David Grann….
(5) WEEKEND B.O. The Hollywood Reporter checked the cash registers and found “’Blue Beetle’ Box Office Opening Beats ‘Barbie,’ ‘Strays’ Gets Lost”.
…After ruling the box office roost for four weekends, Barbie fell to second place as DC’s superhero pic Blue Beetle took the top spot. It opened to an estimated $25.4 in North America. …
(6) BRADBURY MEMORIES. On Ray Bradbury’s 103rd birthday, John King Tarpinian visited his gravesite, bringing a funny book, a cake, and a dinosaur. (John always takes the cake to the cemetery office for the staff to enjoy.)
(7) BACK IN THE DAY. In this episode of Day at Night taped on January 21, 1974, host James Day speaks with Ray Bradbury about his career, the importance of fantasizing, his aspirations as a young child, his dislike of college for a writer, his idea of thinking compared to really living, and his love of the library.
(8) REMEMBERING BUSTER CRABBE. Steve Vertlieb invites fans to read his article “Careening Spaceships And Thundering Hooves: The Magic, Majesty (And Friendship) Of Buster Crabbe … And An Era” at Better Days, Benner Nights.
When I was a little kid, prior to the Civil War, I had an imagination as fertile and as wide as my large brown eyes, dreamily filled with awe and wonder. My dad brought home our first television set in 1950.
Here is an affectionate remembrance of the Saturday Matinee and 1950’s Philadelphia television when classic cliffhanger serials thrilled and excited “children of all ages”… when careening spaceships and thundering hooves echoed through the revered imaginations and hallowed corridors of time and memory…and when Buster Crabbe lovingly brought “Flash Gordon,” “Buck Rogers,” “Red Barry,” and “Captain Gallant Of The Foreign Legion” to life in darkened movie palaces, and on television screens, all over the world.
Return with us now to “those thrilling days of yesteryear” when Zorro, Buzz Corry of the “Space Patrol,” Ming, The Merciless, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry in “The Phantom Empire,” and Larry “Buster” Crabbe lit the early days of television, and Saturday afternoon motion picture screens, with magical imagery, and unforgettable excitement. Just click on the blue link above to escape into the past, via the world of tomorrow.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born August 22, 1909 — Paul W. Fairman. His story “No Teeth for the Tiger” was published in the February 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. Two years later, he was the founding editor of If, but he edited only four issues. In 1955, he became the editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic which he would hold for three years. There are several films, Target Earth and Invasion of the Saucer Men, based on his stories, plus some TV episodes as well. (Died 1977.)
- Born August 22, 1919 — Douglas W F Mayer. A British fan who was editor for three issues of Amateur Science Stories published by the Science Fiction Association of Leeds, England. He was thereby the publisher of Arthur C. Clarke’s very first short story, “Travel by Wire”, which appeared in the second issue in December 1937. He would later edit the Tomorrow fanzine which would be nominated for the 1939 Best Fanzine Retro Hugo. (Died 1976.)
- Born August 22, 1920 — Ray Bradbury. Seriously where do I start? He wrote some of the most wonderful stories that I’ve ever read, genre or not, many of which got turned into quite superb video tales on the Ray Bradbury Theater. As for novels, my absolute favorite will always be Something This Way Wicked Comes. (I’m ambivalent on the film version.) And yes I know it isn’t really a novel but The Illustrated Man I treat as such and I loved the film that came out of it with Rod Steiger in that role. Let’s not forget The Martian Chronicles. (Died 2012.)
- Born August 22, 1945 — David Chase, 78. He’s here today mainly because he wrote nine episodes including the “Kolchak: Demon and the Mummy” telefilm of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He also wrote the screenplay for The Grave of The Vampire, and one for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Enough Rope for Two”, which he also directed.
- Born August 22, 1955 — Will Shetterly, 68. Of his novels, I recommend his two Borderland novels, Elsewhere and Nevernever, which were both nominees for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature, and his sort of biographical Dogland. Married to Emma Bull whose Finder: A Novel of The Borderlands is always highly recommended, they did a trailer for her War for The Oaks novel which is worth seeing as you’ll spot Minnesota fans in it. And Emma as the Elf Queen is definitely something to behold. Will was planning to run for Governor of Minnesota so he had collected funds for that. That instead went instead to this film
- Born August 22, 1948 — Susan Wood. She received three Hugo Awards for Best Fan Writer in 1974, 1977, and 1981, and a Best Fanzine Hugo as coeditor of Energumen in 1973. In 1976 she was instrumental in organizing the very first feminist panel at a con, at MidAmericon. The reaction to this helped lead to the founding of A Women’s APA and of WisCon. While teaching courses in SF at UBC, one of her students was William Gibson. “Fragments of a Hologram Rose” which is his first published story was written as an assignment in her SF class. (Died 1980.)
- Born August 22, 1963 — Tori Amos, 60. One of Gaiman’s favorite musicians, so it’s appropriate that she penned two essays, the afterword to “Death” in Sandman: Book of Dreams) and the Introduction to “Death” in The High Cost of Living. Although created before they ever met, Delirium from The Sandman is based on her. Bookriot did a nice piece on their friendship.
(10) LONE STAR REVIEWS. BookRiot challenges readers: “Can You Guess the Fantasy Book Based on Its 1-Star Reviews?” I’m surprised I’m able to say I did guess one.
We’ve all been there: You go to leave a review of an amazing book, only to see that someone has left it a dreaded 1-star review. And when you read it? Oof. Did the two of you even read the same book? Well, let’s put it to the test. Can you guess these fantasy books based only on their 1-star reviews?
I did not get this one. I should have – I read it! But then, I thought it was good. Maybe that threw me off.
3. CLICK HERE TO REVEAL THE BOOK.
“What a bore! To read a rock’s thoughts and almost nothing else happens? Please!”
“Be careful when you see a Shakespeare reference while looking for a good fantasy read. I do not recommend.”
(11) WARM UP YOUR CREDIT CARDS. “Disney Drops Another Great 4K Blu-Ray Surprise With Plush Releases Of Major Star Wars And Marvel Shows” – Forbes has the story.
…The information released by Disney today lists four initial series set to get the 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray treatment: Loki Season One, WandaVision, The Mandalorian Season One, and The Mandalorian Season Two….
… What’s more, these TV series releases are going all-out to appeal to fans by sporting steelbook packaging for both their 4K and HD Blu-ray versions; gorgeous box art designs by artist Attila Szarka; as well as concept art cards and never-before-seen bonus features. And as perhaps the biggest surprise of all, Disney has confirmed that it will be pressing the 4K versions of these TV series releases on 100GB discs rather than the 66GB-capacity discs that it’s used for all of its previous 4K Blu-ray releases bar the two Avatar movies….
(12) WHERE’S MY JETPACK LYRICS? Here they are. Thank you, Peer, for these sympathetic words.
Jet pack crashes
A new Scroll cries
Its pixels falls to the floor
Mike opens his eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the filer can even click the boxJetpack crashes
An old scroll dies
Its pixel fall to the floor
Mike closes his tabs
The items that was in theirs
Reposted now, by the baby down the hall
Oh, now feel it being discussed again
Like a rolling thunder reported on X
Blogs pulling Items from the center of the scroll again
I can tick box nowJetpack crashes
A new scroll is born.
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon comes to Netflix starting December 22. The way Variety sees it, “…The trailer has just about every piece of sci-fi and fantasy imagery you can imagine: a princess prophesied to end a war, spaceships raining lasers down on a hapless village, talking robots, a spider creature, a badass wielding glowing red laser swords, a flying pegasus-like animal and lots of slow-mo….”
The YouTube blurb says:
From Zack Snyder, the filmmaker behind 300, Man of Steel, and Army of the Dead, comes REBEL MOON, an epic science-fantasy event decades in the making. When a peaceful colony on the edge of a galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, Kora (Sofia Boutella), a mysterious stranger living among the villagers, becomes their best hope for survival. Tasked with finding trained fighters who will unite with her in making an impossible stand against the Mother World, Kora assembles a small band of warriors — outsiders, insurgents, peasants and orphans of war from different worlds who share a common need for redemption and revenge. As the shadow of an entire Realm bears down on the unlikeliest of moons, a battle over the fate of a galaxy is waged, and in the process, a new army of heroes is formed.
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Daniel Dern, Bill, Steven French, Dan Bloch, Steve Vertlieb, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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I think Susan Wood was born in 1948, certainly not in 1958.
Why yes, I did forget to check the birthdays before posting them today. How could you tell? (Thanks for the correction.)
(1) Vaguely worded laws are a blight.
“We’re protecting the children!”
“So how do we protect them from you and your badly written law?”
(2) facepalm
I’m pretty sure it’s not unethical to turn down a story after it has been accepted. It happens all the time — for various reasons. Let me know if I’m wrong.
(5) An R-rated talking dog movie. Just what people are going to want to see…
(9) Something Waukegan This Way Comes.
(1) Lovely. I foresee a lawsuit that goes to the (biased) Supreme Court.
(2) Don’t really know enough to comment, although he says if he were to go back in time, he wouldn’t do that again. I have no idea whether I trust him… but then, there was the late Sen. Byrd, who as he got older, completely repudiated when he joined the KKK as a young man, and proved his repudiation by his actions in the Senate.
(3) Is there any list of book titles available?
(8) Fond memory of the 80’s TV show, Buck Rogers. One episode, in the dogfight, Buck’s chased by a baddie, and another pilot shoots the baddie down.
Buck: “Good shooting, Major Gordon”
Gordon: “I’ve been doing this a long time””
Buck: “Not as long as me” (being from the 20th century)
Gordon: “That’s what you think, sonny.”
Gordon, of course, was played by Buster Crabbe about four months before he died. Oh, would I love to see outtakes from the filming….
(10) Before I had Amazon take down the 11,000 Years page that had been put up by Ring of Fire Press (now shuttered) so that my new publisher could put one up, I had one 2 star review. Good thing I didn’t have anything in my mouth while reading it. It’s… 11,000 years in the future, and he found my worldbuilding unbelievable (everyone else praised the worldbuilding), and bias… and from the way he wrote it, I assume the reveiw writer’s an evangelical.
Meanwhile, people who complain about “words they had to look up” aren’t folks I expect to read much. And I sincerely hope all of my writing appalls anyone who’s anti-“woke”.
@Anne Marble: On that note, see here.
1) Pretty much every shitty Internet regulation law and many other crappy laws as well started out with “But we only want to protect the children”, because if you object to the law, you’re objecting to protecting the children, which automatically makes you a monster.
I yelled “Pixel!” when I scrolled into the chocolate. . . .
10) Lone Star Reviews: I got 7 out of 12; I hadn’t read any of the other 5, and a couple of them I hadn’t even heard of.
(12) Hey, that was unexpected – Thanks Mike! (And thanks Deadloch for putting the song back in my mind)
@mark
Every court composed of human judges/justices is biased — there’s no way around it. The current Supreme Court, however, has been pretty good on First Amendment issues.
See, for example, 303 Creative LLC v. Eleni, or Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
@mark
Every court composed of human judges/justices is biased — there’s no way around it. The current Supreme Court, however, has been pretty good on First Amendment issues.
See, for example, 303 Creative LLC v. Eleni, or Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
(9) By far the most famous work by Paul W. Fairman is THE RUNAWAY ROBOT, ghostwritten by Fairman from an outline by Lester del Rey, to whom the book is attributed. THE RUNAWAY ROBOT was offered by the Scholastic Book Service and so ended up being a gateway to science fiction for many young readers, myself included — and it holds up today as a very good novel about emergent AI.
(2) I can’t imagine that the other accepted authors will be happy about their names showing up in the same issue as Riley’s.
(10) I got two and am kicking myself about a couple of others. A lot there I’ve not read though.
Yep, it sure does look like he managed to cram every last space opera visual cliche and “homage” possible into that trailer. Might not be any left for the rest of the film.
This one looks like it might beat out Avatar for the “most unacknowledged borrowings” award.
Thanks for the Title Credit and count me as another fan of The Runaway Robot
(2) Also from that interview:”I joined in 1973. At that time it was widely viewed as a patriotic nationalist party with serious concerns about the high numbers of immigrants who were coming into the UK at the time.” and later on: “Still recovering from its loss of empire, Britain was in a poor state, ….,unprecedented numbers of people arriving from overseas ”
It doesn’t sound like he’s changed any of his actual views, and the only reason he would have done it differently is because it makes things sometimes inconvenient for him now.
That David Dubrow guy seems like real piece of work too.
1) Denying any single group or demographic the same rights as all others in the US is discriminatory and, in theory, would not stand up to a Supreme Court case. It’s worth noting that the current target of the right wing is children, transgendered people, as well as immigrants, those of other religions, races, or the educated (whom they call elite, despite the fact most of them have gone to Yale or Harvard).
It’s impossible to prevent kids from seeing whatever they want on the internet. I don’t see that the right wing’s anti-LGBT/anti education crusade will do anything from stopping pornography, child exploitation, hate based propaganda, or conspiracy theories online or on social media.
Social media sites are echo chambers for the worst of humanity. Though some good has come of it, it’s part of what is tearing this country apart. IF social media is a threat to our kids, (a big IF), then it is equally harmful to adults who are addicted to being frightened by conspiracy theories. SOCIAL MEDIA SITES should be the thing that gets shut down, if it’s such a threat to national securty!
As the right wing uses social media to push it’s agenda, they won’t take such action, nor will they address the harm that conspiracy theories from within or without the US generates in social media, because they keep their constituents in a constant state of fear to 1) keep them from thinking rationally, and 2) promote the notion that “It’s the end of the world if THEY get in power.”
Just recently, a man was triggered by a pride flag into shooting a store owner. This is NOT a rational act. This is what can happen if people are conned into believing that this group or that group is an existential threat to their existence.
1) Censorship is a bad idea in general and when shit like this has “broad bipartisan support’ it actually makes me more suspicious rather than less. Normally y’all can’t agree on the color of the sky, so what you clowns REALLY up to here?
2)Honestly, the only thing this has really accomplished is to make me curious about Riley (who I had never heard of before) and his story, which I’m pretty sure was the opposite of the pitchfork and torch brigade’s intention.
13) The other day I mentioned that some book covered here about psychic CIA assassins sounded like it been written just for me. Every time Zack Snyder makes a movie, I feel the same way. Can’t wait to see it, bro.
HUZZAH! I’ve been forlornly and without much hope requesting a login token from Chengdu about twice a day… and this morning, I GOT ONE! I’ve immediately voted for the categories I’ve read, just in case this was a one-time miracle and I’ll never be able to log in again, and I’m now downloading the various packets so that, with luck and another miraculous token, I’ll be able to vote for the categories I’ve not yet read….
(2) ”I joined in 1973. At that time it was widely viewed as a patriotic nationalist party with serious concerns about the high numbers of immigrants who were coming into the UK at the time.”
This doesn’t hold up. In 1973, the National Front was led by John Tyndall. Tyndall was explicitly calling himself a National Socialist less than ten years prior. It’s true that he changed his message, but it was also clear that his views were the same.
Furthermore, Tyndall became the NF leader because the previous leadership resigned; they explicitly left because of Tyndall’s neo-Nazi connections. Tyndall’s mentor, A. K. Chesterton, was a proud antisemite who founded the British Unions of Fascists several decades previously.
In the summer or 1974, Kevin Gately died during protests against the National Front. It doesn’t appear to be the case that NF members deliberately killed him but it was front page news. You couldn’t claim not to know who the NF were.
It is possible to redeem yourself from actions you took over 40 years ago. Claiming that you shouldn’t be held accountable is not the way to start.
(If anyone’s interested in this topic, I strongly recommend Failed Führers from Routledge’s Studies in Fascism and the Far Right series. It’s a great series in general; Failed Führers goes into some detail on six significant figures in the UK fascist movement, including both Tyndall and Chesterton.)
13) “flying pegasus-like animal”?!? Have they never heard of the noble griffon?
@mark
I haven’t seen one. But with 190,000 books, a list would be larger than a big novel.
The books were taken from the torrent site Bibliotik. This purports to be a list of those books at a moment in time, and should correlate pretty closely with the actual list.
Yeah, you really turned the tables on everybody who opposes a writer who belonged for 10 years to the National Front back when its leader was a neo-Nazi whose stated goal was to convert racial populists into fascists.
With your abandonment, we haven’t lost someone more vital to the cause of tolerance since the guy in the Matt Bors comic strip You Made Me Become a Nazi.
If only we had remained silent instead of saying “this bigot would bring disgrace to F&SF,” which is so savage a condemnation that it definitely compares to pitchforks and torches.
I’m just saying that if you see someone post about an publishing achievement and you hop on Twitter to tell their publisher/outlet ‘hey, fifty years ago this guy did something I don’t like’ and the publisher/outlet says ‘…And?’ and then you hop back on Twitter to complain about that response and then again to complain about people being mean to you about complaining about the response?
You’ve clearly overestimated your clout/it’s obviously not turning out the way you thought it was going to and at this point you’re just giving the guy and the outlet free publicity. Which is probably not the desired end goal. So maybe just take the L and move on with your life.
Also, why are these people still on Twitter? I have it on good authority that remaining on Twitter just encourages/enables Musk in his villainy.
Also also, if you see someone post about achieving some sort of milestone or personal best or whatever and your first response is to try and tear them down, maybe re-think your worldview because that’s a small, mean, unhappy way to live.
What would Avram Davidson say?
From what I have read, DAR was called out before (by the horror community) — they read his more recent posts and realized he hadn’t changed his spots. He just found different names for them. (They are no longer spots — they are fur specks.)
Many people are still on Twitter because they are still looking for something that works for them. Others are there because they know that if they delete their account, someone will take their former username and spew hate and spam. I’m still on Twitter because of the discoverability, because it’s the only way to follow many genre people, and because I like keeping an eye on crazy stories in various genres. (I only just got on BlueSky a couple of days ago, thanks to a kind soul. And many are pointing out that BlueSky is not perfect, either — it’s still run by Jack.)
Your premise has already fallen apart in the first sentence. It isn’t about 50 years ago. It’s about everything since then because he continues to hold those beliefs today. Go read about Ataka, the ultranationalist party he supports in Bulgaria, and tell us again this is about the 1970s.
I don’t need advice on a well-lived life from somebody who wants to play precious rhetorical games instead of condemning fascism and white nationalism. Just go ahead and tell us you support him because you agree with him. Don’t pretend you’d oppose him if the right tactics had been used to speak out against him during the 24 hours since news of his sale to F&SF broke on Ex-Twitter.
10 “Be careful when you see a Shakespeare reference while looking for a good fantasy read. I do not recommend.”
Huh. Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest has more Shakespeare references than all other fantasy novels put together, probably. It’s a really good read.
The N3F Laureate Awards
Ray Bradbury (see well above) was an early winner of an N3F Laureate Award.
Once again, Neffers came together to vote on the Laureate Awards, the oldest set of awards in fandom. Many thanks to all who voted, continuing a fannish tradition now eight decades old. The awards this year are:
Best Fan Writer — Martin Lock
Best Fan Artist — Jose Sanchez
Best Fan Website — Fanac.org from Joe Siclari,
Edie Stern, and Mark Olsen
Best Non-N3F Fanzine — Simultaneous Times
Newsletter from Jean-Paul L. Garnier
Best N3F Fanzine — Tightbeam
Best Podcast — Simultaneous Times
Best Novel — Lords of Uncreation by Adrian
Tchaikovsky
Best Shorter Work or Anthology — Return to Glory
by Jack McDevitt
Best Pro Artist — Austin Arthur Hart
Best Editor — Toni Weisskopf
Best SF Poet — Michael Butterworth
Best Comic Book — New Think 1.0
Best Anime — Chainsaw Man
Best Manga — Mindset
Best Television Show, Film, or Video — Heath
Row’s Productions
Best None of the Above — Manuscript Press (Rick
Norwood) and aruffo.com for reprinting the
daily comic strip Alley Oop
Here’s where you’re mistaken, bud. I don’t particularly support or agree with him. Partly because I couldn’t give less of a shit about Bulgarian politics (or British politics, either 50 years ago or current day, if I’m being honest) and partly because I had no idea he existed until he was Streisand Effect-ed to my attention by someone else I had no idea existed until yesterday.
But something that I have never supported or agreed with, and never will, is people trying to whip up Internet bullshit mobs and attempting to be a tastemaker or gatekeeper because they don’t like somebody else’s opinions on [ –fill in the blank–]. I do support those people falling flat on their faces though, because I hold physical comedy to one of the highest and most enduring forms of comedy.
As for the advice, you’re an adult, and so free to make whatever choices you feel are best for you. But I do not see how acting counter to said advice is a productive and/or effective use of anybody’s fleeting time.
There is no Internet mob. There are longtime F&SF subscribers like me — and others who hold the publication in high esteem — who do not want it to publish an avowed bigot.
Fascism isn’t an opinion. It’s an existential threat to democracy and freedom.
Are you suggesting that you would care about David A. Riley’s despicable views if they were about people of color, Muslims, Asians and immigrants in your country? That seems unlikely when you keep pushing the idea that any online group criticizing a bigot is worse than the bigotry. Your “take the L” talk, as if this is a game and you need Riley to be the winner, is morally vacuous.
Now that you do know he exists, here’s a collection of social media posts he made from 2019 to 2021:
https://twitter.com/DantonSix/status/1694326447899382145
F&SF should not be raising his profile so that he can spread that kind of poison further.
@rcade: Are you suggesting that a magazine editor, who’s seriously backlogged due to AI submissions, check out each author for acceptable politics before sending an acceptance?
Fascism is a disease (there are others). But people such as yourself have proposed no cures, that I can see.
The cure is for F&SF publisher Gordon Van Gelder to announce that they will not be publishing the story. Magazines cancel the publication of stories and articles all the time.
And that one announcement by GVG will cure all the Fascists? (I doubt F&SF can afford to not print stories they paid for at this point). Absolutist delusions are another kind of disease. Bodhisattva Never Despise will be part of my cure, if I’m going to be absolutist.
F&SF can afford one kill fee more than it can afford subscriber cancellations.
You’re the one looking for absolutes. I’m talking about a specific situation. I don’t know what the bodhisattva reference is supposed to mean and looking it up didn’t help.
“Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes.” 😉
This whole thing reminds me of the famous thread about the “shitty crustpunk bar” and the bartender who knew he had to kick out all Nazis — otherwise you get to the “oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now” stage.
And the Paradox of Tolerance.
There has been criticism of people because they piled on Sheree Renée Thomas — instead of directing criticism toward Gordon Van Gelder.
Jeff Jones: There are people who hang around here for no pay and check the birthdays so they can tell us we made a mistake. So it’s certainly not that a publisher would incur any expense if they wanted a volunteer to run a few dozen names through Google and find out what kerfuffles they’ve been in. They might reject the idea for some other reason, though; who wants their magazine to have a reputation for running background searches on contributors.
Yes, I’m interested in general solutions. But at least you looked up the reference! This gist is that everyone can (and will) become enlightened. Believing/acting otherwise leads to bad results. Anyways I’m done playing shura-bosatsu for today.
@Mike I just saw your reply. That’s something to consider.
@Jeff Jones: “Are you suggesting that…”
They publish six issues per year, and there’s going to be a whole lot of repeated authors, so I wouldn’t think a quick final check on a submission that’s gotten to the point of acceptance is asking too much.
(2) If anyone still doubts the extent of DAR’s recanting/reforming, then putting some keywords in his feed’s search bar will give you answers. Here’s one, but you can find plenty if you go through the dog whistle bingo card:
https://nitter.net/DavidARiley1/search?f=tweets&q=woke
And seriously, stop supporting his Parallel Universe Press, stop linking to his reviews, don’t stock him in your shop, and consider whether you want to be in his books.
Just how does an editor go about vetting a writer? For example, the new issue of Analog has a story by Lorraine Alden, who appears to be a new writer and has only one previous credit in ISFDB. Is Lorraine Alden a fascist? A communist? A Republican? An associate of Jeffrey Epstein? An Obama birther? [Note: I have no evidence that Alden is anything other than a saint — just using the name as a proxy]
There’s a writer with the Twitter name Lorraine Alden, could be our author. How long does it take to vet her entire Twitter feed?
How much time should an editor put into deciding that a person, who has otherwise submitted a good story, is or is not “our sort of people”? (remembering, of course, that for every decision you make that pleases a liberal, you run the risk of losing a conservative subscription, and vice versa — see Mike Glyer’s comment above)
The hypothetical shouldn’t be a little-known first time author. It should be an author who has a long public track record. David A. Riley’s National Front background and continued advocacy of the positions he held back then are not secrets that were just stumbled upon. He received the same scrutiny he’s getting now when announced a few years ago as the senior editor of the relaunched Weirdbook.
F&SF, Analog and Asimov’s all run editor’s notes telling readers about the authors of each story they publish. They’re already learning about the backgrounds of the people they include in their pages — particularly the ones making their first appearance. There’s no new burden being placed on them by calls not to publish Riley.
Trying to turn this into a liberal vs. conservative issue demonstrates a pretty low opinion of conservatives.
Okay, make the hypothetical an author with a long track record — the question still stands. How does a person whose full-time job is to publish an SF magazine tack on the duties of making sure writers whom he would like to accept for publication have a clean history with respect to unacceptable beliefs? It’s not an easy thing to do, especially if it’s not something you’re used to doing. The only reason we know about Riley is that someone else did the work. But if you are going to hold van Gelder to this standard, then he has either got to do it himself, or hire someone (out of a budget that seems to be pretty lean). (I’d imagine you could crowdsource it — no way that will turn out bad . . . )
“F&SF, Analog and Asimov’s all run editor’s notes telling readers about the authors of each story they publish. They’re already learning about the backgrounds of the people they include in their pages”
— yes, and this info comes from the authors themselves. Do you expect the author to volunteer “BTW, here’s some background on me that if you knew it, you wouldn’t hire me”? Of course not. The information you want is not something that you could expect to routinely be offered up. Someone will have to dig for it.
“Trying to turn this into a liberal vs. conservative issue” I’m not trying to turn it into one; that’s already the default axis on which most of these controversies lie (Sad Puppies, J K Rowling and TERFism, etc.) And this isn’t new — the 1950s Hollywood Blacklist (how’d that one work out, hmmm?) was also on political lines on a L/R axis.
Here’s something that editors, publishers, and readers could all do to make the stories we all like better — judge the stories on the merits of the stories. No where in this discussion is any statement as to whether Riley’s story is any good. (and now the link to the story in (2) above goes no where.) Eric Flint was a socialist. I don’t care for socialism, but I read and enjoyed his books.
Sad Puppies was a conservative vs. liberal issue because a conservative author started that effort to complain about imaginary persecution by liberals. He put it on that political axis just like you’re trying to find common cause between conservatives and a three-time National Front candidate and party organizer who wrote an article for a British fascist newspaper in 1983 celebrating H.P. Lovecraft for his white suprecism. Here’s his conclusion to that piece:
If I was a conservative I wouldn’t read that poison and think any part of it was reflective of conservatives. But Larry Correia didn’t mind being associated with Theodore Beale despite all of his racist remarks about people of color. So I guess that’s a trend.
“just like you’re trying to find common cause between conservatives and a three-time National Front candidate”
I’m not trying to find common cause between conservatives and a three-time National Front candidate.
In the context of this disagreement, it might be good to remember who uttered the phrase “The little shit wrote a really good story.”