These are the times that try men’s Scrolls.
(1) Dilbert is still not at work on his sci-fi novel.
(2) Blogger and Big Bang Theory actress Mayim Bialik is opening a new venue for her writing:
I am founding this space for all of us: It’s called GrokNation.
Do you know what it means to grok something? Grok is an old-school sci-fi term from the 1961 book “Stranger in a Strange Land.” It means to fully grasp something in the deepest way possible.
I want to be able to reach all kinds of people with my thinking and writing, and while I will still continue to write for Kveller about Jewish parenting, GrokNation will be the place where I share my thoughts about being an actress on “The Big Bang Theory,” being a scientist and a vegan mom, being an unusual woman because I am an actress and a scientist and a vegan mom, and everything in between. Eventually, I want GrokNation to become a place for voices other than mine, but we are just starting out so it may take some time!
(3) Rachel Bloom, known to fans for her Hugo-nominated music video “F*** Me, Ray Bradbury”, has been busy charming TV critics in advance of the October 12 premiere of her sitcom Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
When it organically was revealed that literally every single present “Crazy Ex” actor can professionally tap dance, Bloom’s co-star and four-time tap champ Donna Lynne Champlin challenged the journalists in attendance to ask all the other casts we come across this tour that same question, and see if any other show comes close….
Showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna and Bloom also masterfully handled — or at least deflected — sincere topics, such as the use of the potentially pejorative “Crazy” in the title, which could have been bait for a less comfortable group.
(4) In World War II, dozens of radio operators in Scituate, Rhode Island dialed into enemy conversations worldwide:
The Chopmist Hill listening post soon became the largest and most successful of a nationwide network of 13 similar installations. Its ability to eavesdrop on German radio transmissions in North Africa, for instance, was so precise that technicians could actually listen in on tank-to-tank communications within Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s infamous Afrika Korps.
The Germans’ battlefield strategy was then relayed to the British, who under Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery eventually defeated Rommel at El Alamein.
(5) With the Worldcon coming to town next week, the Spokane Spokesman-Review brings locals up to speed about the Sad Puppies:
It also arrives amid controversy.
Fans at Worldcon vote for the winners of the annual Hugo Awards. Regarded as some of the most prestigious honors in sci-fi and fantasy writing, the Hugos have been bestowed upon such names as Kurt Vonnegut and Portland novelist Ursula K. Le Guin. The Hugos have been awarded every year since 1955.
This year’s Hugos are mired in a present-day argument instead of a futuristic struggle.
A group of authors who call themselves the “Sad Puppies” is accused of strong-arming Hugo organizers to insert three authors on the shortlist of nominees. The group’s leaders contend the Hugos are too often awarded to what they call the “literati elite” and predisposed to affirmative action rather than less pretentious and more deserving writing.
Critics call the “Sad Puppies” a right-wing group supportive of the writings of white men and averse to the growing diversity of the genre. Martin has chimed in with a long series of blog posts, saying the controversy has “broken” the awards and “plunged all fandom into war.”
The controversy “has resulted in more people interested in Worldcon than would have been interested before,” said Tom Whitmore, a Seattle massage therapist and Worldcon volunteer who’s helping promote and organize the not-for-profit event. “We’ve followed our own rules, and we’re going ahead with our own rules, and that’s that.”
(6) Even those who have been following the Puppies from day one need a map. Aaron Pound, who Lou Antonelli tried to get fired from his job as a government attorney, summarizes all the Antonelli news from then til yesterday on Dreaming About Other Worlds.
Despite my tweeting on my personal twitter account, Antonelli took it upon himself to track down my work e-mail and phone number, first e-mailing a poorly thought out threat to come down to my workplace and do something or other, and then telephoning my office to confirm I was employed there.
(7) Natalie Luhrs’ chronicle of Antonelli’s offenses, “Pattern Matching: Lou Antonelli and the Sad Puppies”, characterizes them as she feels they deserve.
I think it bears emphasizing that by making a false report to police about David Gerrold, Lou Antonelli placed every single attending member of Worldcon in danger. This is reprehensible. The fact that David Gerrold forgave Antonelli for this is between the two of them; Gerrold does not get to accept Antonelli’s apology on behalf of the rest of the convention membership and to its staff and volunteers….
His modus operandi seems to be to incite an incident or seek one out, become abusive in some manner, and then only apologize if the target is high profile enough or if enough high profile people notice that he’s being abusive. His apology will contain a lot of language that deflects responsibility for his actions off him and onto other people or communities. Lather, rinse, repeat. If he goes after you and you don’t make noise about it or if someone doesn’t make noise on your behalf, or if you’re not particularly high profile, you’re not going to get even an attempt at an apology….
(8) In a separate post, “Some Members are More Equal than Others”, Luhrs makes her case against Sasquan’s decision not to ban Antonelli from attending.
One of Gerrold’s quoted reasons is that Antonelli “deserves” to be able to attend the Hugo Awards because he’s a nominee.
The message I’m getting from Sasquan is that if you apologize enough, if you can convince the person you’ve harassed into accepting your apology, and if you’ve been nominated for an award, Codes of Conduct don’t apply to you. Especially if you’ve promised to be on your very best behavior and not do it again.
(9) But Antonelli has not been left to face the music completely alone. Amanda S. Green on According To Hoyt argues the way he’s being treated is out of proportion, and compares his critics to the storybook folk who claimed “The sky is falling!”
At least that is the way it might seem if you were paying much attention to those very vocal few who have made it their life’s mission to denigrate anyone who might even remotely be associated with Sad Puppies 3. Oh how they have rallied these last few days to not only vilify Lou Antonelli but, even in the face of the one man who could reasonably be seen as having an issue with him accepting his apology, they continue to attack and demonize him. This has resulted in at least one contract being cancelled for Mr. Antonelli and even that is not enough to satisfy those who have taken to social media to attack him.
And, like with so much of what the Anti-Puppy crowd has done these last few months, they have taken Antonelli’s actions and blown them out of proportion. Specifically, Antonelli sent a letter to the Spokane Police Department expressing concerns not so much about what David Gerrold might personally do but what some of those who follow him on social media might do. Was it a wise move on Antonelli’s part? No. But, to be honest, with some of the vitriol I have seen from both sides of the fence the last few months, I can understand why he might have felt concerned.
(10) There will be no comic relief at the end today! Because Stephen King knows how to take a horror and make it verse.
How's this for a Trump campaign slogan: IF YOU'RE WHITE, YOU'RE ALL RIGHT! ANY OTHER HUE, I DON'T TRUST YOU.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 5, 2015
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nigel.]
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With the caveat that I didn’t know about Winterfox/RH/Benjanun until she was raised as an equivalence situation to Sad/Rabid Puppies and Gamergate…
I find Antonelli’s behavior atrocious and yes, abusive. Apologizing and promising better behavior is an integral part of the cycle of abuse for many abusers. I don’t trust it for a second on its own; demonstrably better behavior over the long term is the baseline for even beginning to believe in any claims of change.
I don’t follow the ins and outs of the ongoing RH saga as closely as say, Ann Somerville but I do agree with her that no real change has occurred. Her tactics prior to her outing were apparently sneaky and manipulative and concentrated on sowing dissension among ostensible allies and playing “friends” off each other. She appears to completely lack empathy for the pain she has caused any of the people she “apologized” to.
I really don’t get the defense of her as a put-upon minority speaking rage to power because it’s been pointed out again and again that the main people she lashes out at are other female authors who are people of color, queer or both.
Moreover, the people who continue to unequivocally defend her appear to be a distinct minority. I think the equivalence that Puppy supporters like to make is a false one because I can’t think of any occasions where any of them have been at all critical of each other’s actions and statements, no matter how over the top. Lou Antonelli’s FB page right now is full of supporters telling him he has nothing at all to apologize for. Even more egregious to me, I haven’t seen any of the lead Puppies specifically disown statements by VD or TK, who have been the most over the top, aggressively nasty to anyone who even mildly opposes them.
Related to the item a few days ago about the Mars crab, we now know where Arrietty ended up!
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/597282/Alien-hunters-claim-NASA-image-shows-WOMAN-standing-on-Mars-acting-as-lookout
@RedWombat
That’s been my understanding as well. Most of the people who condemned RH looked at the apology and went, ‘well, we’ll see’. That’s been largely the same approach to LA, again, as I’ve seen. People will long histories and patterns of awful behaviour generally don’t have ‘come to Jesus’ moments that change their actions in the long term.
There’s also a strong difference between the two cases. RH conducted long, protracted campaigns against people. LA seems to go off at the drop of a hat, especially with a couple of drinks in him. They are two different elements of unacceptable behaviour which deserve different responses. Personally, I think that LA should have been banned, and the decision not to will come back to bite Worldcon.
@Brian V
I have some suggestions for him!
1. Boycott the convention. Just don’t go. Poor Sasquan will feel empty and bereft — all those supporting memberships, and nobody showing up? We will be sad as puppies.
2. Go, but wear a mean T-shirt that makes fun of liberals. Have five different T-shirts, one for each day. Over the course of the weekend, add buttons, bumper stickers, and other insulting anti-liberal slogans. Whenever we see you, we’ll surely be overcome with the vapors and have to retire to our rooms for a bit of a lie-down.
3. Avoid all panels with known “SJW”s participating. All those empty rooms they face will make them cry.
4. Go to the dealer’s room and DON’T buy anything from Tor. Instead, buy all your books from small press tables. Buy lots and lots of small press books. Walk through the halls carrying a big stack of small press books in your arms, and point out to anyone who will listen that NONE of these books were published by Tor. Not one.
5. Throw a party. Invite only your own pals — no SJWs need apply. Make it the best party at Worldcon, possibly the best party there has ever been. Make SJWs feel really bad for having missed out. They’ll regret it forever. (Fandom has a long memory about such things.)
6. Enter a brilliantly satirical anti-SJW costume into the masquerade. Win. That’ll show us!
7. Bring a hundred copies of your anti-SJW fanzine and leave them around the convention at places like the literature tables and the fanzine lounge. We’re sure to read them, because fans can be compulsive like that. Then we’ll feel really, really bad.
Also, Camestros, the map is a thing of beauty.
In other news, Rabid Puppies are mostly baffled by Poe’s Law.
McJulie –
Before they do any of that they should preface and end anything with declarations about how much they don’t care. Maybe make a sign and carry it around so people will know. While they’re at it they should flip their collars up and wear sunglasses indoors so that people know not only do they not care about the convention or the opinions of anyone there, that they’re also rebels who like to live on the edge man.
And wear a Three Wolves shirt to channel the true spirit of Puppy Sadness.
@John Popham:
Science fiction and fantasy have long been a big house with open doors, and lots of rooms in which to dream. Squids from space, Bug Eyes Monsters and granite-jawed starship captains legitimately share the table with Breq, Pyanfar Chanur and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. This is not a weakness of the genre. It is the genre’s strength, this cross-pollination of the ridiculous and profound, the vulgar and the high-minded.
We are an unlikely-to-the-point-of-absurdity community of wild and obstreperous minds, opinions and dreams. Those who value that house and the stories told therein should be exceedingly slow to judge who does and does not deserve a place at its eclectic table.
That is the lovely utopian take on the sff community.
The gritty reality is that policing and marginalization have been a part of the community all along (if we’re talking about the sff community in the U.S. — I don’t know enough about it in other countries, but the fact that most people assume sff fan=American in this whole puppygate issue is one of the problems that has been pointed out by fen in other countries).
I was thrilled to find organized fandom in 1976–on the west coast of Washington–until I started attending cons and found straight white male fen complaining about the icky girl cooties, and the crap that those girls liked (*media star trek kirk SNEER*), although, well, it was OK if they wore Orion Slave Girl outfits (unless they were fan, in case holyshit), and it was ROOOONING Sff.
Review all the whinging and false complaints about how MEEEAAAAN WisCON was to men (and the lies about how men were not involved) (and the harassment of women on Wikipedia who wanted to have a separate entry for “feminist sf” instead of just one catch-all entry for “women and sff’–some of those women left to form WikiChix).
And count down from there to Racefail ’09 (which was simply the longest and most memorable of ongoing patterns of racism in sff which was first noted and meorably reported by Samuel Delaney upon the occasion of winning a Hugo).
And then look at the recent online temper tantrums of men (some of them fucking professionals) yelling about the fake girl geeks and how they were only coming to cons to take advantage of poor innocent nerds and they weren’t all that anyway.
And leading straight into the accusations of the affirmative action warriors taking over the Hugos (meaning if the white girlz and people of color are winning Hugos, it’s all because of political correctness).
And the whole fight against “cosplay is not consent,” and the GamerGate campaigns (no not all games are sff but a shitload are).
So, yeah, not so much of the utopia for *many* people, and the claim that SFF was ALWAYS welcoming and oh so open and diverse simply shows the speaker is operating from some position of privilege.
Specifics about any of the above can be easily Googled–I am not in the mood to bother because if you truly believe the above utopia, you’re not going to be convinced by any number of links–and I have this list of stuff for today.
McJulie: BRILLIANT plan!
You just left out 3. PROFIT!
rrede –
Do they not know the saying, SFF is not a nation of fans but a family quarrel?
And what fights cut the deepest and are the messiest other than family quarrels.
Thanks for the Le Guin wink, Matt Y.
Yeah, speaking of how welcoming SFF is to different views or different people, I’d like to submit this turd into evidence:
http://www.tangentonline.com/e-market-monthly-reviewsmenu-265/lightspeed/2872-tangent-online-special-androgyny-destroys-sf-review-of-lightspeed
I’d like to submit this turd into evidence
There’s a reason I “No Awarded” Tangent Online in my Hugo voting.
Oh god, shock, horror. Not ANDROGYNY!!!!
(Please don’t throw me in that briar patch! Especially not the one with all the androgynous allegedly women!!)
Someone has apparently filled a complaint against Nora Jemsin with Sasquan. She’s… not going to Sasquan.
(It’s on her Facebook page.)
@Nigel can’t find her FB. You have any details?
Puppies and Poe’s Law? No, Cole’s Law: you know:: thinly sliced cabbage.
Love the map, but going to suggest you rethink your proportions – you’re giving Sad- and Rabidlands too much prominence. Kind of like older maps that show Europe huge, Africa disproportionately small (I’ve worked in a map library). Instead of making them continents, how about a SadRabid Archipelago? And have the continent be all SFF readers?
Feel weird doing this for some reason. Hope this isn’t invasive. I know it’s public and everything but still. (Shit I hope it wasn’t on her private feed that I somehow accessed accidentally. Aagh)
This is her Facebook page. If it was meant to be public you should see it there. If not, not.
https://www.facebook.com/nkjemisin?fref=nf&pnref=story
@re Jemisin’s Facebook page. Good grief.
It really is Fuckwit day: a commenter on a SF Signal post today tried to argue that since POC don’t read
F/SF, they don’t need to be represented in it
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/08/people-color-sci-fifantasy/#comment-148964
Tobias Buckell has already responded on his blog.
@Paul: That guy’s argument is, umm, special.
Nigel, I’m not seeing anything on N K Jemisin’s Facebook except her general thoughts on the current mess and Sasquan’s decision re Antonelli: nothing about a complaint against her having been made. (Post beginning “This is a problem”).
With the Tangent Online thing, that’s a trifecta of special.
@Nigel Where do you get from her facebook post that someone filed a complain against her. If I’m seeing the same thing, it’s just about her being unhappy with the Antonelli ruling and saying she isn’t going.
Nora’s post about the filed complaint is locked friends-of-friends, not public.
@brightglance
It’s still there for me. Bollocks. I hope this is just jolly old Facebook viewing peculiarities. Otherwise, apologies to Ms Jemisin if I’ve done something silly.
In other news, I may lack the killer streak you need for really ruthless cutting-edge journalism.
And I mis-spelled Jemisin above.
EDIT: Oh, thinks Nick. I suck. PLEASE PRETEND I SAID NOTHING.
Mike, could you delete these?
@Cassy B.: in case JJ’s post wasn’t enough of a hint, here’s the full answer: Gbz Xengzna
@Paul I read the article but decided to avoid the comment section specifically to avoid such bone headed comments.
If a well-known leftist author were to have been the target of a harassment complaint to Sasquan, this would be the Puppies applying one of the Alinsky rules they cite, as T. Beale often states his intent to do: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/alinsky.asp
Well, when a well-known leftist author starts harassing someone in a manner related to Sasquan, we can cross that bridge.
@aaron:
1) No, all one Puppy has to do is make up a plausible sounding complaint against a target. And after reading the Antonelli affair, and Amanda Green’s response to it, and some of the comments in that blog post, I suspect the complainer might even believe that their complaint is valid.
2) The rumors (in comments above) are that one of the incidents I describe as hypothetical has already happened? I’m being vague in case Mike wants to squelch the identifying name on what may have been leaked from someone’s private pages.
JJ & David Goldfab, as is the case with so many anagrams, it’s blindingly obvious… once someone else points it out. <wry grin> Thanks to both of you! (I also completely failed to get the middle trilogy in today’s xkcd, which was REALLY embarrassing once someone else clued me in. Not my day for puzzles, apparently…)
Okay, phew, I posted on Nora Jemisin’s page, and she graciously responded that she doesn’t mind. I’m an idiot, but not a privacy-violating one.
If Nora Jemisin posted to friends of friends on Facebook that she was the target of a complaint filed with Sasquan, it seems fair to talk about that publicly. A post sent to friends of friends on Facebook by an author with 2,295 friends is reaching a large audience.
Can someone give the short version of what she said happened?
1) No, all one Puppy has to do is make up a plausible sounding complaint against a target.
Yes, and it would be treated with all the seriousness that it deserves.
2) The rumors (in comments above) are that one of the incidents I describe as hypothetical has already happened?
And it is being treated with all the seriousness that it deserves.
To avoid dragging Nora directly into File770, I’ll link to Jim C. Hines’ public Facebook post about the complaint.
Just that a complaint had been lodged against her with Sasquan, which she is not attending, because remarks she made about Antonelli on a Sasquan Facebook comment section were ‘libel.’ I mean, I was being pretty stupid in getting so wound up about whether I’d inadvertently made her a target for yet more of this bullshit, but at least I wasn’t as stupid as that complaint seems to be.
This complaint against Jemisin sounds completely ridiculous.
There’s nothing in Sasquan’s Code of Conduct about libel, nor does it seem reasonable that a person other than Antonelli would have grounds to complain that he was libeled.
This seems like a troll at work.
{Applause}
So let me see if I’ve got this straight–somebody (nameless, though my Rot13 leads me to suspicions) is trying to get Sasquan to pull NK Jemisin’s badge for talking about Antonelli online, except she’s not even attending, which they didn’t bother to check before complaining?
This would be stupid to begin with, but not even checking to see if their target was planning to attend is a spectacular failure of…ah…”intelligence gathering” let us say.
What a buffoon.
@cmm on August 12, 2015 at 9:20 am said:
If people are getting thrown into androgyny briar patches, I want the one where David Bowie and Tilda Swinton are hanging out. Oh, and Tim Curry in lingerie. And Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo.
Also — LIBEL? You’ve got to be — this is just — it’s — (sputters into incredulous incoherence)
What is it with jerks and the constant threat of libel suits anyway?
There’s nothing in Sasquan’s Code of Conduct about libel, nor does it seem reasonable that a person other than Antonelli would have grounds to complain that he was libeled.
Also, the truth is an absolute defense against a claim of libel. Jemisin backed her arguments with sources.
What is it with jerks and the constant threat of libel suits anyway?
They don’t understand it. They think “libel” means “someone said mean things”, which is so far from what it actually is that it isn’t even funny. They have no real understanding of the law, so they go off running about spouting idiocies and expecting to be taken seriously. (Sort of like Antonelli himself and his silly “exaction” theory, which makes no sense at all, but that didn’t stop him from trumpeting it on his blog).
I did check the comments on Jemisin’s FoF post on Facebook to make sure she was okay with this being discussed before doing my own on Facebook.
And then I decided it would be more fun to just run with it on Twitter. #CluelessComplaintsToSasquan
I wonder if any of Antonelli’s stories take place in a world where the law functions the way he thinks it does. That could be entertaining.
My first draft had it as one landmass but as the non-puppy fans have to live in (or perhaps sail upon) the Ocean of Fandom, it only makes sense that the Puppies live/sail upon the Sea of Puppies. This also solved the problem of where Antonelli’s spot could be and also Michael Z Williamson. On that logic Monster Hunter Nation should have been its own island as it isn’t connected to the Mad Genius Confederation directly but I may just put some mountains there. Also archipelagos are cool.
Peter Grant (Bayou Renaissance) is part of the Mad Genius Club so he has to be in Sadland but the Tor boycott was a very Rabid flavored thing, hence Torboycott cape (Torcott cape is neater – thanks) reaches out to the Voxpopoli peninsula. Tor-Boycott ships probably set sail from there to take stern emails all the way up to the Tor Empire (off the map NW corner).
Jim C Hines –
That’s an even broader category to mock in general. Like ‘Why can’t I be a supporting member for free?’ or ‘Why isn’t it more like [insert different convention]?’
Plus, as I recall, he denies being a Puppy when calling for a boycott over being personally insulted by remarks aimed at Puppies, so you’d want to have a little geographical ambivalence there. Maybe it’s one of those places that’s an island at high tide and a peninsula at low tide…
I am adding lots of small islands near File 770 but they will have to be unnamed due islands needing to be big enough to fit words on the them (ok maybe a kitten shaped one). Alexandra Erin will get her own island because an Ireland shaped Island called ‘Erin’ is obligatory. Also a bit male-centric at the moment.
Also who first proposed No Awarding everything? Or rather was there a specific blog that advocated it initially? I can’t recall.
Jim C Hines: <snork!>