Pompeii, Krakatoa, Sasquan — only one of them was a science fiction convention…
(1) Dilbert bypasses actual writing to work on social media marketing for his sci-fi novel.
Yes, sometimes there is a fine line between documentary and parody.
(2) SF Signal’s new Mind Meld “Exploring Fear in Fiction” poses this question to its participants:
How do you use the fears that fascinate you in your writing, and how do the things in those dark recesses and corners of your mind come to the fore? What authors evoke the fears lurking in your own head and how do they do it?
Rising to meet the challenge: Stina Leicht, Kendare Blake, Robert Jackson Bennett, David Annandale, Lisa Morton, Mercedes M. Yardley, Mark Yon, David Nickle, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Andrew Pyper, Kate Maruyama, Anna Yeatts, Tiemen Zwaan, K. V. Johansen.
(3) Camestros Felapton (Nick asks, is that your real name?) has produced a literal (did I use that word right CPaca?) map of the 2015 Puppy kerfuffle.
A map of the various websites and groupings involved in the on-going internet kerfuffle over the Hugo Awards. Most symbols don’t really mean anything. Groupings of bloggers under a heading in bold. Crossed swords represent places where a notable discussion/argument etc occurred. This may include Brad Torgersen explaining what he intended or some kind of deceleration of intent (e.g. a boycott) or somebody pointing out what somebody else had done.
Several people offered corrections and suggestions. The best is CPaca’s plaint, “What, you couldn’t have a little Tank driving off a cliff in Marmot Gulch?”
(4) Sarah A. Hoyt’s version of the past six months of Puppies, “The goat kicks back”, shuffles the cards and deals them in a way that makes sense to her. That generally means belittling critics, or treating them as if they don’t have agency.
Which brings up “I’ll walk with you.”
I like Vonda and read her long before I came here. And I’m sure all she’s heard is the game of telephone in her circles, the same nonsense that convinced the dim bulb Irene Gallo that we’re all “right wing extremists.” I’m just going to say she’s trying to be nice, and the reprehensible people in this equation are the ones who so “Othered” Sad Puppies as to convince her we’re some kind of bigots.
To borrow Mark’s description in a comment here: “It’s a whistlestop tour through puppy history, illustrated with out-of-context screen shots and bizarre conflations of different events, culminating in identifying a clearly satirical website as an attempt to trick potential puppies.”
(5) Chris Meadows sums up the Antonelli story for TeleRead and makes a reliable prediction:
This is really something in the nature of a pre-game show to the kerfuffle that will invariably follow the announcement of this year’s Hugo winners (or “No Award” votes, as the case might be). No matter who wins, or whether nobody wins, some people won’t be happy, and there will be plenty of ranting and grumbling from both sides. And the Puppies will emerge determined to do even better (or worse) next year—which they might well be able to do, since Worldcon bylaws mean that no change designed to rebalance the procedure can go into effect until two years after it was proposed.
I just keep thinking of the old aphorism about academic politics being so vicious because there is so little at stake. It occurs to me that could very easily describe the politicking over literary awards, too.
(6) Although Ann Somerville’s primary interest is rebutting selected statements by K. Tempest Bradford, in the process she distilled the latest kerfuffle into a few well-chosen, pungent words.
As letting Antonelli off the hook, this is simply bullshit. No one in the comments on that post is saying “Antonelli should be let off the hook or let’s wait and see or oh it was so long ago”. The only defenders of Antonelli I’ve heard about at all have been his Sad/Rabid Puppy fellow travellers. Even at the very start of this, when all we knew about Antonelli is what he’d done to Gerrold, his apology, and Gerrold’s acceptance, there were easily half of those commenting condemning him outright and saying the apology was self-serving. The others thought Gerrold had been generous and on the face of it, the apology matched the offence. The more information we have had about Antonelli’s behaviour, has meant those praising him for his apology have changed their minds, and more people have joined in to say the apologies are nothing but an abuser’s typical tactic.
No one is letting Antonelli off the hook, not even Sasquan. Whether he’s facing the full consequence of his behaviour is another matter. But the idea that he is being given a free pass is nonsense – and again Bradford knows this. She also knows the only reason Antonelli’s apology was given any consideration by serious people was because the only known (at the time) victim of his actions, accepted it.
(7) Lyda Morehouse in “Dirty Dogs, Old Tricks” on Bitter Empire pays David Gerrold several ironic compliments.
Amazingly, this so-called reaction to the way he thought he was being treated has resulted in… (drum roll, please)… zero consequences for Antonelli.
Yep, the way he’s been treated by his loyal opposition is well beyond fairly. A few more people know his name now, and, at worst, have crossed him off their to-be-read list. But, the folks running the Hugo Awards, the Sasaquan WorldCon Committee, have not banned him (though they really kind of wanted to). Guess why they didn’t?
Because David Gerrold asked them not to.
In fact, Gerrold has been calling for peace all over the internet and asking everyone to try to be more compassionate.
Wow, yeah, what a psychotic that Gerrold guy is.
Good thing the cops know to be on the alert. You wouldn’t want a raging wanker like Gerrold wrecking your party.
(8) Vox Day has his own notions about giving peace a chance:
As for Sasquan, we have no interest in disrupting it, but we do expect our attendees to be prepared for any SJWs inclined to violate the posted Sasquan harassment policy. That is why I encourage every VFM, Puppy, and Dread Ilk attending Sasquan to keep a recorder running at all times on your Android or iOS phone. If you’re subsequently subject to any verbal or physical harassment, you’ll have material evidence on hand to bring to the relevant authorities. More importantly, you’ll also have a strong defense to present against the inevitable SJW lies concerning your own behavior.
(9) Deb Geisler, chair of the 2004 Worldcon, puts in perspective what the 2015 committee is going through.
Today, there is a group of people who are starting their own week-long count-down to the World Science Fiction Convention. This one is in Spokane, Washington. Their convention has been fraught with difficulties. Many of their people are not laughing. They’re not even grinning.
They are still trying to build something special for fandom. They’re often not getting much satisfaction. In fact, some are sitting around right now, wishing they were somewhere else, dealing with something else. Perhaps at a villa in Tuscany…perhaps in Port-aux-Français (since that’s as far away as one can get from the Spokane Convention Center and still be on land) in the Kerguelen Islands (also known as the Desolation Islands – you can get to the irony of that on your own)….
What I will say is this: If you are going to the convention, say something nice to the people you meet with a “committee” or “staff” or “volunteer/gopher” ribbon. You don’t need to compliment them on things. Just say something nice. Or maybe something that will make them laugh. Or smile at them and say nothing at all. (This last works particularly well when you don’t much like them.)
For those of us who have slogged this slog, sometimes a smile from someone is better than a paycheck. Hell, it *IS* the paycheck.
(10) Anne Rice in a public comment on Facebook renews the argument that the limit on freedom of speech depends on a willingness to defend its least savory examples.
Signing off with thanks to all who have participated in our discussions of fiction writing today. I want to leave you with this thought: I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. There are forces at work in the book world that want to control fiction writing in terms of who “has a right” to write about what. Some even advocate the out and out censorship of older works using words we now deem wholly unacceptable. Some are critical of novels involving rape. Some argue that white novelists have no right to write about people of color; and Christians should not write novels involving Jews or topics involving Jews. I think all this is dangerous. I think we have to stand up for the freedom of fiction writers to write what they want to write, no matter how offensive it might be to some one else. We must stand up for fiction as a place where transgressive behavior and ideas can be explored. We must stand up for freedom in the arts. I think we have to be willing to stand up for the despised. It is always a matter of personal choice whether one buys or reads a book. No one can make you do it. But internet campaigns to destroy authors accused of inappropriate subject matter or attitudes are dangerous to us all. That’s my take on it. Ignore what you find offensive. Or talk about it in a substantive way. But don’t set out to censor it, or destroy the career of the offending author.
(11) And here’s an unsavory example you can practice on: Tangent Online Special: Androgyny Destroys SF Review of Lightspeed.
Therefore, Tangent Online will show how the philosophy, the core defining predicates of androgyny can be applied to non-fiction as well as fiction and how in other ways it should be applied to areas of our real world lives. Thus, the table of contents for the August issue of Lightspeed below will contain only story titles—no author names; for revealing an author’s name would give immediate rise to the same conscious or unconscious bias we find in so much of our fiction. As well, the name of the reviewer is not mentioned for the same reason. Following the lead of the special Women and Queers Destroy SF issues of Lightspeed, you will find an essay following the review. Its author is also nameless, as it should be. It is the content of the words which truly matter and not who penned them. Content over author or editor is the only way to go in the Androgyny Revolution.
[Thanks to Mark and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist .]
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The Muslims run the place. The rest are Chinese and Indians of different sorts. I have been to KL and Singapore. I was a fan of Mahathir Mohamed, one of the cleverest SOBs Asia ever produced.
Lee Kwan Yew was the master though.
I am not required to agree with Wright on all matters, or any.
The trouble here is that you guys seem to require Wright to agree with you.
“The Muslims” don’t “run the place” in the way, say, “the Muslims” run Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.
Hi!
I guess you are a Chinese Malaysian.
I grew up in Manila, our neighbors were Chinese, Indian, and etc. and everything. My best pal as a kid was the Pakistani consuls son, we played cowboys and Indians. Guess who was the Indian.
Went to engineering school with 90% Chinese classmates.
Here is my attempt at a T-shirt design [the bracketed version]:
[File770.com]
They aren’t quite as intense about it as the Arabs and etc., but don’t be fooled, they are in charge.
As noted, you might want to seek out THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON by Saladin Ahmed.
The Puppies — those who have commented on it — hold it up as an example of that nasty nasty political correctness run amok that they hate so much about the SJWs.
It was so ignored that it was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and won a Locus Award. Oops.
How do you feel about Chinese novelettes?
The answer to that is self evident is it not? As I said, most people can do that quite easily when dealing with other people. It’s only when the difference is substantive that it needs hammering out
Note that you don’t get to define what is substantive to someone else.
@Soon Lee, thanks you were one of the people I was thinking about when Buwaya started his whole how do you speak to Malaysians shtick.
@Nick,I would say Buwaya is as accurate in that as a claim that Christians run America. Ie, not very.
Congratulations, RedWombat! I look forward to reading more about Bob.
(And if it isn’t too nerdy to say so, I really liked your Bleach fic, though I totally understand why no more is forthcoming.)
What substantive difference is there between you and Wright, and you and pretty much any person on any Asian street?
I was using the Malaysian thing as an example of difference.
@Buwaya
I was using the Malaysian thing as an example of difference.
I guess for the Malaysians among us it fell a little flat.
Of course not. You’re just lucky that “pretty much everyone I have ever known my entire life has or had approximately the same opinions.”
Heck, every time the Pupnado calms down, we start arguing with each other.
Congratulations on the Story of Bob, RedWombat! Please do keep us informed of it’s publication–
On matters of sexual morality, most certainly.
Muslim, Christian of every flavor, Chinese rather vaguely Christian and even atheists like my fascist abuelita. Some things were just wrong, in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, and on to today.
I went to Singapore for a literary festival once. I even brought gum and pornography with me. Didn’t have any problem with anyone, and it was fun to talk to Malay, Chinese and Indian comics fans.
Mm-mm, chili crab!
Like the Muslim science fiction thing. It must be restful, deciding what everyone else thinks and wants to see or would ignore, and then telling them that they feel this way.
The Malaysian thing fell flat on matters of sexual morality? That’s too bad.
I loved the chili crab in Singapore, myself, and talking with Malay, Chinese and Indian comics fans.
@Kurt Busiek –
No, we do not.
😉
Islamic Science Fiction? How about A Mosque Among the Stars? I’ll also recommend Usman T. Malik.
Fyi, I’m a Muslim and my presence here hasn’t prevented conversation.
LunarG —
Do too!
For the former, a great deal
For the latter, it would depend on the person.
After all, odds are against it, but it could be me.
On ignoring Islamic SF, I guess we must be doing it badly. How else would’ve Ms Marvel gotten on the ballot this year?
One of those Muslim writers we ignore so hard he won a Stoker award, was nominated for a Nebula and has been featured in the Year’s Best SF & Fantasy.
His The Pauper Prince and The Eucalyptus Jinn was really good.
IIRC Ms Marvel isn’t actually written by Muslims.
It’s just a Muslim character.
There are plenty of Muslim characters in European literature.
I will certainly have a look at the novels suggested.
Again we get proof that the puppies aren’t any interested in SF. We get yet another bizarre puppy dropping in and to spread weird and strange opinions about homosexuality, catholics and asian people.
No discussion about books.
No discussion about what authors he likes best.
No discussion about great SF movies.
Just talk about homosexuality and the idea that we should go to a neonazi blog and strike up a conversation with the misogynistic racist there. Yes, the racist that wanted to heroize the man who tried to kill my friends.
This puppy is no SF-lover Just a hateful and prejudiced troll who wants to make cultural war on minorities.
Wrong again—Ms. Marvel editor Sana Amanat and writer G. Willow Wilson are both Muslima.
Interesting.
I am a “minority”. You could class me as ” Asian” (Filipino) or Hispanic, in the census.The kids went with ” Hispanic”.
IIRC Ms Marvel isn’t actually written by Muslims.
It is. G. Willow Wilson is a Muslim.
The discussion was about the current controversy.
As for Hugo winners, my personal favorite was “A Canticle for Leibowitz” (yes it would be wouldn’t it?).
Biggest disappointment was Panshins “Rite of Passage”.
I hunted that obsessively back in the 70s. I should have realized why it was hard to find.
That’ll come as a surprise to G. Willow Wilson, the writer, and Sana Amanat, the editor, both of whom are Muslim.
Wilson also wrote the World Fantasy Award-winning Alif the Unseen, speaking of Muslim SF.
Speaking of G. Willow Wilson, her Alif the Unseen is also a pretty good read.
Oops, Kurt Busiek said it first.
My in-laws are old-school conservatives. I’m fairly sure that my husband’s aunt had opinions about homosexuals and First Nations people (non-Canucks may not know that’s one of the most accepted terms for Native Americans in Canada) which would make us all profoundly uncomfortable to discuss, even though, she being remarkably generous of heart, none of her old prejudices would reach remotely the level of, well, any of the Puppies’ expressed opinions. My father-in-law is a climate change denier, and a close friend to one of the few climatologists who has made it his career to deny climate change. He and my mother-in-law probably still have some reservations about GLBTetc, but thankfully would not be the sort of people to disown their beloved son if they knew he was bisexual. They’re too loving.
My in laws are some of the kindest, sweetest, most giving people I know. I have never seen them close their heart to anyone, they will talk to anyone. They’ve travelled the world and lived with and worked with people from all over – Kenya, Lesotho, Russia, China. They’ve talked about how and why most charities fail – because the people coming in act as if they are superior to the local people, infantilize them, and do things for them, instead of teaching them to do for themselves, and looking on them as equals to work with.
My grandmother had some clear racist ideas, and used to be homophobic and transphobic (changing that started with, kid you not, Four Weddings and a Funeral). We all held our breath when my cousin came out as trans. But grandma – who, I should say, passed away less than a month ago — figured out she loved her granddaughter just as much as she’d loved what she’d thought was her grandson.
I’ve met Muslims and Jewish people. I’ve known Filipinos and Malaysians and Jamaicans. (and not necessarily hyphenated immigrants to Canada). I try best I can not to be racist, and when called on it hen I fail, I try hard not to be defensive.
I’ve never asked anyone to follow my ideology. But it’s fair to say I do ask people to treat those they disagree with as human. To look again at people they’re prejudiced against and remember that there is room for charity and real equality.
And yes, though I can be polite thereto (because they, too, are humans), I do not “tolerate” or seek middle ground with those who talk of beating my close friends to death with tire irons, or who explain earnestly that women should not be allowed to vote (because a greater percentage of women vote progressively! How dare we not vote the way they want!). Because they are violating that one principle I think is immutable. This is not a contradiction; while there is nobody whom it is impossible to treat as human, there are people I cannot share the table with, because of the way they would treat others I want at that table considerably more.
Other’s have pointed out your ignorance regarding Ms Marvel (btw, give Alif the Unseen, G Willow Wilson’s book from a year or two back a try – it’s crazy awesome)
Also, I daresay quite a few Malaysians would find this impolite and/ or offensive.
ETA: double ninja’d by Busiek and Amina!
But how does Buwaya feel about EPH?
Off topic… I finished God Stalk and am just beginning the second book. God Stalk was incredibly fun. Someone mentioned earlier noticing similarities between Ankh-Morpork and Tai-tastigon. I had the same thought. The Lieber connection between the two makes perfect sense. Jame is a bit of a Mary Sue but the book is so much fun that doesn’t have much effect on my enjoyment.
Unfortunately, the gravity-well of my ridiculous TBR list (damn you, f770!) is trying to pull me off of Hodgell and into… The House of Shattered Wings, Silverlock, Great North Road, Riddle-Master, Swordspoint, The Grace of Kings, Dawn of Fear, The Library at Mount Char, the latest issue of Apex… and on top of that I realized I can’t recall if I ever read Gateway or any of the Heechee books. That one is exerting the most pull at the moment, actually.
Hey, I was like, the third or fourth to point out that Ms. Marvel was created, written and edited by Muslims, so we can bring up Alif a few times, I’m sure.
What with it being something the Puppies would surely like and the SJWs of Fiyal 770 would ignore and all.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is also one of my favourites. Not because I agree with Miller’s world view but because his writing is funny and heartbreaking and deeply troubled.
A Mosque Among Stars is a free themed anthology that may be of interest given recent comments.
Also:
http://www.islamscifi.com/
ETA: ninja’d by Amina
@RedWombat
Sigh.
::Adds to the list.::
Look you two, an argument isn’t just contradiction. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
Snowcrash:
Me too…
…downloads Kindle sample to try…
Random thoughts:
Aaron: I agree with RedWombat that your short fiction reviews are welcome and excellent.
RedWombat: looking forward to more of Bob and all. 🙂
Kurt: I suspect that a lot of folks feeling uncomfortable about Antonelli’s presence at Sasquan are feeling dread that he might do…exactly what he did to Cuinn – publicize enough info for his followers to go make their lives miserable for a while. The Bayesian priors would seem to be in their favor, too.
Bonus content! Bayesian priors, a fascinating part of probability analysis, explained with reference to Han Solo and telling him the odds or not.
Patrick May: It seems to me like a willingness to get comfortable around racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like are essential, defining qualities of the Puppies. Consider the case of a conservative anti-racist like Harold Gray, creator of Lil’ Orphan Annie. (That links to a fascinating article by Jeet Heer. Jeet, if you’re reading this, thanks again for writing such neat stuff.) If you really believe that the state should refrain from social engineering, that social good emerges out of interactions between individuals constrained only for reasons like upholding contracts and maintaining the general peace, and so on, but you also really believe that a healthy society must not push away any member wanting to participate in it on equal terms, and take it further than Gray to include a comparable acceptance of the real equal merit and equal potential of women alongside men, a rejection of the inferiority of homosexuals or the desirability of using the state to enforce their unequal status, and so on…can you cooperate with the Puppies?
Only in very limited ways, I’d think. You’d spend most of your time disagreeing with what they’re pouring passion into saying, and into putting on the ballot ahead of all other nominated works in various Hugo categories. As a conservative with an applied conviction in general equality, you’d end up not wanting to endorse quite a few of the slate works, and even more if you’re a conservative atheist. You might well sympathize with the Puppies on some points, but in their views of what people are all about and how reality itself works…not so much.
And if you were to try telling them about your disagreements with them on such matters, well, we see how they treat disagreement. They’d push you into the same amorphous lump as all the rest of us Maoist miscegenating atheist whatevers. It looks to me like if you were seriously anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, you could work with the Puppies only by suppressing those thoughts of yours in any forum they happen to look at it, and that seems like a poor partnership to me.
I don’t give a blank about EPH.
How they pick the Hugos is irrelevant.
More important is Beales and Correias and Hoyts original complaint, about which messing with the Hugo mechanism was just a tactic.
Which was if I understand correctly, a matter of cultural hegemony.
Hey! I’m almost modern ! I’m up to Gramsci !
Maybe I can recycle the old Maoist stuff.
I reject your stinking bourgeois cultural hegemony !
Exarch Cathedra — No, it isn’t.
@ exarch cathedra
No, it isn’t!
Still no interest in SF displayed by the puppy-troll.
Zen Cho is a Malayasian author, a recent Campbell nominee, and I have really enjoyed most of her stories. My personal favorite is this one:
http://giganotosaurus.org/2011/12/01/the-house-of-aunts/
She has a novel coming out soon.
Msb — Oh, no, this sketch is double-booked!
Still no interest in SF displayed by the puppy-troll.
And no awareness of how the Hugos were run before the puppies decided to break them if they couldn’t steal them.
buwaya, there has been no conspiracy involving the Hugos that was run by the administrators. You’ve been lied to, and you apparently prefer to believe the lies.
@Buwaya
And most people here are of a completely opposed view. Why is it that you expect them to give you every benefit of the doubt, to treat you graciously, to value you, when you are not prepared to reciprocate. When you, quite frankly, will not practice what you preach?
So tell me, you say your point was that people should “suppress ones own sense of difference to deal productively, even affectionately, with very different people.”
How has your actions here displayed any of the above?
I never thought I’d say this, but I want Brian Z back. This replacement troll is not all that the temp agency promised.