Birthdays, baseball and Bill Murray cannot disguise the fact that it’s all Lou Antonelli all the time in today’s Scroll.
(1) August 9 is a big day on the science fiction birthday calendar.
- Frank M. Robinson (1926-2014)
- Daniel Keyes (1927-2014)
- Marvin Minsky (1927)
- L. Q. Jones (1927)
- Mike Hinge (1931-2003)
- John Varley (1947)
Cheerleaders reenact “Red’s wedding” during the Staten Island Direwolves game August 8. (Photo by Bill Lyons.)
(2) George R. R. Martin was in the stands for the Staten Island Direwolves v. House Lannister minor league baseball game Saturday. The ‘Wolves won.
The Staten Island Direwolves successfully defended Richmond County Bank Ballpark against an invasion from the omnipotent House Lannister (Hudson Valley Renegades).
Ned Stark maintained that you could hold Winterfell with just 100 men, but the Direwolves needed just 30.
Be it an act of blood magic or sorcery, but RCBC was transformed into a fantastical realm in front of a record crowd of 7,529, celebrating Game of Thrones night and mastermind George R.R. Martin’s appearance.
Martin, a lifelong Mets supporter, had just one stipulation if he was to be in attendance; the Staten Island squad had to abandon the “Yankees” name for the game and adopt “Direwolves” instead.
Promotional activities overshadowed the game, as often happens in the minors, all advancing the Game of Thrones theme.
An opportunity to meet George R.R. Martin and receive an autograph highlighted a list of special events which included: an appearance by a live arctic wolf, jousting competition, trial by combat against Scooter, a reenactment of the red wedding featuring mascot Red and swearing in of honorary Night’s Watch induction.
(3) Deadline says Bill Murray will be in the next Ghostbusters after all.
Bill Murray, scared off the Ghostbusters train after his disappointment with 1989’s Ghostbusters 2, will appear in Paul Feig’s 2016 franchise reboot starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Chris Hemsworth.
(4) Yesterday, Lou Antonelli reported Carrie Cuinn at Lakeside Circus had revoked a signed contract for one of his stories in reaction to the news about his contacting Spokane PD to warn against David Gerrold.
Cuinn soon thereafter sent this tweet —
https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/630254247200862209
Now Lou Antonelli has called on those involved to stop.
Ok, if anyone I know out there is contacting Carrie Cuinn and castigating her for the decision not to publish my story, knock it off. She and Lakeside Circus have their right to free expression, also. Lambasting her is certainly not helping things.
Insofar as the story is now available, and to make the best of a bad situation (since it probably will never be published anywhere anyhow – or anything I write in the future, for that matter), I will drop it in here now, so maybe some people can enjoy it.
Ladies and gents, I present “Message Found Written on an End Roll of Newsprint”:
The text of the story follows.
(5) Pat Cadigan gave her take on Lou Antonelli’s letter to the cops on Facebook –
In my opinion, the line crossed here can’t be un-crossed, certainly not with an apology.
Denouncing someone to the authorities for disagreeing, about science fiction or fantasy fiction or any other kind of fiction, is completely unacceptable. In my opinion.
1945 called; it wants its Iron Curtain and the Secret Police back.
David Gerrold responded:
Pat, I love you and will hug you ferociously every time I see you —
That said, I have to say this as well.
I am dismayed by where some of the comment threads are going — not just here, but everywhere.
So I’m asking people to please be compassionate. There is far more to this situation than has been reported, and I’m not going to violate anyone else’s confidentiality. I’m just going to say, please, let’s all take forty or fifty deep breaths, have some chocolate, or coffee, or a beer, or whatever — and recognize that we’re all just human, the missing link between apes and civilized beings.
It’s time to say, “This isn’t working. Let’s try something else.” It’s time for all of us to decide if we want our conventions to be war zones or places of celebration. If we want celebration, then we have to remember that despite our disagreements, no matter how ferocious they might seem, we’re all here because we love the sense of wonder that we find in science fiction and fantasy.
We have to stop beating each other up. Especially in comment threads, where it feels safe to say terrible things about people we’ve never met in person — because those ripples spread outward and generate more negativity and more and more.
The solution? It starts with one person saying, “if we’re the good guys, let’s act like it.” And then another and another. And send those ripples outward instead.
So please, it’s fair to report what happened — but let’s also be responsible enough to say that we can use this as an opportunity to look in the mirror and decide if we want to continue being angry every day or choose to be some other kind of person.
Thanks for listening.
(6) Adam-Troy Castro drew our attention to his sarcastic reply to Steve Tinel’s post about David Gerrold, linked in yesterday’s Scroll:
Question to blogger Steve Tinel: why would you even want to write a blog dedicated to science fiction when you have such bottomless loathing for science fiction?
What’s that? You don’t loathe science fiction?
How can you say that when David Gerrold’s criticism of one (1) Catholic Cardinal led you to accuse him of “vile anti-Christian bigotry?”
You attacked one science fiction writer! Clearly, you hate science fiction!
What’s that?
You weren’t attacking all of science fiction? You were just expressing your anger against one guy?
You mean you can do that, show outrage at one member of a group without being accused of venomous hatred for every single member of the group?
Oh.
That changes things.
Doesn’t it.
(7) Vox Day sure gets a lot of attention in Newsweek’s story about what it calls “the Nazi romance novel For Such a Time”.
Now, after being nominated for two major prizes at the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference in late July, the book’s Holocaust-set themes of Christian salvation are tearing the romance world apart…
“Obviously a lot of people liked the book, because they nominated it,” Day adds. “What they’re trying to do is disqualify all those people’s opinions because they disagree with them. It’s something that the SJWs are getting more and more blatant about, and I think people are getting more and more tired of their attempts to impose political correctness and impose thought-policing on everyone else. Donald Trump’s not having any of it, and I’m certainly not either.”
Donald Trump isn’t a political figure I’d expect to see Vox link himself to, even if it’s only to bait Newsweek readers.
[Thanks to Steven H Silver, Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Happy Birthday Everyone!
Wait. Newsweek still exists?
Anybody want to predict the odds that the Antonelli story gets a puppy nod next year?
Glad Antonelli is telling people to knock it off, anyway, and is defending their right not to publish the story. I hope it stops the abuse being leveled at Cuinn.
I’ve been here watching the whole time and I still don’t know how in hell it all came to this.
So far no comments with anything to say against rape and death threats on Lou Antonelli facebook post. *Sigh*
At least Lou appears to be acting in good faith so, silver lining?
Man, Gerrold just can’t stop with the horrific, vile vitriolic bile, can he? Only Vox Dei’s diplomatic genius can save us now.
(this trifle posted to subscribe to updates)
Hah. 🙂 Of course VD has strong opinions about the ‘Nazi romance novel’ and supports Trump.
I will note that I didn’t see Antonelli posting the editor’s email address, just her name. That was possibly (probably?) a misjudgment, but I didn’t read what he was saying as a call for an attack on her, his fans just think that way on their own. :/
Sigh.
I refer to a lot of the Puppies and their fellow travellers as The Not Yet Ready for Prime Time Players (I know, horrible person for calling them names aren’t I, I’ll stick to Ess Jay Dubya or SMURF or whatever next time).
Antonelli was one of the prime candidates for this, from randomly calling people Nazi for kicking him off their sites to harassing someone at their workplace to telling the police that someone you disagree with is a threat to whatever the hell this can be described as. He literally has no idea how he comes off to other people until well after the explosion.
I don’t think this is malice, I think this is just him having a tremendous blind spot. I don’t think anyone else is beholden to make allowances for him, epecially not after the number of times he’s gone “But I didn’t mean to do that!”.
He’s an adult. Realizing that actions have consequences, and taking the time to consider those consequences shouldn’t be new to him.
It’s getting reallllllly old having to see his name attached to this behavious. He’s said he’s going to take some time to reflect, and I wish him all the best on that, because man he needs it.
Are you kidding? Donald Trump is exactly the political figure I’d expect Vox Day to link himself to: A relentless publicity-hound whose every action is all about himself.
I’m looking forward to Ghostbusters.
I have agree that Trump seems like an obvious choice for Beale.
I think that Antonelli honestly doesn’t understand (as frankly many men, and especially older white men don’t) the reaction that women get on the internet. Why would he even publish that email if he didn’t want her to be yelled at? The answer is that he wouldn’t, and honestly, nothing is going to convince me otherwise. Especially with the Puppies being directly associated with GamerGate. This was a foregone conclusion for anyone with any awareness whatsoever.
Like the letter to the police, I believe Lou is honestly surprised at the amount of negative attention being directed at him over these behaviors, but that fact clearly points at an ingrained notion that this is a proper way to behave. Which means it won’t change. But perhaps he will regularly apologize for it, which is… something, anyway.
This whole Antonelli/Gerrold mess just makes me sad. It feels like we are starting to see the fallout of the whole puppy thing. Careers damaged, reputations destroyed. At first it was so much anger from all sides. And now when that is starting to settle, people awaken to what they have done. Start to see the results. And it is not pretty.
Some will contine to stoke outrage just to avoid blaming themselves. But for those that don’t… Sad Puppies was an apt name. They spread sadness to everyone.
No offense to Lou, and the story may well be fun (I just scrolled down to comments and caught the ending), but any story that ends like that is not an award contender.
SPOILER SPOILER
There’s a “something leaps out at the narrator” type twist, but he’s writing it down as it happens. He’s so surprised, he keeps writing about his surprise, sitting there and continuing to write while immediate crisis and threat are upon him. No, honestly. Just no.
SPOILER SPOILER
That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pups went for it. Not after some of this year’s offerings.
Gabriel F.: Why would he even publish that email if he didn’t want her to be yelled at? The answer is that he wouldn’t, and honestly, nothing is going to convince me otherwise. Especially with the Puppies being directly associated with GamerGate. This was a foregone conclusion for anyone with any awareness whatsoever.
That’s what I think. He has such a storied history just this summer of trying to arrange serious consequences for those who get on his bad side, it’s hard for me to see this as not being one more incidence of the same–and the most successful of them, too, both in terms of his victim getting real, hard-to-ignore abuse, and in terms of him getting to show off his nice clean hands.
I could be wrong. I’d like to be wrong. But it’ll take a good long time of him not stalking, mini-SWATing, or doxxing anybody–on purpose or “on accident”–before it’ll get easier to see these recent actions of his as “innocent but thoughtless” in retrospect.
The story Antonelli just posted to his FB wall: I read the whole thing. Not a bad story. Antonelli does have some skill/talent/competence, and the editor who accepted it made a good call in so doing, IMAO. That said, the story is more of a “workmanlike prose with a cute idea” kind of thing than a “award-winning knocker of socks into orbit” kind of thing, certainly not Hugo calibre.
Don’t care for Antonelli’s oh gosh my career as an author just might be over hairshirt act. No matter how sincere that hairshirt act really is, can Antonelli really be so clueless re: pen names? Feh.
I’d actually like to apologize for having dropped Gerrold’s name in my filked reply to Cubist. I wasn’t trying to direct a barb at him in particular – “full speed ahead Mr. Gerrold!” just meant he is Master of Ceremonies and has perhaps been known to grandstand now and then. Today, he has shown such strength of character in his reply to Pat Cadigan that mentioning his name looks dumb even by the rock-bottom standards of File 770. I took it out.
Paul Weimer,
Nat Lovin,
Antonelli said unequivocally that he wouldn’t participate in a slate campaign again. Did you think he’d change his mind after all this?
Do a thought experiment:
1. Kempner at Chaos Horizons crunches the numbers and confirms your worst fear: minions all voted in mindless lockstep. From now on, despite the record six thousand ballots, these robots always total roughly 15-20% of future nominators, the range where it can be “solved” by a “technical solution”. They get write-ups in the Wall Street Journal vowing to do it year after year until either Hell freezes over or the Mule destroys the Second Foundation.
2. Next February 1, a slate appears naming Butcher, Anderson, Wright, TK, Nelson, Rinehart, Vajra, Rzasa, Burnside, Roberts, Williamson, Truesdale, Schmidt, Weisskopf, Minz, Resnick, etc., plus some new faces because John C isn’t writing fast enough to fill all those slots by himself, and they drive everybody else off the ballot with only 15-20% of the votes cast, without declining their nominations.
3. It happens again and nobody declines their nominations.
4. It happens again and nobody declines their nominations.
5. It happens again and nobody declines their nominations.
Any weak links in that strategy?
In Scenario Two, in addition, what you just called a real, non-delusional slate of nonpuppies, headlined by why don’t we say Jim Hines, Rachel Swirsky, Charlie Stross, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ken Liu, N.K. Jemisin, Seanan McGuire, Kim Stanley Robinson and Aliette de Bodard, all join forces with editors Gardner Dozois, Beth Meacham, Sheila Williams and the Nielsen Haydens, with Glyer, Langford, Garcia, Bacon and Silver linking arms to prevent incursions into Best Fanzine, and they vow to obliterate the puppies.
If that happens, remember to turn off the lights.
And even if it were somehow beneficial to have a so-called “technical solution” waiting at the curb with the engine running, EPH and 4/6 would still be mostly dominated by one such group of idiots, and would be essentially overwhelmed by two.
The only way to minimize the influence of politics/the culture wars/the SJW backlash/whatever horror is coming next is if the fans get together and decide not to go overboard. And all remember to read and nominate. Sorry.
@Kurt – So the protagonist is writing away in his journal as death comes for him?
“It says that this is the Castle of Aaaaarrggh.’
Aaargh?
….Maybe he was dying.
Wait, if he was dying, he wouldn’t carve ‘argh’, he would just say it!
…Maybe he was dictating?”
Well, must be a day with a Y in it, Brian is claiming that EPH won’t work and all of fandom just needs to believe in fairies to solve our problems.
I’ve been away for a week or so, did he ever come up with a Step Two of his plan? I’m not seeing anything like that in his post.
1. Absolutely don’t change any rules to limit groups to an influence on the nominations proportional to their numbers
2. ????????????????????
3. Profit!
@Maximillian – of course not, remember Brian is an ideas man, someone else has to do the work.
I think there are some people who want to suck any joy there might be out of Sasquan and for whom a mess like this is a ‘victory condition’ . Even saying that plays into the hands of the joy vampires.
1 there are many more people with nomination rights for 2016 than for 2015
2 non-puppies have a much stronger incentive to nominate for 2016 having seen the mess the puppies made
3 there are more new lines of communication, sf/f blogs reviewing and active discussion between non-puppies than there were prior to the 2015 nominations
4 the antipathy towards slates in general and the puppies in particular has grown
5 the more trollish sections of puppydom will get bored and move on to some other outrage leaving behind the true believers of puppydom
6 if in doubt some deus exmachina plot device will save the day as befits the genre (I’m hoping it is chocolate)
Is “revoked” the correct term for what happened to Antonelli’s contract? He posted about being due a “kill fee”, which implies the contract was determined in line with one of the agreed terms.
I do believe Antonelli didn’t think of the consequences when he posted about losing the story, it’s just that Antonelli not thinking of consequences is sadly a pattern. I’d hope he’d also go back and rethink his “Exaction/Extortion” theory, which I noticed he also brought up at the end of that SuperversiveSF podcast.
On the subject of the podcast, which I inexplicably decided to listen to much of (I had to skip a few points when Wright started ranting about devil-worshiping atheists and the like), there was a discussion of No Award that revealed that none of them really knew exactly how it worked, and an attempt at an in-depth discussion of the categories that revealed that several of them hadn’t read all the works. JCW is point-blank refusing to read AS, for example, because pronouns, and because he did the AI plot better in the Golden Age.
And yes, VD has never seen a bandwagon he didn’t want to hitch himself to.
I liked this Antonelli story better than the one he was nominated for. No, neither one of them was Hugo worthy, but that is not really surprising. Hugo is the top of the pops. The crème de la crème. An author that managed to write only Hugo worthy stories would be a demi-god.
But the ending needs some fixing.
Also, I have no idea what Brian Z is chattering about. Anyone understand him? Yesterday he was all about puppies never slating no more, we should instead be careful about some unknown whatevers. And today it is all about slating for eternity.
Does your friend and his, Brian Z, realize that as a result of his determinedly persistent, all-pervading deceit, he’s long since burned thru all his social capital, all Benefit Of The Doubt that might conceivably be granted him, all his credibility? Su-uu-ure Brian Z “wasn’t trying to direct a barb at [Gerrold] in particular”. Uh-huh. Yup. You betcha. Su-uu-ure Brian Z wasn’t trying for a drive-by sneer at Gerrold. Just like Brian Z doesn’t goddamn well know he’s lying like a Persian rug when he makes noise about how “technical solutions” can’t possibly do any good whatsoever when slates exceed 20% of total nominations.
Can Brian Z truly be unaware that he’s pretty much whoring himself out as an obsequious, servile shill for transparently awful Bad Actors? What ‘benefit’ can Brian Z believe he can possibly be deriving from the shit he’s pulling, and the pushback his shitty actions continue to earn him? I suspect Brian Z might make an interesting case study for a grad student in sociology or psychology.
“Obviously a lot of people liked the book, because they nominated it,” Day adds.
“What they’re trying to do is disqualify all those people’s opinions because they disagree with them”
Wait, Isn’t that your campaign?
People nominating sci fi that they loved, but you hate those stories, so you organised a slate campaign to push the work off the ballot?
Maximilian:
That sort of thing, yes.
Hampus:
Forget it, Jake. It’s FUD-In-The-Mist.
Hampus: I was replying to Paul Weimer. Do you see any weak links in a slating forever strategy?
You are running out of arguments, so you want others to find them for you? Thats what the comment was about?
BriZ:
Yes, there are obvious weaknesses, and they’ve been explained to you before. Quit trying to ride your unicycle in circles and claiming you’re on the way somewhere.
I’m going to regret this, I’m going to regret this…
@Bryan “Hampus: I was replying to Paul Weimer. Do you see any weak links in a slating forever strategy?”
What does that even mean? Weak links from whose point of view? In terms of what goals?
If you mean VD, his stated goal (for whatever worth you give that) was to force the Internet to say only nice things about him by threatening to slate and then No Award in perpetuity. The obvious weak link in his plan is that there isn’t anyone who can give him what (he said) he wants.
Hampus: well, it should be blindingly obvious to anyone who stops to think for a moment.
“looks dumb even by the rock-bottom standards of File 770”
Speak for yourself, please. Is there a reason not to be courteous?
Maximillian: how about from the point of view of people being honored by a fan award?
What are you blabbering about? You are turning full stop James May.
Hampus: how about from the point of view of Butcher, Anderson, Wright, TK, Nelson, Rinehart, Vajra, Rzasa, Burnside, Roberts, Williamson, Truesdale, Schmidt, Weisskopf, Minz, and Resnick?
Incidentally:
> “‘Obviously a lot of people liked the book, because they nominated it,’ Day adds.”
From the RITA awards website:
“Up to 2,000 romance novels are entered in the RITA competition each year. A novel may be entered either by the author or by the book’s publisher in one of the contest categories.”
Wow, that sounds like a LOT of people!
Now, to be fair, the book became a finalist (although it did not win.) Here’s how that works, from metafilter commenter dw —
“… the RWA sends out books to association members and asks them to read and review them. Each book gets five readers and the top/bottom scores are thrown out … the book was nominated thanks to three reviewers … Five people read it in the romance community. It wasn’t until romance bloggers and Smart Bitches started looking at the list and read the book that all this blew up.”
Definitely a LOT of people! FOUR, one of whom was the author or the publisher!
Brian Z:
Do you mean that they all have the same point of view? Thats ludicrous.
Kyra, I don’t know, it kind of looks like an interesting system to me.
Keep asking him what he’s babbling about, Hampus. Maybe he’ll start juggling to go along with riding the unicycle in circles.
I mean, he’s now trying to ask the question, what if there really was an SJW conspiracy, and he expects people to treat it as a rational point, which just shows he’s backed all the way up to the starting line and is hoping if he just starts the routine over everyone else will play along.
Juggle, BriZ, juggle! You can do it!
Aha.
> “Kyra, I don’t know, it kind of looks like an interesting system to me.”
I intended to make no comment about the system at all, positive or negative. I was simply pointing out that a particular statement made about it was incorrect.
Oh sure – sounds like VD might not have read the rules carefully. Interesting system though:
Then explaining it should be easy for you.
@BrianZ From the point of view of potential recipients?
As you know, from seeing several of them here in the same posts that the rest of us read, they think that it is great and most of them believe, or claim to believe that they deserve the awards and are only being denied them because of a conspiracy.
Or do you mean that you were trying to palm a card again and this is where you were going to say that obviously we should just do nothing until they get tired of being No Awarded? If so, please feel free to say that directly instead of continuing your Dance of Obfuscation.
I’m not sure whether you realize this, but the attempt at using the Socratic Method is not edifying. Please try just saying what you mean.
Really? OK. How would VD enforce his requirement that these people agree to be given all the nominations in perpetuity? Under those circumstances, wouldn’t the vast majority start declining those nominations pretty soon or more likely immediately? Would he try to appoint each year 30 new authors of fiction and related works, 10 new editors, 5 new fanzines and fan writers, as Vox Day’s best of the year? This year’s sweep was at least semi-accidental, which is why some of those authors like John C. Wright felt loyalty to the fans who honestly supported them. If the awards are blatantly and openly hacked year after year, though, who on earth would accept such nominations? VD would have to do something different instead. And surely he will.
I always post as me, Simon Bucher-Jones or sometimes Simon BJ.
Simon BJ
Honestly? Naaah, block voting is the opposite of honesty.