126 thoughts on “Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild Launches Prematurely”

1. Annalee Flower Horne has posted a good series of tweets on this subject here:

   https://twitter.com/leeflower/status/953771713468207104

2. I’ve seen a lot of responses to this group, including more beyond the ones you have here, Mike.

   I have been trying to productively engage with SFFC/Richard**, trying to get him to look at the idea that a place “Free of politics” is just not possible. You can stop political discussion and debate, but that leads to a default political point of view, not making a place apolitical entirely. I don’t think I am convincing him, but I would rather try and make the argument in good faith. I am not happy of his crapping on Alex’s agent.

   **Because, we all know me. It takes someone like Mr. Del Arroz’s persistent and unyielding crapfest to get me to block and ignore someone.

3. Lesson learned. Don’t climb into the abandoned spaceship and poke at the weird space eggs to see what is inside them.

   @Paul Weimer
   Given a choice, I’d rather deal with JDA than Richard P – so be careful.

4. Camestros Felapton: Lesson learned. Don’t climb into the abandoned spaceship and poke at the weird space eggs to see what is inside them.

   Say again? I couldn’t understand you with that thing on your face….

5. I hope that they do well and offer their members what they want; there’s plenty of room in F&SF fandom. Beginning by calling people cancer seems a somewhat combative start to me, but if you’re expecting resistance, sometimes that’s what you do right out of the gate, and it’s also easy to lose your temper when someone else has spilled beans and you’re scrambling to pick them all up.

   Sustaining an organization and keeping it lurching it forward is hard work; I have nothing but sympathy for someone willing to give it a shot. Richard, if you’re reading this and want resources on how to set up structures for handling volunteers and creating community, I’m happy to send links to some of the stuff I used to self-educate when I first started working with SFWA.

6. @Camestros. People “around me” even in my own thread of conversations have been far more pointed at him than I, who have tried to be civil and getting him to look at his bollocks assumption. I didn’t tweet it at them, but I tweeted a passage from a Robert Silverberg story tonight that puts paid to his notion.

   We’ll see how this goes. My guess is that he will eventually ignore my thread and just concentrate on the more pointed responses to his venture.

   I’ve also learned that I probably need to withhold commenting on your blog for the nonce because of JDA’s presence there.

7. Mike Glyer on January 17, 2018 at 4:52 pm said:

   Camestros Felapton: Lesson learned. Don’t climb into the abandoned spaceship and poke at the weird space eggs to see what is inside them.

   Say again? I couldn’t understand you with that thing on your face….

   I thought it was a Kinder Surprise. The ‘surprise’ bit were the tentacles.

8. Oh, goody, another attempt to suck the life out of sf.

9. Paul Weimer on January 17, 2018 at 4:55 pm said:

   I’ve also learned that I probably need to withhold commenting on your blog for the nonce because of JDA’s presence there.

   Sorry about that and I understand.

10. When you add the premature launch, the combative responses, and the naive view that SFF is (or should be) apolitical, they haven’t exactly started well.

11. Apparently there was a tweet about “going after sfwa and worldcon” which seems to have been deleted.

    https://twitter.com/rameloche/status/953698451052625921

12. Are they conflating SFWA and WSFS again?

    How do you come after Worldcon by building an SFF Creator’s chat space?

    For that matter, how do you come after SFWA by building an SFF Creator’s chat space?

13. Del Arroz’s initial publicity stunt re OdysseyCon was to offer himself as replacement GOH. Upon being instantly turned down, he offered free books. OdysseyCon has never turned down free books–not interested in censorship, but left it up to readers to make their own judgements.

14. F.J. Bergmann: Del Arroz’s initial publicity stunt re OdysseyCon was to offer himself as replacement GOH. Upon being instantly turned down, he offered free books. OdysseyCon has never turned down free books

    So you’re saying that Del Arroz’ “OdysseyCon Book Bundle” was officially endorsed by OdysseyCon?

15. I wouldn’t call it a cancer, but I would call it a fallacy. Quite a few people who don’t believe all art is political still manage to create great art. If I had become a successful writer and had an agent, I’d probably want one who believed that. It’s true mostly and a great way of getting away with stuff when it isn’t.

    Like the SNL sketch with the author of “Fire and Fury” saying, “Even the stuff that’s not true? It’s true.”

16. I don’t think anyone reasonable is going to interpret “stuck it on the freebie table” as “endorsement.”

17. F.J. Bergmann: I don’t think anyone reasonable is going to interpret “stuck it on the freebie table” as “endorsement.”

    You might want to re-read the part about the book bundle above, you’re talking about something different. Mike is referring to an e-book bundle of right-wing and alt-right writers and the inflammatory post JDA made to promote it.

18. @JJ
    Doris V. Sutherland linked to the relevant tweet in the comments at Cam’s blog some time ago. It’s still visible over there.

19. Ah yes, Cora, thanks.

    How bizarre that they think their guild will have any effect either on SFWA or Worldcon — but then this is the bunch that bizarrely thought that the Dragon Awards would have some effect on the Hugo Awards. In other words, their days of being delusional are coming to a middle. 😀

20. Quite a few people who don’t believe all art is political still manage to create great art.

    Even their art is political.

21. When you add the premature launch, the combative responses, and the naive view that SFF is (or should be) apolitical, they haven’t exactly started well.

    The bizarre thing to me is their insistence that because Cam blogged about their under construction site, they had to launch prematurely. They could have just ignored the blog post and waited until they were “ready” and no one would have thought anything was amiss. Now, they have gone off half-cocked and look ridiculous. Okay, they were probably going to look ridiculous no matter what, but they look extra ridiculous now.

22. Aaron: The bizarre thing to me is their insistence that because Cam blogged about their under construction site, they had to launch prematurely.

    The utter lack of intelligence and rationality in that decision is staggering, isn’t it?

23. I have yet to see anyone who believes it exists actually give an example of a work of non-political art…

    As to the rest of this, I’m glad some people have optimistic things to say about a project which so far has manifested itself mostly through classic Scrappy twitter-pestering and name-calling. I can’t say I have any benefit of the doubt to spare at this point but perhaps I’ll be proved wrong!

24. I have yet to see anyone who believes it exists actually give an example of a work of non-political art…

    Paolinelli cited Frankenstein as a piece of apolitical art. I would say the delusion is strong with that one.

25. Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild Launches Prematurely

    “I swear, this has never happened to me before!”

26. Part of the problem with the term ‘political’ it has several, often radically differing meanings. When people refer to ‘non-political art’, they seem to be referring to the political as a synonym for advocacy or partisanship and there is certainly a lot of art that falls outside that definition, which is a limited definition at best.

27. When I think of “non-political art” I think of “hotel-room art” — that is to say, technically competent, utterly inoffensive, and boring as hell.

28. @Aaron Oh, yes, I see that now – and apparently his own book is non political art too, what an extraordinary and fortuitous coincidence!

29. @Arifel: I’m sure he could also find some nice non-political fantasy, like say, “Brokedown Palace”?

    Honestly, I’m just bemused by how much they are parroting the whole “nutty nuggets” thing.

30. @Aaron:

    Quite a few people who don’t believe all art is political still manage to create great art.

    Even their art is political.

    I didn’t say otherwise. I’m simply saying their belief in non-political art doesn’t keep them from creating great art. So your response may* be true, but it is irrelevant.

    *I say may because I go back and forth on whether all art is political or not. Some days that seems to be a profound insight. Other days, it’s just a word game played by people with differing definitions of “political”. I mean, there’s a sense in which everything is political; but there’s another in which some things are and some aren’t.

31. @Cassy B – When I think of “non-political art” I think of “hotel-room art” — that is to say, technically competent, utterly inoffensive, and boring as hell.

    I’d argue that’s decor, not art. Doesn’t art have to have some sort of point of view that isn’t “goes well with the drapes?” That’s probably a good explanation of why I think art isn’t apolitical (although it might look that way if the point of view is enough like yours that you’re undisturbed by thought).

32. Besides the many points mentioned here and elsewhere, I’ll just add this:

    Setting yourself up as “the new alternative” to anything is a super risky business.
    Let’s run with the assumption that existing SFF organizations and conventions really are heavily politicized. And let’s assume that being apolitical really is possible.
    And let’s say you found a competing organization, and “No politics!” is your rallying cry.
    Who are the first people who move over?
    You’re new and inexperienced; the existing group is huge and established, and have reputation and networking.
    So: You’ll probably get a couple of ideologues who agree that being apolitical is more important than anything the existing establishments are already doing well. But mostly you’ll get a bunch of people who can’t get along with the existing establishment, hate the establishment’s political stances. Those are the people with real incentive to move over.
    In other words, you’ve just primed your organization to be a political opposite of the existing ones. That’s inevitably going to be the opposite of forming an apolitical organization.

    And that’s assuming purest motives, absolute sincerity, and competent leadership.

    New things need to be built up from the bottom. You want to change SFWA? That means you need to be able to work within the SFWA, tolerate the things you don’t like, pick your battles, and try to do the same things better — at the mercy of the organization. You want to supplant the SFWA from the outside? OK, then you need to build up an organization, and that organization has to have a more solid, immediate, constructive goal than “supplant the SFWA”; you need something that a wide range of authors would actually be interested in. Build up something decent, according to whatever your own standards of decency are, and you’ll do a lot better than trying to gather people around the banner of “my decency is the best kind of decency.”

33. I wish to register my appreciation for the title here 🙂

    @Standback

    Yup. Defining yourself as “not X” tends to attract the people who are the most vocally disgruntled with X. That’ll get you an early influx and lots of noise, but when you want to grow you’ll suddenly find those people aren’t interested in the hard work.

    (So speaks someone who’s spent the last week herding volunteers and/or cats to turn up to something that requires a bit more effort than just being disgruntled)

34. @ Camestros
    They would have hatched anyway. Nothing that happened on your blog forced anybody to do anything. RP botched the launch all by himself.
    @ Paul Weimar
    Sorry to hear this. Your comments are worth reading wherever they appear.

35. Cassy B:

    When I think of “non-political art” I think of “hotel-room art” — that is to say, technically competent, utterly inoffensive, and boring as hell.

    Cheryl S:

    I’d argue that’s decor, not art. Doesn’t art have to have some sort of point of view that isn’t “goes well with the drapes?”

    It’s an interesting point. @John A, I sympathize with what you wrote: there’s a sense in which everything is political; but there’s another in which some things are and some aren’t.

    I’m sure I don’t know what the politics of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Starry Night are. I suppose one could point to what Van Gogh deemed a worthy subject, or say that Post-Impressionism is the politics. Same for, say, the Mona Lisa. Politics influences everything, and everything has political implications, and the fact that certain works have been hailed as masterpieces while others have not is certainly political. I’d love to hear explanations on the politics of “seemingly apolitical” art like this — but at the same time, I feel like it also makes (intuitive?) sense to say that “Starry Night” is “less political” than the Sistine Chapel. Does that make sense?

36. Same for, say, the Mona Lisa.

    Which is the product of and had its subject determined by a wealthy family’s patronage. Also true of many far less acclaimed pieces, of course.

37. @James: Definitely. I was kind of alluding to that in “what (ARTIST) deemed a worthy subject.”

    That’s also why I lead with “Dandelions” or “Starry Night.” 😛

    And even those are making certain assumptions about what’s present, what’s nearby, what’s beautiful to look at, what speaks to the viewer’s experience.

    But again, I do think one can say some are “less political” and some are “more,” or that one is inherently political by nature of its subject matter, whereas the other is “merely” influenced by existing political realities, and so on. 🙂

38. I like how Paolinelli uses the royal “We” everywhere.

    The Three Pixel Scrolls of Palmer Eldritch
Scroll My Tears, The Pixelman Said

39. I’m simply saying their belief in non-political art doesn’t keep them from creating great art.

    Asserting that their art is non-political makes their art political.

    Their claim is, in itself, a political claim.

40. Van Gogh’s art is political with regard to the subjects he painted, fields, flowers, ordinary people, and the way he painted them.

    More than a hundred years ago, the director of the Bremen art museum purchased a painting by Van Gogh. This purchase was hugely controversial and the director was almost run out of office over it. Nowadays the Van Gogh is the museum’s most famous and valuable painting (and they have a very good collection). However, even when I was a kid, the Van Gogh was still hidden away in the furthest corner of the museum, as if they were ashamed of it.

41. Van Gogh was majorly bucking status quo with his art style. Now he seems safe and staid and traditional, but that definitely wasn’t the case in his lifetime.

42. Cheryl S, I think we’re in violent agreement. I think “decor” is (usually) bad (or at least uninteresting) art. I do posit an artist who thought they were creating something meaningful…. which doesn’t mean that the artist succeeded.

43. Impressionism absolutely was political in that it rejected the prevailing academic style of the time — in other words, the impressionist painters were rejecting the idea that you had to paint the “right” subjects in the “right” way, or take the “right” path to artistic success.

    While this debate is pretty much over in visual art, given that there are still people who insist that there are “right” (rockets) and “wrong” (politics) elements in SF/F, I would say the impressionists’ message is still pretty relevant to our field.

44. Also, I look forward to the SFFCG’s first donation to help support Writer Beware.

45. Like with the whole Nutty Nuggets stuff I think that if there’s a belief by them that there’s an under represented section of the SFF audience and authors that they can market and promote to, and now to build a group for to help each other as creators, that’s wonderful. It’s a lot of work but it can also be very rewarding.

    As others have mentioned though, setting up as a ‘Not-X’ group just invites comparisons to that group which can make your new thing look less like it has an individual identity and more like something that only exists begrudgingly. The focus should be on the creators and helping them, not on what other groups are doing. Plus most professional organization act professionally.

    From some of what the org has put out there I agree that they shouldn’t have rushed out just because their existence was announced early. It doesn’t appear that they have a clear mission statement about what works and creators they’re looking for. Telling people they want apolitical things and escapist works isn’t exactly clear, like does that leave out all dystopia/utopias? Alien worlds with different religious practices/governments/biology? Speculation on the future based on climate or geo-political trends? Who knows because it doesn’t appear to be well articulated. Which also makes it hard to know if you’re an author who might want to join the group or what the group might offer. And if it was more clear maybe they wouldn’t be getting dunked on all over twitter.

46. Personally I find the “We’re open to everybody except SJWs and liberals with their cancerous ideas” message not particularly apolitical or welcoming.

47. It doesn’t appear that they have a clear mission statement about what works and creators they’re looking for.

    Remember a couple of years ago when some on the conservative wing were trying to come up with an award to replace the Hugos but were struggling with how to make the award open to wide participation but also keep out those who had the “wrong” political beliefs, leading to the whole “web of trust” thing? Remember how they simply couldn’t make it work and that idea fizzled?

    That’s the kind of conundrum these guys face. They know that “conservative clubhouse, all you nasty liberals stay out” is not something that will play well in public, so they make a show of wanting to be open an inclusive, but in practice they are really bad at it.

48. @Aaron They know that “conservative clubhouse, all you nasty liberals stay out” is not something that will play well in public, so they make a show of wanting to be open and inclusive, but in practice they are really bad at it.

    Which makes me think of this, from Russ’ “How to Suppress Women’s Writing”:

    In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially speaking) is one in which the members of the “wrong” group have the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they can’t. But alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. The trick thus becomes to make the freedom as nominal a freedom as possible and then—since some of the so-and-so’s will do it anyway—develop various strategies for ignoring, condemning or belittling the artistic works that result. If properly done, these strategies result in a social situation in which the “wrong” people are (supposedly) free to commit literature, art, or whatever, but very few do, and those who do (it seems) do it badly, so we can all go home to lunch.

49. Aaron –

    They know that “conservative clubhouse, all you nasty liberals stay out” is not something that will play well in public, so they make a show of wanting to be open an inclusive, but in practice they are really bad at it.

    I mean even taking the group at their word I think it would be difficult across the spectrum of all writers to want to join a group where they’re required to leave their personal opinions related to most everything at the door. Seems like that’s against the whole point of collaboration.

50. @Aaron:

    I’m simply saying their belief in non-political art doesn’t keep them from creating great art.

    Asserting that their art is non-political makes their art political.

    Their claim is, in itself, a political claim.

    All arguably true, all still totally irrelevant to the belief of the person creating such art that their art is not political. If you can’t convince me, you won’t convince them.

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