SFWA Turns Down Jon Del Arroz Again

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Jon Del Arroz says that on Friday his latest application for SFWA membership was denied:

Same form letter as last time. No one will respond, no one will call. Looks like nothing’s changed within the org.  Still a bunch of unprofessional people. I couldn’t imagine people acting like this in my real job. 

Immediately after Mary Robinette Kowal took office as SFWA’s new President in July, JDA blogged that his application for membership was is already in her inbox (“A New Dawn For SFWA!” [Internet Archive link]), and he posed as a supporter: ‘Things are changing at SFWA as my friend Mary Robinette Kowal has been installed as president, after I endorsed her candidacy early on.”

But today he claimed his rejection was another symptom of the horrors in this past weekend’s news: “SFWA, Mass Shootings, And The Ugly Ideology Of White Supremacy” [Internet Archive link].

Over the weekend, I was pronounced banned from SFWA, an act which is both a heavy blow to me as a professional writer trying to make a name for myself, and an atrocious act as standards are applied to me, a Hispanic author, which are not applied to many of their white members….

In contrast to JDA’s first time around, SFWA hasn’t publicly addressed its latest action. In January 2018, the organization said on the SFWA Blog that they had denied an unnamed person’s membership application, which Jon Del Arroz promptly identified as his own. Their 2018 statement began:

Recently, a science fiction writer made a very public announcement of his application to join SFWA. SFWA Bylaws section VI.1.c.i gives discretion to the membership credentials committee “regardless of qualifications.” Based on the behavior of and online statements by this writer over the preceding year or so, which the credentials committee believes is inconsistent with the obligations that SFWA members have to one another, the committee has determined that it has good and sufficient cause to deny this membership.

Perhaps no more needs to be said.

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59 thoughts on “SFWA Turns Down Jon Del Arroz Again”

  1. About what they should have said the first time. But all is well that ends well. 🙂

  2. The SFWA could just use a template statement, and increment “preceding year or so” to “preceding two years or so”, “preceding three years or so”, etc. It’ll save time.

  3. Of course he thinks his rejection by SFWA is on a par with mass shootings. And that it’s entirely due to his Latinx identity, not his obnoxious behavior, all evidence to the contrary.

  4. He really has descended into Trumpian levels of narcissism. Everything is about him, and he is blameless. If I haven’t experienced his oozing vileness first-hand, I might even feel sorry for him.

  5. Lis Carey says Of course he thinks his rejection by SFWA is on a par with mass shootings. And that it’s entirely due to his Latinx identity, not his obnoxious behavior, all evidence to the contrary.

    Seriously he really didn’t think that they were suddenly going to change their minds and think he was the sort of individual that they wanted to have as a member, did he? If he did, he’s even stupider than I thought he was. And I figured him to be pretty stupid.

  6. Lis Carey notes Of course he thinks his rejection by SFWA is on a par with mass shootings. And that it’s entirely due to his Latinx identity, not his obnoxious behavior, all evidence to the contrary.

    Actually his plea to the new SFWA leader is to set free oppressed Christian and Conservative writers. I kid you not. Not much of a Christian I’d say given his attitude, and very little of a traditional Conservative either.

  7. @Cat —

    Actually his plea to the new SFWA leader is to set free oppressed Christian and Conservative writers.

    And Hispanic, don’t forget Hispanic.

    I can’t decide how much of his drivel he actually believes, and how much of it is just self-serving schtick. Either way, it’s getting more and more pathetic by the day.

  8. Still a bunch of unprofessional people.
    Says the guy with no idea of how to behave like a professional.

  9. Contrarius says to me And Hispanic, don’t forget Hispanic.

    I can’t decide how much of his drivel he actually believes, and how much of it is just self-serving schtick. Either way, it’s getting more and more pathetic by the day.

    I think it’s mostly the latter. Or if it isn’t, he needs serious counselling.

    BTW Can anyone recommend actual Hispanic SF writers worth reading? I know I should be able to think of them, but I’m going blank right now. I’ll frankly admit that I’m pretty blind to race, gender and so forth as regards the authors when it comes to picking the novels I indulge in.

    The story is what I’m interested in, but an writer whose politics I find distasteful does get dripped from my reading list pretty fast as I won’t support such a person with my purchases.

  10. I guess Jon found out that Mary Robinette Kowal isn’t as much of a fool as he thought she was. 😀

  12. Carmen Maria Machado, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Daniel José and Malka Older, one half of James S.A. Corey. Plus, Ann Aguirre is a white woman married to a Mexican and living in Mexico.

  15. Oh, P.S. —

    @Cora —

    Plus, Ann Aguirre is a white woman married to a Mexican and living in Mexico.

    According to one of those pages I listed above, Ann and her husband sometimes write together under the name AA Aguirre. So those books would definitely count as well.

  16. Relevant Meredith Moment:

    If anyone wants to check out what Jon’s writing is actually like, his book For Steam and Country is currently available for free on Amazon US. Not just KU-“free”, but actually totally free. He’s got other books that are free on KU.

  17. I’m amused by him calling SFWA “unprofessional”; I wonder whether he’s ever tried to apply for a real-world job? If they aren’t interested, crickets. If I had a strong stomach I’d like to see him state just what horrible things he thinks white SFWAns have done, and how they were worse than the behavior that got his Worldcon membership revoked.

    @Cat Eldridge: +1 to rec for Daniel José Older; I didn’t care for the entry I read from the Bone Street Rumba series (a little bloody? for my tastes), but the Shadowshaper Cypher novels were well worked-out in both plot and magic system. (ISTM they tended to assume all whites were corrupt, but I wasn’t keeping score.)

  18. If you include horror writers, we can include J. F. Gonzalez and Gabino Iglesias. You could argue that some of the Gonzalez books have SF elements (such as the post-apocalyptic Primitive).

  19. I’m guessing, based on his name, that A. Lee Martinez is Latinx. I’ve only read one of his books, his first, Gil’s All Fright Diner, and enjoyed it. It won the Alex award. I like his writing style.

  21. If we’re including horror, then Mariana Enriquez. Things We Lost in the Fire is unbelievably good. (Also really disturbing, and occasionally straight-up Lovecraftian.) And Samanta Schweblin, whose Mouthful of Birds is excellent, although it’s more edging toward slipstream than horror.

    Pola Oloixarac’s Dark Constellations is published as mainstream fiction but is unquestionably a weird and brilliant SF novel.

  24. @Cora —

    Sabrina Vourvoulias is another good Hispanic author of SFF.

    In fact, she wrote one of the articles I linked to in my earlier post.

  26. Ignacio Vigalondo wrote the script for the spanish movie Time Crimes and it is fantastic. Highly recommended.

  27. I’ve been reading Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic. Edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown. It has 34 interesting and evocative stories by different authors. Check it out.

    Second the recommendation of A. Lee Martinez.

  28. Angelica Gorodischer is Argentinian and has three books in English from Small Beer, one of them translated by Ursula Le Guin.

  29. Hampus Eckerman on August 5, 2019 at 4:39 pm said:

    About what they should have said the first time. But all is well that ends well

    I think that was what they said the first time. AFAIK we only have Jon’s statement this year.

  30. @Cat Eldridge

    BTW Can anyone recommend actual Hispanic SF writers worth reading?

    Thanks. The first book in Del Arroz’s series is now free on Amazon. I’ll let y’all know if that Hispanic author falls within the group of “worth reading”.

    Regards,
    Dann
    “To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am” – M.C. Escher

  32. Amusingly, after I posted here JDA popped up on my Facebook and thanked me for the pull quote.

    Darn it, I thought we sprayed for Prominent Local Authors last spring!

  33. @dann665

    The first book in Del Arroz’s series is now free on Amazon. I’ll let y’all know if that Hispanic author falls within the group of “worth reading”.

    A few JDA posts here ago, he sent me one of his books in Kindle format. I gave it an honest shot, but the pacing was awkward, the characters flat, and the plot hackneyed and cliched. I couldn’t finish it.

    What I’m saying is that “free still costs you time to find it, and it’s not worth even that much.”

  34. Pingback: Jon Del Arroz’s History of Trolling and Harassing

  35. @Douglas Berry

    As my beloved bride keeps reminding me, that’s why there are lots of different books for lots of different people.

    His series involves steampunk elements. Steampunk isn’t really my thing.

    But it has been on my TBR pile for a while. If I don’t like it, then I don’t have any qualms about tossing it aside. Now it’s only a couple from the top of the stack.

    I’m working on Brian Keene’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and just bought “Pilgrim’s Storm Brooding” from Damien Black. It’s the capstone of what has been a very nice (but not flawless) series.

    I guess I’ll know about Jon’s book soon enough.

    Regards,
    Dann
    War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. John Stuart Mill

  38. @Eric —

    A few JDA posts here ago, he sent me one of his books in Kindle format. I gave it an honest shot, but the pacing was awkward, the characters flat, and the plot hackneyed and cliched. I couldn’t finish it.

    Some time back I did a detailed review of the first ten chapters of his sf book The Stars Entwined. It was laughably bad — my review here.

    The guy has absolutely no concept of even high-school-level physics, and he should never venture anywhere near an outer space story. OTOH, the one that is currently free on Amazon is steampunk rather than straight sf, and I haven’t tried it. So there’s no telling whether it is in the same class or not.

  39. Eric Franklin says What I’m saying is that “free still costs you time to find it, and it’s not worth even that much.”

    I review which means I don’t pay for what I read. Those books get exactly the same treatment as anything I pay for which is that they’ve got a chapter at the most to get me engaged in the story before I move inward to something else. For audiobooks, it’s a little more fuzzy but it’s roughly a few hours before I say enough.

    JDA ain’t getting on my TBR pile ever in large part because he offends me. He may or may be a great writer but he’s a lousy human being in my eyes. And his political viewpoints are a large part of that.

  40. I think I found one honest phrase in the third-to-last paragraph of JDA’s latest marketing screed. It’s very telling, anyway, and very reminiscent of puppies. [emphasis mine]

    “In response to this atrocious treatment, and being kept from what’s due me…”

  41. I took advantage of the zero cost to get his steampunk novel.

    According to my ebook reader, I got 10% into the book, about 3 chapters or so.

    The plot hadn’t advanced more than an inch, and there was no characterization that made me care about what happened next.

    Oh, well.

  43. Kat says “In response to this atrocious treatment, and being kept from what’s due me…”

    He’s a writer. He’s due exactly nothing. If enough readers decide to pay him for his product that he makes a good living, that’s great; if there’s a less than that, tough. That’s capitalism for you.

  44. @RS Benedict: Oh, hey! I didn’t know you posted here 😀

    @All, Benedict is very very worth reading. All four of her stories in F&SF have been showstoppers, each in its own way.

  45. @Cat Eldridge

    JDA ain’t getting on the TBR pile in large part because he offends me.

    I get your motivation. He hasn’t exactly covered himself with glory outside of his fiction. I also find the current trend of conflating an author’s life with the content of their fiction to be more of a cultural irritant than a balm. It encourages a trend towards living in cultural silos rather than experiencing a broader range of work.

    I’m in the middle of a series written by an author that holds at least one significant opinion that is not only offensive, but it is IMHO threatening towards a range of minority populations. That opinion is more than a little problematic. The author’s work is highly enjoyable. I’d like to be able to get one without the other, but that just isn’t possible.

    For the curious, this author thinks Che Guevara is a laudable figure that is worthy of emulation. Just….no.

    Regards,
    Dann
    I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. – Isaac Asimov

  46. @Dann665–

    I get your motivation. He hasn’t exactly covered himself with glory outside of his fiction. I also find the current trend of conflating an author’s life with the content of their fiction to be more of a cultural irritant than a balm. It encourages a trend towards living in cultural silos rather than experiencing a broader range of work.

    It’s not about disagreeing with his politics. It’s about him being a shitty human being who makes the world worse by his behavior, And who appears to have no idea how normal human beings behave, suggesting his fiction is unlikely to b worth my time.

    His claims that he’s disrespected because of his ethnicity or his politics requires him to either ignore or be genuinely unaware,which is kind of scary, of a wide range of well-respected Latinx writers and conservative writers. Which says he doesn’t even know the genre very well.

    He lies, he abuses people, he causes trouble wherever he can.

    I’ve never felt an urge to boycott Tim Powers, or Gene Wolfe, or a list of other writers whose politics don’t match mine, but who are decent, upright people who actually write good books.

    I’d pay money for a Scott Card book again before I’d read a JdA book for free, because Card’s politics are really disturbing to me, but he treats every individual he interacts with with courtesy and respect. Oh, and he can write. A lot of his fiction has what I find to be really disturbing elements, meaning that no, I don’t go looking for his work, and won’t, but they are well-written. And a short story of his, “The Originist,” in a tribute collection for Asimov, was the first work of fiction I ever read that captured what I feel about being a librarian, and why it’s important.

    I don’t like Card, but I treasure that story in my heart, and will forever.

    JdA is not a patch on the conservative writers he assumes don’t exist because he doesn’t see them being shunned, like he is.

    Oh, if I wasn’t clear? Powers and Wolfe are two of my favorites.

  47. And to add to what Lis says. He’s not only behaving badly. He’s behaving badly towards friends.

    That is a hard limit.

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