Tag Archives: Carrie Cuinn

Pixel Scroll 8/31/19 A Scroll Title Named Desire

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(1) TIPTREE AWARD CONTROVERSY. While I can’t say I located the ultimate roots of the discussion, I found Carrie Cuinn’s thread, which starts here.

https://twitter.com/kellyoyo/status/1165586947269640192

There are more comments in Natalie Luhrs’ thread, starting here.

https://twitter.com/eilatan/status/1165412583253217280

Today Sweden’s John-Henri Holmberg countered challenges raised about continuing the James Tiptree Award under its existing name in his review of the history of the award and its namesake on Facebook. He asks in conclusion:

…What has changed in the last few months? As far as I know, nothing. The award given not even in her own name, but in the name of her pseudonym, celebrates work of imaginative fiction exploring the territory she made her own over her twenty-years long writing career. She explored it more deeply, searchingly, critically and imaginatively than anyone before her had ever come close to doing, and her work remains startlingly fresh, moving, and thoughtful. We owe it to her to celebrate her heritage, not to obliterate it. Her death, as that of her husband, was a tragedy, but not by any reasonable standard an erasure of her life or her literary heritage.

(2) CARRYING THE BANNER. Travis Corcoran’s Prometheus Award acceptance speech has been posted on the Libertarian Futurist Society blog:

Here is the acceptance speech by Travis Corcoran for 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Causes of Separation.  (Corcoran could not attend the Dublin Worldcon but wrote this acceptance speech to be read there at the ceremony.)

…Chapman’s essay and Pournelle’s and Conquest’s laws are three observations of a single underlying phenomena: the collectivists always worm their way in and take over. We know THAT this happens, but WHY does it happen? How can we model it and understand it?

(3) WHAT, IT’S NOT CHEESE? Space.com reports “China’s Lunar Rover Has Found Something Weird on the Far Side of the Moon”.  

China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover has discovered an unusually colored, ‘gel-like’ substance during its exploration activities on the far side of the moon.

The mission’s rover, Yutu-2, stumbled on that surprise during lunar day 8. The discovery prompted scientists on the mission to postpone other driving plans for the rover, and instead focus its instruments on trying to figure out what the strange material is.

…So far, mission scientists haven’t offered any indication as to the nature of the colored substance and have said only that it is “gel-like” and has an “unusual color.” One possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon. 

(4) EL-MOHTAR REVIEW. NPR’s Amal El-Mohtar says “‘Palestine + 100’ Explores Contested Territory, Past And Future”

A few years ago I reviewed Iraq + 100, a project which invited its contributors to write stories set 100 years in Iraq’s future. It was conceived as an imaginative springboard for Iraqi writers to potentially launch themselves beyond the enduring trauma of waves of invasion and devastation — but because science fiction stories set in the future are always in some way about our present, the collection became a multi-voiced testament to the fact that you can’t project a future without first reckoning with the past.

Comma Press has followed that collection up with Palestine + 100, an anthology edited by Basma Ghalayini in which twelve Palestinian authors write stories set 100 years after the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — during which, as Ghalayini writes in her moving, thoughtful introduction, “Israel declared itself a new-born state on the rubble of Palestinian lives.” Thus where Iraq + 100 looked towards the year 2103, the stories in Palestine + 100 look towards 2048, and the bulk of the work isn’t about extrapolating a future so much as recognizing, fighting, and establishing narratives about the past. The choice of subtitle — “stories from a century after the Nakba” — exemplifies this, drawing attention to the fact that for Palestinians (and many Israelis), May 15, 1948 is not a date to celebrate, but to grieve.

In Palestine + 100, memory and imagination are contested territories. Samir El-Youssef’s “The Association,” translated by Raph Cormack, kicks off with the murder of a historian; the narrator observes that “Since the 2028 Agreement, the people of the country — all the different sects and religions, Muslim, Christian and Jewish — had decided that forgetting was the best way to live in peace.” In Saleem Haddad’s “Song of the Birds,” a young girl lives in a beautiful simulation haunted by the vicious, broken reality it obscures. In Ahmed Masoud’s “Application 39,” two young men imagine a Palestinian bid for the Olympics as a joke — and find themselves in the tormented midst of trying to make that a reality, with all the consequences it entails. In Tasnim Abutabikh’s “Vengeance” the plot is evenly divided between one man’s elaborate pursuit of revenge against a neighbor he thinks has wronged him — and that neighbor’s heartbroken revelation that the man had the past all wrong. In almost all these stories there is a doubled, troubled vision, that never resolves so much as it fractures further.

(5) MICHAELS OBIT. Melisa Michaels (1946-2019) died August 30 of complications amid efforts to treat her lung cancer. (Condolences to filer Xtifr, her nephew.)

Michaels was known for her series about Skyrider, a woman space combat pilot. She also wrote urban fantasies including “Sister to the Rain” and “Cold Iron.” Her novel Skirmish was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel in 1986. SFWA presented her with a Service Award in 2008.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 31, 1914 — Richard Basehart. He’s best remembered as Admiral Harriman Nelson in  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He also portrayed Wilton Knight in the later Knight Rider series. And he appeared in “Probe 7, Over and Out”, an episode of The Twilight Zone. (Died 1984)
  • Born August 31, 1933 — Robert Adams. He’s best remembered for the Horseclans series which became his overall best-known works though he wrote other works.  While he never completed the series, he wrote 18 novels in the Horseclans series before his death. (Died 1990.)
  • Born August 31, 1949 — Richard Gere, 70. Lancelot in First Knight starring Sean Connery as King Arthur. And was Joe Klein in The Mothman Prophecies. That’s it. First Knight for me is more than enough to get Birthday Honours!  
  • Born August 31, 1958 — Julie Brown, 61. Starred with Geena Davis in the cult SF comedy, Earth Girls Are Easy. She’s actually been in genre films such as The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Bloody Birthday (a slasher film), Timebomb and Wakko’s Wish. She’s had one-offs in TV’s Quantum Leap and The Addams Family. She’s voiced a lot of animated characters included a memorable run doing the ever so sexy Minerva Mink on The Animaniacs. She reprised that role on Pinky and The Brain under the odd character name of Danette Spoonabello Minerva Mink. 
  • Born August 31, 1969 — Jonathan LaPaglia, 50. The lead in Seven Days which I’ve noted before is one of my favourite SF series. Other than playing Prince Seth of Delphi in a really bad film called Gryphon which aired on the Sci-fi channel, that’s his entire genre history.
  • Born August 31, 1971 — Chris Tucker, 48. The way over the top Ruby Rhod in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, a film I really, really like. His only other genre credit is as a MC in the Hall in The Meteor Man.
  • Born August 31, 1982 — G. Willow Wilson, 37. A true genius. There’s her amazing work on the Hugo Award winning Ms. Marvel series starring Kamala Khan which I recommend strongly, and that’s not to say that her superb Air series shouldn’t be on your reading list. Oh, and the Cairo graphic novel with its duplicitous djinn is quite the read. The only thing I’ve by her that I’ve not quite liked is her World Fantasy Award winning Alif the Unseen novel.  I’ve not yet read her Wonder Women story but will soon.
  • Born August 31, 1992 — Holly Earl, 27. She’s been in a number of British genre shows such as playing Kela in Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Agnes in Humans, and yes, Doctor Who in the “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe”, an Eleventh Doctor story in she was Lily Arwell.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro lives up to its name with this idea about collaborative effort.

(8) ONE TO BEAM UP. Camestros Felapton’s incredible “tweetfilk” of Star Trek and Bowie, featuring science officer Ziggy!! Thread starts here.

(9) PLEASE DON’T JOKE ABOUT THIS. Variety: “‘Joker’ Reviews: What the Critics Are Saying”.

Critics are raving for Warner Bros. latest comic book installment.

Todd Phillip’s “Joker” opened Saturday at the Venice Film Festival to effervescent reviews, with many critics highlighting an Oscar-worthy appearance from star Joaquin Phoenix. Variety‘s own Owen Gleiberman praised Phoenix’s performance, emphasizing his physical acting and emotional control:

“He appears to have lost weight for the role, so that his ribs and shoulder blades protrude, and the leanness burns his face down to its expressive essence: black eyebrows, sallow cheeks sunk in gloom, a mouth so rubbery it seems to be snarking at the very notion of expression, all set off by a greasy mop of hair,” he wrote. “Phoenix is playing a geek with an unhinged mind, yet he’s so controlled that he’s mesmerizing. He stays true to the desperate logic of Arthur’s unhappiness.”

(10) VERY LEAKY ESTABLISHMENT. NPR asks “Have You Seen Any Nazi Uranium? These Researchers Want To Know”. (The photo makes it look like a Borg spaceship.)

Timothy Koeth’s office is crammed with radioactive relics – old watches with glowing radium dials, pieces of melted glass from beneath the test of the world’s first nuclear weapon.

But there is one artifact that stands apart from the rest: a dense, charcoal-black cube, two-inches on a side. The cube is made of pure uranium metal. It was forged more than 70 years ago by the Nazis, and it tells the little-known story of Germany’s nuclear efforts during World War II.

“From a historical perspective this cube weighs a lot more than five pounds,” Koeth, a physicist at the University of Maryland, says as he holds it in his hand.

…At the time of Hitler’s rise, Germany was actually at the cutting edge of nuclear technology. “Nuclear fission was discovered in Berlin in late 1938,” says Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. “They were the first team of people who figured out how to split the atom, and figured out that when you split the atom, a lot of energy was going to be released.”

That basic idea of splitting atoms to release energy is what’s at the heart of all of today’s nuclear power plants and all the world’s nuclear weapons.

But back during World War II, it was all theoretical. To find out how it could work, the Germans devised strange looking experiment. Scientists strung together 664 cubes of uranium with aircraft cables and suspended them. The result looked “kind of like a very strange modernist chandelier of cubes,” Wellerstein says.

The chandelier was dipped into a cylindrical tank of heavy water, which contains special isotopes of hydrogen that make it more conducive to nuclear reactions.

The setup was known as the B-VIII reactor. The Germans were experimenting with it inside a cave in the southern town of Haigerloch. They were still trying to get it to work when the allied invasion began. As Allied forces approached, the German scientists disassembled the reactor and buried the cubes in a field.

The first wave of Allied troops to arrive included a task force known as Alsos, which was seeking to seize as much of the Nazi program as they could.

The Nazi scientists quickly disclosed the location of the buried cubes to the Allies, Wellerstein says. The Alsos team boxed up the cubes, to send them back to America, but what happened after that is not entirely clear.

(12) UK BIOBANK. “Geneticists To Cooperate, Not Compete” – NPR has the story.

There’s an astonishing outpouring of new information linking genes and health, thanks to the efforts of humble Englishmen and women such as Chritopeher Fletcher. The 70-year-old man recently drove 90 miles from his home in Nottingham to a radiology clinic outside the city of Manchester.

He is one of half a million Brits who have donated time, blood and access to their medical records to a remarkable resource called UK Biobank. The biobank, in turn, has become a resource for more than a thousand scientists around the world who are interested in delving into the link between genes, behaviors and health.

Popularity of the resource is snowballing. Just this week, a major study using the data explored the genetics of same-sex sexual behavior. And as researchers discover the biobank’s value, there’s a strong incentive to add to the database to make it even richer.

…What makes UK Biobank valuable is not only the half-million volunteers, whose health will be followed for decades, but also its community-spirited scientific strategy. Chief scientist Dr. Cathie Sudlow says the organizers, in a break from their usual ways, aren’t out to answer their own scientific questions, but to serve their colleagues.

“I’ll freely admit that when I first started out in the biobank I couldn’t really believe that we were all going to work really hard to make data available for other people,” she says. “And that is because I came from this traditional, kind of slightly paranoid, somewhat territorial, academic background.”

The scramble for research funds creates competitive incentives in much of academic science today. This biobank is different.

(13) JUST A FEW MORE HOURS. Readers of Camestros’ Felapton’s blog have entertained each other today with some last-minute speculation about the winners: “Just for fun, some Dragon Award predictions”.

Best Science Fiction Novel: A Star-Wheeled Sky by Brad Torgersen is a plausible winner. If it does then we can assume other works in the Brad Puppies list got lots of votes. I think Tiamat’s Wrath is a likely winner given the popularity of The Expanse TV series and the Dragon Con audience. However, Becky Chambers has a wide and devoted set of fans and I wouldn’t be astonished if Record of a Spaceborn Few won. If any of the others won, that would be interesting but I don’t know what it would mean.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Brian Z., and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]

Carrie Cuinn Straightens Out Sasquan

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Sasquan did consult Carrie Cuinn about Lou Antonelli’s online statements about her and the threats she received as a result (Cuinn’s account was quoted here yesterday), however, the convention subsequently represented her answer as a request not to ban him —

Cuinn has repudiated that interpretation in a series of tweets.

https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/631267133096374272

https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/631267979884396544

https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/631271457490927616

Cuinn elaborated in a Facebook post that it was only her interaction with Antonelli she was evaluating, not the larger question whether he should be banned which was never posed to her:

The Sasquan Con Committee has asked if I want Lou Antonelli investigated for his recent statements about me and the ensuing harassment. I have told them no: I don’t believe he specifically asked anyone to attack me. However, I also don’t believe he didn’t have any idea what his statements could cause, and I don’t believe his apology. In short, he shouldn’t be banned from Sasquan because of me, as I don’t think he personally did anything criminal. He’s just a jerk.

ETA because the con committee had issued comments which are factually incorrect: I did not ask for Antonelli not to be banned. I was not asked if he should be banned. Not banning him had nothing to do with “respecting my wishes”. I was only asked about his interaction with me, and since I’m not attending, I felt it didn’t meet their harassment guidelines. That’s all we discussed.

Sasquan Did Consult Cuinn

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Carrie Cuinn states on Facebook that Sasquan, which earlier announced it will not ban Lou Antonelli, did inquire if she wanted the committee to address what he wrote about her.

The Sasquan Con Committee has asked if I want Lou Antonelli investigated for his recent statements about me and the ensuing harassment. I have told them no: I don’t believe he specifically asked anyone to attack me. However, I also don’t believe he didn’t have any idea what his statements could cause, and I don’t believe his apology. In short, he shouldn’t be banned from Sasquan because of me, as I don’t think he personally did anything criminal. He’s just a jerk.

Pixel Scroll 8/10 Where the Scrolled Things Are

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Where there’s smoke there’s… Well, exactly what there is is a subject of debate in today’s Scroll.

(1) Do not miss – “Dilbert Writes A Sci-Fi Novel”.

(2) Oh brave New World! Scientists claim to have pinned down one of Shakespeare’s previously unsuspected literary influences —

South African researchers announced they found cannabis residue on pipe fragments found in William Shakespeare‘s garden.

Francis Thackeray, an anthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand and the lead author of the study published in the South African Journal of Science, said he and his team used gas chromatography mass spectrometry to analyze residue found on 24 pipe fragments from the bard’s hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, and cannabis residue was discovered on four fragments taken from Shakespeare’s garden.

(3) When Arthur C. Clarke introduced interviewer Jeremy Bernstein to Stanley Kubrick, he accidentally launched their 25-game chess duel.

I told Clarke that nothing would please me more. Much to my amazement, the next day Clarke called to say that I was expected that afternoon at Kubrick’s apartment on Central Park West. I had never met a movie mogul and had no idea what to expect. But as soon as Kubrick opened the door I felt an immediate kindred spirit. He looked and acted like every obsessive theoretical physicist I have ever known. His obsession at that moment was whether or not anything could go faster than the speed of light. I explained to him that according to the theory of relativity no information bearing signal could go faster. We conversed like that for about an hour when I looked at my watch and realized I had to go. “Why?” he asked, seeing no reason why a conversation that he was finding interesting should stop.

I told him I had a date with a chess hustler in Washington Square Park to play for money. Kubrick wanted the name. “Fred Duval” I said. Duval was a Haitian who claimed to be related to Francois Duvalier. I was absolutely positive that the name would mean nothing to Kubrick. His next remark nearly floored me. “Duval is a patzer,” is what he said. Unless you have been around chess players you cannot imagine what an insult this is. Moreover, Duval and I were playing just about even. What did that make me?

Kubrick explained that early in his career he too played chess for money in the park and that Duval was so weak that it was hardly worth playing him. I said that we should play some time and then left the apartment. I was quite sure that we would never play. I was wrong.

(4) The new Fantastic Four reboot is getting the kind of reaction that explains why the phrase “stinks on ice” was invented.

Not only were reviews scathing — resulting in a 9 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes — audiences on Friday night gave the $120 milliion Fox tentpole a C- CinemaScore, the worst grade that anyone can remember for a marquee superhero title made by a major Hollywood studio. (CinemaScore, based in Las Vegas, was founded in 1979.)

…For the weekend, Fantastic Four, starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, topped out at a dismal $26.2 million from 3,995 theaters in North America, one of the lowest openings of all time for a Marvel Comics film adaptation

(5) Carrie Cuinn explained why Lakeside Circus killed plans to publish a Lou Antonelli story, what Antonelli did next, and the verbal attacks she received as a result.

I couldn’t stand by and do nothing after Mr. Antonelli publicly admitted to essentially SWATing someone in our community, especially given the numerous deaths by police and in police custody that have recently made the news. As I said in my letter, it’s a matter of SAFETY. Antonelli took away Gerrold’s safety when he filed that false police report, and I won’t support that by giving him my money or promoting his work.

I was content to do what I felt necessary privately, between Mr. Antonelli and myself, but he dragged me up in front of his fans and made a target of me. He knew people were defensive and angry on his behalf, and he gave them me as a target. Doing that, he took away my safety, too.

(6) Lou Antonelli says what happened wasn’t his intent, and apologized again.

I want to make it clear than when I posted about Carrie Cuinn and Lakeside Circus’ decision taking back their decision to publish a story of mine, I meant it as a cautionary tale – don’t be a jackass like I was, because there are repercussions. Experience is a hard teacher. I don’t begrudge the decision at all. I apologized to David Gerrold because I realized I did something stupid and I made a mistake. But I didn’t think I made a mistake in revealing Cuinn’s decision. Fact was. I thought people would commend her for it, and I thought there would be some people who would like to give her credit for it.

Now she says she’s gotten threats over the revelation. That’s not why I posted it! So I’m sorry again, in this case, because it never occurred to me her action would be seen negatively.

(7) K. Tempest Bradford has a take on the Antonelli/Gerrold story.

You hear all this, and your response is UGH, how terrible! That crosses a line! Antonelli should explain himself and apologize!

Oh? Really? A guy contacts a police department in a serious effort to have said police pay extra special attention to a convention attendee in an atmosphere where there’s already plenty to worry about with police overreacting and you want him to apologize?

Sure, Gerrold isn’t a young black man, so he’s already much safer around police than a lot of folks. But Antonelli’s intent was bring police into a situation for the purpose of causing alarm and harm to Gerrold for no other reason than that he can’t handle Gerrold having an opinion and a platform….

There are real ramifications here, real consequences. There may be a good chance nothing bad will happen. That doesn’t mean it’s okay. That doesn’t mean an apology is enough….

The difference between how we treat people from marginalized identities who do things harmful to our community and how we treat white men who harm our community is so stark, so blatant, that I feel like I’m living in a Onion article right now.

This is how you fail, white people of SFF. This right here….

(8) Some commenters are extrapolating Bradford’s post to mean that Benjanun Sriduangkaew, the subject of a report by Hugo nominee Laura Mixon, ought to be treated with comparable leniency.

Jason Sanford, for one, has written a post “On the double standard of genre apologies”.

Here’s a simple test. Can you figure out why the following situations are different?

(9) Ann Somerville sharply disagreed that these cases are comparable.

The crucial differences are – and Tempest fucking knows these:

  • Antonelli does not carry out secret campaigns of abuse. He does everything, for good or ill, under his own name (which is now mud).
  • He hasn’t been carrying out harassment of people, white/POC, male and female, straight and gay, cis and trans for over ten years
  • he apologised for what he actually did, in full – unlike Miss Hate who sort of vaguely alluded to bad behaviour, without acknowledging the full scope of what she did or directly apologising to her actual victims
  • his victims don’t include people of colour, but include one of Hate’s much loathed white women (that should make him a hero, according to Bradford and Hate)
  • People don’t feel constrained from criticising Antonelli on account of his oh so persecuted race and sexuality – which is still the case with Hate (despite the fact she is massively class privileged and not racially disprivileged in her own country.)

(10) In an earlier post, Jason Sanford made an appeal for peace in the genre.

But this incident has also brought into focus how much bad blood there is in the science fiction and fantasy genre. The letter Lou wrote wasn’t merely an attack on David — it was an attack on Worldcon and the entire genre.

Which I’m certain isn’t what Lou intended. I have no doubt he loves the genre. I’m certain he wants the genre to thrive and grow.

We have reached the point in the SF/F genre where people must decide what they want. Because there are now two simple choices: To destroy the genre or reach for peace.

Reaching for peace doesn’t mean silencing your views or beliefs. Our genre has long been a big tent where all viewpoints and people can co-exist. Yes, the genre has often not lived up to this ideal. And that doesn’t mean there won’t be disagreements and arguments and people who hate each other.

But at the end of the day a shared love of science fiction and fantasy joins us together. We must never forget this.

(11) Though prompted by her experience at the BEA, not by this latest kerfuffle, Kameron Hurley’s article for Locus “Your Author Meltdown Will Be Live-Tweeted” seems prescient.

The more people respect what you have to say, the more folks will come out of the woodwork trying to tear you down. Having been one of the people flinging arrows at authors myself (and let’s be real, I still do), I get it, and I accept it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to navigate when you’re sitting in a restaurant and wondering if your dinner conversation will end up in an Instagram video.

In the ten years I’ve been writing online, I’ve mostly been hated as some kind of women’s lib boogeyman, and that’s just funny more than anything. It’s a lot easier for me to dismiss haters when they’re sending me death threats for believing women are people. It’s harder to dismiss people who want me dead because they despise me in general. In the same breath they’ll say I should be garroted to keep me from speaking and Starbucks should stop serving Pumpkin Spice Lattes because, gosh, those lattes are gross.

More and more, ‘‘being a writer’’ isn’t about writing at all. It’s about the writer as celebrity. The writer as brand. The writer as commodity. And more and more, I see authors themselves reviewed as if they’re busi­nesses on Yelp.

(12) Is it possible that the extended edition of The Battle of the Five Armies could be even more violent than the version shown in theaters? TheOneRing.net theorizes that will be so —

According to a bulletin published today by the Motion Picture Association of America Classification and Rating Administration, the extended edition of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will carry an “R” rating for “some violence.” Of course, it’s no news flash that the movie contains violence. The theatrical version’s PG-13 rating came with an advisory for “extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.” So, it’s intriguing to imagine what, exactly, in the EE bridged that gap, especially with only “some violence” to go by. Possible EE spoilers ahead!

(13) The late Terrence Evans (1934-2015) is remembered at StarTrek.com:

Evans ventured to the Star Trek universe to play Baltrim, the mute Bajoran farmer, in the DS9 episode “Progress,” and Proka Migdal, the Bajoran who adopted a Cardassian war orphan, in “Cardassians.” He also appeared as the Kradin ambassador, Treen, in the Voyager hour “Nemesis.”

(14) Voice of Trillian in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Susan Sheridan, has passed away. SF Site News has more at the link.

(15) I believe Matt!

[Thanks to Gregory Benford, JJ, Andrew Porter and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

Pixel Scroll 8/9 A Dribble of Links

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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.)

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.]

Dropping the Pilot

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The SFWA Blog has posted “An Exit Interview with John Scalzi” conducted by Carrie Cuinn. It’s very much a presidential memoir, alluding to much without saying anything outright.

Cuinn’s basically softball questions allow Scalzi to avoid the only topics people really want his opinion about – the SFWA Bulletin and the motion to expel Theodore Beale from membership.

Cuinn reaches back to quote from Scalzi’s 2008 campaign as background for a question about SFWA’s current reputation instead of using the obvious starting point, Scalzi’s June 2 statement on the SFWA Bulletin:

Carrie Cuinn: When discussing the 2008 presidential election, you said, “Whether SFWA wants to admit it to itself or not, thanks to the massive public debacles of the last year, its reputation is in the dirt, and not just with people already active in the field. I go to a fair number of science fiction conventions, you know; I’ve met a lot of the neo-pros and the under-30 writers who are (or should be) SWFA’s natural new membership. They see SFWA as either useless, or actively hostile to them.” (Feb 18, 2008, Whatever blog)

Now that you have completed your service as President, what do you think SFWA’s reputation is? In what ways can the new President continue to repair the organization’s relationship with the “neo-pros” – both new members and potential ones?

John Scalzi: I think SFWA’s reputation is better with the outside world and neo-pros than it was in 2008, although I would want to be clear that the reason for that is not all (or even majority) due to me – we’ve had very good boards in the time since, which has focused on member service and on making sure that the organization was doing what it was supposed to do – advocating for writers in the marketplace. The best argument SFWA can make to a potential membership is simply to do its job. If the next president and board do that – and I don’t have any doubt they will – then SFWA’s reputation will continue to rise.

Scalzi told readers of Whatever he planned to say little about SFWA in the immediate future, and since he was unwilling to engage with the issues that are tearing the organization apart it’s hard to see why he interrupted his Bush-like post-presidential silence to do this interview.

Behind the Kerfuffle Kurve

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And sometimes we publish yesterday’s news, because it’s always news to somebody…

Vox Day sounds just like one of those overly talky, self-congratulatory villains from a 1940s serial, and his flock of followers could profit from a dose of what Manly Wade Wellman used to write about.

He was called out, not by name, in N.K Jemisin’s guest of honor speech at Continuum delivered in Melbourne, Australia on June 8.

She devoted the beginning of the speech to a comparison and contrast of racism in Australia and the US in which the US came off second.

So: admitting that the land we live on was stolen from hundreds of other nations and peoples? Acknowledging that the prosperity the United States enjoys was bought with blood? That’s a pipe dream.

For all America’s other shortcomings, the purchase with blood is confessed in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, one of the country’s most widely-studied pieces of political writing —

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

But as for those other shortcomings, Jemisin targeted several in her discussion of the sexism in the SFWA Bulletin controversy, and remarks about the last SFWA presidential election where Theodore Beale (Vox Day) was a candidate and received several dozen votes.

Beale’s idea of a terrific comeback helped make Jemisin’s point and inspired another round of indignation, including Amal El-Mohtar’s call for the expulsion of Theodore Beale from SFWA.

Many who commented stated they had deliberately omitted a link to Beale’s post.

For a blogger with 30,000 readers, providing a link effectively turns over a greater platform to a pathological attention-seeker. For those of us with followings only about 1% that size, I find Carrie Cuinn’s reasoning  persuasive:

All courtesy of Theodore Beale, writing as Vox Day. For those who don’t know, Beale is an active member of SFWA, and even ran for President this year. Though he repeatedly says things like women are ruining SF, except for those few who write like men, or women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, or women should be ignored entirely if they’re not attractive, not to mention his views on people of color (as evidenced above, and elsewhere in his public site), he still managed to get roughly 10% of the vote.

That’s the genre community for you, right there. But we ignore trolls like him, right? That’s what I’ve been seeing all day. Ignore him. Ignore his post. Don’t read the comments. Stay off the Internet for an hour until the unpleasantness passes.

You know what? Fuck that. Go read his post (it’s linked above).

In the meantime, SFWA has announced a Four Step Plan for Moving Ahead with the Bulletin. Chris Gerwel makes sense of both controversies in his post about Personal, Professional, Official? Standards of Professionalism in SFWA.

And it should not take much effort to find dozens of other posts

[Thanks to DB, David Klaus and Ansible Links for the story.]

One Resignation, Many Ripples

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“SFWA has a fanzine, too,” I’ve heard pros joke, meaning the SFWA Bulletin. Since I’m not a member I don’t see it, and ordinarily never think about it unless an issue contains something controversial about fandom, for example, Gene Wolfe’s complaint about the financial support he received as GoH of the 1985 Worldcon, or the dialog – by Resnick and Malzberg, come to think of it – saying the Worldcon will keep deteriorating unless it becomes more like Dragon*Con.

These days the SFWA Bulletin has even more in common with fanzines. While most writers and organizations have moved to various internet formats, the Bulletin persists as a quarterly magazine.

Just how long that will continue suddenly seems in question.

Consecutive issues have been criticized by a number of members who found some contents sexist  – a Resnick/Malzberg dialog about “lady editors” in #199, a babe in a chainmail bikini on the cover of #200, an article suggesting Barbie as a role model for women writers in #201, and most explosive of all, the new Resnick/Malzberg dialog in #202 counterattacking critics of the earlier piece (see screen shots at Radish Reviews, pages 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6.)

Resnick, “The next question is: is this an overreaction to attempted censorship? The answer is simple and straightforward: I don’t think it’s possible to overreact to thought control, whether Politically Inept or Politically Motivated or merely displaying the would-be controllers personal tastes and biases.”

Although Jim C. Hines’s essay “Cover Art and the Radical Notion that Women Are People” is in the new issue, too, and Jason Sanford says it implicitly rebuts the type of arguments offered by Resnick/Malzberg, the controversy has moved rapidly beyond Sanford’s characterization as an exchange of broadsides in the free marketplace of ideas.

Om May 31, E. Catherine Tobler publicly resigned her membership, explaining in Dear SFWA –

In all the complaints that were voiced, there was never a call for censorship. There was never a call for suppression. There was a call for respect.

There arose the notion that women are people too; that, in a piece focusing on editors, one might speak of editing ability, of anthologies and magazines assembled, and not how one looked in a bathing suit. Surely such content didn’t belong in a piece about editors? Were these such radical thoughts? What year is it?

There arose the notion that SFWA might consider its membership—its whole membership—when assembling an issue of the Bulletin. That SFWA might take in to mind that perhaps a good portion of its membership would be offended and insulted by content that tells them to keep their quiet dignity as a woman should.

She finishes:

I am leaving you because your publication and certain members have made me feel unwanted and unwelcome more than once. I have grown uncomfortable speaking my mind in the forum because based on prior incidents, someone may likely tell me I’m being silly for feeling the way I do.

Kameron Hurley immediately followed Tobler’s announcement with Dear SFWA Writers: Let’s Talk About Censorship and Bullying, which addresses Resnick and Malzberg:

So. I get it. The world used to agree with you. You used to be able to say things like, “I really like those lady writers in this industry, especially in swimsuits!” and your fellow writers, editors, agents, and other assorted colleagues would all wink and grin and agree with you, and Asimov would go around pinching women’s asses, and it was so cool! So cool that he could just sexually assault women all the time!

Her full discussion concludes with this advice:

Listen. Do better. Understand privilege and power. Understand why people didn’t speak up before. Why you didn’t hear it before. If you hit somebody, and you really didn’t mean to would you say, “Well, it’s your fault for having tits?” or would you say “I’m so sorry I hit you. That wasn’t my intention. I will actively work to not hit you in the future.”

I know what somebody who was genuinely interested in open, honest, respectful dialogue with people they considered humans and colleagues would do.

Samantha Henderson also set the critcism apart from censorship, putting the latter in a real-world context:

Women of my generation aren’t supposed to be rude to men of your generation; we’re supposed to be reasonable, understanding and respectful of all points of view, even those that seek to belittle us. And I hear you’re lovely people, supportive of women writers, great conversationalists, salt of the earth, and I’m sure in many ways that’s true.

Screw that anyway. I’m too tired to see your non-stop use of the term “lady;” lady writers, editors, publishers as anything but condescending, however gentlemanly it’s meant (and in #202, it’s so constant I can’t but suspect you’re intentionally trying to get a rise out of your soi-disant anons). I’m too tired to be anything but offended at your claiming that those who have the audacity to criticize you are trying to censor you, in a world where censorship means a girl getting shot in the head for daring to become educated, or a country trying to wipe all records and knowledge of an atrocity.

After the Barbie article came out, Carrie Cuinn said (in addition to its other failings) the piece was antithetical to the purposes of a professional writers’ organization:

The worst part, worse than the stupid, offensive comments about women, is the fact that this article is supposed to be about being successful as a writer. It lists suggestions for improving your career. The SFWA, a professional organization of writers, included this in its official literature. It wants us, as writers, to read this and learn from it.

The SFWA, our writers’s union, our leadership and our guides, want us to know that women should be quiet, nice, and happy, in order to be successful, because otherwise we’re imperfect, unhappy, whores. How can I laugh that off? How can I read that and not stand up?

And now, Chris Gerwel (in The SFWA Bulletin, Censorship, Anonymity, and Representation) adds that there are implications of giving SFWA’s platform over to any given set of views:

Like it or not, the SFWA Bulletin is an official trade publication published by an organization representing science fiction and fantasy writers. It is one of that organization’s public voices. The words and images it contains matter. They send a message to current members, they send a message to potential members, and they send a message to future generations of writers about the values and priorities of our field.

What next?

Outgoing SFWA President John Scalzi has taken responsibility for the publication, and the organization has announced a SFWA Bulletin Task Force

The board is aware of a number of complaints by members regarding Bulletin issue #202, specifically the article by Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg. We welcome this criticism and thank our members for making their voices heard. Further feedback is welcome on our online discussion boards, or else can be mailed to either Rachel Swirsky or John Scalzi.

In response to this and previous feedback from members about recent issues of the Bulletin, I have authorized the formation of a task force to look at the Bulletin and to determine how the publication needs to proceed from this point in order to be a valuable and useful part of the SFWA member experience. This task force consists of SFWA’s current vice president and incoming president, as well as related SFWA administrative staff, and experienced editorial consultants. The task force is: Rachel Swirsky, Steven Gould, Jaym Gates, Kate Baker, James Patrick Kelly, Charles Coleman Finlay, and Neil Clarke.