aka Sad Puppies Strictly Cash
Peter Grant, Vox Day, John Wright, Chris Meadows, Adam, Steve Davidson, Natalie Luhrs, Alexandra Erin, Nick Mamatas, Lela E. Buis, Lawrence Person, Soon Lee, Lis Carey, Melina D, Joe Sherry, and May Tree. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day William Reichard and Rev. Bob.)
Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man
”The Tor boycott is on” – June 19
Regrettably, due to the apparent lack of action by (and the deafening silence from) Tor and Macmillan, the time has come to do as I promised. I therefore ask all those who believe, as I do, that the recent statement by Irene Gallo, and the pattern of behavior and statements from others at Tor whom I’ve previously named, are completely unacceptable, to join me in refusing to buy any of Tor’s products from now on. I support and endorse what Larry Correia said about this yesterday.
… this is between Tor and its readers who feel insulted, not the Sad Puppies campaign or the people who ran it … To the Sad Puppies supporters, do what you think is right. All I’m asking is that whatever you do, try to be as civil as possible in your disagreements. Stick with the facts.
There’s much more at the link. (Recommended reading for background and more information.)
I am not a member of, and I do not speak for, either the ‘Sad Puppies’ or ‘Rabid Puppies’ campaigns (although I support the former). I don’t represent cute puppies, playful puppies, cuddly puppies or hush puppies – only myself. If you share, in whole or in part, my values and outlook on life, I invite you to join me in this boycott. Don’t do so just because I, or anyone else, is asking you to do so. Act on the basis of your own informed conscience and reasoned judgment.
There are those who protest that a boycott of Tor will prevent them buying books they want to read, and/or hurt their favorite authors. I can only point out that used copies of those books are usually available from many sources soon after publication, often in very good to excellent condition, and sometimes at prices much lower than a new copy. As for your favorite authors, if you buy a used copy of their book(s), why not send them the money they would have made as a royalty if you’d bought it new? In fact, given that many royalties are a pittance, why not send them more than that? Many authors have so-called ‘tip jars’ on their blogs or Web sites, or you can write to them enclosing a check or money order.
There are those who doubt that a boycott can achieve anything. I can only reply that ‘doing the right thing’ is important in itself. It’s a matter of honor – and although any mention of honor may be greeted with scorn and derision in these ‘modern’ times, I was raised to value the concept and live by it. I still do. I doubt I’m alone in that.
What’s more, in a SF/F market that’s increasingly dominated by independent authors, with cratering sales among mainstream publishers and tight financial margins, even a small boycott may have an impact out of all proportion to its size. I’m certain, on the basis of support already voiced, that we can achieve a short-term six-figure reduction in Tor’s annual turnover. All that’ll take is a couple of thousand people not spending their usual $50 per year on Tor books (and many have, until now, spent a lot more than that – for example, see here). With more supporters and/or bigger spenders involved, the impact will be correspondingly greater. I believe that over time, as word spreads and more join the boycott, we can grow this into a seven-figure annual impact – particularly when, in markets where we have a strong presence, we start talking to bookstores that carry Tor products. Given current economic conditions and the present and predicted state of the SF/F market, our boycott may in due course make the difference between a profit and a loss in Tor’s annual trading accounts.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Tor boycott announced” – June 19
As you can see, I have been a Tor Books customer since 1986, when I bought a mass market paperback copy of The Edge of Tomorrow, by Isaac Asimov. And because I have considerably more experience of Tor Books and the consistently abusive and unprofessional behavior of its senior employees, I will go a little further than Mr. Grant has. Until Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are no longer employed by Tor Books or Tor.com, I will not:
- Purchase any books published by Tor Books
- Read any books published by Tor Books
Given (2), this means that if Ms. Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden are still employed by Tor Books in 2016, I will not nominate any books published by Tor Books for any awards. I encourage those who deem Ms. Gallo’s behavior to be unprofessional and unacceptable to follow Mr. Grant’s lead and join the Tor Books boycott. I am the leader of the Rabid Puppies, I do speak for them, and I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that they will follow my lead in this regard. I am not concerned about whether the boycott is “successful” or not. The simple fact is that if Macmillan is at all interested in the long-term success of Tor Books, it will jettison both Ms Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden on the basis of their disloyalty, their unprofessional behavior, and their repeated violations of the Macmillan Code of Conduct, regardless of what any outside parties may happen to believe. I simply won’t have anything to do with Tor Books as long as those two individuals are employed there.
John C. Wright
“Embargo On” – June 19
Since I am Tor author and hitherto have been very proud of my association with that fine and famous imprint, I am fascinated (if mildly aghast) that the Tor management has allowed the situation to degenerate to this point.
Because of a financial conflict of interest on my part, it would be untoward of me to express fulsome support and applause for the boycott, and tell the boycotters their position is the principled and correct stand.
Nor will I point out, because it is obvious, that if you buy my books from Tor, then some part of your precious book-buying dollars goes into the wages of several people at Tor (but by no means all, or even most) who hate both you and me with a sick and soul-destroying hatred, a hatred like a disease that withers the heart and rots the brain.
Nor will I point out, because it should also be obvious, that any Christian gentleman would be willing to forgo a worldly reward of your generous book-buying dollars if he may have your spiritual reward of your loyalty instead. If the gentle reader feels compassion for me in my hour of need, or fears the boycott will harm my finances, I have a tip jar on this page.
So I cannot express support for this boycott.
The people with whom I work, my editor and cover art director, have a perfect right to expect me not to undermine their position, untenable as it may be. If the management wants to set the company policy as one of indifference to our patrons and clients on whom our livelihood depends, or contempt, or enmity, or loathing, that business decision is in their bailiwick.
Chris Meadows on Teleread
“Sad Puppies supporters, opponents respectively call for boycott, buying of Tor books” – June 19
However, even leaving aside that Vox Day certainly does speak for the Rabid Puppies, what Correia and Grant miss is that, as a grass-roots movement (I was going to say “ostensibly grass-roots,” but what the heck, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt), “Sad Puppies” doesn’t really have a true “leadership” to speak for it at this point. Whether you’re an official “member” or not, if you identify with the movement, you’re going to be identified with the movement, especially by the movement’s opponents.
Make a lot of noise in support of Sad Puppy goals, and voila, you’re a Sad Puppy, and anything you do reflects on them. And likewise, anything the rest of them do reflects on you—which is why the Puppies movement as a whole is, rightly or wrongly, often tarred with the black brush that most accurately applies only to Vox Day and others like him. (Indeed, it’s why a lot of people use “Sad Puppies” as a shorthand to refer to both the Sad and Rabid Puppies.) And it’s why anti-Puppies (some have suggested the term “Happy Kittens”) feel justified in calling this a “Sad Puppies” boycott.
Adam on The Noisy Rogue
“The Boycott of Tor Books” – June 19
Even John C Wright, one of Tor’s own published writers, is unable to express support for Tor in this situation. Make your own minds up, dear readers. But rest assured that the culture wars have not been lost. They were only originally winning in the first place because our side couldn’t be bothered turning up. Now it’s on.
Steve Davidson on Amazing Stories
“Today is Buy From Tor Day” – June 19
Just a reminder that if you would like to express support for Irene Gallo, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Moshe Feder and TOR books, today is the day to go out and buy a TOR book.
You can learn a bit more about this here.
Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man
“Moshe Feder doubles down (again) on the lies” – June 19
Friends, I give you Moshe Feder on Facebook earlier today:
….I’m still not going to call for the resignation or dismissal of any of the Tor employees I’ve named. Nevertheless, if I needed any more justification for why I’m boycotting Tor, Mr. Feder has provided it. I suppose I should thank him for that – and if he wishes to call me an ‘idiot’, well, I’ve been called a lot worse than that in my time. Furthermore, for all Mr. Feder’s vitriol directed against him, he’s just made Vox Day look like a sensible, reasonable participant in this debate. Vox might want to thank him, too . . .
https://twitter.com/eilatan/status/612027207758823424
Hey, Puppies. Tell me again how Irene Gallo was at all wrong about the putrid, racist, cowardly lot of you. https://t.co/fbkvZHyZGH
— Alexandra Erin | patreon.com/AlexandraErin (@AlexandraErin) June 20, 2015
Does Irene Gallo get to take back her apology now?
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) June 20, 2015
Lela E. Buis
“Adding fuel to the flames” – June 19
What ever happened to that discussion about the Hugos?
What Hugos?
By this time, it should be fairly clear that the current debacle has nothing to do with the Hugo Awards. It isn’t really about the liberal versus conservative content of a few Tor books, either. I concede that there may be an ideological component to the attack. If Day is a a “fundamentalist Southern Baptist,” as he has been characterized, then it is likely that he’s offended by liberal viewpoints in general. Still, that’s no reason to go after Tor in particular. Publication of LGBTQ novels, for example, has been increasing across all major publishers in the last few years. Tor has no franchise on liberalism.
That makes it more likely that Day has launched a personal vendetta undercover of the conflict over the Hugo Awards. He has moved from naming Irene Gallo to Moshe Feder to Patrick Nielsen Hayden in the last few days. Most likely this is his actual target. Hayden is the man quoted in news reports announcing John Scalzi’s recent $3.4 million contract with Tor.
It’s a vendetta, folks. Day is pursuing a long-running feud with John Scalzi. That means that anyone who supports Day’s flame war by responding to him is only perpetuating the problem. Tor has got it right. It’s time to hunker down and wait him out.
Lawrence Person on Battleswarm Blog
“Sad Puppies Redux (Or Why That Tor Boycott Won’t Work)” – June 19
Since then, a few people on Twitter have been calling for a boycott of Tor Books over the incident. About this I would just like to make a few points:
- Though the editorial stuff does lean toward the SJW side, plenty of conservative authors are published by Tor.
- An ad hoc, Twitter-organized boycott is deeply unlikely to work. Given the way book sales are tracked, it’s unlikely the financial effects of any boycott would stand out from sales figures more than background noise. Most SF readers probably aren’t even active on Twitter, and even fewer have been following every twist and turn of the Sad Puppy Saga.
- Given that Tor is a very small part of the Bertelsmann international conglomerate, chances are even less likely that that any boycott would be effective or even noticed.
- Larry Correia has categorically stated that the Sad Puppies are not calling for any boycotts. He also notes, as he invariably does, “All I’m asking is that whatever you do, try to be as civil as possible in your disagreements.”
So put me down in the category of thinking a boycott is foolish, pointless and counterproductive.
One big point on the Sad Puppies campaign: Most recent domestic Worldcons have topped out in the 4,000-6,000 members range. I recently bought a Supporting Membership in Sasquan, and my membership number was in the 9,000s. This tends to indicate that the Hugos have indeed become a test of strength in the culture wars.
"E pluribus Hugo" proposal submitted: http://t.co/FCVRWxxV20
Community Q&A here: http://t.co/pGOPpNQHEc#HugoAwards @sasquansf— Soon Lee (@SoonLeeNZ) June 20, 2015
#HugoGuide update: We've added GeekyLibrary review star rating for THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS by @TheKJA #hugoawards http://t.co/d6boG4jPAa
— GeekyLibrary (@GeekyLibrary) June 19, 2015
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Sucker Punch, by Eric S. Raymond” – June 19
Eric S. Raymond is a 2015 nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. This is a perfectly competently written MilSF…vignette. It’s not a story. It describes a couple of important and unfortunate advances in military weapons and tactics, and presents the resulting dilemma quite poignantly.
Joe Sherry on Adventures In Reading
“Thoughts on the Hugo Award Nominees: Novella” – June 19
….The big surprise in this category, at least for me, was Tom Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry. I had expected a very aggressive narrative designed to offend those of a more liberal persuasion, but what I got was a surprisingly graceful story of a dying sentient tank. That may sound weird, but given advancement in artificial intelligence and this being a science fiction story, it works. It works remarkably well, especially the deeper Kratman brings the story into Magnolia’s history. Yes, there are also some clumsier jabs at how military tactics have been handled by those not committed to the mission or by those who don’t fully understand what it takes to win, and politicians get the sharp end of the stick in that regard (rightly so, in some cases).
If all of Arlan Andrews’ “Flow” was as successful as the second half of the story, I might have been able to move it up another space on my ballot, but unfortunately the beginning of the story was something of a chore to push through. The primitive ice world (a partially frozen post apocalyptic Earth) was tough to take, less because of the writing and more because of what I was wanted / was getting from the story. I’ll willingly take the hit that part of this is on me, but I often bounce off of fiction dealing with significantly more primitive Earth cultures unless the writing / storytelling can just grab a hold of me and make me care about the characters and / or the setting. “Flow” didn’t…until it did, midway through as Rist began to discover more of the world and realized that what his people taught may not be the way things actually work. I’m now curious to find “Thaw”, a previous story in this setting, and move on to “Fall”, the next in the setting. I’d like to see where Andrews is taking this.
My Vote
1. “Pale Realms of Shade”
2. Big Boys Don’t Cry
3. “Flow”
4. “The Plural of Helen of Troy”
5. No Award
6. One Bright Star to Guide Them
Melina D on Subversive Reader
“Hugos 2015 Reading: Short Story” – June 19
Without too much further procrastination, it’s onto the stories. This was another full puppy-supported slate, so – to put it mildly – my expectations of good writing were low. I was pleasantly surprised by one story, meh over a couple of others and (predictably) was ready to set a thousand fires to another.
May Tree in a comment on File 770 – June 18
(The original is here if you don’t know it.) The original inspiration for looking at this source material was that “Voxie” rhymes with “Roxie.”
[Excerpt is only one-third of the whole parody.]
[PUPS] Hah! They had it coming! They had it coming! They took a genre in its prime And then they used it And they abused it We’ll slate the Hugos – It’s not a crime!
[SARAH] Now, I’m typing on my blog post, carvin’ up the SJWs for the Puppies, minding my own business, in storms Mike Glyer, in a jealous rage. “You’re a hydrophobe!” he says. He was crazy and he kept posting, “You’re a hydrophobe!” And then he ran into my axiom. He ran into my axiom ten times!
[PUPS] If you’d have been there If you’d have read it I betcha you would have thought the same!
[JULIETTE] Oenq, V nz fbeel, ohg vs lbh jvyy or ynoryvat zr nf n fnq chccl V jvyy unir gb nfx lbh gb jvguqenj zr sebz lbhe yvfg. Lbh qvq abg fnl lbh jrer tbvat gb or pnyyvat vg gur Fnq Chccvrf yvfg. V srry yvxr lbh jrer zvfercerfragvat vg. V’z unccl gb or bar bs lbhe Uhtb erpbzzraqngvbaf. Guvf vf qvssrerag.
[BRAD] Yeah, but will you be on my slate?
[JULIETTE] UH UH, not Puppy!
[LARRY] My buddy Brad and I had this Sad Puppy act, and my “devil” Voxie traveled around with us. Now, for the most recent year in our slate, we nommed 20 of Brad’s buddies in a row. One, two, three, four, five…Kratman, Freer, Antonelli, Reid, one right after the other. Well, this one night we were ranting about liberals, the three of us, boozing and having a few laughs, and we run out of ice. So I go out to get some. I come back, open the door, and there’s Brad and Voxie nomming Number Seventeen – “Wisdom From My Internet.” Well, I was in such a state of shock, I completely blacked out. I can’t remember a thing. It wasn’t until later, when I was washing the toner off my hands, I even knew they were Rabid.
[PUPS] They had it coming! They had it coming! Ann Leckie does her genders wrong! I didn’t read her! But if I read her I wouldn’t know which “she” has a schlong!
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My main books are Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days and Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours. I’ve had the good fortune of having books stay in Barnes & Noble forever, while it seems like a lot of SF/F authors only get a painfully short time on those shelves before they vanish.
But I still envy them. I have a completed thriller manuscript that needs a second draft and many aspirations to write SF/F.
Hahhaha, another innocent converted to the Dark Side of the Filk.
It didn’t suck. 🙂
Welp, that’s a way to ruin a nice quiet Sunday morning – reading the comments on Torgensen’s blog trying to minimize MZW’s disgusting racism.
Won’t do that again.
No, saying it was meant as a joke doesn’t make it less disgusting.
I also notice Torgensen doesn’t even comment on Snowcrash’s correction, and certainly doesn’t apologise for calling someone a troll for not doing what they actually did do. Between the disingenuousness and the fact James May is allowed to vomit his nastiness all over the blog, I can’t imagine why anyone with a speck of decency spends more than two seconds there. But Torgersen seems to have no problem with the people who comment on his blog. I wonder why that is?
Danny
I very much doubt that the voters at the business meeting would believe that a tactical ‘let’s not slate this year’ was anything other than a tactic. After all, this isn’t the first year that the Sads/Rabids slated; it’s just the one which made it absolutely clear that VD and his cronies would happily destroy Worldcon and the Hugos for fun and profit.
They have no social capital left; they’ve spent it all. They are perfectly free to organise whatever conventions they want, and award themselves whatever trophies they want, whenever they want. What they are not free to do is drag their US politics into Worldcon, pretending that the U.S. is the world when it is blindingly obvious that the U.S. is, in fact, a country, and there are a lot of countries in the world, filled by people who don’t give a toss about US politics and US culture wars, but who do care about SF/F.
Which is why people around the world bought Tor books as a gesture of support and solidarity with the writers, and editors, and art directors who are being attacked by VD and his cronies. And, of course, the hell we are undergoing reading Hugo contenders which would be ejected by any self respecting slush pile.
I’m really enjoying Gladstone; thanks to all who recommended him.
Nearest my left foot: my Nook, containing among other titles my recent Torsday purchases (The Just City and A Natural History of Dragons), and my current read, The Book if Speculation, a literary fantasy featuring a librarian who has just received in the mail a very odd old book that may have belonged to his grandmother.
Danny:
>> What happens if, after we go to all the trouble of devising this complicated slate-killer algorithm… Beale chooses to not deploy the Puppies in 2016? Would anyone at the business meeting in Kansas City be willing to vote for EPH if it turned out to be unnecessary?>>
Sure, because…
>> (And then, once EPH is overturned, he re-deploys a slate in 2017, and EPH is reintroduced, and etc etc) >>
…it’s not as if no one could see that coming.
Fixing the nominations process doesn’t hurt anything, despite Brian Z’s waily wailies, so now that it’s been shown that there’s a need for it, people won’t care if the need is imminent — if it serves as a deterrent, that’s good too.
@Happy-Puppy:
I think you’re trolling here, but once I apply the Sarcasm Deflator I extract a statement that the grief-stricken narrator is not completely reliable, and I think that’s true.
Me, I don’t think the story is brilliant at all. I think it’s a weakness that both victim and attackers are so poorly specified. Some people like that aspect of it, and while I think they’re wrong, I have no desire to argue them out of it.
But I’ll say a couple of things:
1. The story didn’t win the Hugo. It didn’t even come close.
2. If it had, it would be one bad story that won an award – neither the first or last among Hugos or any other award ever.
3. Let’s say that Swirsky wrote the ending the way I insist she should have, and that it turned out the attackers were a gang of working-class toughs. So what? Sometimes gangs of working-class men do, in fact, visit horrible violence on people. Working-class men have a broad enough range of portrayals in narratives across all media that it wouldn’t count as any special calumny against them as a class, faux-populist crocodile tears by people like Hoyt to the contrary. I’ll believe Sarah Hoyt gives a shit about the working class when she stops mooning for the days of the fascist Salazar regime.
To Nigel:
I have an odd sense of humor. But as several people have pointed to “gin” in text as proof that story was not refering to working class men and frat boys do not leave behind widows and orphans, then we are left with *unrelible* narrator as only logical reading of text.
To Jim Henley: Last paragraph was indeed sarcastic — but also in an odd way sincere. I thought reading text as refering to working class was so obvious that I didn’t realize so many people would think text refered to frat boys.
By being challenged, I came up with a more interesting and logical reading of text.
As to portrayls of working class men in literature, you are of coure, quite right.
Stuff I bought for Buy a Tor Book Day:
Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (This is fantastic. I originally checked it out from the library, and it went right to the top of next year’s nom list.)
Blindsight, Peter Watts (I downloaded this from the author’s website, but I still wanted a dead-tree copy.)
Stuff I bought due to the threads here:
Uprooted, Naomi Novick
Revival, Stephen King
The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi (Also purchased because it’s set in Phoenix, and we’re already starting the water wars with California due to that state’s ongoing drought.)
A Darkling Sea, James Cambias
Y’all are giving my credit card a workout. (Also, Mike, thank you for the pretty new comment buttons.)
@rcade, I think I’ve seen the 24 Hours one at work – either a colleague brought it in or it was in the “technical library” (a shelf). I never looked at it properly though as I was already quite experienced with Java by then.
@Happy-Puppy:
Fair enough!
Next to my left foot is Castaway Planet by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor, and next to my right foot is my Kindle containing (among many other titles) Brynony And Roses and the first two segments of The End of All Things.
Meanwhile, holy shitballs Phil Noto’s colors alone are worth a Hugo for Black Widow in the graphic-novel category
Hey guys,
I am about 180 comments behind but wanted to share a few links which I feel relate to a certain tweet that has been talked about. Don’t worry, this is big picture stuff mostly and two of the three are SFF!
A report on the study of long term influences on childhood indoctrination
Movie Bob’s Big Picture Commentry: Relics
SF Latest DS 9 Review: Far Beyond the Stars, with bonus review of the short comic Judgment Day
Two Gallup polls about a shift to a more liberal US.
Americans Continue to Shift Left on Key Moral Issues
On Social Ideology, the Left Catches Up to the Right
The tl;dr version is: Racist attitudes are going to be with us for a while. We are going to have keep up the good work, but change is happening.
@Jim Hensley
I’ve been a fan of Phil Noto’s artwork ever since first seeing it in Beautiful Killer. It’s practically made for stylized spy thrillers. 🙂
@rcade Computer book writers R us, How to do everything with Windows 8is still paying here…
Oops, too many links! I probably shouldn’t have added those last two to my post.
In my moderated post I recommend SF Debris’s latest DS9 review. It seems particularly pertinent to today’s round-up.
@XS: Oh yeah, his pencils are great too. Especially for this kind of thing. And I love that he doesn’t fetishize her. But his colors really take the book to a whole other place.
(Thunderstorm has transformed 40-pound border collie into a lapdog so typing is a bit cramped.)
@ Happy-Puppy
Hey. As an actual “mentally ill” woman with a treatable disease that is under control with medication? Screw you. The mental gynastics you’ve put yourself under in order to insult both Ms. Swirsky and a host of other people in the world who haven’t done a thing to you except have the misfortune to be born with an illness you’ve got a bunch of preconceived garbage notions of is the sign of a disturbed mind for sure.
I have more I could say, but not the spoons to get into an argument with someone this gross.
Do I infer from Wright’s oily little blog post that his editor is Moshe Feder? Seems like it would be either him or PNH from context, and Feder’s been a little more outspoken.
To Gabriel F.:
Ialso do not wa nt to argue with you. If your feelings were hurt by my analysis of the text, I apologize. It was never my intent to attack or disparage disparage people in real life suffering from medical problems.
I simply engaged in a logical exercise in which I engaged a problematical text.
Ouch, yeah.
I’m sorry you had to endure that, @Gabriel. That was really tone-deaf.
There is also the possible interpretation that the narrator of “Dinosaur” was not present at the beating and was using witness accounts for her mental image of the incident. Eyewitnesses are pretty notoriously unreliable.
Nearest my left foot is “The Other Insect Societies” by James Costa, non-fiction. There is no SFF anywhere to my left. But then, I am a puppy.
Have we done Fetch-22?
We do seem to get a depressing number of Puppies who have absolutely no interest in SFF dropping in here.
I wonder why those ones are so invested in derailing an award for something they are deliberately ignorant of.
Hey, look formatting buttons for comments, awesome!
Most of my reading these days is on my laptop or phone, so the entire Hugo packet and my Kindle books are closest to my left foot. Dead tree book is a crochet pattern book by Doris Chan–I’m not sure which one, and I can be arsed to look at the moment.
Other things that I couldn’t be arsed with while catching up on this thread: reading Brian Z’s tiresome EPH comments, clicking through to Puppy links in the wrap up, giving a good goddamn about anything Mr Beale and cohort have to say about anything.
I have put another 5 or 6 books on my library hold list, though, which means I have officially maxed out my 25 allowed hold.
Also, checked out A Murder Hatched which seems to contain the first two books of Donna Andrew’s Meg Langslow series. Thank you to the commenters who recommended her: I’ve been feeling the need for a break from all SFF, all the time. A nice mystery sounds just the thing.
Er, Dinosaurs and English class structures.
We have gentlemen’s clubs, some of them descendants of 18th century gaming clubs for members of the male aristocracy, others the coffee houses in the City where deals were done. Those clubs still exist, and if you look someone up in Who’s Who it will tell you which clubs a gentleman belongs to.
Such clubs will have billiards rooms as well as card rooms.
So, we don’t have frat boys but it is perfectly possible for upper class guys with wives and families to spend time in clubs playing billiards, getting blotto, and having to retreat outside for cigarettes or cigars.
It would probably help if you bothered to do some research on English social structures before you claim that a writer is mentally ill.
I see what you did there. So what’s the rightist bit of SFF around you?
To Peace: “There is no SFF anywhere to my left” is a joke?
Well, decently productive day for me. Rejection from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, but with a brief critique, (which is a little rare these days), and an invitation to submit to them in the future that seemed like a little more than the formality that they usually seem to be. And cleaned up the story I intend to submit to the Capes anthology for Local Hero Press and it’s into the hands of my alpha reader.
The books closest to my left foot are:
The Austalian Concise Oxford Dictonary,
Bilbe Stories by Dabid Kosoff,
The Complete Adventures of Blinky Bill,
The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.
Fetch-22 is brilliant.
I don’t see Far From the Barking Crowd on there, either.
But then, the barking crowd keeps coming here. @Gabriel, I’m sorry you had to deal with Happy-Puppy.
Oh boy, I’m sorry.
I think my sense of humor has been draining away. My apologies. That was a good one.
Happy-Puppy
I appreciate that not everybody is familiar with class structures in England, and thus it might take some time to research the position, but I do think that before you start making assertions about mental illness it would be sensible to do some research before you make an idiot of yourself in public.
That way everybody wins…
I thought I recognized you as a fellow traveller on the same %PATH%.
Considering this Puppies situation, is it a good thing or a bad one that computer book authors don’t have a fandom? I’m 18 years in and the only groupie I’ve acquired I promptly married.
To Stevie: I did not claim that a *writer* was mentally ill. I said a text could be interpreted as written from the POV of a mentally ill person. Writers need not be insane to write unrelible narrators.
Unreliable =\= Mentally ill
Stevie wrote
Happy-Puppy wrote
Can we stick to what was actually written, this isn’t telephone?
Book closest to my left foot is Michelle Goodwin’s Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. The closest SFF is Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death.
@Gabriel F
Internet jedi hugs on offer if you want them.
@Happy-Puppy: We’ve interacted constructively, I hope. My I please offer you some advice on the mentally-ill thing?
Stop digging.
You goofed. You upset some people and their hurt is reasonable given the load they carry and all the extra stuff that gets piled on them. Just say sorry, stop explaining, and move on. 🙂
@Happy Puppy
The simplest reading of that story, I think, is that the narrator is grieving. If you have to use a circuitous route of interpretation to achieve at a less likely reading that some people are likely to find offensive, then people are apt to think you are saying what you are saying simply to offend.
Offering, perhaps out of vanity, Jim’s Rule of Buts for consideration.
The comment “[I] congratulate Ms. Swirdky [sic] for writing such a brilliant fantasy from the point of view of a me.ntally disturbed woman” could be read two ways:
1. Happy Puppy is calling Swirsky mentally ill
2. Happy Puppy is calling her story’s narrator mentally disturbed
Option 1 is ugly and deserves to catch hell.
But how are you certain HP didn’t mean Option 2?
Happy-Puppy,
Adding to what Jim said, your apology earlier was “If your feelings were hurt by my analysis of the text, I apologize.” Considering that Gabriel F. had already clearly stated that her feelings were hurt, that comes across as a non-apology. A straightforward “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings” is best.
Thanks,
Another Mentally Ill Person
@ rcade
I assumed he meant option 2. I’m just tired of it. The “crazy woman” trope, especially as it relates to characters dealing with loss (especially of a child) is worn the hell out for some of us, and it’s constant in visual media.
The thing is, if it’s not okay to call someone “gay” or “retarded” as an insult, because those conditions are inherently not insulting, then can we stop calling people “crazy” when they act irrationally?
I’ve never heard anyone say “you don’t want a cola? What are you, diabetic?” or “You’re acting really weird, are you CHF?” But for some reason, the actual medical diagnosis of a brain injury or illness is up for grabs.
So, y’know… don’t.
I’m not medicated for my mental illness because usually (not always) my other coping methods are enough and frankly I’m already taking more than enough medications. The apology has happened, and that’s great, can the rest be dropped and done, now, please? Happy-Puppy and the people who want to tell Happy-Puppy off? Its serving to drag out the squick, for me at least. (Although if people who are objecting are helping Gabriel… I’ll deal, grit my teeth, and focus on the comments about books.)
Happy-Puppy
Your assertion that the protagonist of the story is mentally ill is based on your assertion that she is an unreliable narrator which you claim is proved by the absence of upper class guys tanked up on gin and wielding snooker cues because frat boys are too young to have wives and children.
Perhaps in future you could grapple with the fact that frat boys are not an universal phenomenon; strangely enough, frat boys do not exist outside the U.S.
Of course, I realise that it’s hard for you to grasp that there are countries other than the US, a fact which you share with the Rabid and Sad Puppies, but that’s reality. I’m all for informed criticism, but your observations merely demonstrate the fact that you didn’t bother to inform yourself before getting stuck in.
Again, I do understand that the concept of evidence is one which puppydum has problems with, but I’m sure you would get the hang of it if you tried putting some effort into it. Or, to put it another way, any chain of reasoning starts with initial assumptions, which is why rational people first consider whether their assumptions are in fact correct before diving headlong into the pool and, as in this case, crack your skull open on the bottom of the pool…