There Will Be War X, the first new anthology in Jerry Pournelle’s military sf series in 25 years, will be released on Amazon next Monday.
“It’s pretty good,” Jerry promises, with a mix of fresh names and favorites. “Several new writers I didn’t know before, and some old standbys like Bova and Anderson with stories that hold up despite their age.”
Here is the complete roster of contributors:
Gregory Benford, Charles W. Shao, William S. Lind, Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele, USMC, Ben Bova, Allen M. Steele, Michael Flynn, Martin van Creveld, Matthew Joseph Harrington, Cheah Kai Wai, Col. Douglas Beason, USAF, ret., John DeChancie, CDR Phillip E. Pournelle, USN, Russell Newquist, Brian Noggle, David van Dyke, Lt. Col. Guy R. Hooper, USAF, ret., Michael L. McDaniel, Poul Anderson, and Larry Niven.
The Castalia House book, says publisher Vox Day, initially will come out as an ebook, then in audiobook early next year, and finally in a hardcover omnibus edition with Volume IX sometime in Spring 2016.
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Trolls gonna troll.
Trolls gonna troll, and my favorites are also problematic. Some of us can acknowledge that a writer or musician or actor or director whose work we like is also a horrible human being, without leaping from that acknowledgement to accusing everyone who disagrees with them of being a danger to children.
I also suspect it’s easier to say “the late X was a horrible person, but I like their work” than “X is a horrible person who should be in prison, but I still like his music.”
Its quite a leap to go from “Campbell, Gernsbeck, and Wells kind of liked military science fiction” to “they would have liked this specific quite shoddily prepared example of that subgenre”. One might even say it is quite a dishonest leap to make.
Thus far I haven’t had to worry about whether to read Beale’s output despite his sleazy and slimy personality. Everything I’ve ever read that he’s produced has been a rancid pile of poorly written stupidity, and there’s no real reason to go back to that well.
When you feel the need to invoke, as reviewers, people who died before the work in question came out, you clearly have a problem on your hands.
At the very least, you’re making a religious claim rather than a critical one.
I don’t know, if any of those three reviewed RtRH I know I’d read their responses. Not often you get to hear opinions from beyond the grave.
Nice to see that goalpost moving, though.
>’Not often you get to hear opinions from beyond the grave. Nice to see that goalpost moving, though.’
The goalposts are marked Hugo and Campbell; the game is played on the field made by HG Wells. John Campell published Jerry Pournelle and Poul Anderson, and you can read the foreword to Larry Niven’s Gil the Arm collections to see his links with Campbell’s taste in SF detective stories.
There Will be War may be honestly considered a shoddy collection only by those who have not read it. The nonfiction by Philip Pournelle has been awarded in its field, Martin van Crevald does an important essay on war and immigration, William Linn is smart. The space war stories are full of That Buck Rogers Stuff, like John Campbell and HG Wells and Hugo Gernsback. I will vote for Jerry Pournelle for Hugo Best Editor based on this book.
When I suggested people who hate righties put together a left-liberal collection that’s better, this thread took my suggestion as an insult. Was I just being a mean troll who trolls people who don’t have SF chops, or is there a good Against VD and Those Tainted SF collection out there?
Bring us the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West and we’ll answer your question.
I think the passage of time may have dulled your recollection. https://file770.com/?p=26635&cpage=3#comment-379842
Riding the Red Horse was the collection you mentioned in that comment rather than There Will Be War. I haven’t read any of theThere Will Be War anthologies but like many people I received and read Riding the Red Horse as part of the 2015 Hugo Packet. It wasn’t particularly good.
I’m still waiting for links or references to where any of the dead authos and editors of science fiction past wrote effusive praise about RtRH. Until that can be provided, declarations about how they’d totes agree with any particular opinion are a bit silly – especially since I rarely if ever see someone claim that conveniently dead heroes would agree with someone other than the speaker. In the end, it always looks like the person attempting that gambit lacks the courage of their own convictions and requires an authority, however invented, to back them up.
I’m sure no-one here would like to give that impression.
As for “insults”… Rejecting any attempt to bring about Culture Wars: Anthology Edition is not the same as feeling insulted. I’m not interested in or enthused about an anthology that cares more about representing a side than it does about picking great fiction and non-fiction from a diverse range of perspectives. I want, wherever possible, to have as many viewpoints as possible for the theme – and yes, that includes right-wing ones. I don’t want an anthology aimed at being against Beale anymore than I want an anti-SJW anthology. I just want entertaining, thought-provoking fiction chosen by skilled editors. Based on the absence of anyone suggesting such an anti-“Tainted” (and who calls them tainted apart from themselves?) anthology, I don’t think many on the left give a damn about it as a concept, either, so what on earth is the point of discussing it?
The problem with a lot of pro-Puppy visitors here is that they think we all care about culture war as much as they do, and so end up talking past most of us to the Mythical SJWs they assume are here somewhere. It gets very tiresome.
Bruce:
You’re making things up again.
You didn’t suggest that “people who hate righties” put such an anthology together, you opined that Scalzi didn’t have the guts and that the SF Left wasn’t up to it.
Aside from the fact that neither of those are “people who hate righties,” both are an attempt to goad through elementary-school-level insults.
This seems to be a common tactic for some on the internet: Make a statement, then change the definition of the subject, change the verb and change the intent, and claim it’s still the same axe. With bonus points for suddenly painting oneself as the victim of people who hate you.
Plus: wait for awhile before posting the next message in the hope that people forgot what you wrote last time. 🙂
I dream of the day visiting Puppies (and our resident concern troll) understand that we can click to the previous pages of comments. Also, scroll up. It would save time for everyone.
It’s only now sinking in that Bruce seems to think that “fourth-generation warfare” is a new concept that RTRH introduced.
@Jim Henley
I’m not sure I follow your logic. I mean, clearly Bruce* believes RtRH brought something new, but I don’t think he’s claimed it to be anything except, um, replicating the There Will Be War format. Which isn’t any newer than 4GW, but still.
*I really wish this Bruce had also used a surname initial. *hypocrite* We have other Bruce’s.
The goalposts are marked Hugo and Campbell; the game is played on the field made by HG Wells.
And yet none of them have read either RtRH or the new There Will Be War. Making the leap from “these guys kind of liked this kind of fiction” to, “they obviously would have liked this collection published decades after their death” is pretty much unwarranted. In fact, it is downright dishonest.
John Campell published Jerry Pournelle and Poul Anderson, and you can read the foreword to Larry Niven’s Gil the Arm collections to see his links with Campbell’s taste in SF detective stories.
He also rejected a lot of stores they wrote. Being published by a particular editor is not a guarantee they will like all of you work, or even that they would consider what was published to be notably good when compared to the available universe of other works.
There Will be War may be honestly considered a shoddy collection only by those who have not read it.
You started by talking about an entirely different collection gushing effusively about its mediocre to miserable contents. Given that There Will Be War doesn’t strike many here as being particularly noteworthy, and you’ve already proven your taste is suspect, why should anyone take your assessment seriously? The collection is heavy on reprinted fiction, and has known cranks obsessed with “cultural Marxism” among its nonfiction authors. This is neither new nor something to be taken seriously.
@Meredith: I’m not the dedicated re-reader of comments you are, but my recollection was that Bruce specifically included RTRH’s discussion of 4GW in its bill of groundbreaking particulars. If I misremember, I misremember.
@Jim Henley
I had another look and the comment that closely resembles that is Vivienne Raper’s, writing in support (via disagreeing with snowcrash) of Bruce’s claims that RtRH was good and doing new things.
So, more misattribution rather than misremembering. 🙂
@Meredith: Thanks for checking.
@Bruce: I apologize for the misattribution. That was sloppy of me.
I have to admit sometimes the puppies and trolls lead to entertaining conversations by filers.
It is too bad Pournelle couldn’t get Baen (or wasn’t interested in working with them) to publish his anthology over the years. I’m sorry that he didn’t see self-publishing/Kickstarter as a way to go. Being partnered with Castilia House unfortunately hurts his reputation and his defense of “I didn’t know anything before I signed” doesn’t help. Research your publisher is among the basics that SFWA, Preditors & Editors, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch teach. Only newbies to publishing who frequently get caught in vanity publishing schemes don’t know to do the research step. One doesn’t need to know about puppygate to learn about VD.
@Bruce if the best proof you can come up with for a book is that dead people would have liked it you are losing the war. Being able to keep track of your conversation on a blog helps a lot. As others have said the rest of us know how to reread comments to make sure we are responding to the right person and the words they’ve actually typed. Your argument is hurt when you can’t do the same. There Will be War may have some good stuff in it. But it is tainted by its publisher who has said many awful things on his blog which you can go and read. Heck he has threatened people here on this blog post in the comments. Threatening people is bad behavior. One does not reward bad behavior. If you’ve raised children or had/have pets or manage people in the workplace or think criminals should be jailed you know this. Being online doesn’t change the rules of decent human behavior.
>’I’m still waiting for links where dead authors praise Riding the Red Horse‘
I don’t claim dread necromancy. I see the tradition, and the chops it takes. Read HG Wells, you see what Arnold Bennett meant by ‘the technique of Wells.’ Of course Bennett is dead also.
>’A lot of pro-Puppy visitors think we care about Culture Wars as much as they do-‘
I can’t see why you’d bother to criticize VD for polemics swapped with Mythical SJWs if you don’t care. But yes, political blathering is wasting a lot of time better spent on Sarah Newton’s remarkable Mindjammer novel and RPG, or Larry Niven’s The Goliath Stone.
@Bruce: I bought the Mindjammer RPG (2.0, the Fate Core version), but I can’t get it to download to my iPad. It is bumming me out.
@Jim Henley- I put off getting the hardback, because KA Ching. Wish I’d got it sooner. Totally worth it. I’ve never read an SF RPG that got this deep into something like real astronomy before- I mean the stuff that’s cool and real both. And it’s really cool to see transhumanism that isn’t all whiney- (waa, people are immortal and not starving and incredibly smart and healthy! Must be humanity’s Eclipse Phase!) Nobody’s merged transhumanism and old-school space opera like this since Poul Anderson’s For Love and Glory.
@Bruce: Have you read any of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels? They’re a pretty clear inspiration for Mindjammers RPG. More blending of transhumanism and space opera. I particularly recommend The Player of Games and The Use of Weapons. And Excession is a hoot.
@Jim- I’ve picked up Culture novels a couple times, never got into them. People i respect like them. Maybe I was in the wrong mood.
@Bruce
Leaving aside that ‘in the tradition of’ is not the same as ‘a good example of’ since at this point I think we’ve hit ‘not much point in continuing to state opposing viewpoints at least two comment exchanges ago’… 🙂
I’m super curious what you thought of Turncoat from RtRH, then. It seemed to me almost the most negative portrayal of transhumanism I’ve ever seen! Did the other aspects make up for that for you, or did you come away with a more positive impression of the treatment of transhumanism?
I just picked up the first of the Culture novels in the post-Christmas Amazon ebook sale. I’m quite curious to try it; I bounced off Player of Games hard as a teenager.
As for:
I believe I criticised Beale for his slander, doxxing, and frequent lies (sorry, ‘rhetoric’) rather than his polemics swapped with Mythical SJWs. Disagreeing with someone politically is not usually sufficient reason for me to refuse to spend money on their stuff.
@Bruce: If you’ve tried them and they’re not to your taste, that’s cool. Just wanted to make sure you were aware.
@Jim @Bruce
There was a mind jammers rpg kickstarter that ended a few weeks ago I believe. I thought about backing but did not know the game enough to justify the investment
@Meredith- ‘polemics swapped’ ‘slanders, doxxing, frequent lies’
‘Not much point continuing to swap opposing viewpoints’
Agree on ‘not much point’.
I’m still spiteful enough (umm, loyal enough to a great SF collection, yeah, that’s the ticket) to doubt you’d call his Samuel Delany quotes lies. Greater the truth, greater the slander? Trotsky’s polemics, or Maynard Keynes’, any article in Counterpunch or the World Socialist Web Site or The Unz Review or Africa Confidential, annoy people, as good polemic is meant to. You have to read both sides knowing it is meant to annoy, indeed to move. And most people who know a subject get annoyed with the rest of us and mix polemic in their didactic to annoy us back.
Agree on ‘not much point’.
‘Super curious what you thought of ‘Turncoat”
I just reread ‘Turncoat’. I watched the new Star Wars last night. By comparison, ‘Turncoat’ was an awesome blast of righteous Hard SF done right. Tomorrow I will see it as an okay SF space war story, well below Poul Anderson’s 7 Conquests ‘Kings Who Die’, well above any Bolo story not by David Drake. And I like the Bolo stories. So. Above the ruck, below the very best. The transhumanism isn’t presented as the end of humanity in itself, it is an amplification of opportunities and risks and the moral choices taken by the minds in the story. I was impressed by the stories in the collection, but what really sets Riding the Red Horse apart from any SF collection in 20 years previous, mil SF or any other SF, was VD getting good minds from the Danelaw to contribute. That is the core of SF. ‘The technique of HG Wells’. Science Fact balanced with Science Fiction. Without the nonfiction, SF turns back into fairy tales for innumerates (just watched the new Star Wars). Vox Day did good.
@Shambles. I’d have contributed to the Mindjammers kickstarter if I’d had the money. Strongly recommend the main rulebook if you have the money. And if you like hard SF, it’s worth skipping two cases of beer.
@Bruce
I’m afraid I’ve not read them due to, well, the series being used as an excuse to lie about and slander both fandom and authors like Scalzi and Asimov (those quotes I’ve seen elsewhere), so I have no opinion on how Delaney is portrayed within them.
Re: Turncoat
See, I thought the transhumanism aspects were clearly shown as a corrupting, dehumanising thing, and the only explicitly not-evil humans shown were those who’d rejected transhumanism. It also says that transhumanism would have been the end – those who embraced transhumanism no longer wanted nor retained much in the way of humanity or human parts, and those who rejected transhumanism were having genocide committed against them. It just wasn’t very nuanced.
I liked Star Wars just fine, but I don’t watch Star Wars for hard science fiction! (Don’t put any spoilers here, by the way, there’s a particular thread for that.)
@Bruce: It’s cool that you liked Turncoat. I couldn’t get past the solecism in the first paragraph. Regardless, we are not talking Nightfall or Big Two-Hearted River here. Turncoat is by no means a universally acclaimed standard of quality.
@Meredith- ‘to lie about and slander both fandom and authors like Scalzi or Asimov’
David Asimov’s conviction for a giant library of kiddie porn is a matter of public record. Delany has repeatedly said he supports the North American Man-Boy Love Association. And written serial-killer child-molester porn.
Guilt by association arguments are weaker than facts. Scalzi is proud that as President of the SFWA he saw Delany honored as Grandmaster. VD says Isaac Asimov failed as a father when he raised a son who loved kiddie porn. VD says fandom has a big, long-term, unaddressed child molester problem. I have no reason to doubt either argument, but they do involve guilt by association, weaker than fact. Stronger than the guilt by association argument against Jerry Pournelle letting VD be his publisher.
@Jim ‘we are not talking Nightfall or Big Two-Hearted River here.’
No. And I don’t like either. But if I was doing an SF collection for people who’d never read SF, I’d include ‘Nightfall’- simple story, prose not bad for Asimov, and lots of other SF collections include it. I like hunting stories, and there are lots of great hunting story writers. Hemingway was never a great hunting story writer, he was a great ‘sensitive guy being sensitive about his sensitive feelings on a hunting trip’ writer. Even ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is one sensitive old man. I prefer A Moveable Feast by the old pretender (too lazy to read Ouida? Bah. When the young master wrote Death in the Afternoon he read bullfight journalism from two centuries previous).
‘solecism in the first paragraph’
I don’t think the first paragraph is a solecism. The knights of Aristophanes or Tacitus or the Wars of the Roses weren’t dreamed up from Victorian romanticism, exactly, and neither is the Turncoat.
@Bruce
Judging people on the criminality of their relations would be a very poor road for Beale in particular to go down, considering his father, so perhaps the rest of us should refrain and set the man a good example.
@Bruce: IIRC, Big Two-Hearted River is a fishing story, not a hunting story. 🙂
By solecism in the first paragraph of Turncoat, I meant the sentence that parses as, “My suit of armor is…armor.” He lost track of his word repetitions in all the technobabble.
@Jim- ‘my suit of armor is . . .armor.’
Not the best sentence ever. Not the worst. A preceding sentence, ‘I have armor on my armor.’ would help. Technodithyrambunctious SF rules.
Bruce: ‘Turncoat’ was an awesome blast of righteous Hard SF done right. Tomorrow I will see it as an okay SF space war story, well below Poul Anderson’s 7 Conquests ‘Kings Who Die’, well above any Bolo story not by David Drake. And I like the Bolo stories. So. Above the ruck, below the very best.
Conversely, I’d never read a Bolo story. I like Military SF, the thinking kind (as opposed to the kind which mainly consists of pew-pew-pew).
After reading “Turncoat” and “Big Boys Don’t Cry”, I took someone’s recommendation and read what are considered the three best Bolo stories by Laumer. And I was blown away by the difference. By comparison, I found “Turncoat” and “Big Boys Don’t Cry” to be clumsy and amateurish. And as Meredith says of “Turncoat”, “It seemed to me almost the most negative portrayal of transhumanism I’ve ever seen!’
I’ve also seen a great analysis of the Burnside piece that you so laud, which points out the numerous errors in it.
Which is fine; everyone is entitled to their own tastes. I would simply point out that your opinion is neither a universal one, nor is it “more right” than the opinion of others, and your claim that “Riding The Red Horse was the best military SF anthology in twenty years” is, well, just that — a claim, your opinion, with which a lot of other people don’t agree. And that is why the components of it which appeared on the Hugo ballot this year did so poorly in the final voting.
@JJ- ‘I’ve also seen a great analysis of the Burnside piece that you so laud, which points out the numerous errors in it.’
People will be pointing out the numerous errors in Ken Burnside for twenty years, until someone finally does better. I’ve probably read your great analysis, but name some names.
‘I like military SF’
‘I took somebody’s recommendation and read three Bolo stories’
Congratulations on reading your first Bolo stories, you liker of military SF so long as it isn’t icky pew pew stuff. If you read David Drake’s Bolo story, you may over time notice a difference. Poul Anderson, Drake, Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, Zelazny, Riding the Red Horse and There Will Be War, are in the tradition of HG Wells and Hugo Gernsbeck and John Campbell. Most Hugo and Campbell award winners in the last twenty years are not. If John Norman’s Gor stories monopolize the James Tiptree awards, well, won’t happen. No writer who sells will bother. But if it did, fans of Tiptree would have a different opinion..
‘your opinion, with which a lot of other people don’t agree. And that is why the excepts from Riding the Red Horse did so poorly in the Hugo awards this year.’
Nobody voted against them without reading them? Making Light has sorely misinformed me.
Bruce: Most Hugo and Campbell award winners in the last twenty years are not… in the tradition of HG Wells and Hugo Gernsbeck and John Campbell.
That’s certainly true. HG Wells’ last book was published in 1941. Campbell’s last work was published in 1966, and he ceased editing in 1971. Gernsback’s limited fiction was considered execrable by the masters of the genre, and despite his role in bringing SF to literary prominence, he was a despicable person and a crook. He ceased editing in 1967.
Maybe you are not interested in science fiction as it’s advanced in the last 50 years, and you just want to keep reading the same-old, same-old. Clearly, a lot of people are interested in reading new and different things — and the Hugo Awards of the last 20 years reflect that, because that’s what Worldcon members like. What is the problem with Worldcon members voting for what they like? Just because it doesn’t happen to match what you like.
Bruce: Nobody voted against them without reading them? Making Light has sorely misinformed me.
I’m sure that there were some people who No Awarded slate entries on principle — and that was a perfectly ethical response to the Puppies rigging the nominations.
But if you actually did read Making Light, then you know that a great many people did read the stories from the slates this year, and there were many, many analyses and reviews of those works posted on Making Light, here on File770, and all over the internet. The Puppies’ claims that non-Puppies No Awarded the slate entries wholesale without actually reading them are utterly false.
@JJ ‘(Gernsback) was a despicable person and a crook’
Despicable like the Man-Boy Love Association or its enablers? Hadn’t heard. I’d known he was on the border between crook and bankrupt. I liked 124C41+. If you hate Hugo Gernsbeck, avoid Hugo awards.
‘science fiction as it’s advanced in the last fifty years’
The good new stuff is in the good old tradition. Charles Stross’ Laundry Files, Ken Macleod’s The Restoration Game, Larry Niven’s The Goliath Stone are all in the old tradition. The bad stuff fails like old bad stuff- Macleod’s space opera, or Stross’s, or the Ancillary space opera don’t fail differently. Failure to use cool astronomy for Space, failure to have operatic Opera.
‘If you actually read Making Light’
‘I’m sure there were some people who No Awarded on principle’
‘claims that non-Puppies No Awarded the slate entries wholesale without actually reading them are utterly false.’
‘You lie,’ said Wormtongue.
‘That word comes too soft and easy from your lips,’ said Gandalf.
Arguing is more fun for me when I assume people who have the bad taste to disagree are honest. I realize that sounds utterly false, on principle, to you.
Bruce: ‘You lie,’ said Wormtongue. ‘That word comes too soft and easy from your lips,’ said Gandalf.
Translation: I don’t have a valid rebuttal to your statement, so I’ll just throw a LOTR quip here in an attempt to make myself look witty and intelligent and distract from the fact that what you say is true.
Bravo, Bruce. Argued like a 6-year-old.
@JJ- ‘I don’t have a valid rebuttal to your statement, so I’ll throw in a LOTR quip to make myself look witty and intelligent and distract from the fact that what you say is true.’
So: 1) Lots of people righteously voted against Riding the Red Horse without reading it, 2)The reviews in Making Light were brilliant, by your ‘I like military SF as long as it’s not icky pew pew’ standards, and 3) therefore I lied when I said lots of people voted against Riding the Red Horse without reading it. Also, Tolkein is unacceptably highbrow.
You speak for a strong faction in organized fandom, the faction that has monopolized Hugo awards for the past twenty years. The faction with no SF chops. The pro-NAMBLA faction.
Bruce:
To be honest, I thought ‘Turncoat’ was one of the worst short stories I read in years. I mean, it even starts with a ridiculous infodump:
Translated:
And that is where I started to fall asleep. Given, I’m not very fond of weapons porn, macho language or military SF. Perhaps if you had written weapons porn done right you might have been more accurate.
Anyhow, of course I voted this below No Award. I couldn’t stand it. And I guess all people who weren’t into military SF did the same.
That you make up these weird conspiracy theories just makes you look ridiculous.
@Bruce
::plonk::
( grav-c3806455a82bb5b0f4060a890e42aeb2 )
I mean, it even starts with a ridiculous infodump
Even beyond the infodump, it is a very poorly done story. There are only two real characters in the story, and both are such flimsy caricatures that they aspire to be one-dimensional. The central conflict is between two philosophical viewpoints, but both are given such scant attention and are so poorly articulated, that the single paragraph that describes the protagonist’s conversion is almost laughable.
The “stinger” at the end where the protagonist chooses his new name is also incredibly parochial and, for anyone who knows anything about history, absurd (Arnold wasn’t a principled turncoat, rather he was a corrupt officer under investigation who cynically changed sides for lots of money). The entire story was an amateurish effort at best, and not even good enough that it could be filler to pad out the page count of an average issue of Analog.
Bruce, I don’t know where you’re getting your figure of “lots” of people didn’t read Riding the Red Horse, but, regardless, Riding the Red Horse wasn’t on my Hugo ballot. “Turncoat” was, and “The Hot Equations” was, but not Riding the Red Horse. I found “Turncoat” to be poorly written and not engaging; I found “The Hot Equations” to be meh. Neither ended up above No Award on my ballot. But I *did* read them.
And as an example of editing, I found it did not reflect well on Mr. Day, so he ended up below No Award as well, on my personal ballot.
Obviously, your mileage may vary, but kindly do not tell me that I did not read and judge what I did read and judge. Even if my judgement differs from yours. I find that deeply insulting. (Not that your tastes differ from mine, but that you presume that if my tastes differ from yours that I obviously must not have read it.)
You’re allowed to like, and upvote, what you like. You’re allowed to dislike, and downvote, what you dislike. Kindly allow me the same privilege.
@Bruce: We’ve had some decent interactions in this thread, right? FWIW, when you say, “I really like Turncoat, dammit,” I hear a dude who has his own taste and is into some stuff I’m not. When you ascribe Turncoat’s showing in the Hugo’s to “the pro-NAMBLA faction,” I hear, to coin a phrase, rhetoric.
I read “Turncoat”. It reminded me of a substantial number of sci fi gaming fan-fic stories and character backgrounds I have read over the decades.
While I don’t object to fiction that reads like a recital of character sheet stats, I feel it needs to have something more to qualify for some of the field’s highest awards.
Bruce: 1) Lots of people righteously voted against Riding the Red Horse without reading it
Not what I said. Yes, some did. But many, many people did read the slated entries. Their analyses and reviews are all over Making Light, File770, and the internet.
Bruce: 2) The reviews in Making Light were brilliant, by your ‘I like military SF as long as it’s not icky pew pew’ standards.
Not what I said. I said those reviews exist. I also never used the word “icky”.
3) therefore I lied when I said lots of people voted against Riding the Red Horse without reading it.
Look, those analyses and reviews exist. There are a lot of them. So yes, you’re lying when you claim all those people No Awarded Riding the Red Horse without reading it. Or I guess a kinder interpretation would be that you are choosing to remain wilfully ignorant.
Bruce: 4) Also, Tolkein is unacceptably highbrow.
This bears absolutely no resemblance to anything I said, and I have no idea where you got it.
Bruce: You speak for a strong faction in organized fandom
I don’t speak for anyone but myself.
Bruce: the faction that has monopolized Hugo awards for the past twenty years. The faction with no SF chops.
That “faction” has monopolized the Hugo Awards for the last 62 years. That “faction” is the Worldcon members. And their SF chops are so “bad” that they have built the Hugo Awards into the most prestigious genre award because people knew (at least before this year) that if a work was a Hugo finalist, it was, with only very rare exceptions, almost certainly high-quality.
Bruce: The pro-NAMBLA faction.
This is so asinine, it does not deserve a response.
Now, you may think that claiming I said a bunch of things I did not say, and then responding to those things, is a valid type of adult discourse. It’s not. I realize that this is a common tactic on Puppy blogs, but it won’t wash here. It just makes you look incredibly foolish and disingenuous.
@Hampus Eckman- ‘I’m not very fond of weapons porn, macho language or military SF. If you had said weapons porn done right you might be more accurate.’
When I was small and believed what I read, I read Norman Spinrad’s remark to the effect that ‘a writer who says another writer’s stuff is porn means he himself can’t write good sex scenes.’ I like good gadget porn. Lots of weapons are neat gadgets. This had some good stuff. If Larry Niven had a short story on the ballot I’d have voted for that instead.
‘ridiculous conspiracy theories’
I believe lots of organized fandom voted against anything connected with Vox Day without reading the entries.
@Aaron- ‘even beyond the infodump, it is a very poorly written story.’
Simply written is not poorly written.
‘Arnold wasn’t a principled turncoat, rather he was a corrupt officer under investigation who changed sides for a large sum of money.’
British or Canadian histories give a kinder view of him, and the investigation was started by people more corrupt than Arnold had opportunity to be. (I’m thinking of the Continental Congress and the ninny fellow officers he annoyed by, say, winning Saratoga despite them). I’d have guessed he offered to betray the Colonies from professional frustration and because it would have been technically sweet, no special order.
You could be right. I’m no historian.
@Cassie B- ‘I find that deeply insulting. (Not that your taste differs from mine, but that you presume if mine is different I must obviously not have read it).’
I believe lots of organized fandom voted against Vox Day and everyone tainted by any connected without reading the entries. I believe you are one of the exceptions.
@Jim Henley ‘We’ve had some decent interactions in the past.’
Yes, and you were right and I was wrong about ‘Big Two Hearted River’ being set in a fishing expedition.
‘When you say ‘I really liked ‘Turncoat’, dammit, I hear a dude who has different tastes.’
Yes, and I like to argue for them.
‘When you ascribe ‘Turncoat”s showing in the Hugos to a pro-NAMBLA conspiracy, I hear, to coin a phrase, rhetoric.’
Lots of people voted against ‘Turncoat’ and Burnside after reading them and thinking, Not My Taste. I argue my taste against theirs.
Lots of people voted against Vox Day and all his works and all those tainted by association with his bad character. When you challenge the other fellow’s character, it is between your character and his. Grandmaster Samuel Delany is proud to associate with the National Man-Boy Love Association. President Scalzi is proud of having presided over Samuel Delany becoming a Grandmaster.
@Peace is my Middle Name. ‘I read ‘Turncoat’. it reminded me of a number of sci-fi gaming stories and character sheets I have read over decades.’
I like a number of those. Mindjammer is great. Pricey, but well worth it.
‘I feel it needs something more to qualify for the field’s highest awards.’
I’d like to feel the same. I’d like to feel the Hugos haven’t lost their chops. Been a long twenty years.
@JJ- ‘pro-NAMBLA faction.’ ‘This is so asinine, it does not deserve a response.’
Tell Grandmaster Samuel Delany. If I shared his tastes, I’d very much want a pool of day-dreaming adolescents to, um, guide.
Bruce: I believe lots of organized fandom voted against Vox Day and everyone tainted by any connected without reading the entries. I believe you are one of the exceptions.
In other words, you are choosing to ignore the voluminous amount of evidence to the contrary which exists on the internet, and you are going to insist on believing what you want to believe, no matter how untrue it may be. Thank you for making it quite clear that you are choosing to ignore evidence so that you can make false claims.
Bruce: Tell Grandmaster Samuel Delany.
I don’t know Delany. I’ve never met him. And he’s not the leader of an internet movement to take the Hugos away from the people who created them and nurtured them for more than 6 decades.
I haven’t sworn allegiance to him — nor have any other WSFS members — but many Puppies have sworn allegiance to Vox Day, Brad R. Torgersen, Larry Correia, John C. Wright, and Tom Kratman — all of whom have well-documented histories of racist, sexist, misogynist, and/or homophobic hate speech.
I don’t know why you insist on dragging Delany into this discussion: Grandmasters are awarded by SFWA, which is a completely different organization from WSFS, with very little overlap between the two. If you think there is a problem with Delany being a Grandmaster, then you need to take that up with SFWA. Trying to beat people here over the head with it just makes you look like an idiot who has no idea what he is talking about.