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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SFWA /= WSFS. Grandmaster is SFWA. Hugo’s are WSFS. Conflating the two in order to create a fictional Hugo “pro-NAMBLA” faction is silly and obnoxious.
*Jedi waves*
These aren’t the SJWs you are looking for.
You can go about your business.
Move along.
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.
<blink> Um, Bruce? You believe there’s an “organized fandom”? Where did you see it? Did you get pictures? <wry> I’ve been going to conventions for nigh-on thirty-five years, I’ve been on concoms and even was fan GoH once at a tiny local convention… and I’ve NEVER seen “organized fandom”. Fandom is about as organized as a herd of cats….
Miaow. =^_^=
I don’t know why you insist on dragging Delany into this discussion
He insists on dragging Delany into the discussion because its the only thing he has, and its a soap-bubble flimsy argument at best. The “evidence” that there is a pro-pedophile faction in current fandom is laughably weak, but because it is the current political axe that VD has to grind, his sycophants like Bruce are parroting it.
Delany’s real crime is that he has the temerity to be a better writer than all of the Rabid Puppies combined while being both black and gay. Delany has spoken on his experiences growing up as a black gay kid in the 1950s and 1960s, and as one might guess, has said that he felt isolated and alone, which didn’t make understanding his feelings and attractions any easier for him. He has opined that he would have appreciated an older mentor who could have offered him guidance and reassurance, and has pointed to NAMBLA as the only organization that even comes close to this.Note, this was Delany talking about his own experiences, and things he thought would have made his life easier. In the hands of slime like VD, this personal account has morphed, via quote mining and dishonesty, into “Delany loves NAMBLA”, which one has to be either an idiot who can’t understand the written word, or intentionally misrepresenting, to get out of what Delany has said. Given VD’s misunderstanding of some of the things Scalzi has written, I wouldn’t bet entirely against him not understanding what Delany said, but I think intentional shit-slinging by VD is more likely.
Delany has also said that treating 18 like a magic line for sexual consent is overly simplistic, which some have latched on to as evidence that he is in favor of sex with minors. But Delany’s stance is pretty conventional in this regard: Witness the numerous states that have laws defining the age of consent as something lower than 18. Witness the numerous states that have exceptions to the age of consent rules. One might point to the many times that Pournelle and Niven have talked about how “a 12-year old was an adult in Roman times”, and, for example, a scene in Lucifer’s Hammer in which an older man is involved in a sexual relationship with a girl who is 15, which is presented as normal and acceptable. Making a big deal out of Delany’s statement in the face of this sort of background is fairly rank hypocrisy.
Delaney’s interview about NAMBLA.
‘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
I can’t speak for the UK, but you could easily do a degree in Canadian history and never hear Arnold’s name at all. In Canada the American Revolution is taught almost exclusively in terms of how it affected Canada (ie by prompting the emigration of Loyalists that kick-started English settlement of Ontario.) To be honest I don’t think he was even mentioned in my American History course.
I’d never heard of Benedict Arnold at all, and the punchline, such as it was, was entirely lost on me. So, that’s one English person data point.
Yeah, I’m not sure launching a disgracefully ramshackle and tabloid attack-the pediatrician-standard ‘Hey at least we’re not as bad as pedophiles!’ campaign is quite the act of tactical genius the rabids seem to think it is.
For years I always mixed up Benedict Arnold with Aaron Burr, which was weird because I didn’t know why either of them was famous.
Meredith: I’d never heard of Benedict Arnold at all, and the punchline, such as it was, was entirely lost on me. So, that’s one English person data point.
I’m an American, I grew up knowing who Benedict Arnold was, and I thought the ending — which referred to an event which would no longer be in anyone’s memory at the time of the story’s setting — was just one more amateurish flourish in a story rife with them.
British or Canadian histories give a kinder view of him
They may, but they don’t change the fundamental reality of Arnold. While assigned to Philadelphia, he was repeatedly investigated for corruption related to his many business deals, many of which were essentially war-profiteering schemes. Congress investigated him, and found that he owed Congress money due to his sloppy record keeping. He was court martialed and cleared of some charges and convicted on others, leading to a letter of censure from George Washington.
Arnold agreed to switch sides and deliver the fort of West Point to the British in exchange for 20,000 pounds and a high-level commission in the British army. Because his plan to turn over West Point failed, the British only paid him about 6,000 pounds, but did commission him as a general. Arnold wasn’t a principled turncoat. He was a man under a cloud who jumped because he saw a way to get money and status.
Bruce:
Why? People have different tastes. Mine is not yours. You vote according your taste, I vote in accordance with mine. In this case, your taste seemed to be one of a minorities.
You shouldn’t argue taste against others. That’s stupid. You should explain why you like something, hope that others with the same taste will listen for tips. We are a lot of people here with very diverse tastes (look at the brackets for examples). People will explain why they like or not like something, but not argue that others are wrong.
Oh, and could you please use the blockquote-tags? It makes your writing so much easier to read.
P.S. One thing to remember. 1994, where Delanys famous quote about NAMBLA comes from, is the same year that the gay community as a whole started to wake up to the problems with pedophilia. Before that, NAMBLA was a part of International Lesbian and Gay Association as there was a tendency to show solidarity with all sexual minorities. If I remember correctly, this was a time for global awakening against child porn and pedophilia (at least in Sweden). Discussions of consent was on an extremely low level.
Delany was speaking as a gay where he as a young boy was attracted to older people, not as a pedophile. When he grew up, the only possibilty to find gay sexual partners were to visit gay locations for adults. I don’t know about US, but here in Sweden, lots of people have their sexual debute around 15. What if your only choice was to go where adults congregated? That is where Delany comes from. Different times.
Regardless, there is tendency to downplay the problems with NAMBLA. Whatever problems Delany has with belonging to a sexual minority, NAMBLA is and was a lobbygroup for pedophiles. It was even started as a defense of gangrape of children! If he still remained a member, voiced any kind of support whatsoever, I would want him stripped of is grandmastership and thrown out of all cons.
I read the interview with him and I have problems with it. What the heck has Breen being nice to someone else to do with him being an abusive rapist? And some other things he says is pure pedophilia lobbyism.
If the grandmastership had been handed out now, I would have protested loudly. But it was given out in 2013 and the interview is from 2014.
Hampus Eckerman: Regardless, there is tendency to downplay the problems with NAMBLA.
Really? Where have you seen this happen?
@JJ – Really? Where have you seen this happen?
In the Wool Sweater/Samuel Delaney interchange that Meredith linked to, for one. Delaney several times elided the aims and purpose of NAMBLA in favor of describing how intelligently its newsletter addressed issues around sex.
Cheryl S:
Exactly so. And that makes it problematic to link to the interview as if it would clean up the problems with Delanys views. When it instead enforces them.
Cheryl S.: In the Wool Sweater/Samuel Delaney interchange that Meredith linked to, for one. Delaney several times elided the aims and purpose of NAMBLA in favor of describing how intelligently its newsletter addressed issues around sex.
I would agree with that — but how does that translate to “a tendency”?
JJ:
Hmm. Yes, the sentence was incorrect as written. I think I should have written “a tendency to downplay the problems with Delanys connection to NAMBLA”.
And to make it clear: I have seen absolutely no defense for NAMBLA whatsoever by anyone here. Nor any tries whatsoever to downplay the problems with NAMBLA.
but how does that translate to “a tendency”?
Tomato, tomahto, perhaps. I don’t think we (including Hampus in the “we”) actually disagree, although I’m willing to be incorrect, that the Delaney parts of the interchange downplay the problem of NAMBLA. Since I can’t recall anyone not a member of NAMBLA ever speaking publicly and favorably about the organization, at a guess, this “tendency” we’re speaking of is pointed at Delaney.
ETA: Delaney says he received the NAMBLA newsletter, not that he has ever been a member. That may or may not be an important distinction.
Absolutely agree on this one.
Hampus Eckeman: And to make it clear: I have seen absolutely no defense for NAMBLA whatsoever by anyone here. Nor any tries whatsoever to downplay the problems with NAMBLA.
Thank you for that. I know that members of NAMBLA in the U.S. will justify its existence and play down its problematic (understatement of the year) aspects, but I have never known anyone personally, or seen anyone else for that matter, ever attempt to justify it, or downplay it, or be anything but horrified about the existence and purpose of that organization.
I am dismayed by the things that Delany says in that interview. I also have to bear in mind that I have not lived his experience as a gay black boy or young man; he was physically and emotionally abused by his father, and while he says that his sexual experience as a 6-year-old was not abuse, and it’s not my place to gainsay his lived experience, I do not believe there is such a thing as meaningful consent between an adult and a child. The question as to at what age that meaningful consent can occur is indeed a murky one — as is evidenced by the differing legal ages of consent in different states and different countries.
If I had any reason to believe that Delany was engaged in abuse of children, I would be one of the first people to speak up. But I see no evidence of that. Delany has had a committed adult partner for the last 25 years. I don’t agree with his views on the ability of children to understand the implications of sexual contact and consent to it — any more than I agree with VD when he voices approval of acid mutilation of uppity women, or with JCW when he says the instinct of all normal men is to beat gay people with ax handles and tire irons. If I had any reason to believe VD or JCW were actually doing those things, I would also be one of the first to speak up.
Delany is not a member of NAMBLA (and based on that article, he does not appear to ever have been a member; he says a friend put him on the mailing list because they knew he would be interested in the content of the newsletter). I don’t see how I can justify going on a witch hunt for him because of his views. I can however, state that I strongly disagree with most of what he says.
@Hampus Eckeman
Could not disagree more. Good taste is the only thing in the world worth arguing about.
@Hampus Eckeman
Bruce:
Then I will just have to ignore you as I will ignore everyone telling me I’m a wrongfan having wrongfun. 😉
Blockquoted parts are always in italics. If you want to use blockquote, but remove the italics, you can put <em>-tags (gotten by pressing the i-button) around the part. So
<blockquote><em>Hello world!</em></blockquote>
Will look like this:
Just to be clear, I linked to the interview so that people could argue about what Delaney actually said rather than whatever was suggested in the Castalia blog posts, which I haven’t read but assume from other segments were, shall we say, edited. It was not an implied agreement with Delaney, who I disagree with on a number of points which I think have been well-covered by Hampus and JJ.
There are things wrong with the USA’s consent laws (trying to jail teenagers for sexting each other is ridiculous) but protecting prepubescent or young teenagers from adults is not one of those wrong things.
Meredith:
In sweden, the age of consent is 15 years, raised to 18 against people you are in someway dependent upon. There is also an additional line saying that the person found guilty “should not be penalized if it is evident that the act is not involved in any form of child abuse, given the small difference in age and development between the person who committed the act and the child and other circumstances”.
If both kids are below 15, there will be no penalty as both participants are too young. But depending on what has happened, social services might get involved.
@Hampus
The law in England and Wales is very similar, only ours are 16 (for general consent) and 18 (for situations involving someone in a position of power, although even after that it can get you in non-legal trouble) instead of 15 and 18. If both participants are under the age of consent neither will be prosecuted, assuming both consented (I think Scotland is more punitive but I’m not sure). Those 12 and under are considered unable to consent under any circumstances.
I can think of edge cases where those lines might be a problem, but for the majority of the time I think they’re about right. I like the Swedish line you quote about having leeway for when there’s little difference between the individuals involved and I’d like something similar to that in our laws.
Meredith, in America that’s usually called something like the “Romeo & Juliet Exception” to statutory-rape laws.
@Bruce, if that explanation confused you like it did me, to end the quote, hit the i again.
@JJ – I am dismayed by the things that Delany says in that interview.
I am also dismayed, and I really wish Delaney’s writing and thinking were less discursive, because that meandering lack of clarity is part of the problem. I also think he’s quite dodgy around the issue of consent, and far beyond dodgy in his anecdotal arguments.
However, it’s clear to me that Delaney is not speaking as a pedophile, but rather as someone who, for reasons of his own, thinks his childhood and adolescence would have been improved by having sex with adults. He then extends that thinking to the legal penalties that would have been faced by those theoretical adults and, because he thinks he would have welcomed the contact, concludes that the issue of consent is not self-evident.
Theory isn’t lived experience and Delaney’s answers might be different if, as a child, he’d actually had encounters with pedophiles. But he didn’t, so he’s taking a romantic view of a hazy might have been based on what he thinks would have been an improvement over his actual experiences, which he glosses over but indicates were not wholly pleasant.
In other words, I think he is engaging in special pleading based on an imagined improvement in his own past, using unconvincing arguments because he’s not spent a lot of time with the victims of pedophiles who have been targeted because of their vulnerability and not thinking critically about how, as a child, one really consents to a grossly unequal power dynamic.
As despicable an apologia for NAMBLA as one is ever likely to need outside of a court of law.
And to defend such filth….no shower will suffice!
As despicable an apologia for NAMBLA as one is ever likely to need outside of a court of law.
Well, we now know that you didn’t bother to actually read what Delany said, or pay attention at all to the conversation. Exactly why do you think anyone will ever pay attention to your drivel again?
If not, let’s just say it is for the purposes of your cynical grandstanding around the issue. No shower will ever wash you clean of that.
Cheryl S.: Theory isn’t lived experience and Delaney’s answers might be different if, as a child, he’d actually had encounters with pedophiles.
But he did. Go read the part about his building superintendent again. My contention is that the person he had his first sexual experience with at the age of 6 was exactly that; but because he does not feel that he was traumatized by the experience, that the adult was not guilty of anything. I think he’s taking his lived experience as proof that not all adult-child sexual contact is bad. And I agree that that is special pleading.
Michael: despicable… And to defend such filth….no shower will suffice!
I am sure that you have similar vehement condemnatory words for VD, who voices approval of acid mutilation of uppity women and calls black people sub-human savages, and for JCW, who says the instinct of all normal men is to beat gay people with ax handles and tire irons, and that homosexuals should be killed. Please go ahead and post your condemnations of VD and JCW here, so that no one gets the mistaken impression that you are a flaming hypocrite.
@JJ, I totally see your points, both about the building superintendent (which I can’t read about again because once was more than enough) and how Delaney’s lack of trauma colors his view. I’m approaching it from the lens that Delaney provides, which is that of a six or seven minute interlude with an adult who neither groomed his victims nor sought them out.
I find I’m having difficulty with this, because of personal disgust, but I think Delaney’s view of his opportunistic offender is at the heart of the problem of his defense of NAMBLA. In his view, the building superintendent acted as a mentor and lives in his memory as a good thing. That standard issue pedophiles (search for the most vulnerable, groom, manipulate, exploit, damage) are not mentors gets lost for him.
Personally, I think his arguments are shoddy, his differentiation is meaningless and his anecdotes are deeply dodgy. But, for the sake of discussion, to try and understand where Delaney is coming from, I’m making a distinction that I wouldn’t ordinarily make to highlight how his opinions might be very different if he’d encountered someone whose known and stated sexual preference is for children.
@JJ-
An SF convention that allows children at all will have children who like SF and fantasy. Children who like to fantasize are convenient for adults who like sex with children. This is a moral hazard. What is to be done? The Robert Heinlein view- Mrs Grundy is evil, what children do is none of anyone else’s business. The Social Justice view- make Samuel Delany Grandmaster, enjoy the fruits of social progress. The Vox Day view- you deviants must be cursed and shunned. Heinlein assumes smarter, tougher children than humanly probable or observed. Social Justice assumes progressives are smarter and more virtuous than humanly probable or observed. Vox Day is annoyed by attacks on his character. Solutions unsatisfactory.
@Aaron-
Arnold’s investigation by the Continental Congress was not worth a Continental.
That is only one of the many marks against him, and whether the investigation was flawed or not (you’ve presented no evidence it was, as the reason he was found to owe Congress money was that he did not have proper records. Wishful thinking won’t make those missing records materialize), it doesn’t change the fact that he was under a cloud. And he had been court-martialed, convicted, and subsequently censured by the commander of the Continental Army.
‘Turncoat’ is a simple story. Taking the Arnold name works as self-criticism.
It is a simplistic story. There is nothing in the story to suggest that the choice of the name Benedict is self-criticism. You’re inserting something into the story that just isn’t there. It was a parochial choice, and the silly choice.
@Bruce – Children who like to fantasize are convenient for adults who like sex with children.
What in the actual hell are you talking about? Yes, the rest of your screed is silly, but this crosses the line to ridiculous. Children’s ability to fantasize is nearly universal, so you might as well say that children are convenient for adults who like sex with children. Which is, however squicky, true, but not at all to the point.
To get out of the indentation or anything else, you have to / (and trying to show you really screws everything up, so I won’t). Just insert that / before the word to end the instruction.
I agree with JJ and Cheryl S.’s integrated take. I’d add that I think there is, ironically, a failure of imagination on Delany’s part: he’s comparing an idealized view of adult-child interactions to the real situation of gay kids during his youth. Now, thing one: ideals tend to beat reals in head-to-head competitions; that’s what makes them ideals! They also don’t exist: that’s the other thing that makes them ideals. Delany should stop judging by the best possible outcome.
Thing two is: hey, let’s change the real! And we have to substantial degrees – not enough, but quite a bit. Let’s make it possible for adults to mentor gay kids via real mentorship rather than through what most of us would call predation. We’ve made a lot of progress on that track; let’s keep doing that. After all, adults manage to guide and mentor straight kids and who among us says the best way to do that is by…you know.
But oh wait! I know the answer to that! Robert Heinlein! Also Theodore Sturgeon. Probably some others. Heinlein presented glowing treatments of parent-child incest in his fiction, and seems to have spoken supportively of it in his letters too. (e.g. to Theodore Sturgeon.) Situations in Heinlein stories map much more closely to what Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen’s children endured than anything Delany has written or said does. Heinlein is also a SFWA Grandmaster. So perhaps he is further evidence of this problem. And perhaps VD and the Dead Elk have just never read Heinlein. Or maybe, just maybe, Heinlein is getting a pass that Delany is not because the incest he portrayed was heterosexual, and he tried to square the same militarism-plus-libertarianism circle as many of the Puppies.
To the extent there is a real problem of pederasty in SF fandom and the world at large, the likes of Day and Wright do less than nothing to help it: first because of the special pleading (Delany bad! Heinlein crickets! Shut up about pedophile priests!) and also because they want to more homophobia rather than less – which would push us back to the social context of Delany’s childhood or worse.
‘Turncoat’ is a simple story. Taking the Arnold name works as self-criticism.
I have been reading this conversation with some bemusement, because–though I am an American, and have known the “Benedict Arnold = traitor” premise my whole life–when I read “Turncoat” I immediately thought “Benedict means Blessed One . . . say what?” Which confused me no end. (And didn’t strengthen the story, in my opinion, but that’s just my opinion. Unless you think that the AI making a really bad “first joke” that needs to be explained–and isn’t–is ironic, I suppose. I just found it, well, confusing. As I said.)
Here seems like a good place to drop in a link to Scarleteen, an excellent resource for young people that gives them access to the information and support they need, and also a place in perpetual need of financial support.
Would you buy a used witch-hunt from this man?
Meredith, thank you for that link. Forwarded to a few teens I know that might appreciate it.
@Cassy B
Awesome. 🙂
I’m still waiting for those heated Puppy condemnations of VD and JCW — especially in light of the squicky way JCW includes and describes 12-year-old girls in his fiction.
Oh my! You’ve called me a hypocrite. Sniff:( You really don’t like anyone calling out pedophile apologies, do you.
You really don’t like anyone calling out pedophile apologies, do you.
Given that you have yet to do that, no one here is particularly bothered. When you actually inform yourself and can have an intelligent conversation on the subject at hand, do let us know.
Michael: Oh my! You’ve called me a hypocrite.
I see that reading comprehension is not your strong suit. I haven’t called you a hypocrite. I’ve pointed out that I fully expect you to be posting similar condemnations of VD and JCW — and if you don’t, that yes, it’s very strong evidence that you’re a hypocrite. But I’m totally open to the possibility that you’re not. The truth remains to be seen — but the longer you duck commenting on VD and JCW, the more evident the answer would seem to be.
@Michael: The thing is, there’s an interesting conversation to be had on this topic. But I do mean conversation. You don’t seem to be after one of those.
Bruce:
Theodore Beales take is that all rules against harassment should be removed from conventions, leaving both adult and children victims to defend for themselves.
I confess that carefully guarded defenses of NAMBLA, or those who make such, are unlikely to provoke a lawerly response from me. Does not much of this really amount to a unsubtle attempt to soften NAMBLA and its various cheerleaders?