Soap Operah Recap, and Sarah Hoyt Wins the Internets

So over the last week there’s been ANOTHER dumb SFWA soap opera of angsty Social Justice Warriors shrieking at people who actually make a living writing speculative fiction because of our lack of glittery hoo haws.

Sarah Hoyt’s response is friggin’ hilarious. Seriously.

http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/02/18/my-last-post-on-sfwa-pinky-swear/

The latest thing was when a whole bunch of really accomplished authors who are still SFWA members signed a petition saying that they don’t like censorship in their speculative fiction org. (this is just backlash for all the bullshit of the last couple years) This thing was signed by the likes of Robert Silverburg, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, Misty Lackey, David Brin, David Gerrold, etc. So basically pick any one of them, and they’ve sold more books than 9/10th of the people they’re arguing against put together. And to give you an idea that is the entire political spectrum including some fairly flaming liberals.

I thought the petition was fairly mild. It was just about how freedom of speech was important in an org dedicated to speculative fiction and got into the running of their little newsletter and how much editorial control it should exercise in order to protect the delicate lilac scented feelings of the easily offended. So pretty mild stuff for anybody who has ever worked in an actual grown up professional organization.

Of course, the response was why do all these OLD PEOPLE not want women to write sci-fi? I saw one blog post that invoked Walter Cronkite and previous (i.e. old) generations expecting respect, but they didn’t understand this new, raw, instant feedback model we work with today… Only I kinda make my living with that whole new-fast-raw thing, and they were all screaming at me about how I should respect them more. Go figure.

Mostly it was just bleating and character assassination, that way all of the low information types can see a couple of out of context posts on Facebook and think Raymond E. Feist is the worst person EVAR! It is amazing the fabricated crap people will swallow to get their outrage on. So you know, the typical stuff  (and btw, Riftwar, read it as a teenager, friggin’ awesome).

Mike explains it here: http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/ Mike also points out that the people on one side of this particular petition seem to be politically diverse while having sold a shit ton of books, while the other side is a bunch of people marching in political lockstep who haven’t really accomplished much, except for yelling diversity over and over.

I don’t even know how I ended up in all these posts from the other side this week. As usual, the SJW crowd has a bunch of hyperbolic bleating about the racisty-hatey-hate-hate of people like me, and I’ve not even paid much attention to this one.  Come on guys, I was the one you were all supposed to hate two weeks ago.

Fans always find and forward me the best stuff. Over the last few days there was a Twitter post that said Larry Correia and Sarah Hoyt were white supremacists… Which will come as a shock to Sarah’s black grandparent, and I find it remarkable that my hate mail can simultaneously think I’m a white supremacist AND I’m also a swarthy menace stealing all the white women.

Meanwhile, there was another post attacking the Mad Genius Club posters, and it followed the Checklist and went for Dismiss. Only they dismissed the MGC people because they were just Americans. (and everybody knows how inexperienced Americans are!), except in this case they were mad at Sarah (Portuguese immigrant), Kate Paulk (Australian), Mike Williamson (British immigrant), and Dave Freer (South African).  I don’t blog there, but I got lumped in, so Larry (America FUCK YEAH!)

There was another post wondering why I hadn’t chimed in on this one, but they figured I was still begging for a Hugo (that’s so last month, it cut off in January, up next, arguing here about who all of us want to vote for to really piss you people off) or I was getting my panties in a twist over gendernormativecistranswtfery, but it did make me think… Let me describe yesterday to you, and no, this is totally factual and isn’t in any way exagerated:

I was too busy to respond yesterday, because over those 24 hours I wrote and sent off 2 pro paying short stories and got the contract for 2 more (so basically enough to qualify for SFWA… in one day), and then I got my 4th Audie nomination and found out my narrator was up for best narrator, (I’ve already won 2) and I also did one of my Book Bombs for my friend and fellow outspoken conservative writer, Chuck Dixon (which means I helped Chuck sell more books yesterday than most of those people will sell in their entire lives.) Then I watched the new episode of Face Off and painted some minis.

So all in all, it was a Tuesday. That has to really suck for them. 🙂

Oh, but wait, there’s more! I think this might be from the same poster warning you of the danger’s of my cismale gendernormative facism and Sarah’s (strangely tan) whiteness: “Larry Correia’s macho focused urban fantasy with a liberal dose of gun porn is message fic”

That sound you heard was the point whooshing obliviously past some minor blogger’s head, because I said in the article that she Skimmed Until Offended that we all can put message in, but we can only usually pull it off when we do story and entertainment first. Duh.

I do think she meant that as an insult. Personally, I think it would make a good cover quote. That’s sort of like that one reviewer who tried to insult me by saying that I was a “modern day Robert E. Howard.” Sweet. But that tells you something about someone when they consider comparing you to the guy who invented Conan and Solomon Kane an insult.

Now here’s a fun one for you. Let me give you a small look behind the curtain into the exciting world of self righteous nobodies throwing their weight around.

Mike posted this little tidbit where a “micro publisher” condemned all the super famous authors who signed that petition mentioned above.

[Image]Steven Saus saysFebruary 10, 2014 at 12:15 pmThis is really easy for me: As I posted on Twitter, all parties who have signed that petition can go ahead and recuse themselves from any projects (including paying ones) that I control. If they haven’t yet violated my respect policy as a publisher, they will soon enough.They’ve just put themselves on the list of “people whose opinions I can safely ignore”.

Okay… I read that, and thought bullshit. That’s like the commissioner of Bulgarian Arena Football telling a bunch of NFL hall of famers that they are hereby banned from playing in his league. But that name sounded familiar. So I searched my email. Yes. I have met this guy, or at least did a project for him.

You guys remember the Crimson Pact anthologies? I wrote several Son of Fire, Son of Thunder stories with Steve Diamond (and they are actually really good btw). The only reason I agreed to write anything in those anthologies was because they were being edited by my friend Paul Genesse, and I wanted to support a good guy and good editor. (wait, I just identified him as a male editor, is that sexist? I’m so confused now) Later on Paul had a falling out with Saus but I have no idea why. That’s the last I’ve had to do with Saus other than to collect my royalties (more on that later).

But here’s the interesting thing, a year or two ago I found out what their total copies sold was. I checked that number against the Amazon Affiliates link on my blog… At the time something like 80% of their sales had come through my fans, on this webpage.

Why yes, I’m sure Robert Silverburg and Misty Lackey are feeling the heat of Saus’ stark condemnation and wondering how ever their careers will survive. To demonstrate just how much this is going to harm their bottom lines, let me show all those grandmasters what they are missing out on! My royalties last quarter were $6.52. The quarter before? $16.70 (I mentioned it on my blog). Before that? $4.47.

In other words, at that rate it will take approximately 500 YEARS for me to make as much profit from those short stories as I made in my challenge coin Kickstarter. (on that note, Jack is almost done shipping them! Yay!)

Yes… Harlan Ellison, sure you are still collecting hundreds of dollars in royalties every quarter for stories you wrote decades before this micropublisher was born, but you have violated his RESPECT POLICY!

Don’t worry everybody. I’m sure there will be some exciting new controversy for them to get all butt hurt over next week!

Sad Puppies 2: The Debatening!
BOOK BOMB! Chuck Dixon's Bad Times

109 thoughts on “Soap Operah Recap, and Sarah Hoyt Wins the Internets”

    1. Oh, lord yes. They’d change the rules the next year, I think. This one goes on my “if I win the lottery” list – cuz I like Vox Day’s Throne of Bones stories anyway.

  1. Hey Larry. You don’t even know, man. This generation is darker, faster, edgier, hip for the 90s…uh…00s? Teens?

    Either way, they’re young millennials and they’re going to, like, LITERALLY change the world, man. You know, because they CARE ABOUT STUFF. A LOT. (Except murdering the English language.)

    You’re just too old to get it. You can change the world by Twittering or Facebooking or whatever.

    Can’t you? Because everything else looks hard.

    1. “Like” this post if you want to change the world.

      *snicker*

      In all honesty, I’d say that this is just a terrible tragedy but I’m getting too much entertainment from it.

      Also – Sarah’s post needed a “norking through the nose” warning on the top.

  2. Larry, isn’t it about time for you to start a guild for SF/F writers? Obviously the other one is broken, and competition is good for the soul.

    Somebody is going to step into the breach, it might as well be you.

    1. If you really want to get a boost to the membership roles, you could edit an ebook anthology of all your fans who want to join the new SFF League of Authors. Self publish the ebook, the masses of fans all buy a copy, the fans all become published authors and are now eligible to join and vote. (Worse yet, it might, like rap music, catch on and actually make a few cents.)

      Your power has already been demonstrated by publicly contradicting a real agent on stage. *gasp* Then by laughing at them all saying “Ha! You could have had 15% of THIS.”

      The awards need age to add to their seriousness, so the sooner we get started, the sooner they get blurbed on the front covers. True, the voting will pretty much be a popularity contest…

      But how is this any different from the Hugos?

      1. Why can’t we have our own long march through the SFWA? Actually, not a long march; more the barbarians storming the gates…

      2. The problem with the long march is that once you have enough people, you have to become utter A** H***s to the rest of the people there. Generally, conservatives and tea party types are just too nice to be rat bastards and drive everyone else out.

  3. But you forgot to mention poor little Cedar Sanderson who was lambasted along with Sarah for the “crime” of unironically declaring herself a Lady Writer

  4. Sarah, Mike and Kate _are_ typical Americans. They came to this nation to find a better life, make more money and have more freedom. And they succeeded. For similar reasons Dave left SA and moved to Australia.

    Ipso Facto they are Bad People(tm) And besides, what would Sarah know about living under a Socialist regime….oh, wait….never mind.

  5. I read the petition a while back when Brad Torgerson shared it over on Facebook. I was a newspaper publisher until very recently, and also served as editor-in-chief. (Warning: I can’t edit my own stuff for shite)

    When I read that petition, my first thought was that the petition was perfectly justified. The idea that a committee will have oversight over the magazine was absolutely ridiculous, especially when the reason for that committee was simply to make sure the editor didn’t offend someone. Really? Honestly, that thought fucking offended me.

    They (SFWA) handled the whole situation wrong from the start, and they’re just making it worse.

    As for Sarah’s description of the whole thing, that was epic. I’m saving that one and using it for the reason why I won’t join the SFWA (when I’m actually eligible).

    Of course, Mr. Saus’s comments were new to me. I had missed those along the way. I’ll make him an offer though. I’ll edit an anthology where I can ONLY use those writers, and he does an anthology where he excludes those writers (he can even pick the editor…just don’t let it be someone who signed the petition). The winner is the anthology that sells the most copies.

    I wonder if he’ll take me up on that? I’m not holding my breath.

    1. What I found more amusing at one of the places filled with pathos over the whole thing, where many a twit lamented that this or that favorite author was “dead to them.”

      Ah, the drama!

      The bit where Robert Silverberg stepped in, and was consequently asked how, as a former editor, he couldn’t understand this was a good thing and that he had no clue about appropriate editorial oversight, would be funny if not so sad.

      On a more serious note – it’s one thing to have a guiding/policy board that sets the direction of the magazine, hires an editor to make the decisions, and occasionally follows up to see if they like the job the editor is doing ( and if they can’t come to a meeting of minds, fires him).

      What the petitioners were protesting was language that made the oversight something else far more preemptive and granular.

      1. From what I understand, oversight fell to the President. IIRC, Scalzi was president when this first started and just ignored that part of his job. If it wasn’t Scalzi, then it was the current president.

        Either way, part of their job was supposedly to oversee the operation of the magazine. The PRESIDENT OF SFWA was the one who could have prevented the “offending” items from ever seeing the light of day. He didn’t.

        So, because the president dropped the ball on that front – and, as he ultimately serves as publisher of the magazine, it’s all on him – he threw three other people under the bus and this committee thing came out of a desire to make someone else responsible.

        The thing is, I suspect they’re going to have a hard time getting an editor for the magazine. I wouldn’t take the job, even though it’s a major up in profile and probably money from what editing I have done. Why? Because editors expect to have to please a publisher, not a committee. It’s easier to get in sync with one person than a group of people who are also going to have agendas that have nothing to do with the magazine.

        Not only that, but when I decide to go looking for greener pastures, will future employers see me as an editor who can run a publication, or someone who had the title but really was just the errand boy for a committee? Again, these are the questions I’d ask if I were interviewing someone with this as their last job.

        So, experienced editors aren’t likely to take the job, assistant editors looking for a move up may be unlikely to take the job, and what does that leave?

        I somehow doubt they’ll ask Mike Resnick to edit it for them.

  6. I love how I’m a “middle class, privileged, racist white guy,” when I wasn’t even in this country until 1978. That whole Civil War and Civil Rights thing? Yeah, totally my doing.

    It’s also interesting how “white” has become an epithet, even if the target person isn’t really white.

    Larry, being Hispanic, you should tell them that being called “white” is “triggering.”

    Also:

    Convention committee member:

    “SFWA has long been a ‘prestigious institution’ and now that it is more on the level of a reality TV show it just makes it more fascinating to hear about. It’s like a train wreck full of naked celebrities.”

    1. I see where you’re coming from. Many of my ancestors from the cracker complexion fought and died in the American Civil War, fighting to free the slaves.

      Next time we bring up “reparations” let’s be sure to include money for the dead northern soldiers, and the families they left destitute.

      1. And my ancestor fought to stop an invading force from destroying his homeland. Way too poor to own slaves. Made far more destitute by the invaders and their insane economic Reconstruction policies. Reparations over here too please.

    2. When I want to look at naked bodies on the Internet, SFWA members aren’t what I’m thinking of. Staging them in a train wreck doesn’t help the visual any.

      The SFWA dustup is a bunch of people I don’t care about in the slightest, doing things I’d rather not watch.

      So your reality TV train wreck analogy is spot on.

    3. Nothing more dangerous than a “white Hispanic” with a gun. =)

      And being from England makes you personally responsible for the slave trade and colonialism and the brutal suppression of the Indian Mutiny, so there.

  7. “…couple of out of context posts on Facebook and think Raymond E. Feist is the worst person EVAR!”
    What? Anybody have a link to what happened? It’s been a while since I was on the Feist Fans mailing list, but Ray has been a favorite author for a long time.

    “…I find it remarkable that my hate mail can simultaneously think I’m a white supremacist AND I’m also a swarthy menace stealing all the white women.”
    This is why I’m still single! Damn you, Larry Correia! DAMN YOOOUUUUUUUU!!!
    🙂

    1. The best comment during that was from a female fan of Asian descent. “How come you aren’t stealing all the yellow women!” 😀

      1. Because he isn’t finished stealing all the white women, of course! I mean, I haven’t been stolen for *months*, and I ‘m quite pale. Hmm. Maybe Larry found out about the Cherokee grandmother? (pouts in corner, considers calling Larry racist but realizes TOTALLY valid complaint would get lost in the noise)

    2. It was going around Facebook because Feist is one of those “old white guys” pointing out the hypocrisy. They were using some comments of his. They could be construed as mean, but in typical fashion they were without context other than what the person with the ax to grind gave for context. (and as we’ve seen here, in my racist yet stealing all the white women ways, you know how reliable that is).

      1. I have a complaint. Why have I never been stolen? Am I not white enough? Or is it because I belong to a male of color? (Okay, okay, the man could pose for count Dracula, but judging by a medical problem of one of the kids, he has to be about 50% Amerindian.) Raciiiiiiiissssssssssss (Oh, and he refuses to let me change his name to Heinlein’s character Grace of G-d Bearpaw. So he’s Raciiiiiiiiiis too.)

      2. Ray and I have never met, but he was VERY active on the Feist Fans mailing list and I don’t see him being mean. Not that he’s incapable, just that he always struck me as a very wise business man that treated writing as a profession, not a hobby. My experience with him on that list would have cemented him on my must-purchase-immediately list (along with Larry & Sarah) even if I didn’t care for his writing. The meanest thing he ever did was make us wait until the next book (common enough that we just referred to it as WUTNUB), or in my case, I received a WUTBAN (wait until the book after next), which was mean since I had to wait two years for that book. Of course, it also guaranteed him sales for the next book…

        As for you, Sarah…you haven’t been stolen yet because there’s the matter of still needing to level up a couple more times. It’s not fear so much as the concern that between you, your male, the boys, and the rest of the Huns…it might be just a wee bit more to bite off than would be wise at this point. Sometimes discretion IS the better part of valor. 🙂

      3. Does this mean that not only are you a cismale gendernormative fascist you’re a racismale gendernormative fascist?

        I also have yet to be stolen. Guess you’re too busy writing books to steal all of us. =)

  8. The tears, they are so very, very delicious. Akin to the sweetest of wines. Oh, it is a beautiful thing to hear the bleeting cries of the morons and the glitterati, the perpetually offended and the professionally outraged. To listen as they petulantly beat their fists upon the successes of those who dismiss their great purpose, their mission of equal misery for all.
    Oh, the tears, they bring me joy, they bring me pleasure and quench my thirst.

    On another note than my random poorly written proseish-poem-thing extolling the pleasure of liberal cries, I’m surprised we haven’t seen any Scalzi stirring the pot. Then again, he’s a fairly smart guy and probably won’t insert himself into a situation where he could get mauled so easily without there being some sort of carrot for him.

  9. Larry, I was thinking about getting those anthologies soon. Since I want to help you and the other authors, but not that guy, do you have any recommendations? Any place that would give the best author dividends or the most publisher costs (since the royalties are per-sale, right?) ?

    1. No idea. The last book of the anthology was done by Paul. Now that I’m thinking about it I’ll have to look up and see what the rights situation is with those stories.

  10. Good Lord. People who publish in the Grantville Gazette, an e-zine devoted to a SINGLE SERIES make more than you have from Steve Diamond’s anthologies.

    Perhaps I should attempt to convince Eric Flint to ban Steve. Naaaa, Eric’s congenitally opposed to censorship. It would never work.

    For many decades I rather longed to qualify and join SFWA. It was an organization which did cool and useful things (Preditors and Editors) and ran a useful and narrowly focused charity (The emergency medical fund), etc. It seemed like a validation.

    Once I qualified, I sent in my membership. Once I had done that, and “gotten the union card” so to speak, I did not renew. I’m now one of the large group of ex-sfwa members. Oddly, that seems like an honor too. 🙂

  11. I can’t bring myself to favor either side of this debate.

    Censorship is wrong, yes, but trying to save an already-dead organization from censorship is hardly smart, either. It’s like arriving at a funeral, and seeing the mourning family divided into two factions, fighting over ownership of the corpse.

    SFWA is dead. Stick a fork in it and walk away. Those authors who signed this petition are successful enough that they don’t need the organization anymore. And younger authors have alternative methods of protecting themselves. They don’t need to belong to a guild. Let the others put the final nail in the coffin, by all means. Or not. If the other side also tires of being shackled to an organization that does not match their ideals, they should walk away too.

    1. The political totalitarians don’t walk away from organizations. They get as many like-minded to join as possible to influence the structure that others did the work of building.

      Once they have enough membership to make a difference, they do their utmost to drive out the competition, and complete the hostile takeover.

      We’re watching it happen yet again with the SFWA.

  12. Why is it, that when I read about the young inexperienced people telling the successful writers they are old and need to go away, my mind summons up an image of the stereotypical rebellious teenager, always thinking they know better than their parents?
    Also did no one ever teach them to respect their elders/peers?

    Of course I also imagine that a number of these people wouldn’t survive a week in a third world country.
    I can picture it now, one of them sees a ruthless dictator doing something horrible, and so they protest, thinking yes this will work, but since they aren’t in America the dictator just has them arrested without trial. Then they think well at least I will die a martyr, but instead the dictator just has them gang raped and tortured half to death to make an example before making them disappear without a trace.

    1. Real world experience says they’ll run to the dictator to lick his boots while extolling his virtues to the skies.

      1. First couple disappear after protesting most of the ones left will go exactly there, after all, dictator or not, if he is in a designated victim category he can’t really be all bad, right? Maybe there rumors of atrocities are just western propaganda, due to not understanding the intricacies of a foreign culture… 😀

        But you would get the occasional martyrs too. Some of them _are_ basically very nice people who mean only the best and have gotten married to a certain idea because it sounds very nice, in theory, and they haven’t gotten enough real world experience to see – or be forced to see – that it just doesn’t work in the real world. Some of those would even walk to the firing squad still full of belief, convinced that what seems to have gone wrong is just a temporary snafu they got caught in due to bad luck and surely, with time, sticking to the path will bring world the utopia they were promised.

  13. When your fricking job is working in literary fiction and you think calling someone “a modern day Robert E. Howard” is a really witty insult against a writer, you’re so far around the bend you’re looking at the back of your own head.

    The creator of Solomon Kane, Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, El Borak, and a guy who counted H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith as close friends is apparently not worthy of respect by this idiot. Wow….Good thing no one ever got inspiration from him or those other guys. Who knows where that would lead…

    And as for the special needs kids at SFWA, Harlan Ellison’s first dump of the day has more literary value than anything Scalzi’s ever written. Combined. Not to mention the incredible talents of Silverberg, Pournelle, Niven, et al.

    1. Purely indicative of nothing in particular, I’d like to point out that the more comments any particular blog post gets, the higher the search engines rank the post and the main blog itself in importance.

      I did like “Old Man’s War” tremendously. “Redshirts” wasn’t too bad either.

      If I refused to look at the products of people whose political views I disagreed with, I wouldn’t be watching any movies made after 1970, and I couldn’t enjoy pictures of bikini clad models which were taken in color.

      1. “you’d be a better man for it in every way!”

        Oh hell no. I’ll give you 4 reasons why not: Alien, Aliens, Terminator, Terminator 2

        Ah hell, a few more: Star Wars (all three), Indiana Jones, The Goonies (seriously, talk about awesome), True Lies, The freaking Matrix, etc, etc

        I could go on for hours.

      2. Meh. Entertaining as they were, watching those movies did not make you a better person. Plus making scumbag Leftist James Cameron richer is a definite minus.

    2. Boom.
      How is it an insult to say that someone writes like one of the most enduring and influential authors in the field (and one who was a damn fine author, to boot)?
      If someone told me I did ANYTHING comparably to how Howard wrote the Conan stories, I’d expire on the spot from sheer flattery overload.

      1. An insult? Conan was Hyperborean, which was “Far North” so…white male. About as white and male as it was possible to be.

        Opposed to the movies and comics, Conan was also very smart. All in all, white super-male smart Conan, who could never be defined as ‘sensitive’ or ‘tolerant’, and cared absolutely nothing for skin color, just competence or evilness. Conan would have made the worst ‘diversity awareness sensitivity counselor’ possible in any universe.

        So Robert Howard, was bad; sales numbers and pioneering new genres means nothing with a bad message. Your opinion is disqualified because you’re either a worthless white male, or a race/gender traitor. Because “shut up.”

    3. Indeed — Robert E. Howard did most of his writing 80-90 years ago, and is STILL IN PRINT. What’s more, he so impressed L. Sprague de Camp and others that they wrote new stories from his notes 50 years ago. These are STILL IN PRINT. And the last batch of Howard-inspired writing was written about 10-15 years ago.

      Notice a pattern here? Howard’s Hyborean Age is basically a self-supporting myth now, like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth or Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos (to the latter of which the Hyborean Age is connected both in terms of continuity and theme).

      Claiming that someone is “a modern day Robert E. Howard” is a COMPLIMENT. Or would be, if the person writing the statement knew anything about the history of weird fiction.

  14. I think this quote from Cora Buhlert is indicative of the mind set:

    “Honestly, this “old people deserve respect, simply because they are old, and must not be criticized” view is something I simply don’t get. I didn’t get this as a teenager, when I was told that I shouldn’t call out bigotted elderly relatives and family friends on their bigotted crap, because they were old and besides, I shouldn’t upset family parties by talking about politics”

    She’s one of those people. The ones that have to “call out” bigoted relatives at family parties because if she doesn’t then ?.

    Wait, what? What does “calling out” your relatives for their views (we only have her word that they are bigoted, perhaps they just aren’t her views) accomplish? Is she going to argue them into accepting her views? Cause that always works so well. Especially when you accuse them of bigotry. So she starts fights at family parties where everyone just wants to get along and feels peace and comity is more important than you showing that YOU ARE RIGHT!

    That’s a special level of maturity there.

    It never seems to occur to her that perhaps the people bringing up subjects and opinions that offend her might be doing so in order to yank her chain. Hey, at least she is paying attention to them. That’s way more than any of the other relatives who just mumble, “sure, sure” and then get the hell away from them.

    1. “It never seems to occur to her that perhaps the people bringing up subjects and opinions that offend her might be doing so in order to yank her chain.”

      Heh. I’m occasionally guilty of that. Sometimes there’s nothing more entertaining than throwing a grenade into the room and watching what happens.

      🙂

      1. But that can’t be! There can’t be any Ladies in the generations after her! That’s… that’s… nonconformist!

        I curtsy in your general direction, ma’am. 🙂 And if you keep putting those dried-up old spinsters and harridans into such a frothing rage, why, I may find I have to go shopping for a nice cocktail dress and evening gown to join you in wearing a Lady’s con attire. What color for next Libertycon? I’m hoping it’s not white…

      2. Cedar, you might look at recollections.biz in their clearance section. They’ve started doing 1940s dresses and hats, and occasionally they will have one on clearance that’s been returned or the color didn’t come out quite the way the buyer expected.

    2. I don’t know, I can partially see where she’s coming from simply because I’ve been in that position, (grandmother, and a really, really dated term for Brazil nuts,) and it’s really awkward, especially when you know they don’t mean anything by it. But there’s a right way to go about it and pinning a scarlet B to their chest only serves to alienate them and earn yourself a label as an arrogant twerp.

  15. Can I get the popcorn concession the next time you and Sarah get into it with anyone?

    I’ll cut you in for 7% of the net.

    1. Popcorn, hell. I want the single malt concession. That setting would demand it (along with a fine cigar). And being a cismale heteronormative old fart, in this case a cigar is just a cigar

  16. Cora Buhlert according to Amazon has written 48 (I think) books. The longest book containing 86 pages if I scanned properly. Most books contain approximately 20 pages. All are ebooks, so I doubt if she can be a member of SFWA. What is so appalling though is that she is listed as born, grew up, and now going to university in Northern Germany. Her grandparents and parents were enmeshed in one of the worst times in history for that area and she wants to join with people who want to recreate that garbage worldwide.

    1. Are those even books then, 20 pages sounds like a short, short story. Maybe a pamphlet if its message fiction. 🙂

      1. Amazon lists them under books. Each has a book cover. Some even have two stories within, again from the description. A writer/editor gave her a review on her blog. Basically, told her that she wrote like a juvenile and recommended that she read some of Larry’s work and a female writer’s work to learn how to write. She dismissed his information out of hand. Additionally added that she was justified in writing insulting things about Hoyt, Paulk, etc. because they were rude people and should have thick skins. I read more of her comments in the comments section. Glad I don’t live in Germany, if she’s an example.

      2. A writer/editor gave her a review on her blog. Basically, told her that she wrote like a juvenile and recommended that she read some of Larry’s work and a female writer’s work to learn how to write.

        Rob, PLEASE tell me you have a link to this. I’m sleep deprived today and could use a great laugh 🙂

          1. Ha! She’s got Yama the Sex Molester on her side. 😀 Wow. When you’ve cornered the creepy stalker market, you know you’ve struck gold.

            And these dipshits accuse me of hating women, while I’m certifying them how to carry concealed weapons to protect themselves from people like Yama/Clamps/Andrew Marston.

      3. I checked out Buhlert’s post and found that I’d posted on it a while back. I found to my amusement that one person was claiming that I liked “12 year old girls.” It used to be “14” when I last cared about the slur, and it had started at “17” (which would have been legal in most US states). Ironically, I met and fell in love with my now-wife when I was 40 and she was 21, so there might be a germ of truth at the core of that lie. 🙂

  17. I love these “Skim till you get offended” types. I was just called a racist on Amazon for my “Fearless: Powerful Women of History book” because I gave Olga and Joan of Arc funny accents. I’m racist against my fellow light skinned people?

  18. Here is a quote from a committed anti-racist and Nebula nominee about the new film Noah: “I find the whole thing deeply offensive, with its white cast”

    We’re talking about a culture so fallen in intellectually it’s breathtaking. What gigantic leap of intellect does it take to figure out what that is by replacing the word “white,” with “Jewish” or “black?”

    Multiply that comment by many, many times. It’s so typical you can’t keep track of them all. PC culture in SFF is basically like the KKK crying about racists and hoping we won’t notice the hoods.

    What kind of literature will such minds produce? With no faith in the human spirit and much of the planet, what are they going to write about? The PC like to act as if Conan or Heinlein was some type of race or male advocacy fiction. That Van Vogt and Niven are a white supremacist patriarchy of homophobes and misogynists.

    The truth is those old school writers were really smart and really good artists. It’s no surprise this edgy new school all see themselves as iconoclasts, which translates to conformists.

    The PC will write identity fiction as shallow as skin and gender actually are, instead of defaulting to the question of what it is that makes a good story-teller. It’s no coincidence E.R. Burroughs wasn’t much of a writer but was a brilliant and creative story-teller.

    When is the last time, if ever, the PC community produced something like The Mote In God’s Eye? Where is that novel? What’s stopping them from producing it? Where is Fahrenheit 451? Where is their Infinity Beach? Those people got nothing. They got “Yaaaay! It’s written by a woman, PoC, gay. Three cheers for anti-racism and diversity and something about literature.”

  19. I was catching up on this latest dust-up and saw something over at AmazingStoriesMag that left me me a bit gobsmacked… and pointed out that the real problem may not simply be the huffily-and-easily-offended, but rather their enablers.

    The gobsmacking line was: “First, I think that SFWA needs to do some more work behind the scenes and directly address these competing viewpoints of freedom of expression versus the right to remain free from offense.”

    Let that one roll around in your head for a second, if you’re willing to risk having your eyes start to bleed.

    We have two things in the comparison: an actual right, freedom of expression, which is not unlimited but at least qualifies as a legitimate right. It is not, however, actually identified as a right in the statement.

    Contrasting this in this set of “competing viewpoints”, as if they were on equal footing with one another, is what is called “the right to remain free from offense”.

    I see that as, for lack of a better term, a perversion of language. A desire (a fairly irrational and utterly controlling one, IMO) has been elevated to the level of being an actually-acknowledged “right”… in one sense, this actually elevates it ABOVE “freedom of expression”.

    Notice the subtle twisting of ownership of “offense” in the construction. In this case, offense is not something that is taken… the person who is offended did not TAKE offense at something, but instead the offense is simply there, against the will of person who is somehow not “free from it”. Offense was put upon them against their will, and thereby violating their alleged “right” to be free from it.

    If ownership were legitimately assigned, I’d be happy to concede that everyone is free not to take offense at a set of statements, and that this could even be called a “right”.

    But when revealed in this way, the absurdity of the notion appears plain to me… this alleged “right to be free from offense” is more properly cast as “the right to have no one speak in my vicinity in such a manner that I will take offense at their speech”.

    I find the bland acceptance of the legitimacy of such a position, as if it should have either equal or superior status to “freedom of expression”, to be far more pernicious than the typical bleatings of the lilac-scented offense-takers.

    Down this road lies madness.

    1. “right to be free from offense”

      Does that mean I can ban “anti-Christian” speech? [Very Big Evil Grin]

      Note, I don’t really want to ban such speech but such speech never seems to fall under “right to be free from offense”.

    2. I’m rather offended at the notion that they think the “right to not be offended” even exists.

      How do they address this conundrum?

      Oh, wait. I’m a white, cisgendered normative fascist male. My rights are non-existent in their bastardization of a world, maybe?

      1. So are mine, and I am a middle-aged fat spinster. All it takes are wrong opinions. The only advantage, if it can be called that, I have over you is that as long as I keep my mouth shut they will probably assume I’m one of the right-thinking people, so if I want I can blend in.

        And since I don’t like to fight – as I tend to lose my temper pretty fast when I do I don’t fight well enough to win in any way which usually counts as winning in social occasions – I usually do. In social gatherings I am that quiet woman in the corner who gets a rigid smile and answers in monosyllables when the talk turns to politics or saving the world from whatever.

        Blending in can be pretty damn exhausting sometimes. You spend a lot of time feeling thoroughly offended. 🙂

    3. You don’t know the half. Spend a semester in the belly of the beast, or as it is more properly called: The Wayne State University Graduate School of History. Not only do lib-progs think that they have the right to not be offended, they don’t think anyone who disagrees with them has the right to be offended by anything they say because, “We all agree about this.” Seriously

    4. Amazing Stories is worse than you think. I complained a year ago about their bloggers making political attacks on conservatives and was told that those weren’t’ attacks just facts. I quit following them then.. I know one of the bloggers there. The editor decided a couple of weeks ago that the SFWA snowflakes were right and wanted to set up a diversity council for Amazing Stories. He recanted and said that he was misunderstood when a large portion of his bloggers pushed back

  20. Over the last few days there was a Twitter post that said Larry Correia and Sarah Hoyt were white supremacists

    Ah, but do you have a 100-page report declaring you to be a white supremacist, mi compadre? Apparently we White Hispanics sure do love the white supremacy.

    Also, I have to concede on the Book Bomb. We couldn’t crack 1,000. 1,056. You win.

  21. Larry – You and Sarah keep up the good work. My dad taught me that between many pairs of people there’s a chain. You’re either on the yanking or the yanked end. And you both are ninja-level yankers.

    I’ve been helping a friend of mine with her writing. She’s on her second book (I’m her beta of choice). Turned her on to your blog, and she now has “GET PAID” in her mission statement.

  22. The last Hoyt book I read featured a gay, super human, giant as its hero. He was a decent enough fellow (for given values of a bit crazy), trying to figure out his life a midst the events of the book. I suppose USAians rising up against their dictatorial oppressors might near “message fiction” territory, but I don’t see how you get racist or sexist out of it.

    BTW: Into the Storm, good stuff.

  23. I’ve been a SF fan for about 45 years. (I heart the guys in green beanies, but yeah, science fiction). So many stories since the mid-70’s have come across much like that dreck I just shuffled through – Pravda with a quick splash of rattlecan red(or pink) – that I’d almost given up on the genre.
    Then I found Baen, home of writers who are actually able to write (to paraphrase another oldie, if it ain’t Baen, I ain’t buyin’).
    Those twits really annoy me though, their ilk almost destroyed my love of SF.
    Larry & co., please continue to annoy them. I can always hope it will cause one or more to stroke out.
    An aside to Sarah, should she happen to read this – I took up leatherworking as a hobby after retirement, and I feel sure a good sap would be more effective than a dirty sock – would be happy to make you one.

  24. Kid: Grandpa, what’s a protest?

    Grandpa: It’s where a bunch of college kids get together and show off how much they don’t know by repeating it very loudly.

    -Leslie Nielsen as Grandpa, “An American Carol”

  25. Dangit man, I’d sell a finger to be called the “Modern Robert E. Howard!”
    I consider the man one of the finest action writers that ever lived and his style holds up even today. The test of time is the most harsh, but not even the most scathing hatred has suppressed his work.

    Of course, I now see that he has some modern competition! XD

Leave a Reply to Jordan Bassior Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *