A Blow has been Struck Against Puppy Related Sadness

Thanks to the Monster Hunter Nation and other caring individuals a great victory was struck today in the war against the scourge that is Puppy Related Sadness!

http://io9.com/announcing-the-2014-hugo-award-nominees-1565144494

Warbound is a finalist for the Best Novel Hugo.

Almost the entire rest of the Sad Puppy 2 slate has been nominated. It turned out that my nomination for graphic work was not eligble. And Marko Kloos was actually nominated for the Campbell, but turned out to be inelgiable because he had a pro sale in 2011. Take those into account, I think we missed like a single category.

Already there is all sorts of outragey outrage coming from the usual suspects, with allegations of, I kid you not, “ballot stuffing” 😀 For everyone who has been involved in this process, you know how especially ironic and hilarious that actually is, since behind the scenes I’ve been collecting counts of Sad Puppies nominators the whole time to see if the process was rigged because there have been some really suspicious things that have happened in the past to other author friends of mine. Can’t help myself. I’m a retired auditor. But the London committee appears to be totally honest. Great.

(though the Guardian, in England, just happens to run an article mentioning me for the first time ever, making up crap about something I said 4 months ago, the day before LonCon, which also happens to be in England, has all the votes squared away enough to contact the nominees… Yeah… A suspicious person might think there could be a bit of a leak somewhere).

I look forward to the next few months of nonstop character assassination.

For the new visitors coming over from various outraged SJW’s twitter feeds to see just how hate mongery I am, here’s the short version. My side has been saying for years that the Hugos are just a popularity contest for one small clique of fandom. But we got dismissed with Oh, no, you bitter right wing cranks, you’re just not *real* writers. But hang on a second, noble Social Justice Warrior, guys like me are actually popular out in the real world and sell more books, and anybody can vote, they just need to pony up a little cash to join WorldCon, so let’s just check and see if it is actually a popularity contest… Yep…So, point proven.

As for ballot stuffing or making up fake noms? Nope. Just like people like me sell more books than the cause of the day literati twaddle pushers, we also have more fans. We’ve just never been this blatant about asking before. My fan’s $40 is the same as your approved fan’s $40. Deal with it.

So, when pepole who are on the approved list ask their fans for votes, that’s cool. When outsider barbarians ask their fans for votes, that’s ballot stuffing. What they’re actually saying is that the WRONG kind of fans are voting in their fan popularity contest, and that is simply an outrage.

However, now that I’ve proven a popular author can simply ask… I’m a relative nobody compared to some of the other authors who are sick and tired of being told they’re not *real* authors by their self appointed betters and legions of poo flinging monkeys.

I’ve got to keep this blog post short. I just barely walked in the door from ComicCon. I’m totally exhausted. I was on 9 panels, 2 signings, shook I don’t know how many hundreds of hands, talked to fans nonstop, and got to meet or hang out with lots of famous people. Nathan Fillion is a really nice guy in person. Julie Benz is great. Karl Urban is cool.

And best of all, I got to hang out with Adam Baldwin for a few hours, and last night my wife and I went out to dinner with him. (btw, Valters? Best restaurant in town. Amazing food). I told Adam my original idea for my Official Hugo Nomination Acceptance Speech, but he talked me down. This is way nicer than what I told him last night. 🙂

I was given the list at the end of one of my panels today. Other than WOT and Brandon, I actually don’t remember who I’m up against. Hang on.

·Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit US / Orbit UK)
– Haven’t read it. No idea.

·Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross (Ace / Orbit UK)
– Haven’t read it. No idea. Heard of him, haven’t read his stuff.

·Parasite by Mira Grant (Orbit US / Orbit UK)
– Haven’t read it. Mira is Seanann McGuire’s pen name. I’ve met her at WorldCon Reno and we got along fine.

·Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia (Baen Books)
– I hear it is pretty good. (okay, honestly, this series has already won 2 Audies, done well all over the world, and sold good, I’m fully not expecting most of the WorldCon voters to actually read it. It is way easier to just read the Guardian or blogs to find out that the author is the International Lord of Hate) 🙂

·The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books)
– Well… Hmmm… Brandon is a peer and a friend. He’s also one of the best novelists of our generation. Robert Jordan was one of the most successful authors in history. This is the biggest fantasy series of the last three decades.

So, Warbound vs. Wheel of Time. Let’s take a look at the tape.
The last book of a trilogy vs. an entire 14 book series
434 pages vs. 11,916 pages
135,000 words vs. 4.4 million words
Warbound was written in 4 months. WoT was written over 24 years.

Well, on that note, Warbound is a capable heavy weight boxer. Wheel of Time is Godzilla.

So thanks Monster Hunter Nation. Puppies everywhere rejoice!

Now I’m going to go pass out. 🙂

Important: Altered Perceptions. A Charity Anthology for Mental Illness
I'm at SLC ComicCon FanX for the next few days

372 thoughts on “A Blow has been Struck Against Puppy Related Sadness”

  1. For those that wish to see some of the butthurt already happening let me present you with this. Little Miss Special Snowflake used this so that Larry and Vox won’t get hits on their pages, turn about is fair play. Seems I’m also an asshole and she is getting tired of me. Not worth my time to beat my head against the wall when I have writing to do. Enjoy though.

    http://www.donotlink.com/framed?26218

    1. Yet again, I’m glad I passed on her books.

      “People are using popularity in our popularity contest! I’m taking my ball and going home! Curse you dirty peasants! “

      1. I read through the responses and it was sort of entertaining. I wanted to say something serious, because I’m a downer like that when everyone is having fun… Snowflake made a couple statements of fact (or at least sincere belief) that sort of struck me… and that was that hateful people (like, say Vox Day) are automatically unable to produce great art.

        Hello?

        What an irrational thing to say. Assholes throughout history have produced BRILLIANT art. They’ve produced amazing symphonies and transcendent sculpture. Because I’m not an idiot, I actually expect assholes to produce *better* art than others do. They might not, of course, but I do think that there is a non-zero correlation between people who are brilliant themselves, who have no patience or willingness to “make nice”, who very well *may* have ideas I find personally repugnant… but who look at the world sideways to me, differently to me, and will *very likely* produce something amazing. (Some day I will get around to reading something by VD, and I expect that it’s going to be excellent. Even if he pisses me off.)

      2. Hateful people are unable to produce great art? Ms. Snowflake, we have a Harlon Ellison on line one…

          1. Actually,no, they don’t like Polanski or what he did, and wanted him to be sent to prison just as much as anybody else who’s conservative did.

      3. Polanski is hateful as well?

        And here I thought all he hated was waiting until a girl was of legal age…or waiting for consent.

        Then again, I guess that counts as pretty hateful.

    2. I bet she was one of the ones who nominated “Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It”

    3. Well, it seems Miss Luhrs has decided that she is going to “moderate” the posts to her blog now, using the excuse that a troll is using a fake email or some such.

      Natalie Luhrs says

      April 20, 2014 at 11:02 am

      One more note. I’m not letting every comment through any more. I will be actively moderating comments on this post from here on out. Just put someone using an obviously fake email address into the troll-bin.

      1. Has anyone notified Larry about the conspiracy Ms. Luhrs alleges? How Larry forced his fans to buy multiple memberships so they could steal the vote? He needs to know that the secret’s out. The International Lord of Hate needs notification that the cat is out of the bag on the latest stage of his plan to fill the world with hate.

      2. “I see the use of donotlink as a way to improve my safety a tiny bit when linking to gross.” – Natalie Luhrs

        Stupid, stupid girl. Lost an arm by cutting it off when she saw a ladybug on it. A Phyrric victory, but victory.

        I don’t think “safety” means the same thing in heavily medicated femland as it does in realspace.

    4. What I got out of her article was a lot of hurt feelings because in the past while they could not sell many books they could assuage their fragile egos with awards and Larry just took that away from them.

      Not many posts in and we have the outbreak of “Reasoned Discourse” that 2nd Amendment advocates usually see when trying to present an opposing view. That is the deletion of posts, moderation of posts, and banning of posters. That’s fine, it’s her echo chamber and she can do whatever she wants to ensure it remains at her preferred level of coziness.

    5. That woman is bat shit crazy. I almost posted but changed my mind. There is no point arguing with an idiot.

  2. Much as I enjoyed WoT I can’t see any rationale in nominating the entire series for best novel of a single year. At best that should be a separate category.

    1. I won’t lie, I’m kind of conflicted on that one,because although it does kind of feel like cheating, I grew up with the series and ended up re-reading it a lot more than I probably should have through my high school years and beyond. That being said It could also be argued that there is a certain laconic beauty in Warbound making the cut.

    2. I started reading Wheel of Time and loved it for the first three books, and bought about 10 of them. By book 5, I felt like I was punching a time clock to work through the literal slog in the wilderness.

      At that point, I gave the entire set away to someone else around book three, who was looking for the whole set…

      The last book is apparently a super best seller and fantastic writing. I don’t think I’ll ever get around to reading it, though.

      1. I’d submit that Sanderson’s work is worth taking a look at simply because his approach has a different enough flavor to Jordan’s to compare and contrast the two. Although some of the characters don’t out quite right, (oh Mat, what did they do to you?) he also manages to make some of the more meandering cast members plot lines really come to life.

      2. The books got so forgettable I accidentally bought “Winter’s Heart” twice thinking I had missed it when it first came out. I ended up selling the the books and have no interest in finishing the series. I started out liking Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy but found the third book unreadable somewhere around the middle.

      3. I gave up at about the same point because at the end of book 5, it felt like it had at the ends of 4, 3, and 2: like nothing was resolved, nothing was advanced, and oh my god there’s more of this to some…

        Reading shouldn’t have to be hard work.

  3. Hold on, you have an individual work up for nomination, and the entire WoT series is also up for nomination??? Why not just the last WoT book? Is this one of those “famous author/athlete isn’t in the hall of fame yet so let’s give him his credit that’s due”?

    1. It’s due to a rule issue. None of the WoT were nominated (i think) before so that means with the ending part of the series, the whole work can be nominated on the basis of whole story finishing in the designated ime period.

  4. I suspect “Galactic Patrol” will not win in the Retro-Hugos. That would truly be tragic. And it really isn’t fair for any single novel to be up against the entire Wheel of Time.

  5. So “Wheel of Time” is Godzilla ?? No problem, we have Mecha to deal with Kaiju.

    Now. . . .commence the Krataclysms*

    (For those who have not heard of a Krataclysm, it is the effect of Special Snowflake and other similar types, having their craniums explode when exposed to actual fiction, as opposed to SJW screeds masquerading as fiction. . .)

      1. I think Tom just made his “International Lord of Hate” apprenticeship official. Larry’s progressing on his plan to dominate the world with hatey-haterism.

  6. Congrats on your hugo nomination! You deserve it. The accusations of ballot stuffing going around are particularly bizarre, given how the hugo are set up. You literally buy your right to vote. I mean, I suppose you could hand out $4000 to get 100 voters in your pocket, but it doesn’t seem worth it, honestly. Or financially responsible, or sane. Beyond that, what are you going to do, strongarm people across an ocean?

    Anyway, Warbound’s the only thing I’ve read on the list, besides most of WoT. Stross is great though (if you like lovecraftian spy thrillers you should check him out), and I’m a big Seanan McGuire fan, so you’ve got some tough competition.

    Are you planning on going to Loncon then?

    1. “The accusations of ballot stuffing going around are particularly bizarre, given how the hugo are set up. You literally buy your right to vote.”

      And one has to be able to read.

      SFWA SUPPORTS POLL TAXES AND LITERACY TESTS!

      >:)

    2. The accusations of ballot stuffing are suspicious, especially since I and a couple others here have mentioned that we got multiple ballot PINs, but were paranoid enough to only use one.

  7. “I look forward to the next few months of nonstop character assassination.”

    Having seen you on Twitter, I honestly think you DO look forward to it.

    1. At some point I became the voice of an angry generation. The more they scream, try to silence dissent, and grow increasingly bizzare in their attacks, the more regular folks realize just how full of crap they really are. The SJW anti-speech crowd going after Colbert and Patton Oswalt are some of the best things that have happened on the internet recently. They are bullies, nothing more, and the way to take away their power is to stand up agains them and never apologize for telling the truth.

      1. I find it interesting that Scalzi has pretty much told people on his blog “What’s your problem?” Anyone could do this, regardless of their provennance.

        He also correctly points out that the response to vote against based solely on perceived politicking or merit is exactly what you were on about.

        1. I read that. I respect his conclusions and I’m glad he posted it. The only part I disagreed with was where he said I’d teed up on him recently. Oh no… By my standards? Not even close. 🙂 The only time I even started to go off was after he made fun of Toni, and even then I mostly stuck with the positives about what an amazing editior and person she really is.

    2. You’re just watching the old adage of “Stalinists shut their opponents up, Libertarians help opponents to talk themselves into graves.”

      OK, I did update it slightly, to keep up with the times.

  8. Larry I can’t wait for you to be introduced from now to eternity as Mr. Larry Correia, best selling and Hugo nominated ( dare I dream? Hugo winning? ) author. 🙂

  9. I would love NOTHING more than if Pacific Rim won long form dramatic presentation. Nothing against people who liked Frozen, but I hate musicals. Plus, can you imagine just how much more rabid people would be if a brainless-but-awesome, mecha-punching-kaiju movie beat out the feel-good, woman-power movie? Strike a blow for cismale gendernormative fascism, vote Pacific Rim!

    Also, I wonder how many comments people from here are posting over at i09 that aren’t getting past moderation.

    1. I liked Frozen, thought that it was one of the best fantasy musicals ever made, both for the quality of the music and the gleeful subversion of fantasy-musical tropes. Also good drama.

      Haven’t yet seen Pacific Rim, but I will probably like it when I see it, because I love mecha and kaiju movies, and would love to see a good live-action movie combining the two genres.

  10. Oh my god.

    Look, I’m on the far left of the spectrum politically, and I admit, I thought the whole “liberals are shutting us out of the hugos” was either overblown hyperbole or a cunning angle for votes (of which I approve), but I just visited a page where someone was calling for everyone suggested by the SPC to be given a no vote.

    When a commenter suggested that Wiesskoph shouldn’t be lumped in with Larry, and was told that if she “disavowed his tactics” they’d consider voting for her, otherwise, she and everyone else suggested by Larry should get a no vote.

    1. If you thought I was exagerating then you haven’t seen my hate mail over the last 6 years. That moron is one of legion. She is actually a perfect example of how Sad Puppies came about to begin with, and the beauty of it is that she doesn’t even realize it. 🙂

      1. Larry,

        They dislike you, but you’re not their main target. I think Vox Day being nominated is the thing that’s driving them most crazy. He’s Hitler to your Mussolini.

      2. I’m not sure who Vox Day is… but I May have to read it just to enjoy the hatey hate mongery…and laugh in glee the butthurtedness that his nomination engenders

      3. @joecrouse: Re: VoxDay. Vox seems to me to be someone who is financially set, and is amusing himself with writing and blogging.

        I seem to recall him mentioning making quite a bit of money in the computer industry, and his sincere enemy Natalie Luhrs who is the blogging lefty hypocrite of the evening said he has a big trust fund.

        The money is important, because at some point, many people feel they’re set and don’t hesitate to say exactly what they think.

        VoxDay has a blog: voxday.blogspot.com, where his values and opinions are on display for all. His open contempt of athiests, lefties and proponents of “all races + genders + life choices are equal” is quite open. He is accused of racism and misogyny. I often hang out for good arguments with unapologic Christian …. enthusiasts.

        He probably passes the misogyny test with his other blog, alphagameplan.blogspot.com which openly discusses the Pick Up Artist lifestyle.

        As to racism? He certainly considers races to have differences, and doesn’t think much of African cultures. Further discussion I leave to others.

        In any case, his membership in the SFWA ended at the same time that many people accused him of something particularly racist.

        In any case, he’s certainly a magnet for the glittery hoo-ha brigade’s hatred.

      4. Vox Day is someone who I personally think is a bit of a jackass but who has also clearly demonstrated that he is a very talented author. Out of the nominated novelettes I’ve only read Torgersen’s so far but based on prior works I’ve read I think my vote will be between Vox Day and Ted Chiang.

        With the exception of “Horizontal Rain” which I thought was amazing, Mary Robinette Kowal’s work has not really impressed me. Aliette de Bodard is a new name for me. I hope she is good as I love coming across new (to me) talent.

      5. I think that Vox Day’s opinions are genuinely hateful and more importantly irrational at points (such as his racialism and creationism) — but he’s nowhere near as hateful and irrational as are the people who want to shut him down.

      6. I came here via “The Other McCain”.

        I’m 65yrs old. I was once a voracious reader of SF&F (Science Fiction & Fantasy. I do know a different shorthand is used, but I don’t know what the current one is… sorry).

        I read and enjoyed most of the old authors: Heinlein, Doc Smith, Harlan Ellison, etc.

        I also enjoyed “the New Guys”: Niven, some Card, and (especially) Zelazny.

        But I noticed that other upcoming authors started to become more and more overtly political— they seemed to take “the hysteria of the moment”, e.g. Man-made Global Warming, and preach at me about it.

        I have no desire to be talked down to, nor to be guilted, so I stopped reading the new authors works. I really miss reading new SF&F!

        It sounds as if your work isn’t preachy. Is that the case? Also, if you would be so kind, who else could you suggest?

        Lastly, what does SJW stand for, and where can I go “to get up to speed” on this situation? What I gather of the current situation intrigues me and I’d like to scratch the itch.

        Sorry this post is so long, and thank you in advance for any time you’re able to spend on it.

        1. If I stick a message in a book, it only comes way after the story.

          Judging by the authors you listed in sci-fi right now I’d recommend John C. Wright, Brad Torgersen, Chuck Gannon, and John Ringo.

      7. Vox Day isn’t the first person in SF to have idiosyncratic/unpopular/reprehensible beliefs and be abrasive about promoting them. Not by dozens. Maybe not by hundreds.

        His crime was that he called some preposterously self-important people scurrilous names.

        That’s pretty small potatoes compared with, say, a political philosophy that has murdered a hundred million people within living memory.

        “Calls people rude names” compared to “has a long and uninterrupted history of crushing dissent and sending people to death camps, from 1917 right down to the present day”…hmmm… which one is worse? Which one do you suppose actually makes people less safe?

        Tough call, innit?

        Now, which one gets you an attempted damnatio memoriae and which one gets you academic gigs and the Hugo Award for Best Novel?

    1. Obviously not. I just got done doing a Google search of my name for the last 24 hours. It is hilarious. Apparently I’m a huge giant racist who stuffed the ballot box (by simply asking my fans to actually vote, which is only okay when an approved author does it). Of course, even though I’m a prolific author, active all over the internet, with literally thousands of posts to choose from, there aren’t any actual examples of my racism… Because racist. 🙂

      1. Larry, do you have an links of where some of these other authors have asked for their readers to vote?

        What I’d like to do is compare the two posts and publish all the leftist writers asking for their readers to vote for them as well as your request and then publicly ask how the hell is it ballot stuffing when you’re doing the same thing all of these other people are doing.

        I’d just like to do it publicly and really slap them around a bit for it. 🙂

      2. @Tom (sorry, no reply link at that level): Scalzi has more or less acknowledged campaigning for the award in the past and doesn’t appear to see anything wrong with doing so. Tor issues a list of their Hugo-eligible works every year, which certainly smells like a “slate” to me. I can’t think of any author who, when one of their pieces is up for an award, doesn’t mention it on their blog or other social media. Absent an explicit “no campaigning” rule, why wouldn’t you?

      3. @SBP

        I’ll take a look for what I can find for Scalzi. Tor releasing their slate has way too much wiggle room for them. YOU know why they release it, and *I* know why the release it, but they’ll argue it’s something else entirely.

        Now, to find more. I want to nail as many of the leftist twits as I possibly can on their hypocrisy. I hate any, “It’s OK for me to do this, but not you, despite both being within the rules.”

      1. Wait… Tor.com is mad at me for ORGANIZED BLOCK VOTING. Holy shit. 😀 I’m sorry. Did my little website damage the sanctity of the Tor, err, I mean Hugo Awards?

        Note, the reviewer made it through 20 pages of Hard Magic… Horse shit. She picked it up and flipped through it while standing in line at the B&N so she could then spout off to her jackass friends about what a hate monger I am. I’ve been accused of many things, but boring is not among them. This is the same novel that won an Audie (let’s see, 4700+ reviews at 4 and a half stars), and has gotten excellent reviews, in multiple countries… So… Nope, guessing the reviewer is just full of shit.

        As for the comments, fuck them. The last time I went through how to cut the government I spent more time and detail on the military than anything else, and I figure I could fire 40% of the GSes from most of DOD without doing anything other than freeing up parking spaces. If by “right wing welfare” you mean the couple of things the government is actually supposed to do as per the Constitution, then yes, otherwise, fuck off.

        And I like how the moderator lets people make shit up about me with impunity, but then when somebody says they are full of it and good for Larry to bring new voters into the awards, the moderator jumps in to warn everyone to stay civil. 🙂

      2. I’m always amused to be lectured on libertarianism by non-libertarians. I mean, I’ve been quoted by Judge Andrew Napolitano in one of his books, but clearly I know nothing about libertarian ideology.

        Meanwhile, so progressive troglodyte is clearly the expert on Larry’s ideology.

        1. You know, over the last couple of days I’ve been called a racist, a homophobe, a woman hating wife beater, a religious fanatic, a crazy person, and all sorts of names, but I do believe saying that I’m pro government welfare is truly the vilest slur ever hurled at me. 🙂

          1. Wait… Let’s get this straight. Larry Correia asks his right wing and libertarian audience to vote. Tor.com says EVIL BLOCK VOTING!

            Tor.com posts this… http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/01/the-wheel-of-time-hugo-award-robert-jordan which encourages readers to not just nominate the last WoT novel, but the entire WoT (which is what happened) including such tidbits as “So go! Join! Nominate! Vote! Participate! And maybe help make Hugo history, eh? I can think of worse things to do with your time!” TOTALLY NOT BLOCK VOTING!

            Because racist!

      3. Would these be left libertarians (which in my experience are just progressive light)? I’d look, but I recognize the column. Unless Ghengis Kratman rides through it again, its not worth lowering my SAN score.

      4. ok, so everything that article is “delighted” about is strictly about the labels on the various authors and artists, and has nothing to do with the actual works.

        That makes three films on the list with female protagonists, … and one film with a major female character who isn’t white.

        (It’s still not good enough in terms of intersectionality, but neither is Hollywood. Small victories are better than none at all.)

        As an Irishwoman, a feminist, and a card-carrying socialist, it probably goes without saying that my views on what is best are deeply unlikely to align with neocon American ones.

        It’s a good thing the socialist crowd doesn’t like labels; I would hate to see what she would come up with otherwise.

        Also?

        The Legend Award finalists are also chosen from a shortlist by popular vote, and I am extremely disappointed with the voters this year.* There is not one female person on that list.

        * I voted. Clearly I should have gone back to vote many more times.

        Legend Award voters, don’t any of you even read epic fantasy by female authors?

        And does it strike anyone else as hypocritical to accuse Larry of bloc voting, and then make claim that they should have voted multiple times in a different race simply to get more of a particular minority on the ballot?

      5. Well, I told myself I wasn’t going to get sucked into this one, and that worked out right up to the point where a fellow service member spoke up in your defense and one of them started tittering in their hand about the “irony”. I took exception to this, and one double-team later, I drew away some valuable lessons.
        1) get your grammar right. I screwed up the contraction on one word and somehow in their eyes that invalidated my entire argument
        2) You’re apparently a white cismale heteronormative mastermind. Not really news, but to be honest, I also didn’t expect someone to actually pull that line out in real life. I pointed out the fallacies in that argument, (I also screwed up, I stated you only had two white protagonists in your work, somehow I completely forgot about Faye. Luckily, one of the advantages of dealing with folks who skim till offended is they can miss little details like that 🙂 ) I pointed out that you didn’t really have an agenda, (referring to the diversity horn they’d been tooting out of God knows where,) This in turn led to…
        3) You always have an agenda. At this juncture, Someone else claiming to be a fan jumped in with the following statement:

        “Re: Correia and MHI– as someone who very much enjoyed the presence of a non-white protagonist and several strong PoC and female secondary characters, has read the books repeatedly, and (as much as I enjoy them) is getting tired of being bashed over the head with Correia’s politics, yeah the message is there. I believe it is unintentional, but it’s there.

        Message–Business can serve private interests better than government, government should mind it’s own business and let business do its thing, oh and Guns are Good.”

        As I said before, I was referring to the alleged lack of diversity that apparently makes you the White Hispanic devil, and wasn’t really trying to deal with the rest of your politics. The comment from the other individual I was debating basically stated that by creating normal well rounded characters that don’t manage to meet their checklist standards still manages to be as political as working off the checklist. I was tempted at this point, to nominate Michael Z. Williamson for next year, just to see their reactions, but at this point, I remembered why I decided not to wrestle the one eyed slippery snake in last weeks post. I quite frankly don’t have the patience for it, and can’t see how you make a living off of it.

    1. Sounds like a standard-issue liberal pansy ass whiner to me. “You can’t let that guy host an award! He might call me fat. Boo hoo.”

      Parasite was a damn good book though. Depending on how many people read it, Larry might have some serious competition there.

    2. Wait Seanann McGuire is Mira Grant,did not know that. Really enjoyed her Newsflesh books and while the main character in Parasite was frustrating dense I enjoyed it as well. Kinda of get a feeling that I personally would disagree with her on many things, that does not stop me from liking her books however. But wait the proper thing to do now is to condemn the works of authors who hold different beliefs and opinions than I do.
      I so want to be like SJW and judge books and stories based upon the authors and not the actual work. I guess that is too lofty of a goal for me and will just buy books based upon the story and writing and enjoy myself.

  11. Don’t know if you guys know how the WoT fans did it, but it was actually pretty ingenious. It seems that none of the books were ever nominated for a Hugo, and that there is a clause in the Hugo bylaws that allows for a story released in segments to be nominated the year of the final segment being published. Since there were no previous nominations, they did just that and nominated it essentially as a serial-novel. I imagine it’s not what the original bylaw writers had envisioned, and honestly I’m not sure if the WoT fans thought it was possible for it to work, but it apparently did. It sounds fishy at first blush, but makes a certain sense. Jennifer Liang has a more detailed explanation on DragonMount: http://www.dragonmount.com/index.php/News/events/robert-jordans-final-year-of-hugo-eligibility-r693

    I love Warbound and I’m also a huge WoT fan, so I have to admit to being conflicted over which one I’d vote for. I guess it’s luck that I’m not going to WorldCon. 🙂

  12. And I look forward to the next few months of amusing blog posts where you fisk the character assassins. Congrats Larry!

    1. Yet another reason why all progressives are vile. Our host simply wants to get paid for telling stories about guns, babes, and bad guys suffering step increases in entropy. It’s the “social justice” losers who have to bring politics into everything.

      1. And THIS sort of statement is why people on my side politically think so many conservatives are jacked in the head. Blanket statements and insults do nothing but balkanize fans, to the point where both sides are now talking about voting along party lines, in the HUGOS of all things. Which is an insane statement, but nonetheless the truth.

        I’m a liberal, and a guy who likes reading Larry’s books. Do I share his politics? No. Do I think he deserves to be nominated for his writing? Yes. But jeez, defending that position gets hard when others sharing it can’t be bothered to be civil is becoming trying.

        1. Tell you what, you stop supporting an ideology that has killed literally hundreds of millions, and stop voting for obvious idiots like Obama and Biden, then I’ll show you some civility.

          Would you object to someone calling Nazi’s vile? Would you consider it uncivil? Well, guess what, the modern Democrat Party is nothing more than a bunch of Nazis with worse fashion sense and a slightly (very slightly) higher opinion of Jews.

      2. @Brendan

        I am in a similar position as you. I mean the idea that Larry is innocent and just being persecuted because he is ” the voice of an angry generation” is pretty silly. Larry hasn’t ended up in this position as some tragic hero attacked because his views are just too damn subversive. He has actively built his reputation up as a ‘talk radio conservative’ author. The idea that his storytelling ability can transcend his stupid niche is great but my approach has been to withhold my support in areas with political overflow.

        I just buy his books and let him handle all his reputation building himself. Larry has made his politics a part of the that package so just don’t support it. Let the niche he has chosen speak for him.

      3. Brendan, this is not a matter of “both sides.” To prove that is a simple matter of listing race, gender, and gender-expression organizations, symposiums, awards, webzines, and anthologies. That represents purposeful discrimination and segregation, not an accidental demographic like SFF, the National Basketball Association or the National Hockey League. For reasons the PC won’t and can’t explain, none of their provisional patriarchal racist and sexist supremacist opponents have any of those. It’s WisCon that has a segregated “safer-space,” not SLC ComicCon. Had gay UK comedian and actor Stephan Fry been tapped to host the Hugos, no one on the so-called Conservative side would’ve got on Twitter and started whining and threatening. It’s not true this is divided along party lines, though it seems so. This whole thing is very much about supremacist QUILTBAG fake feminists who simply don’t like straight white males and try and hide that fact in social justice terminology. Follow all of SFF’s dust-ups to their sources, including this one, and you’ll find a radical feminist or their rhetoric at the bottom of every single one. Do you for one minute think “white privilege,” “rape culture,” and “trigger warnings” started with Jim Hines and John Scalzi? They’re nothing but useful idiots. But these are not feminists – they are intolerant bigots hiding in feminism – and there’s a difference.

      4. Brendon,
        Your side might think “conservatives are jacked in the head” because of blanket statements and insults… but how is your side any better?
        The fact is, people coming here expect to talk politics. I’d bet that trend started after Larry’s famous 2nd Amendment post. But I’d also say that most of the political talk here is in response to the politicization of every-damn thing by the folks on your side of the isle. When I went on, say, I09, or even Cracked, I wasn’t expecting every other post to shoe-horn in politics, but that’s what I got, often out of nowhere. It gets tiresome.

      5. Brendan, in case you haven’t looked… it’s not Christian conservative gun owners who are trying to censor the Hugo awards. Own it…

      6. Except Brendan, Progressives are vile. They are a cancer on the world. Their ideology leads to misery, pain and death. They are not about freedom of choice and freedom of the individual. They grow government and force it into every facet of our lives.

      7. I enjoy talking politics, and I don’t mind people disagreeing with me. I certainly wouldn’t come here if that were the case! I have a problem with statements like “all progressives are vile.” It’s insulting, and doesn’t bring anything to the debate.

        As for the evils of radical feminism, well, our society is unequal along gender and racial lines. White guys have been at the top of the heap with the biggest slice of the pie petty much from the beginning, and it colors every part of our society. As a straight white guy, that’s been pretty good for me, but as a reasoned, educated man, I see no reason that other groups shouldn’t strive for a bigger slice. Or, given how the deck is stacked against them in some ways, why they shouldn’t get “radical” about it.

        1. White guys have had the biggest slice of the pie because they FRAKKING MADE THE GORAM PIE! A fact that has privileged me not one bit. Nobody has a problem with minorities getting a bigger piece of the pie, but I want them to make the pie bigger (letting them keep the lion’s share of the increase, but growing my slice as a side-effect). You, on the other hand, want to take from my chunk of the pie and give it to someone else, while at the same time implementing policies that prevent minorities from growing the pie (because if they can create their own wealth, they won’t need you). THAT is why you are vile.

        2. Brendan,

          You DO realize the difference between regular feminism and RadFem, right? While I take issue with some aspects of feminism these days, Radical Feminism includes such brainiac ideas as the argument that women do not truly consent to sex with me, and therefore all heterosexual sex is rape.

          I’m sorry, but that kind of thing isn’t something I can excuse. I don’t say all progressives are vile. I know too many who are really good people to believe that. Misguided? I might say that, but vile? Never. However, people who think what my wife and I did to create two wonderful children constitutes “rape” sure crosses the line for into the realm of “vile”.

      8. Dave P:

        Well, aside from one person, I haven’t seen anyone call for a “censorship of the hugos,” and I called her out on that. Most people I’ve seen have been aghast at Vox getting on the ballot and suggesting that people judge the work on it’s merits.

        … and now I see I’m being likened to a Nazi. Class act, Jeff.

        1. I am a class act, that’s why I’m calling you out on your vile ideology. You can lie to yourself, but I won’t permit you to lie to me.

      9. Oh, crap, Slippery’s back again!
        Slippery, “Talk radio conservative author”…? Really?
        Look, if you want to be taken seriously, why don’t you come up with a list of exactly what constitutes a “talk radio conservative author,” points where Larry conforms to that definition, points where he doesn’t, and a cogent argument as to why that means Larry’s political views are invalid. Otherwise shut up.

      10. Brendan,

        Progressivism is a vile ideology. It’s liberalism that’s abandoned even the pretext of being about liberty. It’s a greedy, grasping thing dedicated to enslaving and robbing everybody else by making up and demanding from them imaginary ‘rights’ or ‘justice’ that is anything but. It’s Ted Bundy pretending to be Robin Hood.

        Now, it’s not entirely true that all progressives are vile. Some honestly don’t know any better, some are flat-out stupid, and some are a combination of both. Unfortunately, since all progressives act like self-righteous douchenozzles, it’s very difficult to tell the evil ones from the ones who are just tools.

      11. You gents arguing over liberalism’s relative vileness might note that, while you’re allowed to say pretty much anything here you want, Natalie Luhrs, meanwhile, is approving (or not) each comment, and bragging about her bannings.

      12. @Brendan

        It does start to get pretty funny when they get all self righteous about calling out all our ‘lies’. Keep is up you truth warriors and masters of hyperbole. People called Bush a Nazi too and it was just as retarded.

        @Combat

        Oh, and to explain the “talk radio” conservative comment or whatever. It is pretty simple if you embrace the bullshit abbreviations and oversimplifications common on talk radio then there you go. If you are so far gone and politically insular that you find half your arguments are conservative catchphrases you might be a redneck….. ummmm credulous conservative. I mean I remember when I was a teen I accepted some of the left wing conspiracy bullshit so I don’t blame people I just suggest that rather than taking other people word for it you look into it yourself. What set me straight was talking to people I trusted and not being aggressive about at which point they basically told me I was full of shit. I mean I wasn’t as active as any of these people seem to be but it did make me reconsider my sources.

        Maybe the biggest thing for me was realize that there is probably a pretty damn good reason for the why things are the way they are. Extremists have a ton of excuses for how things got so ‘messed up’ but if you look deeper into the reasons why certain policies got pasted you will see some logic. Non-political concerns tend to trump political ones even within politics. I guess for the left it is all the money in politics and for the right I am not really sure what the force is that is interfering with the best application of policy. Take it easy man, I hope this explains where I am coming from.

      13. @ Tom
        “Cogent argument? From SlipperSnake? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

        That’s a good one.”

        What I forgot to add was, “While I’m waiting for that, I want a pony.”

        1. Here, let me summarize:
          Slippery Snake: “You’re stupid for posting so much to respond to somebody who made fun of you!”
          Everybody else: Makes fun of Slippery Snake.
          Slippery Snake: Posts fifty times to respond to people who made fun of him.
          Larry: Hangs out with movie stars all weekend.

          Calling this one a win and I didn’t even have to do anything. 😀

          1. Last year our I was training a bunch of the Soldiers in our Company. I told a few stories from my combat tour in Afghanistan about bad guys upon whose houses I arranged to drop JDAMs. Our Company Commander asked me afterwards if I realized that I had an “evil laugh.” I think I busted the evil laugh out when reading replies to SlipperSnake’s comments, because my wife kept giving me sideways glances until I told her what I was cackling about.
            I love MHN.

      14. Also I am randomly pumping up your site although I apparently disagree with you and don’t support your reputation building.

        1. Yes, with a few more guys like you pumping up his word of mouth campaign, Larry may just be able to quit his day job and focus on writing full time.

    2. Was fiction ever not muddied by politics and world-views and vitriol? The world isn’t so small-town anymore where you learned to have public manners and get along with and work together with all the nutcases in all their variety because your entire world was the same 300 people. But certainly even when communication was slow fiction was a cesspool of opinionated jack*sses. And in the really old days you could publish yourself, too, and authors often did so.

      I think that what has happened more recently, in the last very few years actually, is that after many decades of increased institutionalization of publishing and the rise of the Gate Keepers, a bunch of people have realized that they don’t have to self-censor quite so harshly in order to be published anymore. It makes the situation more fraught at the moment and perhaps a bit uncomfortable.

      Sometimes discomfort is a good thing… but that doesn’t mean it’s not discomfort.

      1. That’s why there’s so much vitriol coming from the Left. They thought they had won, that their long march through the institutions had been successful. Now they see the country abandoning the institutions they worked so hard to dominate, in no small part due to the leftist domination, and it infuriates them. They’re lashing out in desperation, in the faint hope that one last push will get them to paradise.

        Nobody (except themselves) ever accredited the Left with an overabundance of brains.

      2. Yes. As always, politics usurp everything. Again. Sigh.

        To clarify my original comment, the Hugo Awards used to be story-driven awards. A good story made you popular, and popular won you a Hugo. The winners were classic SFF authors like Heinlein, Silverberg, Leiber, Asimov, Le Guin… the list could go on, but the fact remains that every winning author differs in their political views in some way or another, with some on one extreme and some on the other. But over the past twenty years or so, especially the last decade (you agree), it seems the awards have become more about politics than content. Maybe I’m wrong about that, maybe not. Either way, politics spoil the fun and entertainment that SFF is supposed to be. And that’s all.

        Besides, if I want to read about politics, I’ll visit the Political Science, History, and Philosophy sections of my library to research and ascribe my views to the side that appeals to me, via the fields’ experts rather than reading the books of an amateur dabbler who writes about social welfare among blue aliens or the effects of capitalism on the Instantaneous Travel industry.

        Sigh. Politics. Always.

        P.S. Turns out, if you’re real quiet in a room full of loud, diversely opinionated people, they’ll do your arguing for you. 😀

      3. This is quite a good point, the introduction of the internet and accessibility has led to vast changes in the power structure of publishing. More niches will be available but I think it will settle out. As authors attempt to take advantage of these niches they will build their reputations but at the end of the day I think it will mostly be reliant on the same thing, their ability to tell stories. Maybe it is naive to think that the cream will automatically rise to the top but I am hopeful that at least some of it will.

  13. I nominated The Wheel of Time (in addition to Warbound) because Brandon Sanderson suggested it. Am I to believe that every previous Hugo nomination cycle never involved the candidates asking their fans to vote for them?

    The idea that this year’s nomination process was exceptional is statistically out of bounds. Not that facts matter to the people who would think such.

    1. It’s funny that Brandon Sanderson asked people to vote for his work, and the biggest knock is that the nomination is for the entire series and not that he “ballot stuffed”.

      It’s just amusing to me that it’s OK for Brandon to do it, but not Larry.

      The hypocrisy. It burns.

      1. nope, never read any of brandon’s work. just not that much into fantasy anymore. Don’t object to him calling him for his fans to vote. I do though strenuously object to the ENTIRE series of WoT being in the fucking “single novel” category, and object vociferously. Although given the explanation we’ve had of the by laws…the Hugo people got only themselves to blame for backlash on that one.

      2. What I object to is that a book by Sanderson set in someone else’s setting got the nomination. 😛

        Sanderson’s settings and “rules” tend to be quite creative well-thought out, and his books are rather enjoyable reads imo.

        1. I love Mistborn. I think it is brilliant. And Brandon was the first pro author who ever took the time to give me helpful business advice when I was starting out. He really is a good dude.

      3. I look at some of Hugo twitter feed on Hugo Awards, Sanderson is getting his fare share of grief for belong to the wrong religion. As an avowed lapse Buddhist and current agnostist, I just cannot tolerate the Leftists’ Religious Intolerance.

        1. Pathetic, but still no accusations of ballot stuffing.

          In fact, Larry and Vox are the ones getting hit on that despite the fact that Tor, Scalzi, and apparently plenty of others do it regularly.

      4. There’s a blog on the TOR website calling for people to vote for WOT. I see no problem with it. It’s their right to do so. It’s only ballot stuffing if people vote for things they don’t approve of.

        1. And don’t you just love the hypocrisy. After all, Tor’s blog did the same thing, then Tor’s blog tried to decry Larry for doing the same.

          You’d think they’d take the hint at some point.

      5. Dyingearth – Not really a surprise given the grief that’s been thrown Orson Scott Card’s way recently (entirely because Card’s views match his LDS religion). Sanderson’s profile is rising fast enough (and it’s well-deserved, imo) that I’m sure people are going to try putting him on the spot with regard to the same issues that Card got in trouble over (if they’re not already).

  14. Congratulations, Larry. I agree it’s probably a long-shot to take down WoT, but I think your noms are going to dominate overall even if all the libs give our guys no-votes. PS, I’m really looking forward to seeing you at Congregate, and please keep your original version of the acceptance speech handy for the lols. 🙂

  15. You know, for all the crap people (myself included) give Scalzi, he’s one of the only guys out there to have a reasonable response to the nominations. Good for him.

    1. Alternative interpretation: Scalzi, cockroach that he is, senses the tide is turning against him and is scrambling to survive.

      1. My guess is that Scalzi discovered that Rupert Murdoch’s “withered, reactionary grandpa teats” actually taste pretty good, but got scared when it appeared that his crew of over-privileged and badly-educated Jacobins was getting ready to turn on him for suckling them. Now he’s making “Sweet Voice of Reason” noises. Whatever (no pun intended).

        Another possibility is that they realized that attacking Toni Weisskopf was pushing things too far, too fast. The backlash on that was pretty harsh.

        Unfortunately the mob is much easier to arouse than it is to quell, and 9 Thermidor always seems to arrive.

  16. I joined up for Hugo nomination process because I felt like it was time for The Wheel of Time to get the recognition that it deserves. All I know about you is that you wrote a pretty awesome blogpost about gun control a while back.

    I have to say that I am surprised that people are freaking about this. From what I can tell you are getting condemned for doing the same thing that other authors, George R.R. Martin in particular have done over the years, which seems unfair, ridiculous, and intolerant. Ballot stuffing is utterly ridiculous. To suggest that anyone would spend $120 for just 3 votes, not to mention more money, is a silly argument.

    Just so I can understand what all the hate is about I bought a copy of Hard Magic and a copy of Irrational Atheist by Vox Day. Assuming that both your book and Vox Day’s will be made available in the voters packet I will read both, and if they are good I’ll nominate them, if not I won’t. However, what this controversy did do is move your books up my To-Read list. I want to find out for myself why you’re so “hateful”…

    1. Just so I can understand what all the hate is about I bought a copy of Hard Magic and a copy of Irrational Atheist by Vox Day.

      The latter should suffice to explain it. Just be aware that TIA is non-fiction. If you’d like to read the actual work in question, you can download a free epub of OPERA VITA AETERNA here: http://t.co/yjOJrVVP2w

      1. Hey Vox, accusing you of racism seems to have almost become an internet meme.

        Have you written an article somewhere explicitly saying “I’m Vox, and here are my opinions why I do or don’t consider myself racist.”? I don’t have time to read through all the years of all your blogs to form an opinion, and I’m also not interested in “this tweet wasn’t” or “that post wasn’t” since even Al Sharpton has presumably said something at one time that wasn’t racist. (Possibly in his sleep…)

        I’m tired of hearing only one side. Thank you for your time replying.

      2. After thinking a bit more, I’d say the smartest move would be to say “Wheel of Time” doesn’t qualify. What if *another* last book is published *next* year, or in 2016?

        Will it void the 2014 Hugo? Are there grounds for a fraud lawsuit by representing the book as the last, while secretly planning yet another?

        Will the replacement author be considered a bastard for abusing the Hugo system by writing yet another best seller? Will that one make the series eligible *again*?

        I’m just seeing insurmountable problems with the galaxy sized “Last of a series” loophole.

      3. Have you written an article somewhere explicitly saying “I’m Vox, and here are my opinions why I do or don’t consider myself racist.”?

        I’ve stated my position before: I don’t care what people do or do not consider racist. I am scientifically literate, I do not believe in the existence of any kind of material equality, and I believe that A can never be Not A. I also believe one cannot legitimately judge an individual by a group metric, or vice-versa.

        Call that what you will. I don’t care. And to the inevitable question: “do you believe Population Group X is superior/inferior”, I can only reply with a question: superior/inferior by what metric?

        That’s not an evasion. It is the only valid response.

      4. “After thinking a bit more, I’d say the smartest move would be to say “Wheel of Time” doesn’t qualify.”

        It appears to be within the rules, so fair game as far as I’m concerned.

        ” What if *another* last book is published *next* year, or in 2016?”

        Unless I’m misunderstanding the rule, that book wouldn’t be eligible. From what I’ve been reading (and note that I haven’t looked at the actual rules), this loophole only kicks in if none of the previous parts have ever been nominated. It’s a last-hurrah sort of thing.

        Now if it turns out that people don’t like that, they can change the rules for future years, but I’d be opposed to changing the rules retroactively for this year.

        The WoT isn’t my personal cup of tea, but I’m okay with it being on the ballot (and even winning, if it comes to that, though I’d rather see our host win). The Hugo is supposed to be about the books that fans love best, and there are clearly a whole lot of WoT fans. If it wins it’s not going to be some travesty of what the award is supposed to stand for.

    2. I’m thinking there ought to be a new category “Hugo Award for completed series where the author is now dead and cannot add more ‘last’ books to re-qualify”

      Because the question really does arise with the “trilogy” of Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I think is up to about six or so, with the last 4 being “last”

      It’s a very tough question, because implying an author must stop writing after a book designated “last” is a difficult proposition. It’s especially difficult to say “now that series has been nominated or won a Hugo, you’re finished.” And if they write another anyway, does it revoke the Hugo?

      Does it revoke the Hugo is somebody adds another long after death?

      Or does the series just keep re-qualifying every time another book arrives?

      What about Discworld? I think it’s up to about 30, and would have a LOT of nominations, were it eligible.

  17. I’m glad the whining of bigoted feminists is getting an unofficial nomination alongside Rachel Swirsky’s gay dinosaur porn and Kameron Hurley’s “We Have Always Avoided the Draft Board.” I’m glad to see Ann Leckie’s novel get nominated because Skippy the transgender robot is a keen character. The name “Radish Reviews” doesn’t really make any sense and given the racist anti-racist tone, I have unofficially changed the name to “Orwell’s Great Lard Sandwich” and hope Natalie Luhrs gets nominated next year for most abrasive fan writer with the most abrasive fan – Ann Somerville. I don’t know who’s hosting the Hugo awards now that Ross has been beaten down by QUILTBAG feminism but I hope it’s Ann Somerville and her titanium alloy personality. My second choice would be a piece of sandpaper.

    1. Obviously the Hugo host has to be a Democrat-supporter (because anyone who isn’t is clearly EVIL) who writes message fic (because that’s the only sort that counts). Ideally someone who is a past winner too. And someone with a popular blog.

      There’s an obvious candidate who fits these criteria – Orson Scott Card.

      I’d love to see the reaction of the LGBTQRSDGHSOWIBDWGHUWIHQDUHWDAUHWIDHAIWUDHIAUWHDIUyYYAEAMJHB8934792349237482374* crowd to that one.

      * I lose track of what the groupthink-approved acronym is today.

      1. Mary Robinette Kowal would make a good host because she could have a puppet of Skippy the transgender robot and Skippy could tell the transgender joke about two transgender on opposite sides of a gender and one asks how they can get to the other side of the gender and the other replies you are on the other side.

  18. Even though I’ve never read it, and even though there are two authors on the best novel list that I have read and do like, I sort of hope Wheel of Time wins. The Hugo is supposedly an SF AND fantasy award, but traditional fantasy almost never wins. Even The Lord of the Rings never won. Game of Thrones has never won (in book form). Earthsea – nope. Thomas Covenant? Nope. Malazan Book of the Fallen? Nope. Book of the First Law? Nope.

    Saladin Ahmed got a nomination last year for Throne of the Crescent Moon, which was an exception – well-written, exciting, traditional heroic fantasy. However, even though I thought that book was superb, there’s that suspicion that he got nominated because of his ethnic background.

    1. Thomas Covenant? Nope.

      That’s not because the books are works of Fantasy. That’s because Thomas Covenant is even more annoying than the SJW crowd. Imagine a series of fantasy novels about Michael Moore. (No, not that kind of fantasy. Stop. Stop gagging. Oh. Oh dear. Here, let me hold your hair for you. All better now? Good. Moving on.) Can you even imagine how whiny and boring that would be?

      1. Oh, yeah. I bounced off that one hard. It wasn’t that the protagonist was morally reprehensible per se (there are plenty of good stories about bad guys), but that he was a whiner. How anyone could make it through multiple volumes of whining is beyond me, but apparently there are plenty of people whose tastes differ.

      2. Good lord, Thomas Covenant. I couldn’t even get through the first book. He was even more insufferably self-pitying than Lackey’s Vanyel, which is going some.

      3. Oh, thank goodness! I’m not the only one! The whining was bad. I couldn’t make it past the rape. What a douche.

      4. It was all I had to read on a summer camping trip, so I made it through them all. In self defense, my mind has purged all of it to the point I remember about a paragraph’s worth.

        But it is pretty impressive that Donaldson managed to make me pray for Leprosy to win.

        (As for Michael Moore, I’ve long maintained that the only difference between Michael Moore and a colostomy bag is capacity.)

      5. Dr. Mauser,

        I beg to differ. A colostomy bag is also useful, and there are people who actually need one. Michael Moore meets neither criteria.

      6. I read the first two trilogies (I think he’s published a new one) waaaaaaaaaay back when. I think I started out with the last book of the first trilogy, and didn’t particularly care for it. Then I read the second trilogy, which I found to be markedly more palatable (probably because he has a female fellow-traveler from Earth along for the ride in that book, which iirc helps his personality immensely). And then even later I read the first two books of the first trilogy.

        I’ve also read Donaldson’s two “Mirror” books (and there seems to be a clever reference to one of those books in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV – there’s an open world event called “A Man Rides Through” that involves killing creatures called ‘Mirror Knights’). And the only thing I can say is that I’d really really really hate to live in one of Donaldson’s settings. They don’t seem like very pleasant places.

      7. Oh good LORD…. the only time I didn’t ever gag at Moore was when they blew up his ham-filled puppet in Team America: World Police. (Yes, they really did fill the puppet with ham for that shot) I genuinely was sad when the Moore ass-kicking scene got removed for the published version of Dead Six. It was one of my fave parts.

  19. Apparently Vox Day can’t be nominated because of his extremist political views. Huh? China Mieville won the 2010 Best Novel Hugo and he’s an actual Marxist. Vox Day’s views seem pretty mainstream compared to that.

    1. You don’t understand. To the SJW crowd, Marxism is far too right wing. So they barely tolerate him. Vox Day is their Anti-Christ.

    2. Dude? Marxism IS mainstream now. “At some point you’ve made enough money”, “You didn’t build that”, ad nauseam…

    3. Marxism and communism are accepted because they treat everyone equally — everyone that survives, at least. It matters little that they treat everyone horribly, just equally. No one is discriminated against based on race, religion (if it is allowed), and so on.

  20. Congratulations on the Hugo nom-nom – er, nomination. Sorry, just had Easter dinner, and I am still in a food coma.

    Also, THOROUGHLY enjoying MHI series; I got the first book, blazed through it and laughed with delight (and cackled evilly at parts) which would prompt my darling hubby to ask why. I’ve turned the copy over to him, and I hear evil snickers when he reads. I think he’s planning on introducing a few of his friends to it as well.

    I also bought a copy for my brother’s birthday. He emailed me just to say how much fun it was, and that he reserves reading a chapter at home after a long, long arduous day at work (I believe he’s an accountant of some kind. Works for Ernst and Young.) The opening of throwing the overbearing, PITA boss out the window made him smile.

    Waiting for the other books to arrive; and I’ll order the Grimnoir series next. You’ve been added to my list of authors whose books I must obtain.

    1. Just gave my girlfriend a copy of Monster Hunter Legion, personalized and signed by the man himself.

      She squealed.

      She’s a keeper.

    1. Yay. Congrats. I love your books. As a judge, I’d pick WOT. But, for theater, I’d vote for Warbound. And I think I’d pick Warbound second. I like most of the authors on that list.

      Life is gray. I’d guess that, on one hand, there is oppression of nonliberal authors – to be expected as people working for money dont become publishers. And a lot of failed, perpetually broke and therefore left-leaning authors running SFWA. But, that is a perpetual problem in most organizations. Fun fact ..at Caltech, the physics professoriate periodically sacrifices one of their own as dean after a humanities dean has successfully futzed up the place. The prof gets to quit after cleaning up the nonsense. I am hinting that, if people capable of real work refuse to serve in these organizations, they end up being run by idiots. And idiots, being broke, tend to lean left. And, finally, a prejudice towards ‘real literature’ as opposed to stuff that is fun to read. Face it, on average, fewer than one of the average Hugo nominees in a given category is literature.

      And, on the other hand, Larry may be more reactive and prone to exaggeration than the average less liberal author. I kind of don’t think of him as conservative because I grew up with some real hillbillies. I see the real oppression as requiring wholly unique themes, with odd gender roles, to be considered closer to literature. That often results in unreadable books – similar to Oscar vehicle movies.

      And, lastly, thanks to Larry – his articles on gun control were educational and changed my mind on a few issues.

  21. Hmmm, I finally went and read the nominations. Down in the smaller categories, I was surprised to see that Taral Wayne wasn’t on the Fan Artist ballot this year (He and Steven Stiles are tied for the greatest number of nominations without winning in that category, something around 16 or 17 IIRC). Well maybe next year.

  22. ROTFLMAO! Good for y’all for upsetting their precious little applecart! So our votes DID do some good… Glad to hear it!

  23. So, what happens next for we Crusaders Against PRS? I’ve seen reader packs mentioned a few times, so should I start watching my mailbox? Or will downloads be available for Kindles?

    1. Last year we were sent a link to download the packet. Lots of the stories were present in both pdf and epub formats. I’m not sure if we (LoneStarCon3 attending members) will get the packets or be eligible to vote for the final Hugo winners without buying a supporting membership in Loncon3, I’ve heard it both ways.

      1. The rule for NOMINATING is “Each member of the administering Worldcon, the immediately preceding Worldcon, or the immediately following Worldcon as of January 31 of the current calendar year shall be allowed to make up to five (5) equally weighted nominations in every category.”

        The rule for VOTING is “Only WSFS members may vote.” That means only supporting or attending members of the Worldcon at which the awards are to be given may vote the final ballot.

      2. IOW, both LoneStarCon3 and LonCon supporting and attending members could nominate, but ONLY LonCon members can vote the final ballot.

  24. Reading some of the comments at io9 and elsewhere, I was puzzled by the reactions and asked myself, “What kind of person *immediately*, resorts to assumptions/accusations of cheating or conspiracy theories when a (nominally) democratic process produces a result they don’t like?”

    My first thought was, “isolated, xenophobic, ignorant and superstitious tribespeople, that’s who.”

    When thought of that way, the behavior makes perfect sense. They may have IT jobs and drink free-trade coffee, but they’re half-children who have no idea how the world works outside their bubble.

  25. “Correia clearly attracts even more of the kind of foul-mouthed angry male commenters who launch bitter, misogynistic and condescending attacks against women like smart, vocal Natalie who speak truth to power without the slightest fear.” – Ann Somerville

    That’s the kind of joy and fun I like to hang out with. Great at parties.

    “…people whose mission in life is to basically to strip away your human rights are fucking scary.  As the member of a couple of groups that a lot of people would like to throw in a gaol or drag to death behind the back of a truck, I get it.” – Kameron Hurley

    Lovely paranoia. Fun at parties and card games.

    “I love analogies! Let’s have one. …restaurants… at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face…” – Ann Leckie

    Drama and high tragedy! Oodles of laughs at parties. Great on long flights.

    1. Internet arguing checklist: Make shit up.

      Because Larry’s always going on about how women need to be barefoot and naked, making us sandwiches and dragging gay guys behind trucks. [/sarcasm]

      1. LBGTPoCFems live in a great internment camp. Their movements are severely circumscribed with the occasional drawing and quartering plus random jaw-jackings at inopportune moments by cis-het honkey-men who yell like Confederates and wish the South had won. The cis-het menz use foul terms like “lady” and like Nazi-drawings by Frank Frazetta.

        White cis-het menz have the Mammoth Book of White Menz Stories, safer-space for white-menz at racist Utah Mormon comic convention, have Eurofuturism SF for the whites, special white cis-het menz SF web sites, best white menz SF awards named after racist Hugo Gernsback, Cis-Het Menz Anti-Defamation League of Gentlemen, and Cis-Normative Heinlein White Menz Society to foster writing workshops for vulnerable white boyz who have no car fare to get to racist Utah Mormon comic conventions.

    2. “people whose mission in life is to basically to strip away your human rights are fucking scary”

      She means, like, Marxists?

      Because the last time I checked the body count was something like Marxists: 100 million, Libertarians: 0.

      The most gross violations of human rights all seem to happen in countries like North Korea, China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe… (hint: none of those countries are run by libertarians or U.S.-style conservatives).

      Of course the Special Ones never stop to realize that every time the Marxists get power, the “intellectual” class is always among the first groups sent off to the camps.

      Being a Marxist should be as socially unacceptable as being a Nazi. Maybe even less so.

    3. “Correia clearly attracts even more of the kind of foul-mouthed angry male commenters who launch bitter, misogynistic and condescending attacks against women like smart, vocal Natalie who speak truth to power without the slightest fear.” – Ann Somerville

      So, my female readers who think these people are full of shit too must not be *real* women the same way I’m not a *real* writer. As for attracting angry commenters, since I’m not a libprog looking for an echo chamber, I don’t “massage” my comments. I believe in free speech and letting people express themselves. Their ideas stand or fall on their own merits. That may make people like Ann feel *unsafe* but I wouldn’t know, because I’m not a chickenshit fascist in favor of censorship.

      “…people whose mission in life is to basically to strip away your human rights are fucking scary. As the member of a couple of groups that a lot of people would like to throw in a gaol or drag to death behind the back of a truck, I get it.” – Kameron Hurley

      As a libertarian who wants to keep the government small so it can’t strip away human rights, I’d agree. Since this is coming from someone who I’m guessing is a big government libprog… Dur. As for the next part, when I was a concealed weapons instructor I taught all sorts of people how to carry guns, including women, minorities, homosexuals, etc, I didn’t care. And it is kind of hard to drag somebody to death behind your truck when they pull out a 9mm and put two in your chest.

      “I love analogies! Let’s have one. …restaurants… at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face…” – Ann Leckie

      That has never happened at any table I’ve been at, regardless of who I was eating with. Mostly because I’m not a total pussy and I don’t hang out with total libprog wimps. If anybody punched any of my dinner guests in the face, regardless of their sexual orientation, I’d knock their fucking teeth in, but I’m just a gracious host like that.

      1. EDIT!

        It was just pointed out to me on FB that that 3rd quote from one of the other nominees is from last year. It isn’t about me. I saw it here and assumed it was. (if you google search my name for the last 24 hours you can see why!)

      2. Some of the posts that I found amusing. Earlier in the blog this guy admitted he had only read Ancillary Justice and most likely would not read any of the other novels.

        “Moreover, Larry Correia will be pleased that his relentless self-promotion has finally paid off and won him a Hugo nomination for Warbound. Does this mean he will stop now?” ~ Cora Buhlert

        Please don’t stop you blog posts give my morning coffee that extra little kick.

        “The other four nominees this year as Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, Charles Stross’ Neptune’s Brood, Mira Grant’s Parasite, and Larry Correia’s Warbound: Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles. I’ll leave it to you to pick which one of the four was the result of a concerted bloc-vote and probably doesn’t deserve to be remembered as “Hugo-nominated”.” ~ Grant Watson

        It seems the trend is, you bought your way onto the list therefore your book must be a piece of felgercarb.

        Also

        Kameron Hurley seems rather angry that what she sees as incredible imaginative science fiction and fantasy is overlooked both by the market and awards. And clearly states she would rather sell books then win awards. So she has a conundrum she clearly can’t bash you because you are successful, because that is what she wants for herself. Instead she will just stick to personal attacks based upon imaginary wrongs you have done instead of you body of work. If she even has read any of your books, god forbid she reads Warbound and discovers Faye Vierra. She might accuse you of having a ghost writer.

        1. Yeah, I like how none of them want to read it before condemning it. Which is pretty much what started Sad Puppies to begin with. 🙂

          And Cora had better watch out what she wishes for. This is what I did amused and annoyed. If they want me to get every conservative and libertarian genre fiction fan in the country involved, I can do that. 🙂

      3. It continually and totally pisses me off when some woman co-opts me for her version of women-kind while simultaneously denying me personhood.

        Oh, and I am afraid to “speak truth to power” as anyone who is aware of where power lies is rationally afraid. It doesn’t always stop a person speaking, but speaking truth to power actually takes courage, and courage doesn’t exist apart from rational fear. “Power” can destroy your livelihood. “Power” can totally screw up your life, your family, and your career. If someone is “speaking truth to power without the slightest fear” what she’s probably doing, is preaching to the choir while beating her chest and posturing in front of a straw man.

      4. Didn’t mean to suggest the Leckie quote was about you. I was just showing the mindset from which these people operate.

      5. I’m smart, vocal and naturally posess two X chromosomes, but because I don’t agree with what these other femmes say, I’m not a “real” woman?

        Huh. My advisor will be very disappointed in my not-real status. There are papers I’m supposed to get published.

      1. Yes. I don’t think it’s possible to be any more “The Man” in the F&SF world than Scalzi and the Nielsen Haydens are.

  26. “I love analogies! Let’s have one. …restaurants… at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face…” – Ann Leckie

    Someone should punch this bitch in the mouth… maybe if Vox goes to the ceremony?

    1. I’m inclined to take it out on her in the voting. After all, I wouldn’t have known about this “No Award” thing if people hadn’t been shouting about it for the last day. After all, all right and good members of fandom come to snap judgements about writers and vote without reading the actual works in question…

      1. Fandom coming to snap judgements about writers and voting without reading the actual works? That sounds suspiciously like what caused Sad Puppies to begin with. 🙂

    2. To continue the analogy, most of these people aren’t getting punched in the face. A few are, and all of the attention they receive make these pathetic children make up stories about how they’ve been punched in the face so many times. And white guys aren’t immune to being punched in the face, but nobody likes to talk about it, and the frequency is much lower since they’re likely to punch back or go to a restaurant that DOESN’T *&$)*(@ PUNCH THEIR CUSTOMERS IN THE (*&(@#@ FACE!

      1. Forget the analogy, I just want to see someone smack one of these dumbass, outspoken bitches in the face and put them in their fucking place.

        1. I don’t approve of violence toward women, or for anybody just for having a stupid opinion. I save violence for people who really need it.

          If I was a proper libprog writer I’d delete posts I disagree with, but I let them stand on their own merits.

      2. Just to be clear, no one (not even Ms. Leckie) is suggesting that anyone is, or gets, “punched in the face”.

        What Ms. Leckie *is* doing, is equating each and every instance of something she finds offensive about, well, anything she doesn’t control with a punch in the face.

        Think about that for a minute, and give it the credence it deserves.

        To paraphrase the Scalzi, “If you’re that sensitive, I don’t know how you manage to get out the door each morning.”

        The idea that people shoud go thorugh live and never be offended is just the mental/intellectual outgrowth (if a little extreme) of the mentality that says kids shouldn’t play contact sports, should never be exposed to peanuts, and that no one should have more (or better) recognition and stuff than anyone else based on things like skill, intelligence, or hard work.

        Those things should be apportioned based strictly on the size of ones in-group, with generous weighting factors based on gender, skin color, ethnicity, religion, and certain carefully-selected historical grievances.

        Except for all those smart girls fearlessly speaking truth to power, who should have a bigger plasma TV than anyone else.

      3. re, rocinante2, “should never be exposed to peanuts” — c’mon. In the US alone, someone dies every other day from a food allergy, more than half of these are anaphylactic shock from a peanut allergy. This has nothing to do with “being offended” it literally is a medical matter of life and death. (Otherwise, carry on.)

      4. I’m sorry; I have once again expressed myself with insufficient precision.

        I didn’t mean to equate a severe peanut allergy with “being offended”, nor did I intend to deny that a very few people are deathly allergic to peanuts.

        So, do we completely remove peanuts from the menu? The answer, based on the notice my stepson just got from the summer camp where he’ll be working this year, is “yes”. (The part about “do not send a care package unless it contains enough of everything for 12 people” made my head explode just a little more than the peanut thing, but that’s another story.)

        There has been a marked increase in the incidence of allergies in general (and peanut allergies in particular) in the developed world. There is considerable evidence that this is due to the fact that our world is a little *too* hygenic, and that if the immune system is not exposed to sufficent toxins and pathogens in childhood, it never “matures” – and overreacts to common substances.

        Bottom line: We don’t do kids any favors by overprotecting them, and we don’t do the Anne Leckies of the world any favors by trying to remake the world so that they’re never offended.

        Thanks for your patience.

      5. Everyone one remember George Washington Carver? Okay, then we can finish ‘Banning peanuts or peanut butter is racist because…’

      1. For my money, Japan. Lotta weird crap comes from our Asian friends to the West.
        To be fair, a lot of cool stuff comes from japan too, but i can seriously see a sushi bar were someone yells and then hits you in the face before each course.

    3. I’m going to try to not let Ann Leckie’s extremely ignorant comment color my view of her novel when I read it, but she isn’t making it easy to take her seriously. Using “cis” without irony makes my eyes roll up into the back of my head.

      I read McGuire’s (unimpressive) novel before she embarrassed herself on Twitter so no worries there.

      Stross is in the same tribe but I find him less caustic. I enjoyed Accelerando back in the day so I’m cautiously optimistic about his nominated novel.

      1. I’ve read Stross’s Laundry books, and have found them an enjoyable and darkly humorous read. But I haven’t read any of his other stuff. The man definitely has a talent for writing about how screwed up a beauracracy can be.

  27. I’m not advocating violence towards them because of an opinion (or because they’re women, even though the most vocal seem to be)… they are straight-up trying to you through ruin you (and Vox and the others) through character assassination.

    Opinions are one thing. Lies explicitly contrived to ruin another person’s reputation are another, and I think it’s perfectly acceptable to advocate violence towards people that do that shit…

    What’s more harmful in the long run, ruining someone’s good name or giving them a good, old fashioned ass kicking?

    1. You should be the ‘character assassin’s’ biggest supporters they are giving publicity to Larry and all the rest. If you are part of a radical niche all you want is attention (PITA, KKK, etc.). Larry has made this a part of his career building so leave him to it, it is working.

  28. For those who haven’t voted for the Hugos before, I should point out that “No Award” is not a new thing. It is also not a veto. It gives you, the voter, the ability to narrow your choices.

    As an example, say you get to the “best novel” category, but you’ve only read one of the nominated novels. You can select that novel as your #1 choice and then select “No award” as #2. This way, you don’t have to rank all the remaining novels you haven’t read.

    Similarly, if you think none of the nominees in the category deserve the Hugo this year, you can just select “No award” as #1. That way, the voter never has to rank nominees by which ones he hates least.

    It can be used to vote against certain nominees without having to vote in favor of the others, but it takes a lot of such votes to sink a nominee’s chances. If Larry and Brandon could scrounge up enough supporters to get nominated, they can probably bring enough votes to bear to prevent a “No Award” spam attack. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

    1. I’d think that casting a “No Award” vote is pretty much throwing your vote in the trash, since it’s *extremely* unlikely that “No Award” will win. Rather like the conservatives voting “No Award” last presidential election, causing the current POTUS.

      So I’m all in favor of the Stalinists voting for “No Award” all they want, it just makes *my* votes worth that much more.

      Of course, it was also Stalin who said “It doesn’t matter who votes, it matters who *counts* the votes.”

  29. So far I’ve ready Warbound (awesome) and Parasite (meh).

    Neptune’s Brood is the sequel to Saturn’s Children apparently, so that’s two books I need to read (Stross is very hit or miss for me).

    I’ve not heard of Ann Leckie before but Ancillary Justice has already won a British Science Fiction Award.

    I haven’t read any Robert Jordan before. So if I were to read all of the nominated books that are left that is… seventeen novels.

    That is going to be a challenge. I think I’ll read Ancillary Justice next.

    1. My only recommendation about Wheel of Time is to buy them one at a time.

      Starting somewhere around #4, I felt like Conan pushing the wheel by myself. Halfway through #5, I realized that all I had to do was stop pushing and walk away. Best reading decision ever.

      1. That’s where I quit, too. It was the moment I realized I was reading a trilogy that was already on its fifth book. I have no problem whatsoever voting for Warbound over WoT.

      2. I echo this sentiment. As a teenager, I read the first seven WOT novels. The first 3-4 were great, and then a rapid decline ensued. That experience has made me reluctant to read in-progress fantasy series, as they seem to be getting longer and longer and take ages to wrap up.

      3. Well apparently I won’t need to buy any Wheel of Time books as it was announced on Tor.com that ALL of them will be in the Hugo voter’s packet in ebook form.

  30. How ironic that them “speaking truth to power” has resulted in me going anonymous to post this so as not to torpedo my incipient career. But I think Larry will see my email addy anyway and know who I am.

    Because they are the ones In Power right now. They are the ones holding the cards. Ann Leckie is an editor, although apparently not for much longer, if my google-fu is correct. If I call bullshit on her stupid, stupid “analogy” (and trust me when I say I’m the queen of stupid and overdone analogies), then I’m actively endangering my career–editors talk to each other, and I could be blacklisted and never know it.

    Her analogy would be more accurate if it went like this: You’re in a restaurant, and you take a random swing at a waiter. He blocks the blow and yells “What the fuck, lady? …And then you scream “rape!” Everyone lays a beatdown on the waiter, and he gets fired.

    1. Glenn Reynolds has been talking about that last bit over at Instapundit recently, with examples of women who have acknowledged they made fake rape accusations. Their accusers faced long, long prison terms (and some were actually convicted before their innocence was discovered). Their accusers get a slap on the wrist in comparison.

      1. Bleh… typo… Very bad typo… Obviously that first “accusers” should read “The accused faced long, long prison terms…”

    2. You should never let others make you hide your name in fear. I’m a writer, I don’t care what people think of my opinions. The beauty of today is that you don’t need a publishing house to put your work out there. You can self publish or seek out an indie house.

      Never let the fear of someone in a position of power keep you from expressing your opinions as yourself. I sure as hell don’t.

      1. I wouldn’t call it “fear” so much as prudence. I’m a short fiction writer, and self-publishing/indie houses are problematic, when trying to get your work out there and actually noticed. I don’t always keep my head down, as Larry will attest–I’ve commented here as myself plenty of times, and been loud on Twitter and FB about certain issues–but in this case, I’m going to be… judicious about it. Badmouthing editors, even editors who are leaving editing, even editors who are being dummies, is not a Best Practice.

        And I have a perfect right to do that.

  31. What has broken starkly out into the open with this Hugo dust-up is a fight between two camps over ownership of words like “racist,” “bigot,” “supremacist,” and “sexism.”

    If you are a human being with no dog in the hunt, a balanced look at those words with all the excuses, blame, paranoia, and self-pity stripped away shows where the racism, sexism, and identity-supremacy really resides in the SFF community. It’s not even a close call, and the humorless harridans who’ve been leading this charge the last 5 years, all the while hiding people among them who are clearly anti-white, anti-Western, anti-heterosexual, and anti-male, are feeling the pressure and seeing their bigotry mercilessly exposed.

    You can only mangle a word so much; at some point you’re going to have to defend your positions, your definitions, or censor people. Censoring among the PC is so common they have actually created a mini-industry of people who’ve created their own mini-institutions and platforms from which to fight back; and the anti-PC are winning. Other than to tickle them, no one really comments at Tor or on Scalzi or Hines’ sites or on a score of others I could mention. Ironically the PC’s own censorship has left them isolated and high and dry. No one wants to engage them anymore because they don’t argue fairly and ban people when they are too challenged.

    Let’s be honest: a look at this year’s Hugo nominees shows at least a dozen racist, sexist, bigots on the card. When did the Hugos and Nebulas become some mirror distorted Orwellian vision of Stormfront passed off as social justice, complete with elaborately worked out race and gender demonization theories that would make Goebbels proud?

    The PC have lost REAL feminists, other PC, and gay activists like David Gerrold, Liz Williams, Janis Ian, Neil Gaiman and a whole lot more. All that’s left are the most fanatic fake feminists and their PC allies who’ve gone too far out on a limb to back out now. The SFWA is so radically supremacist feminist today it is almost indistinguishable from the Tiptree Awards and WisCon.

    Predictably, one side is reacting with humor and principle, the other with prim nunnishnish, anger, and denial. I myself love this. It’s time the inquisition was back-handed and their pitiful logic torn to shreds.

    It doesn’t matter if the SFWA is lost or the Hugos go that way too. What’s obvious is that water finds it’s own course and level, and the anti-establishment will continue to simply build a base of their own institutions and leave the wreckage of a racist and sexist cult passing itself off as a literary movement behind. Fun stories about story-telling will rule the day in whatever new literary movement is built. No artwork or story will be censored, pillaged or deemed politically incorrect. The line will not be drawn by politics but where it is and should be drawn: at hate.

    At the end of the day, it’s obvious who is writing the new underground comix and who is the subject of the new underground comix. Liars can’t survive satire; in fact they ARE satire. All you need do is quote them.

  32. Here is another one for the ‘not a REAL writer’ pile: “Otherwise I agree that this shortlist is the result of activism and campaigning at work, since there is no way Larry Correia or VD got there on their own.” She’s also worried that there may be some ‘decent’ authors on the slate who are being irreparably tainted by MHI shenanigans.

    1. Hmmm… I wonder how many Audies she has won, or how many bestseller lists she has been on, or how many times she’s sat on the Bookscan list for over 20 weeks at a time, or how many times she’s got as high as the #3 fantasy author on all of Amazon, or how many times she was a finalist contender for best novel in a foreign country? (where I couldn’t campaign, becaue I wasn’t even aware it was a finalist until after it was over because I don’t live there or speak the language) 🙂

  33. Congrats on the nomination, Larry! Warbound was awesome and deserves to win!

    Wow, the lefty butthurt over on Luhrs’ blog is Epic. Yamamanama/Clamps even tried to put in his 2 cents, though I thought it kind of ironic that everyone there seemed to ignore him. :-p

    1. Aw man. I lost Clamps/Yamamamma/Andrew Marston? How can I possibly go on without the sex offender/creepy stalker vote?

  34. “So, here are some ways in which I have discovered that I am racist. It shames me. I had food delivered and the Latino delivery guy spoke perfect English. I was stunned.” – Mary Robinette Kowal

    “Remember that Tolkien’s Southrons and Easterlings were pretty much Africans and Middle Easterners with the VINs filed off.” – Catherine Valente

    (Valente never heard of 1,000 years of Muslim attacks on Europe including a million S. Europeans carried off into slavery by N. Africans. Valente’s ignorance equals Tolkien’s racism.)

    “Let’s start with ‘conservative.’ N.K. Jemisin says, ‘Because the “fantasy” most EF (epic fantasy) delivers is of white male power & centrality, as much as dragons. That *is* conservativism, now.’ [@nkjemisin, 8:00 pm DST, Feb 20, 2013] We can agree that conservative, here, is fundamentally concerned with not changing the present default cultural narratives of who gets to hold and use power, how, and why. For our genre, for our culture(s) in the US, UK, and Europe, that’s white (heterosexual) cisgendered men. Often persons who don’t fit these criteria who hold and use power anyway are portrayed as wrong, anomalous, wicked.” – Liz Bourke at Tor

    “…aliens in SFF started out as the equivalent of POC natives in a colonial narrative frame” – Aliette de Bodard

    “angry old white men are angry, old, white, and male.” – Charles Stross

      1. Picture of hip young person of color Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

        http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CDHIxuvTULU/UtK9Zq-kSUI/AAAAAAAAABE/yi8nVksMIis/s1600/hayden2.jpg

        Picture of hip young person of color Patrick Nielsen Hayden:

        http://www.midamericon.org/photoarchive/lonestarcon3/13worldcon292.JPG

        Picture of hip young person of color John Scalzi:

        http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5102/5558500000_8d6f885760.jpg

        Picture of hip young person of color Natalie Luhrs:

        http://image.wink.com/_i/1_d1761103_cHM6KzAwMDAwMDExMmRlNGFiODQ_96c96_ffffff00.jpg

        Picture of hip young person of color Seanan McGuire:

        http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6DaPT7QPC5k/TLJaG4eMI_I/AAAAAAAACGI/xxrTWGdyKe8/s400/Seanan+McGuire.jpg

        I’m pretty sure our host has more melanin than all of these people put together.

        1. Let me stand outside for 45 minutes and I’m browner than that entire photo montage combined. Those people are so white that they’d turn translucent in the sun. My dad is darker than Barack Obama and I’m the same color as Cheech Marin (also, it turns out I’m pretty close to Edward James Olmos as I discovered this weekend when I saw him at ComicCon, so I will add him to my Wise Latino Paint Chip Comparison rotation).

          I grew up in a tiny poor agriculutral community that was divided between Portuguese immigrants, Mexican immigrants, and “okies” which was our catch all term for anybody who wasn’t Portuguese or Mexican, and they were the minority. But it was okay, because we all did backbreaking manual labor while up to our knees in cow shit every day. Please, white suburbanites and New Yorkers, lecture me some more about privilege now. I fucking love that shit.

      2. Asking that group of Morlocks to play a softball doubleheader would be considered a death threat, and raise the stock of Ace Bandages. “Quick! Back inside! We’re buuuuurrrrningg!!!”

    1. If you ever want to see a SJW’s head explode, tell them that people’s prejudices are based upon statistical analyses of their personal experiences.

    2. I milked cows alongside Mexicans. I was a missionary in innercity Birmingham. I did factory, construction, and manual labor jobs with guys from everywhere. I was just another dude lifting heavy shit, getting cuts and scrapes and bruises, sunburned or frozen. Yes, please, suburbanites tell me about how I hate.

      The other day I was paying for parking at ComicCon. A Mexican guy wearing construction clothes was in line ahead of me. The machine ate his $10. He didn’t speak English so I helped him with the instructions, and then when we couldn’t get the money back, and he was out, I paid for his parking. Why? Was it because he was slightly browner than me and I was motivated by warm beige guilt? Nope. It was because I’ve had the shitty manual labor jobs myself, it sucks to have to work a normal job around a giant event like that, and I know what it is like to be worried that you’re going to get fired for being late because you couldn’t find parking.

      Please, wealthy New Yorkers with your Ivy League degrees and white suburbanites who’ve never had to bust their ass, lecture me some more about privilege. Tell people what color they must be based upon how they sound on Twitter. Keep on insulting us, and then act all shocked and offended when we get tired of you and actually vote in your cliquish little awards.

    3. “…aliens in SFF started out as the equivalent of POC natives in a colonial narrative frame” – Aliette de Bodard

      That is a particularly funny thing for her to say, given that the first really alien science-fictional aliens (H. G. Wells’ Martians) started out as the equivalent of the colonial INVADERS in a “colonial narrative frame.” But I guess she’s just such a sparkly special snowflake that she can’t be expected to know of the importance of H. G. Wells or The War of the Worlds to the history of science fiction?

      1. De Bodard’s never read that old stuff cuz what she claims isn’t there. I have read that old stuff and she has no business making authoritative statements like that as if she’s Sam Moskowitz. When Jack Vance died de Bodard admitted she’d never read him and Tweeted “Should I?” There’s your “scholarship.” Besides that she’s Tweeted that Heinlein and Arthur Conan Doyle are not good novelists. Somehow I have a feeling no one’s going to be citing de Bodard’s anti-Western postcolonial Vietnamese in outer space stories in 10 years, let alone 100.

  35. I made the terrible mistake of (briefly) reading Liz Bourke’s blog at Tor.com. Now I have the strong urge to never buy a book on that label ever again. I mean, WTF?!?! Useful Idiots, all over the place.

    1. I stopped buying Tor books after the Nielsen Haydens knowingly (and smugly) marched in a Stalinist-organized “antiwar rally”.

      Being against the war (or against war in general): fine. I have friends who hold those beliefs.

      Marching with Stalinists: not fine. It’s no different in my mind than goosestepping in a Nazi parade, no matter what “good cause” the parade is supposedly for.

      I don’t choose to give such people any of my money.

      1. …….. Stalinists…. Ugh. I share your disdain for Stalinists.

        I was going to ask if you had any links for sources to that, but Google was surprisingly cooperative. A.N.S.W.E.R. Those scumbags. And they admitted that they knew full well who organized their march and tried to justify it. Yeah, I’m done with TOR. Thanks for the info.

      2. I don’t, in general, have any kind of political litmus test for reading material — there are plenty of lefties on my shelves and in my Kindle.

        Exactly where the line is drawn is a little hard to specify, but Stalinists are definitely on the other side of that line.

      3. “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.” – Teresa Nielsen Hayden criticizing a remark on Twitter

        1. What a bunch of horse shit. Is this the same whitedar that enabled Jim Hines to know I was a white man who wrote about manly white men and busty white women throwing themselves on manly white penises? If so, they may need to get it calibrated.

          Isn’t it funny though, to a caring liberal all minorities must share the same opinions? It is almost like they are judging people based upon the color of their skin and not the content of their character.

      4. The other funny bit there is that you’ll never – and I mean never – see someone like Nielsen-Hayden make that remark to read “black and male,” or “Hispanic and female,” or “Lesbian and black.” If an entire cult of people is unable to make that simple comparison and realization about their own behaviors – what can they do?

        Meanwhile, here’s a single conversation on Twitter from anti-racist anti-sexists:

        SFF fan and writer Sunil Patel: “Curious: how many of you refuse to watch/read something if it’s about Yet Another Straight White Man?”

        Reply from SFWA member and one-time Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Same is true of books. I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.”

        Second reply from another SFF fan: “I’m taking a yearlong break from books by men, full stop, and dramatically scaling back on stories about them.”

        Last reply from review editor of SFF at Publisher’s Weekly Rose Fox: “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”

        These people aren’t waiting for any Hugo dust-ups to sandbag white heterosexual men, as that conversation occurred on Feb. 27. No, no racism, anti-straight sentiment or discrimination there. Move along. Go back to your homes.

      5. “Isn’t it funny though, to a caring liberal all minorities must share the same opinions?”

        Also funny that minorities apparently need a lot of old pasty white dudes, dudettes, and (I can’t keep up with the meta-cis-trans-ultra-infra- stuff, so just take it as read that they’re included here) to give them their marching orders, lest they fall into “incorrect” modes of thought.

      6. In addition to that intellect-party, Rose Fox claims on Twitter “I am neither male nor female,” and feels insulted to be referred to as “he” or “she” and says “I am female-bodied and genderqueer, with highly variable gender presentation.”

        Aside from the fact her local draft board knows better, I’m curious if ? then gets variably miffed and pleased at reading ? own writings. Say, like, from Wednesday as opposed to Saturday?

        Fox also retweets this “wisdom” today about the GitHub sexual harassment “scandal” (where men watched female employees hula-hooping – who wouldn’t watch such an oddity at work?) in 3 Tweets by Shanley Kane, founder of Model View Culture:

        “To keep Silicon Valley going – sexual harassment and abuse of women MUST happen. It MUST be covered up. The abusers MUST be promoted. The women MUST be punished and silenced. The men MUST NOT suffer consequences. THIS IS INTEGRAL TO THE MECHANISMS OF POWER AND WEATLH. In order for Silicon Valley to keep going as is, this is necessary. THIS IS NOT A BUG. THE SYSTEM IS WORKING AS DESIGNED.”

        Shanley adds: “the tech industry is built on cultural appropriation, privilege, abuse, whiteness, maleness.” Some of the authors at Model View Culture are a who’s who of fempower that often reaches deep into the tech and SFF community.

        That’s what you’re dealing with: a small tightly-knit interconnected echo chamber that whispers in one ear of Scalzi, Stross, and Hines and it comes out “Barrrrack!!! White privilege want a cracka!!! Barrrack!!!”

      7. @Mekadave @ SBP
        FWIW – I’d give them my money in the form of paying for stuff By John Wright or Brandon Sanderson (I’ve already bought all the Card I care about).

        Otherwise – 20-30 years ago I’d buy almost anything from Tor because – well, they had some cool stories.

        Not so much the last ten years, and that was even without finding out about their editors /etc. in the last year or so.

      8. Fail Burton–

        As someone who works in IT and is female, let me say that Shanley Kane doesn’t speak for all of us. I can attest that there’s a lot of ‘old boy’s club’ going on in IT, but aside from one or two individuals who were misogynistic jerks (like one guy who called my brother and told him to tell me to stop working Sundays, when I would take systems offline for updates, as I should be going to church like a good girl, and that my brother should have authority over me to do so) it’s not really a sexist thing. It’s just that there are so few women in IT by comparison that it comes off that way.

        Take my team where I currently work. There are 13 people on our team, and 2 women. And while it sometimes feels like working in an Elk’s lodge, I’ve never felt sexually harassed (even the aforementioned story isn’t sexual harassment) or abused in my 20 years of being in the industry, and that includes 5 years of doing IT work in the military, where supposedly sexual abuse scandals are more common. Granted I work in Salt Lake, not in Silicon Valley, but wouldn’t the argument, if true, be more true in a supposedly benighted conservative white-male dominated area like Utah instead of a liberal paradise like California?

    2. Tor.com and the way that the bloggers and editors crushed dissent soured me on Tor, destroying much of the good will built up in the 90s and early 00s. I would love it if John C. Wright and Brandon Sanderson published elsewhere.

      I’d love it even more if all the calls for Toni to disavow her writers when they were guilty of fandom badthink got turned around onto the Haydens and Tor. (I’ve not met Toni Weisskopf in person, but I’ve watched how she’s handle the various tempests in a teacup this year. SF/F desperately needs more classy ladies like her.)

      1. Dave Drake’s Books of the Elements are pretty good.

        I would not refuse to read anything published by Tor, so long as he is publishing there.

  36. I just have to say, that as a woman I have never felt ‘unsafe’ or discriminated against on this blog or by the commenters here. I certainly don’t feel that Larry writes mysogynistic books, either. Any book where a man cherishes his wife more for her ability to put a high calibur bullet through something’s brainpan at ridiculous distances than her physical beauty doesn’t count as anti-femist, if you ask me. It might count as anti-feminazi, since the women don’t despise all the men and the men don’t cower and grovel before them, but I am soooo okay with that. None of Larry’s women are damsels in distress that need to be saved by the big manly hero. I mean, Owen was busted out of a Mexican prison by his Mother-in-Law! Okay, she’s a vampire, but still.

    So my point is, no women being randomly punched in the face for no reason here.

    1. If Larry’s fandom is any indication, here’s my two cents…
      Mom sleeps with a Winchester model 1200 pump shotgun by her bed. Her birthday present a few years ago was me paying for the gunsmith to do a teardown, clean, rebuild and adjustment so the action’s smooth as silk now.
      When out and about, mom concealed carries a .45 ACP.
      In her chair at home, mom keeps a .357 magnum.
      Mom has bad knees. If someone decides to mug her or kick her door down, she can’t run away, so she’ll just empty the mag in them and then decide if she needs to call the cops, or if she’ll let the carrion feeders have them.
      THAT’S women’s empowerment.

    2. Given people who believe there are Americans (presumably GOP, straight, white, male) who want to drag them behind trucks, murder them, write analogies of America as a place women, PoC, and gays are face-punched, weep openly on Twitter over a comedian months in their future and other goofy things like being ignored consisting of sexual harassment, “imposter syndrome” and trigger warnings about things that wouldn’t bother a child, it’s pretty evident we’re dealing with people with mental health issues who, instead of addressing those issues and getting help, treat each little feeling they have as perfectly valid, no matter how self-evidently insane.

      And somehow it never occurs to these genius that variously negatively profiling between 100 million to half the people in the world isn’t sexism or racism. No, but 100 million white male American can be racists and 3.5 billion males patriarchal women-haters and purveyors of “rape culture.”

      Then, for this culture to defend and accuse millions over “Islamophobia” is just icing on the cake, given cultural custom forbids female drivers in S. Arabia, and law forbids a female president in Egypt. This is not a literary movement, this is a weepy insane asylum that doesn’t know which way is up. And, other than a few gelded allies, this is QUILTBAG fake feminism 101.

    3. Nope. I was clearly scolded for only writing “tokens” so as much as you might think Julie, Holly, Heather, Susan, Faye, Delilah, Jane, Akane, Jill, or Ling are really strong, interesting female characters, you would actually be incorrect. Also Owen, Lorenzo, and Toru are not strong PoV main characters who happen to be a minority. Come to think of it, of my main PoV characters, I’ve got one manly white guy, but there’s no way an Irishman could be a minority in 1932! Meanwhile my supporting characters who aren’t white like Trip, Lee, Bolander, Rawls, Zhao, Shen, Antoine, Ibrahim, and the freaking Chairman totally don’t count either, because sure, some of them are some of my most popular characters, and some of them are well developed enough that I wouldn’t have to break a sweat to write a whole interesting book about them, they don’t count either… Nope. Larry Correia only writes about manly white males doing manly white things.

      I’m glad we were able to clear that up before anyone got any wrong ideas. 🙂

      1. This is because you have internalized southern racism.

        Somehow.

        Despite not being raised in the south.

        Don’t ask me how this works.

      2. Wow. I was so very wrong. Thank you for correcting me in my feminine weakness and lack of understanding. I guess I’ll have to take all your books out behind my house and shoot them full of holes, wait… I’m not allowed to do that, am I? That’s a manly white thing to do. I’ll just have to sit here quietly until some SJW tells me the right way to think.

        1. Well, the last time people like this ended up in charge the proper way to get read of improper books was to burn them. 🙂

      3. Yeah, but you also made Bubba Shackleford. And he’s from Alabama, so he’s a horrible racist. Yes, yes, he didn’t care if his associates were black or white, he was a racist. Because south.

        Also, apropos of very little, I would totally read just about anything involving Faye, even Faye Goes To The Store For a Quart of Milk. She’s one of the best characters I’ve ever read; she’s great.

        1. A Special Snowflake in college once asked me how many slaves my ancestors owned. I answered, “Well, all my White ancestors were dirt-poor sharecroppers and coal miners and the like, so they didn’t own any. However, I DO have Cherokee ancestors, and I can’t say for sure that none of THEM ever did.”
          It’s fun to watch them try to process that information.

          1. Where does the word Slav come from again?

            On the other hand, my Portuguese ancestors invented the slave trade. So I should probably loathe myself. 🙂

      4. “This is because you have internalized southern racism.

        Somehow.

        Despite not being raised in the south.

        Don’t ask me how this works.”

        Ah, the line made by our “concerned” frictionless limbless reptile over the weekend. Followed by his confusion at getting mocked over it.

      5. One of the miniatures games I’ve been playing recently is Saga, and the warband I run for that game is Pagan Rus. One of the unit types available to me is “Slaves”.

        The Viking warband equivalent (and the Viking troop classes are used as the generic identifiers in the game) is “Thralls”, which means pretty much the same thing but doesn’t irritate certain people as much.

    4. “no women being randomly punched in the face for no reason here.”

      They all hate, hate, HATE Heinlein, too, another guy who wrote a lot of female characters who didn’t exactly fit the “helpless victim” category.

  37. I’m sure someone has already mentioned this, but against my better judgment, I Googled and went to the I-Don’t-Link-To-You-So-There (Foot Stamp) site. This may be the single funniest and saddest thing written about the whole thing:

    “Indeed, I was quite shocked when I ran across my first examples of rightwing SF, because SF was about the future and conservatives were against the future by definition.”

    Not sure what’s most sad/funny. Is it that anyone really believes murderous mid-19th century collectivism is “the future”? Is it that someone actually lives this sheltered of an existence? Is it that it’s the 21st century and someone’s willing to digitally scrawl “I am incredibly ignorant and proud of it” on their forehead for the rest of their life?

    Sad, sad, sad.

  38. Congrats on your nomination. I think the ensuing uproar is hilarious. I also think this is great for the Hugos. More voters equal more money for WorldCom.
    And what did they expect? The Hugos have always been a popularity contest. Last year Scalzi brought in his fans. Next year or the year after maybe Martin or some other bestseller will do likewise.

      1. That’s true. But he didn’t seem too pleased with the Hugo nominations. He predicted it was going to be called Hugofail.

  39. Dunno. Half of my problem with the Hugo is that, really, more than half of the winners are books I’d avoid. I’m not picky, but Hugo winners tend to focus more on uniqueness than readability…I don’t notice much of the cismale nonsense in the ones I did read…more a tendency towards a desperate urge to be seen as real literature at the expense of readability. That honestly bugs me more than message fiction.

    I wonder – are these people really in charge of anything important or are they just vocal whiners running something no one cares about enough to clean up? I expect you get a lot of hate mail, but, yknow, unemployed losers with mental issues tend to have plenty of time. Although, I guess interacting with the ones in publishing may be frustrating. Problem is that competent people who like being paid probably stay out of publishing.

    To be fair, last place I lived, some white guys did walk into a shop and murder a Sikh guy over 9-11. Woulda been bad enough if he’d been a Muslim, but that was just stupid. Some paranoia/caution is reasonable and plenty of racism still exists.

    1. It’s true that plenty of racism still exists, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone here try to claim otherwise. What we mock without mercy are the claims that ‘all white people are ipso facto racist’ and ‘only white people can be racist’ and ‘anyone who doesn’t toe the progressive party line is racist.’

      BTW, I once did a chart mapping out the FBI’s Hate Crimes numbers for attacks on Christians, Muslims, and Jews covering a 10-year span centered on 9/11. Even the spike in hate crimes committed against Muslims right after 9/11 barely took them to HALF that of those committed against Jews every. single. year. And then it dropped back down again to only slightly higher than it had been before. So as tragic as I find the attack on the Sikh to be (and I remember when it happened), it’s not exactly an indicator of a nation aflame with Islamophobic paranoia.

    2. As one of only four (out of 60+) English-as-a-first-language pale penis people living in my apartment building, I can definitely confirm that racism still exists.

      Just not the racism that most people think of when they say that word.

  40. “Consider that VD lives in Europe (I’m told), which makes it more feasible that he could go to Loncon – and make people unsafe.” – Alex Dally MacFarlane on Twitter today.

    “…VD, who is not only reactionary and awful but potentially dangerous to many people, if not directly, then via incitement.” – Alex Dally MacFarlane Tweet Apr. 20

    “Cis peeeoooople” – Alex MacFarlane Tweet aimed at heterosexual critics of her first Tor binary-gender column.

    1. I know I’m not the only one who rolls their eyes at the whole “make people feel unsafe” thing. I’m sorry, but if we were nearly as violent as they try to make us out to be, they’d all be dead by now.

      1. Green Lettuce Bacon Tomato With Tuna Fish Barbecue “Safer-Space” sandwich with insane sauce on the side. I think that was Orwell’s fav.

        Mark my words, these people will try and stop Day from attending – maybe on grounds of hate-speech. Ironically – on principle – that’d knock a dozen other nominees out. If you threw in those who are not nominees, you could add another dozen easily, probably two dozen. The fact is that if you had the politically correct embedded in SFF’s institutions shut their mouths for one month, what we might think of as hate-speech would drop by almost 100%. They’re pretty much the only ones who routinely negatively profile people by race and gender. The fact they see it as the exact opposite shows you how nuts they are. The true fact however is that they just don’t have the quotes to back that up. You think that’d be a wake-up call. Not if you’re nuts. Nutty people can see anything the want to see, including VD as a physical threat if he attends the Hugos. He should make a great show of attending, whether he intends to or not.

        1. “The true fact however is that they just don’t have the quotes to back that up”

          That’s where “code words” come in. For example, wanting to end welfare is code for hurting black people, even though most people on welfare are white.

          Code words rock for the left, because they can be made to mean anything. Kind of like how “special snowflake” is apparently a dog whistle for Larry and Vox’s followers, despite the term existing for years before either of them used it

      2. I’m sorry, but if we were nearly as violent as they try to make us out to be, they’d all be dead by now.

        …and pointing that out only increases their flighty panic.

        1. Because logic is scary.

          Of course, I’ve been accused of threatening someone’s life when I was trying to point out that I lived in a bad neighborhood and I was terrified I was going to have to defend myself.

          Some people look for excuses to be terrified.

    2. History indicates that socialism (both national and international) is extremely dangerous to GLBTWTFBBQ.

      Granted, only if you use Western cismale white heteronormative measures (e.g., body count), rather than Alex MacFarlane’s “feelings”.

      1. In all fairness to the other side that won’t read something because of the authors’ politics, I and many, many vets, refuse to watch anything with Jane Fonda in it.

    1. Eh… These are the same people who were claiming that a guy with a plus-size wife hated plus-size women.

      1. … and shouldn’t be allowed to speak at the convention on the off-chance that he might say something to offend someone who was overweight.

        There are some easily-hurt butts out there.

  41. Actually, I understand that Seanan McGuire is a person with Roma blood on one side of the family (but doesn’t claim it, for the very good reason that Roma = cultural and religious obligations that not everybody wants), so teeeechnically Larry isn’t the only minority in the Best Novel race.

    But yeah, it’s a shame that anybody brings this stuff up as serious discussion points, when clearly the important bit is what’s a good story you should bring to get signed; what ethnicity of food you might be served at an author’s house; and how you should be acting in order to not freak out their parents, spouses, or children. 🙂

    1. “Seanan McGuire ‏@seananmcguire 19h Really, let’s play a fun game. Let’s never ever ever use the word ‘g*psy’ in fiction again, unless…nah, screw ‘unless.’ Let’s just not.”

      “Seanan McGuire ‏@seananmcguire 19h @scalzi I had a fucking sociology professor stand in front of me and say ‘Using racial slurs gyps others of their cultural heritage.'”

      “Seanan McGuire ‏@seananmcguire 19h @scalzi I called him on it, he said I was being overly sensitive, I went to the Dean. FUN TIMES.”

      McGuire apparently had no problem using “gypsy” on her own website in 2007, which at age 29 presumably post-dates having sociology professors.

      http://seananmcguire.com/songbook.php?id=153

      1. The word gypsy is an interesting one, in that I had to look up more information on the proper use of the word. (Lorenzo, from D6, his actual ethnicity is Roma). There was a Roma community where I grew up, and they self identified as gypsy, so I never thought anything of it until I saw somebody getting yelled at for using the word. I spoke with some people (American and Portuguese) who were self identified Gypsies (Gitano), and they thought it was perfectly fine. I’m not going to tell them they are wrong and racist for calling themselves what they’ve called themselves their entire lives, just because some goose stepping assholes used it as a slur in the 40s.

        So I’m not quite sure how one person’s offense outweighs another person’s self identifier.

  42. I told you the femgots would turn on Scalzi if he didn’t toe an absolute line:

    …Yeah, that’s when we point out, Mr. Scalzi, that by your own logic you are fucking up. – Sheweta Narayan

    http://shweta-narayan.livejournal.com/201678.html

    Narayan is an author who recently was part of the racial revenge fantasy anthology “We See a Different Frontier,” which mysteriously only sees Western colonialism in history. To prove how noble the Third World is, Narayan moved from India to live with the patriarchal supremacist cis-het colonial settler racist pig-people in Scotland.

    Here’s the promotional blurb for I-love-that-cis-honkey-able-bodied-man-o’-mine WSADF:

    “This anthology of speculative fiction stories on the themes of colonialism and cultural imperialism focuses on the viewpoints of the colonized. Sixteen authors share their experiences of being the silent voices in history and on the wrong side of the final frontier; their fantasies of a reality in which straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males don’t get to tell us how they won every war; their revenge against the alien oppressor settling their ‘new world’.”

    1. Er… because non-anglophone cultures are even a tiny bit tolerant of the non-cis, handicapped, poor, female, or gender variant?

      1. Sir Charles James Napier’s response to Sati is a classic –

        “Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

      2. I had to laugh, guys. The Army sent me to an upper-level Spanish language class recently. The teacher was talking about evil incursions by evil conquesting hatey-hate Whites. I stopped her. “Are you asserting that the Incas, Aztecs and Mayas were any better? The Spaniards killed and raped and made tributary kingdoms. The native empire builders sacrificed HUNDREDS their tributaries on the altar DAILY.’ That stopped her in her tracks.
        I had another conversation with a Latina at work who was going off about the same thing. I told her, “The Apaches and the Nez Perce, if I recall correctly, were actively expanding their holdings when the Whites came by killing off the competition. The only thing REMOTELY like a peaceful tribe we had was the Iroqouis confederation and the civilized tribes. Most American native tribes had a word for pacifists: “Next-on-the-list.” This noble, peaceful savage thing is a load of crap peddled by racemongers.”
        Good thing she’s a friend. That’s all that kept her from storming off in anger.

      1. “Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #330,010 Paid in Kindle Store” 🙂

        It’s just…bizarre…to see someone as privileged as Narayan going on about other people’s privilege. I mean, most cismalewhitepallidpenispeople in the United States or Europe don’t get to go to a high school that costs £11,000/year (about $18,000/year at today’s exchange rate) and jet back and forth between Europe and the U.S. on a regular basis, much less spend *13 years* at U.C. Berkeley, which costs around $50K/year for non-residents (granted, I’d consider 13 years in Berkeley a violation of the Eighth Amendment, but she probably doesn’t). But nope. It’s all those cismalewhitepallidpenispeople (you know, the ones who have actual jobs that involve actual work) who are “privileged”.

        I wonder if her parents consider that $800K or so to have been well-spent.

      2. “Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #330,010 Paid in Kindle Store”

        Yeah…that’s just pathetic. I’ve got a novelette I published yesterday that’s #15,811.

        I know, there’s probably more to a ranking than that, but still. I’ve sold such a pathetically small amount and seem light years ahead of that ranking. It’s just sad.

    2. But I thought we did win every war in the new world. Hang on, let me check with the Incas and the Aztecs… Oh, wait. My ancestors didn’t leave behind any Incas or Aztecs. Never mind.

      1. And the Aztecs weren’t exactly innocent little lambs in the imperialism department themselves. Then they ran up against ‘white Hispanics’ who were a lot better at it than they were.

      2. Microsoft’s Age of Empires III video game had a particular mission that undoubtedly only got through due to PC idiots who don’t know their history all that well. In one mission, the protagonist is tasked with defending Aztec temples against Spanish Conquistadors. Obviously whoever wrote that scenario didn’t bother to check on what actually happened in those temples, or the protagonist would have been helping the Conquistadors tear those things down.

        1. If they actually read the historical accounts of Cortez in Mexico, they’d know that the conquistadors freaked the hell out when they saw what went on. You know, that whole epic human sacrifice thing didn’t go over super good for some reason.

      3. These were the dudes who thought up the Spanish Inquisition, too, so not exactly a kinder and gentler sort of folk. If they were horrified, it was bad.

        I remember reading an account of some Maya who, after having the stuffing kicked out of them by the Spaniards a few times, decided to cover all the bases and try to appease this new God. So…they started crucifying the sacrificial victims before drowning them in the Sacred Well.

        The Spanish priests were unimpressed.

        All the New Agey “druids” out there might reflect that the Romans (another group who wouldn’t likely be on Amnesty International’s Christmas card list) were horrified at the cruelty of the druid religion. There’s a section about it in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico if I remember right.

  43. Next Femgot to bite Scalzi:

    “HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh dear. He is so dancing to Vox’s tune right now. There is so very little you can say to me that I will ever respect again, @scalzi You know, Vox won when you said that those hurt by his words and actions would have to consider his artistic merit.” – @ArachneJericho

    http://spontaneousderivation.com/who/

    “My pen name is Arachne Jericho. I work as a software developer, and otherwise game, read, script, and write in my free time.

    “If you ever see me on forums or communities, I almost always use Psmith’s profile as my avatar. This is because my choice of appearance would be ‘female bisexual in a tux’ (And not one of those ‘sexy’ tuxes. A proper cut for me, thank you.), and not because, as assumed by some, I’m a guy.

    “My favorite pony is the ever-fabulous Rarity, although my personality is very much Twilight Sparkle.”

    Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha “Twilight Sparkle.”

      1. I wonder what the Greeks and Canaanites think about her cultural appropriation. Did she ask before doing that?

        The amusing thing is that this type always imagines India/Vietnam/wherever as some sort of earthly paradise before the Evil European Cismales came.

        Nope. Their lives would have been spent doing three things: working in the fields, cooking, and pumping out a new baby every year in the hopes that one would survive to take care of them in their old age (which would have happened around 40).

        Hell, that’s the reality for a lot of women in Vietnam and India *now*, much less preindustrialization.

      2. Sadly, I think she is trying to emulate Spider Jerusalem from the Transmetropolitan novels. The same guy who definitely does not hold in his opinion about anythign and carries my favorite weapon ever, the bowel disruptor. He holds nothing sacred except for getting the truth out about the story he’s writing.

        The scary part always for me is when you read them and imagine the election going on in the novel as ’08 election here. The Smiler gives me the creeps in that series.

    1. My favorite pony? Death’s pale horse. I like how hell followed with it. Though Twilight Sparkle is a close second.

      1. “These folks are basically the KKK of SFF… the most disavowed in the field… we know they are the foulest of the foul” – Arachne Jericho

        http://spontaneousderivation.com/2014/04/22/how-we-win/

        To me, what a KKK of SFF would look like are Nebula and Hugo nominees who single out oh… let’s say, whites, heterosexuals, and men – perhaps daily – and mercilessly profile them as spiritless, immoral privileged oppressors bent on manly dudebro world domination, dragging people behind trucks, and metaphorically punching gays, women, and non-whites. What real man doesn’t hate his wife, girl friend, nieces, sisters, aunts, and mother?

        Oh… and everyone surprised arachne jericho is a Tor.com reviewer raise their hands and pretend those reviews have no dog in the hunt, because Jericho says straight out “And do you think for a second that marginalized people are in any way obliged to give such works a ‘fair shake’”? You can well imagine “such works” aren’t limited to this Hugo dust-up. Read that whole post for the full monty.

      2. Reading that post that Fail Burton linked to, I keep thinking 2 things:

        1) She apparently never learned the aphorism growing up that I was taught repeatedly: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

        2) She is judging a book, if not by its cover, by what she assumes that books contents might be. None of the stuff she’s claiming she’d be offended by is in Warbound at all (Dunno about Vox’s story. Never read it).

      3. “These folks are basically the KKK of SFF”

        No. Going strictly by visual appearances, the KKK of SF would be the New York offices of Tor Books.

      4. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the majority of these so-called “feminists” openly admit on their blogs and Twitter that they have rather serious mental health issues and are on medication, including hints at suicide threats on their blogs that had their friends plenty worried. And yes I used the word “majority.” I have the quotes and links to prove that but I’m not going to use them. Anybody can have problems like that, and I don’t think they should be lit up for having them.

        Having said that, when people are so obviously showing signs of obsessive and even paranoid persecution by swaths of millions of people they’ve decided to focus their hostility on – in this case 100 million straight white men who’ve done them no harm – it might be time to stop giving them platforms and a credibility they certainly do not deserve. There was real Jim Crow, and now there’s this imaginary pretend Jim Crow that extends out to gays and women too.

        We should stop pretending this is political, or even feminism, and call it what it is: sick hatred. In this crazy world they’ve put together, any mere disagreement or even ignoring them is “misogyny” or “sexual harassment.” I commiserate with people who have mental health issues – I do not appreciate being the focus of those issues by virtue of skin and sex – or in other words – merely by waking up in the morning. There’s a Twitter rant meltdown going on right now by a techfem that to me demonstrates a person who is clearly on the edge of insanity. She frames it as “social justice” and she has way too many enablers who are mainstreaming this insanity and aiming it directly at us.

    2. So I had to look up to find out what Scalzi said and frankly, he was being fair, even classy. I can’t imagine any way to be upset about what he said. He didn’t say he liked stuff he didn’t. He didn’t say he approved of anything he didn’t approve of. He didn’t say anything other than to read (or attempt to read) all the nominees. He didn’t say that anyone needed to approve of Vox. (Or anyone else.)

      Evidently “respect” requires a full out effort to shut down unworthy voices. And even mild suggestions otherwise must not be allowed to stand. And attacking Scalzi seems to be a favorite pass time of Narayan and Arachne and some others of the same mindset. It’s safe, after all, and has worked before.

      I just wonder when the man is going to snap. When he does I’d like him to know that bit about the darkside having cookies….

      1. I just wonder when the man is going to snap. When he does I’d like him to know that bit about the darkside having cookies….

        Darth Barras ate them all.

        (A rather… hefty Sith Lord from SWTOR.)

      2. The real question is how far backwards someone can bend in order to satisfy insane sociopaths who blog and you’ve been stupid enough to believe are “feminists” rather than angry bigots.

    3. Um, what the hell does a “female bisexual” look like exactly? I ask, because I know plenty of female bisexuals and they look like women. I mean, there are hot ones and fat ones and plain ones, but I only know they’re bisexual because they’ve told me.

      Hell, knowing what they looked like might have made my life a little easier when I was trying to hook up with bisexual chicks back in the day.

      1. What this comments section has highlighted is that this isn’t anything like a political divide. These are some seriously disturbed, delusional and sociopathic people who live in a fantasy world of persecution and phobia. They call that world “injustice” and if you don’t live in it you range from unjust to the “KKK.”

  44. Larry, like your work man, but I don’t think you or Brandon are going to win.

    Stross should win. Not because he is a socialist and a Scot (he’s both) but because it is LONDON and there is a LAUNDRY novella. Add to your list the atrocity archives. Anyone who can put pinky and the brain, Chultu, Nazis and Spy Novels together is… good.

    You have to read equoid. It’s free. It’s good. And it is the creepiest unicorns you will ever meet. I just hope y’all get the bureaucrat and geek jokes contained within.

    1. Re: The Laundry Files:

      Brialliant idea. Really loved the first book. The next book or two though…. it started getting more and more cynical, depressing, and “this is all pointless/hopeless” to the point that even with the “JesusPhone” jokes, it palled. I didn’t touch the next one.

      1. I’m still reading them but the gloom & doom is getting to me too. They know humanity is doomed so they aren’t having children and they pity their friends who do have children. I miss the earlier funny geek and cubicle jokes.

      2. I still enjoy the humor. I liked the second and third books more than the first one. The fourth one is my least favorite, though.

        As for the hopelessness, that’s an element of most modern horror these days. Even if the protagonists manage to defeat the Great Evil, the ending/stinger/epilogue frequently shows that the “victory” was merely a temporary setback to the Evil.

  45. This is a off the specific topic here, but it is relevant to the general topic of the conflict that is occuring.

    As someone said earlier, speaking truth to power should involve fear. I’m not independently wealthy, and I work in an industry where some of these power struggles are going on, and participate in a community within that industry where my standing could be damaged by expressing these opinion. This is makes me sad, as well as a little nervous. So although I may change my mind later, for now I’m posting under a different pseudonym than I use in my professional life.

    Because of what has been happening in my industry, I’ve spent quite a bit of time during the past year steeped in the rhetoric of the feminist left, in what I think is called “identity politics”.

    They have some good points. They have a lot of really bad conclusions.

    Then Scalzi did his dishonest (I would have said “or mistaken”, but he’s demonstrated himself to be too smart for it to be anything other than dishonest) hit piece on Toni, and that led me to Sarah Hoyt’s site, and from there I found my way here.

    So now for the past month I’ve been steeped in the rhetoric of this “side”. I’ve always been a small l libertarian, so I feel pretty at home here. (I haven’t read MHI, but it is next on my list, right after I finish the Sara Hoyt book I’m currently reading :).

    I’ve realized something. It’s going to take me a few words to lay it out, I hope you’ll be patient. It may already be obvious to many, but it wasn’t obvious to me, not at first.

    As you know, there are two (at least) cultures involved in this “discussion”, and they speak different languages. That is, they use the same words to mean different things. The left has developed a technical language specific to their model of reality, and like all technical languages, it uses certain words and phrases to mean something other than what they mean in normal discourse.

    I’m pretty sure most here understand that, and even understand what the left means when they use those words. The left, on the other hand, usually *doesn’t* understand what we mean when we use those words in our own version of that technical discourse. And I’m talking here about fundamental words like “freedom” and “right” and even “free speech”.

    And don’t get me started on what they don’t know about even *basic* economics.

    But here’s the thing, and it proceeds from that last point: *we* understand that dollars represent the value that people put on things, and that it is a much more reliable indicator of “true” value, of *social* value, than votes. And that the pie isn’t finite, that it can grow. Most of them completely don’t get either of those things.

    In their world, the only thing that has meaning is power. They accuse us of being violent (because we are prepared to defend ourselves, and willing to use guns to do it if necessary), but the only thing that *exists* in their worldview is violence. Money is evil, don’t you know, and that only leaves violence as a way to get things done. They won’t understand why I use the word ‘violence’ (they think it is all about peaceful voting), but people here will understand.

    One more piece of background before I get to the point. During my year of immersion in the rhetoric around discrimination and “rape culture”, I read many accounts of women being assaulted in one form or another. I’m sure most if not all of them were true. And in almost all cases, the issue (as the Radical Feminists acknowledge, indeed make a big thing about) was power imbalance: the man was in an authority position, and took advantage of that, and was not punished; and the woman *would* be punished if she spoke out and demanded justice. Most of these stories concerned liberal organizations (endemic sexism in a socialist organization, a skeptics convention, many cases in academia).

    In contrast I read on Sarah’s blog about her rides as a young girl on a public bus alone, and her use of a hatpin to address the power imbalance.

    Here’s the point, finally :). When Radical Feminists talk about “rape culture”, people here dismiss it. I think that’s being just a little bit blind.

    Because, you see, I think “rape culture” *does* exist.

    I think it is the culture of the left.

    Remember where those sexual assaults happened. Remember that the leftist rhetoric explicitly says that those in power are oppressors, and those not in power cannot be oppressors.

    What we are seeing here, even though the vast majority of them have no clue this is what they are participating in, is a war for power *within* the left.

    We are the “safe” external bogeyman. When they manage to hit us, we are just collateral damage. Which, as many have pointed out here, is the inevitable consequence of the philosophy of the left.

    1. I had almost forgotten till you reminded me here that their great hero is Bill Clinton. Nah, it can totally be consensual between the leader of the “freeworld” and a teenager whose career could be guaranteed or destroyed with a single sentence from him.

  46. I was plesantly surprised by what Scalzi said, though reading the rebuttals he posted this morning (despite being steeled for it) still made me lose a little faith in humanity.

    What actually made me incandescantly furious, however, were the people loudly proclaiming that Brad Torgerson is a white supremacist.

    I mean, it’s all crap they’ve made up with zero evidence, and Brad, Larry, and Dan are some of the nicest people I know, let alone authors, but that particular bit of slander managed to get through my bull-shit armor.

    1. Brad is such a white supremacist that he’s been married to a black woman for 20 years and has biracial children.

      1. But of course little things like facts don’t matter – heck, at this point inconsequential feelings like love don’t matter to them either, because clearly they wouldn’t care about Brad’s wife even if they knew. Probably for the best because if they did they’d probably just go after her too, and that would really set me and a lot of other people off.

        In the end though I actually feel sorry for these people. Take the responses to Scalzi, one of the biggest (and to be honest from what I’ve read overall nicest) champions of their side. Not only are they attacking him in misplaced fury, they’re openly admiting to prejudging all of the really fine works nominated simply because they *might* say mean hurtful things, never mind that I’ve never actually seen a book from a reputable publisher publish anything with most of those horrificly nasty words. Every time they do this the echo chamber gets a little smaller, a little quieter, and their view of the world gets a little bit poorer.

  47. Clueless Tweets of the day:

    “The people who run the tech industry are abusive, sexist, racist, cowardly white men. And they need to be removed from power.” – Shanley Kane

    “Robust discussion is good.” – John Scalzi

    “I’m getting all sorts of criticism from women today.” – John Scalzi

    Really? Why would that be? Could it be because you helped turn the SFWA in a cabal of nutty fake feminists who are now off their meds and turning on you?

      1. I never heard of this Shanley Kane person before today, but after looking up her Twitter feed, I am thoroughly unimpressed. Just another misandrist SJW.

      2. Multiply Kane by many times, subtract the Correia/Day initiative and you can see the Hugos is driven by the same attitude. Best Fan Writer are 4 man-loving faux feminists and a guy who’s a fanboy of N.K. Jemisin.

        The John Campbell is diversa-fake-fem central.

        Best semi-prozine is QUILTBAG central.

        Best short story is an affirmative action initiative.

        Best Novella is a PC puppet, the Tiptrees, and a woman who claims her story was inspired by Snow White as in “white” skin.

        The 3 others in Best Novelette is PC-central.

        WOT and Correia aside, Best Novel is a PC-puppet, and two radical fake feminists.

        For people who claim to dislike an agenda, Corriea’s humorous point has been lost on them. The point is that when you have a comedian chased off in under 8 hours because feminists don’t approve and a slate that is otherwise diversa-fem central, the idea the Hugos is based on literary merit is a joke. The Hugos today is based on a hatred of the white straight male. You’d have to be blind not to see it. SFF in it’s old institutions is now nothing more than a revenge packet of racism and sexist bigotry. I wouldn’t repeat this joke. Why bother. Let the fish in the lake eat all the other fish. All they have is themselves and they will go after each other. They’ve already started nibbling at Scalzi and he won’t survive no matter how low he bows.

        Forget the Hugos; they are as lost as the SFWA. White straight man-hating orthodoxy rules there just as much as it does the SFWA. I repeat myself: this is not about politics – this is not feminism. This is a medicated group of sociopaths who’ve successfully sold their whiny oppressions about “privilege” to gelded male allies anxious to seem modern, edgy and relevant.

    1. The day Scalzi has a “robust discussion” is the day the horns of Gabriel will blow and the sun cough and die.

  48. A computer doesn’t actually care what color or “gender” you are, Shanley. No one can tell those things from looking at your web site, either. Make a web site that doesn’t suck, get money. It’s not that hard.

  49. The Hugo packet is now available!

    And btw, very nice to include the previous two volumes so people not familiar with the series can get the whole picture. I applaud your effort.

    And I truly hope the Hugo Voters will actually give it a try rather than automatically assuming they know what it is.

  50. And what the crap is this whole “sample” business for Grant, Stross and Leckie? How on earth are the voters supposed to judge the work off of a sample? Bad form.

    1. Because Orbit’s parent company has a policy against giving out free books, especially free eBooks without DRM. Even if that hurts them at winning awards.

      1. I, personally, am not sure that I can vote for a book half read. I have read too many books over the years that started strong and ended with a “what on earth are you talking about?”

        Of course, maybe the publisher is betting on the win without anyone reading anything, like some of the early bloggers were talking about for Larry (vote no award, etc).

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