A few days ago the finalists for the Hugo were announced. The Hugos are the big prestigious award for science fiction and fantasy. One of my books was a finalist for best novel. A bunch of other works that I recommended showed up in other categories. Because I’m an outspoken right winger, hilarity ensued.
Many of you have never heard of me before, but the internet was quick to explain to you what a horrible person I am. There have been allegations of fraud, vote buying, log rolling, and making up fake accounts. The character assassination has started as well, and my detractors posted and tweeted and told anyone who would listen about how I was a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist, a rape apologist, an angry white man, a religious fanatic, and how I wanted to drag homosexuals to death behind my pickup truck.
The libel and slander over the last few days have been so ridiculous that my wife was contacted by people she hasn’t talked to for years, concerned that she was married to such a horrible, awful, hateful, bad person, and that they were worried for her safety.
I wish I was exaggerating. Don’t take my word for it. My readers have been collecting a lot of them in the comments of the previous Hugo post and on my Facebook page. Plug my name into Google for the last few days. Make sure to read the comments to the various articles too. They’re fantastic.
Of course, none of this stuff is true, but it was expected. I knew if I succeeded I would be attacked. To the perpetually outraged the truth doesn’t matter, just feelings and narrative. I’d actually like to thank all of those people making stuff up about me because they are proving the point I was trying to make to begin with.
Allow me to explain why the presence of my slate on the Hugo nominations is so controversial. This is complicated and your time is valuable, so short explanation first, longer explanation if you care after.
Short Version:
- I said a chunk of the Hugo voters are biased toward the left, and put the author’s politics far ahead of the quality of the work. Those openly on the right are sabotaged. This was denied.
- So I got some right wingers on the ballot.
- The biased voters immediately got all outraged and mobilized to do exactly what I said they’d do.
- Point made.
I’ve said for a long time that the awards are biased against authors because of their personal beliefs. Authors can either cheer lead for left wing causes, or they can keep their mouth shut. Open disagreement is not tolerated and will result in being sabotaged and slandered. Message or identity politics has become far more important than entertainment or quality. I was attacked for saying this. I knew that when an admitted right winger got in they would be maligned and politicked against, not for the quality of their art but rather for their unacceptable beliefs.
If one of us outspoken types got nominated, the inevitable backlash, outrage, and plans for their sabotage would be very visible. So I decided to prove this bias and launched a campaign I called Sad Puppies (because boring message fiction is the leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness).
The Hugos are supposed to be about honoring the best works, and many of the voters still take this responsibility very seriously. I thank them for this. But basically the Hugos are a popularity contest decided by the attendees of WorldCon. I am a popular writer, however my fans aren’t typical WorldCon attendees. Anyone who pays to purchase a WorldCon membership is allowed to vote. Other writers, bloggers, and even publishing houses have encouraged their fans to get involved in the nomination process before. I simply did the same thing. This controversy arises only because my fans are the wrong kind of fans.
For the people saying that I bought votes, or made up fake people, or bought memberships for a couple hundred imaginary relatives, nope. For those saying I committed fraud, put up or shut up. That would be extremely easy to prove if it were the case. I’ve been up front and public the whole time. Sadly, the thing which has so damaged your calm consisted of a few blog posts and I drew a cartoon. And I’m a terrible artist: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/01/14/sad-puppies-2-the-illustrated-edition/
Eventually one of my friends colored the cartoon in PhotoShop and one of my fans thought it was funny and made a video. Sorry, outrage crowd. No big evil conspiracy. An evil right winger is treading in your sacred halls because of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzGKlOkQsxY
I mean, seriously, my spokesman was a manatee. No. I’m not making that up. So Sad Puppies 2: Rainbow Puppy Lighthouse The Huggening got my fans involved. Really, that was what we called it. Because writing is such a serious business.
Even last year’s winner, John Scalzi, has said that I did nothing different than what he and other authors have done before. And Scalzi and I seldom agree on anything. Tor.com wrote a scathing bit condemning my actions (and implied what a horrid writer I am). Of course, the very same website did the exact same thing explaining to Wheel of Time fans how the rules allowed them to nominate all 14 books as a single work and encouraged them to get involved. And a cursory Google search by my fans found dozens of other places where authors, reviewers, and bloggers had pushed their favorite works and tried to get fans involved.
We always hear about how fandom is supposed to be inclusive… Only apparently my fans are the wrong kind of fans. They don’t care about the liberal cause of the day. They don’t care about Social Justice. They like their books entertaining rather than preachy. They probably vote incorrectly. That sort of thing.
The last few days have been kind of awesome. I said that for the Hugo’s the writer’s politics were more important than the quality of their work. I was called a liar. Yet, within a couple of hours of the announcement there were multiple posts from the other side where groups of SJWs were strategizing how to make sure No Award beat me, and how to punish every other artist I recommended as well. Others were complaining that the rules needed to be changed to keep the undesirables out. All of this was while they proudly bragged how they had not read me, nor ever would… because tolerance. Hell if I know.
For those who have heard that I’m a terrible, undeserving writer whose mere presence is a mockery of their sacred system, but haven’t read any of my books, I’m actually pretty decent. Feel free to judge for yourself. For the record, my novel that is nominated, Warbound, is the final book in a trilogy that has sold extremely well, been translated into a bunch of other languages where it has also done well, gotten tons of positive reviews (out of the thousands of reviews for this series from across all the various different places I’m still at 4 ½ stars) won and been nominated for other awards, is one of the bestselling and most praised audiobook series there is, has won two Audies, is currently nominated for a third, and been a finalist for best novel in other countries where I don’t speak the language and can’t campaign, so there is that…
But everybody knows bad people can’t create art, says the side that keeps showering Roman Polanski with awards.
In closing, I would really like everybody who is a voting member of WorldCon to actually read the works in each category and vote based upon which ones they think are best. I fully expect Wheel of Time to win my category of best novel. It is a fourteen book epic written by two authors over twenty six years. Duh.
Personally, my goal has been reached. I got the thought police to show the world their pretty pink panties. 🙂
##
Long Version:
Now here are the behind the scenes details for whoever wants the whole story.
Bias and Motivation: In this business, most writers who are conservative, republican, libertarian, or devoutly religious have needed to keep their head down so as to not rock the boat and damage their careers. This damage comes from two directions, the publishing industry which is based in Manhattan and which is uniformly left wing, which will hurt careers out of spite, and also from the small, but extremely vocal left wing fans who swoop in to crush all dissent. I like to call them the Social Justice Warriors.
If right wing authors share their opinions, they will be openly chastised and attacked by very vocal, very angry people. Any deviation from the approved narrative is met with scorn, mockery, character assassination, and because the author doesn’t want to damage his career, he will usually fall back into line and shut his mouth. Basically if you step out, they form an angry mob and attack you until you roll over and apologize for something that shouldn’t be apologized for. Once you’re apologizing for your principles, they own you. They really don’t know what to do about people like me.
This squashing worked for them for years, which helped establish this vision that genre fic, much like Hollywood and the rest of media, was monolithically left. In reality people like me sell a ton of books. SJWs became a powerful voting block for the Hugo’s and pushed their favorite topic of the day as the best works. Many regular readers became turned off or annoyed. Genre fiction fans are as diverse as the rest of the country. As time has gone on, more and more of us creators have gotten pissed off and started being open about our beliefs. I sold machineguns and did gun rights lobbying before I got my first book published, so being in the closet about my politics was never an option for me.
My first realization about how messed up this system was dates back to when I was first starting out. One of the smaller voting blocks at WorldCon is made up of Baen fans. They got me a nomination for the Campbell award for best new author. I was brand new, hardly anybody except for them had heard of me. No problem… Except then people looked to see who these new guys were, and they discovered that I was a Mormon, who owned a gun store, and who’d done gun rights lobbying for the Republican party, and had been running a gun nut political blog for years… Whoops. The SJWs had a complete come apart and began warning each other what a terrible, awful, horrible, bad person I was. (most of them were downright gleeful to proclaim they would never read any books from someone so despicable). A reviewer declared that Larry Correia winning the Campbell would “end literature forever”. They hadn’t read my book. The funny thing is that I was actually much more polite to my detractors on the internet back then. Within 24 hours of the announcement I knew that I would be dead last. People who believed this stuff physically avoided me at WorldCon because they’d been told how I was unsafe.
But there is no bias.
After that I got back to the business of writing books. I’ve published ten more since then. I probably would have been content to ignore awards and just keep on cashing my royalty checks, but the SJWs had to just keep on annoying me, by mocking and insulting me and my friends. A writer can only be told they’re not a *real* writer (because of their badthink) so many times before we say screw it and hoist the black flag. If you’re curious how come my fans ponied up perfectly good money to get involved, it is because they’ve been watching this transpire in the comments here, on my FB page, and on Twitter for several years. They felt invested.
This SJW angry mob inquisition has been a gradual and relatively recent development in our culture, mostly as a result of the anonymous and instant internet. It isn’t just for writers, but the demand for a rigid conformity which is expected from the entire entertainment industry. There are many on the left who cannot tolerate opposing viewpoints or philosophies, so when they arise, they must be stomped down. Any deviation from conformity is met with immediate outrage. They have been doing it to people on my side for so long that it is simply expected by us. We are used to it.
However, it comes as a shock to reasonable people on the left when so emboldened the SJWs begin to do the same thing to people on their own side. Stephen Colbert says something they don’t like. Outrage. Patton Oswalt simply agrees with someone on my side. Outrage. Jonathan Ross might say something in the future. Outrage. Patrick Rothfuss says maybe fandom shouldn’t be so quick to outrage. Outrage. Wil Wheaton simply retweets Rothfuss. Outrage. So on and so forth. It doesn’t even matter that all of these people are staunch allies of the outrage crowd, the mob has been programmed to attack, so they do.
Responding to the insults: I wasn’t joking about Google searching my name and reading the comments. Holy moly, it really is enlightening what we’re dealing with here.
First off, I know it doesn’t matter what I say here, because we’ve already seen hundreds of time that they’ll ignore my actual words and just make up new ones for me.
The thing is everybody who knows me knows that I’m actually a nice guy and all that stuff is a bunch of crap. Yes, I am extremely rude to people who attack me on the internet. It saves us all time that way. Six years of this has worn away my thin veneer of civility. Don’t show up, call me a racist teabagger, and then expect reasoned discourse. We all know where we are going to end up eventually, so why not skip all that passive aggressive foreplay and get down to where we’re going to end up anyway, with you making up stuff, and me kicking your ass.
Many of my writer friends who’ve had the option of keeping their heads down and their beliefs secret think that I’m crazy to be so public. I have a response ready for them, I usually pick out whatever topic it is that I know they personally feel very strongly about, but which goes against the accepted group think of the Social Justice Warriors and ask them to go write a blog post sharing their honest beliefs, and then see what happens. Of course, none of them ever take me up on it, because they know that the caring and tolerant crowd would immediately and blindly lash out.
The funny thing about the misogyny, racism, and homophobic allegations, is that I was a self-defense instructor for the better part of a decade and certified literally thousands of people to carry concealed firearms. I taught women, minorities, homosexuals, didn’t matter, often on my own dime, all because I think people who would try to drag anyone to death behind a pickup truck will have a difficult time doing so after they have a pair of hollow points placed into their chest cavity at high speed. Unlike the SJWs, I don’t just pay lip service to empowerment.
Since I’m a prolific political blogger, with thousands of posts to pick through, you’d think these people would have some actual example of where I’d been racist, homophobic, or misogynist, but they don’t. Go figure. In reality, all of us right wingers simply know that the outrage crowd attacking us is so boringly predictable that we have a checklist ready to go for them: https://monsterhunternation.com/2013/09/20/the-internet-arguing-checklist/
Politically, I’m more of a libertarian than anything. Of all the things I’ve been called over the last few days, the most hurtful thing said was that I was a NeoCon who believed in big government welfare (that’s a bit more offensive than the woman who insinuated I’m a wife beater). If they’re looking for homophobia on my blog, they’re always sad when they discover that I’m not against gay marriage, mostly because I’m far more frightened of the overreaching federal government telling people what to do than I am of gay cooties. The angry privileged white man bit is kind of funny since legally I’m not white and I grew up in a poor immigrant community. But facts should never get in the way of a good narrative.
It is kind of sad that some republicans getting nominated is far more controversial than actual communists and socialists winning. Last time I looked those particular philosophies had killed over a hundred million people over the last hundred years, but there’s absolutely no bias in the awards…
Allegations of fraud: I also had another goal, which I never shared publically during my campaigning. I had heard many allegations of fraud in the nomination process from other authors. Tossed votes, far lower than expected counts, that sort of thing. I am a full time author now, but I am a retired auditor. I love looking for fraud. I do spreadsheets and statistical analysis for fun. So I wanted to see if votes were being tossed. When Sad Puppies 1 launched I kept track of who said they were voting, kept a tally, and then kept their emails so if necessary I could ask for their registration receipts. My suggested slate in other categories would help provide check figures in the smaller categories. (But for the record, everything I suggested was something that I read, enjoyed, and thought was of superior quality and deserving of an award).
The final numbers for last year were within the expected deviation. No red flags. LonCon has struck me as perfectly honest in my dealings with them. So I’m happy to say that I see no evidence of dishonesty in the nominating process. That is excellent.
So me being accused of making up fake voters is kind of funny since you can go through my blog and Facebook comments and see all the real live genre fiction fans I’ve been collecting.
Applying a little critical thinking to this (something Social Justice Warriors struggle with) I’m a popular author. I have more daily blog readers than the total attendance of WorldCon. And not only that, my fans aren’t casual, they are hardcore. I just did a Kickstarter and sold over a hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise related to one of my book series. (still waiting on those last 70 coins, dang it, stupid broken molds!). That’s not a typo, over $100,000 of merchandise on one project in a month… My last Kickstarter before that did $85,000. So what’s more likely, my fans are hard core and have enough disposal income to drop $40 to make a point to an annoying group of people who despises my fans, or that I spent thousands of dollars of my own money to make up imaginary relatives?
Please, keep in mind, my fan base is the same group that routinely is able to sway the entire ranking system of the biggest online book retailer in the world. Once a month, I pick a book, Book Bomb it, and my fans move it onto the Amazon bestseller lists. I’d say that the evidence suggests that A. I’ve got fans. B. They like books. C. Many of them have money.
I find it fascinating that many people on the left end of the spectrum actually believe that their beliefs are the norm among genre fiction readers. They’ve created an echo chamber to validate each other. They’ve taken over SFWA and dominate the conversation there. They’re right and good and any who disagree are evil and bad. They formed a powerful voting block in the most prestigious awards and once a year they could reinforce just how brilliant and important they are by nominating their friends to the various categories. In the last Sad Puppies post’s comments my fans collected a whole bunch of the SJW’s tweets demonstrating this mindset, where conservatives are these anti-science flyover country barbarians who are dying off… Yet, they’re totally oblivious to the fact that guys like me sell a lot of books because there is a big market out there who is tired of being preached at about the SJW cause of the day, and just wants to enjoy their fiction again. They can’t wrap their brains around the fact that people like me are more popular than they are out in the world.
Storytellers win where it counts, BOOK SALES. The SJW contingent wins awards. If the barbarians start taking awards from them they’ll have nothing left.
No wonder they are so angry.
EDIT: I must add the best new bit of character assassination… Larry Correia’s Sad Puppies was where he threatened to kill puppies if his fans didn’t vote. 😀
The Controversial Slate: For the record, I’m only the second most hated man who got a nomination. The most despised is Vox Day by far, however, I’m the one who suggested him to my fans who were participating in Sad Puppies 2. So if he’s their devil, I’m the antichrist.
Let’s back up. The reason Vox is so hated is that he is the only person ever kicked out of SFWA. He makes me look cuddly and diplomatic. He was expelled from SFWA because the powers that be decided he was a racist, in fact, it was so obvious that he was racist that it only took a thirty page thesis explaining how stuff he said was actually racist, including the leadership of SFWA searching through the vile cesspool that is Stormfront until they found some nazi skin head who used similar words, and then holding him accountable for things that posters said in his blog comments (us right wing bloggers don’t believe in censorship so we don’t “manage” or “massage” our comments like they do) then they kicked him out for misusing their Twitter account.
Basically, he called Nora Jesmin an “ignorant half-savage” and that pissed everybody off. See, Nora, is a beloved libprog activist and Social Justice Warrior, and all the reports of her victimization at the hands of the villainous Vox usually leave out the parts where she’d been hurling personal insults at him for years. Myself? I thought that comment might be a bit over the line, but then again, Google search my name and see what the SJW’s have been calling me for the last few days. It is way worse that ignorant or savage, and I think I’m darker skinned than K. Tempest Bradford. I’ve yet to see any SJWs condemning those comments about me. Tolerance is a one way street with them.
I didn’t really know the guy that well before he started pissing so many people off, but having been character assassinated myself, I’ve learned never to take the internet’s word about somebody’s character. Having actually talked with, and then gotten into long arguments and debates with Vox, he is a contrarian, can be a jerk is extremely opinionated, but I honestly don’t think he’s a racist (He’s also not a white guy, but most of the people attacking him don’t know that). We’ve had some long, heated debates on different subjects now, but since I’m not a panty twisted liberal, I can handle differing beliefs.
We disagree about a lot. I disagree with him on some fundamental philosophy. His “rabid hateful” views on homosexuality match about a third of America, most staunch Catholics, and he’s far more moderate on the issue than any devout Muslim or average European villager. So I disagree with him, but he’s not the out there whackadoo his detractors make him out to be, but then again, these same people say I want to drag gays to death behind my truck, so take the hate with a grain of salt. He thinks I’m nuts on several topics, but the dude is smart, and he can write. As for the people saying he “bought” the awards… Holy moly, you’ve got no idea what his day job is. If the man wanted to simply buy votes, he’d be up for everything from Best Novel to Motor Trend Car of the Year.
So when I was putting together my slate and looking for ideas, I remembered his novelette that I read earlier that year. I was surprised by how good it was. I found it to be a really good story (it is actually about love and friendship, with a moral philosophy based on Thomas Aquinas, so not really what you’d expect from such a supposed hatemonger of hatey-hate). I plugged it to my fans earlier this year, which meant that a lot of them had read it as well. To be fair, it was only my second favorite work I read of that size this year, but that’s a tough one because I believe that Brad Torgersen is the best new sci-fi writer around. So I threw them both on the slate.
Yes, I will totally admit that I knew this would spur additional outrage. And oh, how I was proven right. His existence offends them. They aren’t going to read his work. They’re proud to admit it. In the spirit of the awards, a certain Tor editor—who has no problem marching with communists—is pushing for everyone to automatically vote No Award over Vox. Stay classy, noble Social Justice Warrior, but once again, there’s no bias.
The thing is, even if what these people say about Vox is true,(and I personally think it is as grossly exaggerated as anything else these people decide to attack) what they’re declaring is that assholes can’t make good art… Well, the entire history of art would like to disagree with you. Truly brilliant works of art have been created by people who are bat shit crazy. So now that it is nominated, how about you goose stepping morons try reading books instead of burning them?
The SJW contingent isn’t just outraged that these vile hatemongers are on there, but since I’m popular and I riled up a whole bunch of normally uninvolved fans, most of the stuff I suggested also wound up on there too. My other nomination for best novel was for Sarah Hoyt’s (a Latino immigrant woman) story with a gay male as its main PoV character and hero… It checks all their boxes! Oh, but wait… Sarah’s a libertarian and I only nominated A Few Good Men because it was a really good book and not for social justice. Only not as many of my fans had read that one yet, so it didn’t make the list. So much for that monolithic group think thing we’re supposed to have going on over here.
Normally, media tie in fiction, as in books relating to games, movies, etc. is considered contemptible by the WorldCon voters. Tie in writers are looked down on and sneered at by the literati. You’ve got writers who’ve written hundreds of books, like Anderson, Stackpole, or Zahn, with some of them being brilliant, but it would be a cold day in hell before some media tie in fiction got any respect at WorldCon. In any normal year a work of tie in fiction getting a nomination would be extremely controversial. This year it doesn’t even make a blip on the radar.
Peter David writes Star Trek novels, comic books, and other things. I saw a post from him lamenting how sad it was that a racist got on the ballot but tie in fiction can’t… Little did he realize that my slate pushed the excellent Butcher of Khardov by Dan Wells, which is Warmachine tie in fiction, and got it a nomination for Best Novella. As far as I’m aware, in the history of the Hugos this has never happened before… So you’re welcome, Peter. My “wrong kind of fans” broke new ground for you on the very same slate.
It has made me sad to see Dan Wells getting caught up in their hate. Dan is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and he’s a political moderate. I nominated Butcher because it is excellent. It is a story about a homicidal maniac that made me tear up at the end. And now the same people who despise me without having ever read my fiction are conspiring against this brilliant, creative, artist simply for the crime of being recommended by a bad person like me.
But there’s no bias…
I thought it was interesting that the Fanzine category, which is normally dominated by the same handful of groups year after year, taking turns giving each other the Hugo, is actually totally shaken up this year with new nominees… Because last year I demonstrated what happened when a creator simply asked their fans to get involved, so people did. And those little categories can be swayed by a couple dozen votes. Of course, those old Fanzines with their closets full of Hugos simply love me now. 🙂
Toni Weisskopf is one of the most successful and prolific editors in publishing. She’s edited some of the most successful authors in genre fiction, discovered tons of new talent, and runs one of the biggest sci-fi publishing houses in the country… Everybody in the industry knows Toni. The woman is brilliant. Yet did you know that she’d never gotten a Hugo nomination until I launched Sad Puppies? Back during Sad Puppies, some Fanzine (that had like 30 Hugo nominations) was offended by the uncouth barbarity of me asking my people (the wrong kind of fans) to get involved, but even they had to admit that Toni Weisskopf deserved a Hugo.
Meanwhile, the Tor editor who is cool with his followers organizing to vote No Award against the barbaric interlopers? Ten nominations. But there is absolutely no bias in the awards.
I actually got Marko Kloos nominated for the Campbell as well, but it turned out he had his first pro sale in 2011 so he was ineligible. I nominated him because Terms of Enlistment was a really good debut novel. So of my slate, I only missed a single category.
And as they scream and rail against me, this is what my fans accomplished while mildly amused and a little annoyed. Keep attacking us with crazy accusations and maybe I’ll do this again next year, only with more manatees.
Actually reading the books. Crazy idea, I know. The people warning others not to read the nominated works because of badthink. Good. They’re simply demonstrating that they are the small minded, bigoted, control freak, censorship loving, statists I accused them of being.
Now for everybody else who isn’t a jerk, I would encourage you to read the works for yourself and rank them accordingly.
Brandon Sanderson posted about this. Most of the WorldCon voters really want the Hugo to be about quality and art more than politics, and they take their voting very seriously. I agree with him. His fans are being attacked in some quarters as well because they are outsiders. I thought his response to this was very well reasoned. Brandon is a class act. I look forward to his inevitable mud stomping of me and the other competitors.
I actually had a Stross novel on my nightstand to be read when the announcements were made. I’ve read Mira Grant and think she’s a solid writer. I’d encourage anybody who signed up because of Sad Puppies to read and vote based upon the quality of the work.
Tor owes me. Now, in any normal year, the entire fourteen book series of the Wheel of Time, written over 26 years, by two different authors being nominated as “best novel” would be by far the most controversial thing about the Hugos. Instead most of the outragers are spending their energy praying Vox gets cancer.
You are welcome, Tor. Now please go down to Tor.com and tell some of your idiot bloggers to at least try and get their facts straight before they make shit up about me. And to that one junior editor who supposedly could only make it through the first 20 pages of Hard Magic, part of being an editor is finding sellable talent, and I’ve sold the hell out of this series in multiple countries now, so you must really suck at your job.
The rules allow WoT to be considered a novel, so it is there. I’d ask readers to judge the works accordingly. If you love the WoT, vote for it. But please, actually read some of it and don’t vote for it simply because Rand was awesome when you were in middle school. It is bad enough to be outnumbered 27 pages to one, but none of us can compete with 12 year old you’s nostalgia.
That said, my money is on Brandon. 🙂
The Actual Awards. To the morons who keep talking about how they wouldn’t “feel safe” if I attended WorldCon, you may untwist your panties. I’m not going. That’s the same weekend as GenCon, which is actually fun (and has an excellent writing track by the way). If I’m going to go all the way to England, it is going to be to play tourist around a beautiful country, not sit around being lectured on the dangers of cismale gendernormative fascism and neocolonial patriarchy.
And seriously, when you “feel unsafe” in real life you usually end up calling somebody like my average fan to come save you, so quit the drama queen act. It is annoying as hell.
I don’t expect to win anything, and don’t really care. I got my trophy as soon as the Social Justice Warrior contingent demonstrated to the world that they’re a bunch of hypocritical little fascists.
bravo. well said
Double bravo!
Dang…
I just recently started reading your books (Monster Hunter Intl) and had no idea of your political viewpoint. Having read up on this ‘controversy’ and your incredibly literate column above, I think I’m going to part with some more of my hard-earned cash and read more of you. And the authors you’ve recommended.
Congrats to everyone involved both left and right for being complete babies And injecting politics into a place it has no place being. Can you nut jobs (both Left & Right) sling mud in some other part of town ,
I’m guessing you missed the part where the left was already there. We just showed up for once.
I have come to this controversy late. All the comments I have read have been bashing the left and so called social justice warriors. Can any one provide links to sites from the left that demonstrate they were backing slates or bashing writers based on ideology. I figure I am only seeing half the story but in really don’t like the half I am seeing. Who do people classify as SJW anyway.
Its standard practice by the left. Equality based on diversity demands the process be controlled. For the left NOT to vote based on ideology would be rare.
“Its standard practice by the left.”: Proof by assertion. Arik asked for actual links. See if you can come up with something that might come close to WP:RS.
You’ll likely find on this blog mostly comments that bash the Left fascists. If you want to find posts that claim Correia, Beale et al are racists and fascists who conspired to take over the Hugos, there are plenty of sites that do that. Unlike here, most of them do not allow for contrary views – if they allow a response at all, it has to be supportive or your post will be removed and you’ll be threatened with a permanent ban. I know this to be a fact, because it happened to me on Board Game Geek when I criticized claims that Beale was a racist and that Glenn Rahman was also a racist for wanting to republish Divine Right with his help.
SJW or “social justice warrior” is a misnomer. These people are neither social nor just, and their idea of “warfare” is to slink in the shadows like chimps and throw their feces at people who displease them in some fashion. I prefer the terms “Left fascist” or “red munchkin” which are much more descriptive and accurate. “Tankie” will also do in a pinch.
What are they? They are heirs to the old commissars of Bolshevism and of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, self-appointed gauleiters who make it their business to make or break people based on their adherence to a specific Left fascist political orthodoxy. They are people who promote a certain world view “by any means necessary,” using all sorts of nasty tricks against anyone who opposes them. In China, they are the sort of people who came up with the idea of selling the organs of Falun Gong prisoners for profit. In the US the scope of their powers is much more limited (for now), so they have to confine their actions to random riots and violent confrontations with the police. They also try to infiltrate different sub-cultures in an attempt to take them over, mainly so as to decide who gets hired and fired, who gets awards and who gets punished, etc. They’re especially prevalent in US academia. Go look up the Bret Weinstein controversy at Evergreen State College for these people in action.
The Left fascists have been there for at least half a century now. Lovecraft was complaining about Bolshevik tactics like this in 1919.
” To the morons who keep talking about how they wouldn’t “feel safe” if I attended WorldCon, you may untwist your panties. I’m not going. ”
OK, but do go next year and invite the true hardcore MHI fans to the shindig. We will dress up like we were going to a Monster Hunter convention in Vegas.
I would absolutely be down for that. Perhaps we should do something visibly hateful, like wear T-Shirts that were sold where most of the proceeds went to the wounded warrior project or something similar.
You know, just another pebble for their shoes.
I want to see T-shirts with “International Minion of Hate” on the front and a cartoon of a cowering snowflake about to be destroyed by a huge dude (or a – ahem – buoyant woman) with a massive flame-thrower.
“Hail Lobster” tees would do nicely, I’d think.
How about “International Minions of Hate” over the picture of a cute puppy with “saving the world from puppy related sadness since 2013”
Wounded Warrior charity is a scam. 60% goes to administrative costs, a lot goes to running adds, and the money left over for charity s donated to other charities which then take their administrative and advertising cuts.
According to the Better Business Bureau, Wounded Warrior Project financial information for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2011:
Uses of Funds as a % of Total Expenses
Programs: 83% Fund Raising: 13% Administrative: 4%
Total income $123,869,345
Program expenses $89,466,336
Fund raising expenses 13,883,984
Administrative expenses 4,727,106
Total expenses $108,077,426
Income in Excess of Expenses 15,791,919
Beginning net assets 14,565,525
Ending net assets 30,357,444
Total liabilities 6,035,145
Total assets $36,392,589
Programs:
Alumni association 19,367,642
Soldier ride 14,707,505
Combat stress recovery 13,770,349
Family support services 8,676,894
Physical health and rehabilitation 6,743,782
Benefits service 6,016,023
TRACK 4,447,842
Warriors to work 4,180,581
WWP packs 2,871,334
International support 2,761,447
Warriors speak 1,853,265
Transition training academy 1,780,277
Peer mentoring 1,233,197
Campus services 1,056,198
Total Program Expenses: $89,466,336
For everyone’s future reference, the BBB charity ratings are extremely useful in discovering what is an ethical charity and what’s a scam. WWP ranks pretty high.
(Hope the spacing holds up after I post.)
I use Charity Navigator for that. They have the ’12 fiscal year report up for the Wounded Warrior Project.
Program Expenses – 57.9%
Administrative Expenses 5.6%
Fundraising Expenses 36.3%
Fundraising Efficiency $0.23
Primary Revenue Growth 78.6%
Program Expenses Growth 62.9%
Working Capital Ratio (years) 0.93
OMG that would be AWESOME. I’m totally dressing up like a “sexy” internet troll. 😀
>sexy internet troll
So, something like Oderus Urungus, but with less codpiece and more exposure?
“Sexy internet troll.” I’m now having visions of Melvin the Troll from MHI wearing lingerie. Eek. I did not need that.
*shudders*
I would just like to say, that MHI is now to blame for far to many ‘Internet Troll’ appearances in my Shadowrun games. Damn you!
🙂
I’m fairly sure ‘Internet Troll webcam’ will break every players head.
muwahaha.
Well since Worldcon is in Spokane next year there’s no excuse for missing it!!
Oh yeah? *starts planning the road trip*
Really? I served my mission up there. Not sure this is a good time for me to go back, though.
On another note, Larry should let it be known that he’s attending the next one. It would probably keep some of the SJW crowd from attending (given how the guy is a ticking time bomb and all *cough* ), which would further depress the votes for their “message before enjoyment” tomes.
😛
They’ve be forced to drive their mobility scooters into the SAFE AREA whenever I came around.
Washington is a fairly “free” state when it comes to firearms.
I’d imagine a large influx of Monster Hunter types would have enough hardware to suppress any problems that would arise.
Safest WorldCon *EVER*.
Think of it: Hundreds of MHN members, wandering the Worldcon. Each their very own walking “trigger warning”.
I see SJWs vaporlocking left and right.. . .
Hmmm…I have relatives in Spokane – one of which was an Olympic track & field coach and “got” to meet Putin at the Moscow Olympics when Vlad was a young KGB agent.
Hour and a half from my house, might have to be the first con I ever attend. 🙂
I know you’ve given up on the idea of winning. But wouldn’t it be amazinng if you did?
Honestly, every author who gets any amount of success usually earns himself a few jealous enemies. Anyone nominated for any prestigious award has people who resent him. But you have gotten the brunt of something bigger than that. For some reason, it’s as though a law was passed exempting you from legal protections against slander and hate.
I’ve got to say I’m seeing real proof of liberal bias in the publishing community, and I wish more people would speak up about it.
There’s a point in that. If you’re feeling really vindictive, Larry, you might want to talk to a lawyer–some of the stuff directed at you might rise to the level of being actionable.
Keep twisting panties, Larry. You seem to be ticking off all the reight people.
“You seem to be ticking off all the reight people.”
I think you meant to type “reich” people. (snicker)
I was reading through this blog post http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/015838.html
(where many are planning how they will respond to both the sad puppy slate and the Wheel of Time nomination)
and saw this interesting rule brought up
* That voting behavior may result in a situation where a number of the down-ballot races fall afoul of Section 3.11.2 of the WSFS Constitution, which says that no award will be given in a particular category if the total number of valid ballots cast in that category is less than 25% of the total number of final award ballots received.
It would be comical if a lot of new voters just voted for the sad puppy slate and not for any other works, thus relegating ALL nominees in the down ballot categories to loser status. The fear they were expressing was regarding the new, first-time Wheel of Time voters. If the sad puppy brigade joined that contingent, it might spell disaster for this years ballot.
The only downside is that rabbit tears become less valuable because there will be a huge surplus this year.
Leatherwing, implying that the Puppy Brigade voters should try to sabotage voting so that “the down-ballot categories” all get No Award would leave you guilty of the same sort of voting on politics rather than on the quality of the works which Mr. Correia attributes to the “SJW crowd”.
As a bookseller who’s been a fan since before “Star Wars”, and attending WorldCons off and on since 1980, I believe Mr. Correia overestimates the power and desire of liberal fans to blacklist conservative writers. For every vehemently-outspoken “liberal” fan, there’s a conservative/libertarian fan blogging against “P.C. censorship”. David Weber and John Ringo aren’t being kept off the shelves by the supposedly monolithically-liberal New York publishing industry (much of which is owned by decidedly ANTI-liberal corporations like Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp). I’m based in a fairly liberal part of the Pacific Northwest, and my customers are just as likely to buy those authors’ books (and Mr. Correia’s “Monster Hunters”) as N.K. Jemisin’s latest.
Of the commentary I’ve read so far on this issue, just about all seems to agree that, whatever we feel about an author’s politics, voting for or against personalities rather than works would be wrong. I look forward to getting my Hugo packet, and seeing for myself whether I agree with any of the “Sad Puppy” choices; since I’m not able to go to London, I’ll probably have a lot more time to finish reading the nominees this year.
Fair enough. The last time the Bolsheviks tried this sort of thing, their literary field became a laughing stock. Meanwhile the public went for banned books almost exclusively. The same seems to be going on in communist China now, particularly on social media. I doubt the Left fascists trying to dominate science fiction in the West today will manage any better, regardless of their propaganda saturation quotient.
People have said Stephen King and J.K. Rowling aren’t real writers as well. I’ve seen many times over the years where they slam King on how horrible of a writer he is.
Book critic Harold Bloom said that Stephen King was “an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.” He went on to say about J.K. Rowling “that [her] prose style, heavy on cliche, makes no demands upon her readers….How to read Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone? Why, very quickly, to begin with, perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do. Is there any redeeming education use to Rowling?….Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? Yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.”
People read fiction to be entertained. Readers vote with their wallets. I’d say that Mr. Bloom is an idiot. Tell them all to go STFU, keep writing entertaining stuff we (the readers) like and cash your checks. Would you rather have an award or a fat bank account? I know which I’d prefer. Numbers talk. Bullshit walks.
Keep doing your thing, Larry. We got your back.
While I agree with your basic point, I find your examples unfortunate. I suspect Bloom is right (for once) about Rowlings.
Kent (The Bold), I’m going to disagree. I’ve read the books, they’re light reading, no huge surprises, and not written as adult books. She’s not going to unseat Shakespeare, by any means. But she’s hardly worthy of such condemnation and contempt as Bloom trots out. I’ve had occasion to read much, much worse. (I’ve been in more than one spot where reading material was thin on the ground, it’s why I’ve read the Potter series.)
But, more importantly, she tempted so many kids into reading, new readers who have gone on to read more, bigger and better. Many kids who were unlikely to ruffle a page without dire threat, otherwise. For that alone she deserves some recognition.
I’ve written about the disdain the “literati” types have for popular fiction and how very misplaced it is. To be popular, writing must touch something in the heart of a wide swath of people. One might dismiss that “something” as a cheap thrill, but it is there and it is real.
I may not like Stephen King’s books (I managed to get through one. One.) but there’s no denying that he can write stuff that grabs a lot of people. And it’s not just fadish “flash in the pan” stuff, but things that keep selling, year after year.
In Star Trek IV, there’s a line that was played for laughs, where Kirk mentions “the literature of the period” and names “The Novels of Harold Robbings, the collected works of Jacqueline Suzanne” to which Spock replies “The giants.”
It was played for laughs but there’s could be a lot of truth in it.
http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2013/11/popular-fiction-ii.html
I voted for you for two reasons:
1) Warbound was awesome and I’ve reread it twice (and listened to it once) since it came out. It deserves recognition. And an HBO miniseries.
2) I knew if you got nominated there would be dozens of popcorn worthy fiskings, Twitter fights, and awesome blog posts. And I already bought an economy pack of popcorn.
So, I guess that means I’m one of your hateful hatey hate minions.
Anyone know where the next World Con is being held?
Spokane in 2015, I think. I went to the last two, in San Antonio and Chicago, but I don’t think I’ll be attending them going forward unless they’re in the neighborhood.
Spokane.
And well said, Larry!
Mr Correia, no matter what I think of your politics or the way you express them, I love your books with a passion and believe you deserve a genuine chance at a Hugo. I wish you luck.
All that being said, and utterly fascinating and all, I hope you’ll keep writing so I can keep reading. I’m not a “fan” or part of “fandom” but I do like to read your work. Thanks for getting it out of your head and onto paper where I can more easily get to it… 🙂
Seen on Twitter: “For guy who calls himself libertarian he has a remarkably fascist ego.” Also, someone is under the impression his fans call themselves Sad Puppies. Comprehension fail reading basic?
SJW isn’t about fact. It’s all about feeling and correct thinking. If for any reason you deviate from the CURRENT WISDOM, you are a heretic and must be torched. Many current and former SJW’ers are finding that out now if they even consider to question the CURRENT WISDOM.
Remember: None Are So Blind As Those Who Refuse To See.
WTF is a “fascist ego”? I’m betting he/she/it simply wanted to use the word fascist so they could be one of the cool kids.
It does seem that those most like to use the word “fascist” are those least able to correctly define it.
“Fascist ego”: Failure to submerge one’s will to that of the Collective. Like John Adams, Reverend Wilberforce, Fredrick Douglass (bonus points for escaping from Democrats!), and that guy in Tiananmen Square.
@Lemming:
Those most likely to use the word “fascist” are those most likely to exemplify it.
First you turn your ego and your brothers’ egos into a bunch of sticks. Then your dad ties them together. Then you all jump up and down on them and try to break them, and fail, because of materials engineering.
And then some jerk from Italy comes and steals your dad’s perfectly good object lesson about sticking together with your bratty brothers, and names his thug political party after it — because stealing is what leftists and socialists do.
I know what a fascist asshole is, but a fascist ego is a new one to me.
An ego that likes knee high leather boots, marching, and holding one hand outstretched just a little too much?
Inigo Montoya would be most cross if he had to read Twitter.
“You keep using so MANY words that do NOT mean what you think they mean! Sheesh!”
Wait you say the W.o.T. has finally been completed?! Wow I gave up on it around book five IIRC.
I buy books I like to read, I’ve never made it through War and Peace a work that is called great literature, because it was boring.
It is always interesting how those who claim to be the most inclusive are the ones who are the first to attack those who don’t believe the way they do!
You know why Robert Jordan died, don’t you? It was because God decided that, one way or another, WoT was finally going to be finished.
/duck
Dude. Party foul.
Funny, though.
ROFLMAO!!
I think I read to about book five, too. I stopped reading, not because they weren’t fun anymore, but because I could “see” how various threads ought to be coming together, but they were continuing to go apart and I knew it wasn’t ever going to be done. (Now that it is, I may read it again, if I ever have a month of free time.)
WoT is why I haven’t read more than the first Game of Thrones book… I made a vow not to read incomplete series after WoT, and I didn’t realize until after I’d read GoT that there were more than three… or I wouldn’t have even read the one.
I think somebody ought to do a cartoon of all the WoT fans dead in the desert of Book 5. Because it seems like that’s where we all gave up.
It’s a shame if anyone stopped at book 5, because the scene at the end of book 6 was almost awesome enough in its day to justify the dragging parts of the earlier books. Nowadays, though, if you want a good fantasy action scene just read a Grimnoir book.
Larry, I have never read any of your books. But now I have to! Keep up the good work!
Clap Clap Clap.
Yup, what a fucking hero. He couldn’t possibly be a racist, this is proof. Again treating racism like something you have to prove you aren’t infected with. Tell me more about how you don’t beat your wife.
Oh you forgot to quote the part where he repeated a racial slur then claimed it was all cool because it was in a bigger argument. Here I will fix that for you.
“Basically, he called Nora Jesmin an “ignorant half-savage” and that pissed everybody off. See, Nora, is a beloved libprog activist and Social Justice Warrior, and all the reports of her victimization at the hands of the villainous Vox usually leave out the parts where she’d been hurling personal insults at him for years. Myself? I thought that comment might be a bit over the line, but then again, Google search my name and see what the SJW’s have been calling me for the last few days.”
Racism isn’t really racism when people are calling other people names.
What is the racial slur?
The PC have had a sudden spell of incontinence. Although they write tens of thousands of words about hate-speech, racism, sexism, and gender expression phobias, they don’t actually have a neutral definition for those things that might work the same way law does.
For example, the PC love to mumble on about what Day said about Jemisin. I say “compared to what?” Somehow it escapes them that Jemisin has said far worse things far more often. In referring to all white people somehow being on the same page throughout history, what does it sound like when someone writes “…an ingenious system allowing it to dominate most of the planet. (Diabolical… but ingenious.)”
What does it sound like when Jemisin writes “Because the ‘fantasy’ most EF (epic fantasy) delivers is of white male power & centrality, as much as dragons. That *is* conservativism, now.”
What does it sound like when SFWA member, NY Times best-selling author and writer for Marvel Comics Marjorie Liu echoes that tacit racial conspiracy by writing “White male privilege cares ONLY about white male privilege, and there is no goal except maintaining that position of power.”
What is it when one-time Nebula-nominee Kate Elliott writes “It is understood that the law is for the benefit of white people”
What is it when Hugo-nominee Aliette de Bodard writes “There is something fundamentally, quintessentially ‘white male’ about most popular fantasies, which isn’t surprising because they’re being written by white men.”
How about Hugo nominee Foz Meadows: “…white patriarchy. …man, does it get into everything” and “Old white guys. What are [sic] going to do with them?”
How about Charles Stross on the Boston bombing before the suspects were ID’d: “my money is on crazy white guys with a political axe to grind: the provisional wing of the Tea Party.”
Just replace key words in those quotes with “black” or “Jew” and tell me what you see. The fact is I can supply quotes like that in multiples from no less than a dozen of this year’s Hugo nominees on the side of so-called “social justice.” In return, the PC give us Vox Day… again, and again and again. There’s a reason for that: the PC don’t have anything else to give. Certainly nothing that would equal their own torrent of racial, heterophobic and sexist filth.
Our loving and compassionate social justice warriors don’t have squat when it comes to quotes that could come anywhere near the numbers of individuals from right in the heart of SFF’s institutions I can provide.
Wow, Kate Elliott said that? I’m disappointed. From having read a lot of her stuff, I kinda figured she was capable of better reasoning than that.
I’ve kind of gotten the impression that the SJWs believe White People (especially White Males) are the Adeptes Astartes and White Privilege is the God-Emperor of Mankind. It’s literally undefeatable!!!
I’ve got quotes from Elliott you wouldn’t believe. I scarcely believe them myself. Her Twitter feed in the No. 1 source of PC entertainment in SFF; and its daily. You don’t even have to research her feed – just open it up.
Undefeatable you say? Pshaw!!!
All i gotta say is….
WAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
@Fail: Oh no. I don’t think I want to, it’ll ruin my next rereading of the Crossroads trilogy. 🙁
@Bubbasrelm: See but they’re good little citizens of the Imperium that way! They may hate THE EMPRAH but they’ve totally bought into the state myth of his divinity! Versus actually not giving a damn, like the Tau or somethin’.
I’ll grant you they are good little citizens, but does that make Larry an ork? You know, heavily armed, wandering the universe looking for a good fight?
Hi Larry! I find this a very enlightening controversy, and I dare say that those who criticize you are just bigoted idiots! See? I’m French, I consider myself a moderate left-winger! and, Brandon Sanderson and yourself are the authors I’m an absolute fan of! Whenever one of you publishes something I have to buy the book immediately and dive into it, emerging only when the book is over. The first book I read from you is “hard magic” and I chose it for one reason only: I loved the pitch! And, naturally, I loved the book and then I had to endeavor your other books and I loved them… what I don’t understand about this whole controversy and where I think that SJW’s are idiots is that I don’t see anything political about your books. You just write nice and entertaining stories! I don’t see anything preachy about you, on the contrary. And, that’s all I’m asking of a book: to be entertaining with characters we can identify ourselves with. Besides, if we take this approach further, and if we were to view every fantasy or sci-fi work in a political light,most of them strike me as “conservative”. 90% of heroic fantasy books take place in a monarchy for example, (which, for French people is the ultimate symbol of conservatism as we built our nation on the decapitation of a king of ours). So, does it mean that heroic fantasy should be denied the right to a Hugo? Of course not! but that proves one thing, they don’t judge an author, they judge a person. I don’t care about the setting as, what matters is how entertaining and well-written the book is. These bigots prefer to lynch somebody who does not share their political views rather than read books. In a fair world, voters should judge an author, and not a man they don’t even know…. I don’t know you as man, but I think I know you as an author! And, that is all what matters to me and all what will make me read your future books. the French audience deserves to know you anyway, and I will hope you’ll be translated into French one day (if that’s not already done).
Aymeric –
“the French audience deserves to know you anyway, and I will hope you’ll be translated into French one day (if that’s not already done).”
Check the blog post prior to this one. It’s the cover art for the French edition of Warbound.
[T]he French audience deserves to know you anyway, and I will hope you’ll be translated into French one day (if that’s not already done).
It has been done: a French translation of Hard Magic is available here. Tell your friends!
One thing: in America, “conservative” actually means classic liberal – minimal government, free market, focus on individual freedom. These are America’s traditional values and the Constitution is designed to prevent government tyranny. It has nothing to do with supporting a king – quite the contrary, we’re proud of severing ties with a monarchy.
What Americans call “liberal” is what the rest of the world calls “socialist,” btw. And socialism, to me, is just another form of feudalism – as shown in “Animal Farm.”
So one could argue that an American conservative is a European liberal, and an American liberal is a European fascist. 🙂
As another non-American fan, I second what Laurie says. Liberal in Europe is a right-winger economically, as their aim is to liberalize the economy, which means less government intrusion in and control over it.
This post was everything I hoped for and more. They really don’t realize that you already won.
Everything is proceeding as Larry has foreseen. 😀
Thanks. I needed that image of Larry Correia in Sith regalia from SWTOR in my head.
It’s not pretty:
😮
I can see it, the mask covers up the goatee 🙂 http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2013/04/Darth-Malgus-Sixth-Scale-Preview.jpg
I was thinking more along the lines of the Sith you run into on Quesh for the Republic planet quest. Tried to link to it, but maybe there’s a filter. Ah well.
Ahhh, I see. I don’t think I’ve ever had the patience to spend much time on Quesh. The planet’s too orange. I always just did the quick class quest and whatever was nearby and got out.
Halfway through reading this post, I said screw it and decided to turn internet arguing into a game of Bingo.
When they get desperate, disrupt their arguments by posting “BINGO!” Show the SJWs that you could set a clock to their arguments! And when you’re target of their ire, give them a sporting chance by taking a shot every time you check one off!
http://tinyurl.com/lxdgzbj
Sorry for using a tinyurl, but it’s a long, long url. =P
Are you trying to kill people through alcohol poisoning?! You evil, hatey hate-minion, you…!
Heck…that’s a great idea! Especially when “arguing” with the gun control bigots.
You’ll note Markely’s Law in there.
I originally had “Gun show loophole” and “Ninety percent of gun owners”, but I decided to focus on the Sci-Fi literati instead.
But, I went ahead and made a gun control version anyway.
http://tinyurl.com/khz6aed
While I recommended a drinking game for the last one, I feel only dread at the prospect of drinking to gun control cliches. Such a game would leave no winners, only survivors.
Please explain to me how it’s ‘bigotry ‘ to be against guns being so prevalent when there’ve been a ton of fatal mass shootings in the United States in recent years?
What kind of dork posts to the comments of something this old expecting people to answer his demands? 😀
Dude!! Those are so far out the ballpark excellent I can’t even stand it!!
Sweet.
This needs to get printed out and brought to WorldCon. Can you imagine a group of MHI fans yelling BINGO! every few minutes? LOL
Do not try that at a WSFS Business Meeting. And that goes for the other end of the political horseshoe as well.
Heh. Ok, Kevin, just in case that “LOL” in there wasn’t clear- that was a joke. I highly doubt that any of Larry’s fans would be so rude as to interrupt serious meetings. We might be a silly bunch with a manatee as our mascot, but we’re not THAT socially inept.
Although that does make me curious- were you saying that the words on the bingo sheet get thrown around so often during one of your WSFS business meetings that you thought it might be a real possibility? That thought IS troubling.
I missed the LOL, and frankly, I’m not in a particularly good mood with the amount of bad attitude from both ends of the political horseshoe.
To be clear, I was addressing _any_ forms of attempting to disrupt the Business Meeting, by anyone or any group, not implying that there were any particular phrases being tossed around.
Well, I’m sorry you made that assumption. Maybe you should hang around for a while and get to know us a little better. Once you cool off and have some civil conversations, you might find that we’re not such a bad bunch.
Welcome to Monster Hunter Nation, Mr. Standlee. 🙂
Looking back at this craziness, I marvel that it’s been less than a week. In the long term, I fully expect more attacks on Larry. The “retrograde” attitudes of Larry and authors like him will be blamed for the decline in SF/F sales. Cons will have panels about the libertarian-conservative threat to the genre. Bloggers will call for Baen to be marginalized. Mark my words: it will get uglier.
It’s already happened.
Baen is “That one publisher” that works with racist hatemongers. They’ve called upon Toni Weisskopf to denounce Correia and the other people she publishes, or be ostracized.
As for the panels at conventions, there was this panel with a one-time author who was talking about rules for writing urban fantasy. One of those rules was that readers liked urban fantasy, because characters from rural settings were crass, ignorant… well, you get the idea.
Mr. Correia would be able to tell you more because he was actually there, and he tore through every one of her rules while selling more books than she did.
I just wish there was a video of that panel.
That was the best panel ever. I went full Conan on that one. Man, I wish somebody would have recorded it. I didn’t say much for the first half, then I lost my shit and went off in the second half. Got a standing ovation from the audience. 🙂
Some of my favorite bits from the expert, paraphrased because I was too shocked to take note:
A long list of “rules of urban fantasy” of which I violated all of them.
“Urban fantasy is urban because all the magic is in the cities.”
“People in the country are ignorant and crass.”
“The country is scary.”
“Yes, I’ve been to the country. I’ve been to Connecticut.”
From my borderline table flip response when I finally could no longer believe my ears and went on a giant rant, paraphrased from memory:
“I violate every single one of your rules, yet I sold more books today than you’ve sold in your life. The country isn’t racist, ignorant, or scary. Connecticut would fit in my back yard. Everything you’ve said is horrible advice, and if any of the aspiring writers here listen to you they’re idiots.”
Or something like that. 🙂 Then a bunch of you guys stood up and started clapping.
Well, Baen works with communist Eric Flint…so I suspect they’d work with anyone who can write a good story. That would probably include a racist hatemonger. 🙂
And Misty Lackey, and Sharon Lee, and Steve Miller, and Stoney Compton, and Ryk Spoor… Yep. Look at those right wingers. (and I know I’m forgetting a bunch of others off the top of my head)
Exactly.
When Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey are your right wing hate mongers, you’re probably doing leftism wrong.
Heck, C J Cherryh and David Gerrold were evil misogynist homophobes because they signed the Truesdale petition.
Tom, you know they also killed Snowball… err… Trotsky. The left eats their own with a viciousness that rivals their hatred of common sense government (libertarian-leaning constitutionalism).
Larry, you need to start recording your panels for posting here. Medium-quality digital recorders with stereo mikes are pretty cheap these days, but the expression on your co-panelists’ faces when you plunk the palm-sized device down on the table (and they realise they will have to back up their spew)… priceless!
The vast majority of panels I’ve been on have been awesome. Most panelists are great. That one was notable only because of how much it sucked. 🙂 The nutjobs who attack me never do it in person. They only “speak truth to power” across the anonymous safety of the internet.
Saying “I’ve been to the country. I’ve been to Connecticut” is like saying “I’ve been to other countries, I’ve been to EPCOT”.
I would pay real money to see a video of that panel…
And the Ringo “ambushing the feminist ambushers” panel from Ravencon.
SirBrass: True enough.
It’s hysterical though. You point out how they act just like Lenin and turn on anyone not pure enough for them, and they get all kinds of indignant. The cognitive dissonance with this group is just unreal.
I can’t believe I actually used to think like that. SMH
“I went full Conan on that one.”
I would purely love to watch someone “go full Agent Franks” on a nasty little panel of libprog troglodytes.Anything to make the mouthpiece on CNN start the 6:00 PM newscast with the words, “Holy Screaming S*it!!!”
If you come to V-Con next October, you shall never live in want of a cold beer, sir.
Thank you.
Wait Eric Flint is a lefty? Never once got that impression in 1632… cool.
*flynt… damn you no edit… damn you.
larry – it makes me wish I was there to see that, just like I wished I’d been in a position to see Ringo at that Ravencon he ended up writing an AAR on.
@Bubbasrelm:
Yes, Mr. Flint is a lefty. While reading 1632, you might take notice of the power structure, post ring of fire. Also notice the part that labor unions play in the books.
It’s fine. Mr. Flint makes it work. And he has a total babe, who is a cheerleader, super feminine, and is a sniper who I seem to recall was called “angel of death” or some such. She frightened hardcore professional soldiers when they realized who she was.
So he may be communist (not sure) but he’s also very pro 2A. I can live with paying for his books.
One notable tell in 1632 is that the rich executive is written as a mean, nasty, cold-hearted individual. In particular was his “stand-in for racism” attitude toward the locals surrounding the displaced town. Then, out of the blue, an excuse for that was generated in the sequel to allow for his rehabilitation. If that hadn’t happened, Flint would have been forced to write him off. Overall, though, Flint’s politics don’t generate enough baggage to become overburdensome to the story. And the excuse does work.
I thought Flint was a Trotskyite, not a Communist.
Don’t really care, even though I believe he’s farther left than I am right (and I think Rush Limbaugh is squishy sometimes and too authoritarian in other spots). Dude can write some STORY — I’ll pay dirty, capitalist money out of my OWN pocket for anything he writes.
Geo- Steve Brust described himself as a “Trotskyite”, though I’m not sure If he understands what that means.
Well the “orthodox” commies certainly threw out the Trotskyite “heretics” decades ago. Brust is another one whose politics I oppose, whose writing I love (and happily spend Imperialist Running Dog Yankee Capitalist dollars on.)
@Expendable Henchman
I only read the first one, still trying to get enough scratch for the next. it was good enough i want to throw out some money for it.
@junior
Totally missed the evil pig dog capitalist. Just thought he was a douche, but i can see your point.
Overall I can see it was there, but not at the level of message Fic for sure.
Besides, I’ve even argued in the past that for small groups, i.e. village to small town level, were survival is the overwhelming task at hand, communism can actually work(this was a thought experiment, not an endorsement).
This has taken on a life of its own.
“The “retrograde” attitudes of Larry and authors like him will be blamed for the decline in SF/F sales.”
I laid off of SF/F for a long time because if I wanted a political lecture, I could watch MSNBC or any broadcast news show. I’m just now coming back to the genre. I love, Love, LOVE Monster Hunters, just bought the first three books this week and I’m getting almost no sleep because I can’t put it down.
But yes, it’s going to get uglier. Dissent will not be tolerated until “retrograde” types like Larry are back in charge of the culture, and then dissent will be welcomed again.
Some entity named Athena Andreadis has opined that “Heinlein shouldn’t have gotten #HugoAwards THEN”.
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (a *55 year old book*, mind you) has an Amazon sales rank of 2,999.
The Other Half of the Sky edited by Athena Andreadis has an Amazon sales rank of 208,938.
Heh.
I repeat: Heh.
As Captain Pike discovered with the Talosians: “Wrong thinking is punishable; right thinking will be as quickly rewarded. You will find it an effective combination.”
Apparently this applies retroactively as well. I assume Pope Formosus can look forward to another cadaver synod as well at the hands of the SJWs.
To be fair, she seems to have a PhD in molecular biology from MIT, so her being actually stupid is right out. She also seems as pompous and self righteous as one would expect to flow from that. Her previous book is ranked at about 12 million. I didn’t know there were books ranked that low. We can take some solace in the near certainty that she will never breed.
I have to disagree. I went to Amazon and read an excerpt from her book. It took about three sentences to determine that, Ph.D. from MIT notwithstanding, she is actually stupid.
I DO, however, agree the “We can take some solace in the near certainty that she will never breed.”
(As an aside, I wouldn’t hire anyone with her disconnect from reality to work in any capacity in any area of science or engineering.)
Which book, C; her own on the biology of Star Trek or the one she edited?
The anthology she edited. The preview opened into what appeared to be a preface. It was typical hard Left cant.
Okay…try this: I could, of course, be wrong but….ever wonder how bright people – I’ll count myself and offer Sarah Hoyt, a libertarian, and Eric Flint, a Trot – can be bright and still not agree on what’s for dinner? It’s that reason and intelligence hardly enters into it. For us, for ALL of us, we operate off emotions, instincts, base values we were born with or took in more or less with mother’s milk and then rationalize from there. Reason hardly matters in human affairs, really. The difference between conservative and the extremes is that conservatives’ emotions, instincts, and base values are more in tune with the world as it is, and the left’s with the world as they’d like it to be. But in neither case does intelligence, per se, seem to me to enter into it.
On the other hand, this Athena person does strike me as a frightfully arrogant twat.
I think where I’d disagree with you is “But in neither case does intelligence, per se, seem to me to enter into it.” In the sense of the score on a standardized I.Q. test, then no, it doesn’t. In fact, given the intricacy and depth of the Leftist shared fantasy world, I’d have to acknowledge that Leftists do display “intelligence.”
On the other hand, in the sense of intelligence as the ability to absorb knowledge, integrate it into a framework, and apply it to the effective solution of real world problems, they’re all dumb as stumps. Witness the effectiveness of the current administration.
(BTW, really enjoy your books. Glad you came out with a new one in the Carrera Series. Now, are you and Ringo ever going to tie up all the loose ends in the Legacy series?)
But that difference doesn’t seem to me to be a function of intelligence, or reasoning power, but rather whether or not our instincts and emotions are in tune with the world as it is. Now we might say they’re insane, and they might say the same of us (in fact, we’re insane to each other), but intelligence doesn’t really enter into it.
John told me to hold off on the next Posleen book, which would have concerned the actions of the Legio Equestribus Posleenorum a Sacra Custodia Pontificis, in the war against the Hedrin, until he could do a couple more. I’ve lost my Jones for it, so am unlikely to proceed.
Very true, Tom.
“Some entity named Athena Andreadis has opined that “Heinlein shouldn’t have gotten #HugoAwards THEN”.
How to demonstrate the irrelevancy of your little award in one simple step…
I think they’re just totally losing their shit. The argument all along has been that the Evil White Men were holding them back, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Now we’re in a world where self-published and small press books go head-to-head with the Random Penguins and Holtzbrinck offerings and (in some cases) rake in tons-o-loot, yet people still aren’t buying their works of genius.
That’s gotta sting.
Athena Andreadis’ anti Starship Troopers stance, based on her own words, seems to be largely because of her opposition to the patriarchy of the white anglo-saxon male. She seems not to have noticed that the hero’s name is Juan Rico, and his native language was Tagalog. The fact that his mother was in Argentina when she was killed by alien attack also implies some Hispanic connection in his family. Also in the Starship Troopers universe, ship pilots always seem to be females because, according to Heinlein’s narrative, they were better at it than males, and the main one who features in the novel is called Carmencita Ibañez. Sargeant Jelal’s name is an interesting one too. Its used mostly in Islamic populations from Africa to India. The recruiting officer who signs up Rico had the last name is Ho = Cantonese. A lot of the other characters with apparently Anglo-Saxon last names could just as easily have been African-American, since their race isn’t stated. At least Rico was a male, so she got that part right I guess.
You don’t think Athena Andreadis would actually READ something that challenged her preconceptions, do you? After all, that might start her on a path away from the Leftist fantasy world. Horrors!
Take a look at a book about the history of science fiction literature by Sam J. Lundwall, and you’ll find out that it has a lot of message stories in it, contrary to what Larry says..
Doofus, this post is really old. As the admin I’m probably the only guy who is gonna see this comment.
So I can just cut to the chase and say that you’re clearly a fucking idiot, because I never said the issue was message. The difference is those older stories entertained harder than they messaged, and in more recent times we flipped to outright preaching a leftist gospel with entertainment coming a distant second.
Now fuck off. If you want to take a shot at me again try it in a post that’s from a more recent year so there will be an actual audience. 😀
The funny thing to me about all these people bitching about the “slate voting”, is that while, yes, I signed up and voted in this year’s Hugo nominations at your urging, I didn’t vote your slate. For one thing, I hadn’t read everything you suggested (though I did nominate most of the things that you suggested that I had read) and then in other places, I nominated works that weren’t anywhere to be found in your posts.
*shrug*
Goofballs, the lot of them.
They don’t seem to realize that getting liberty minded people to all do the same thing is sort of like herding cats.
I imagine that Larry Correia fans are remarkably hard to coerce. They’ll take your recommendations but if you tried telling us what to do, I don’t think you’d have very good results.
Actually, I beg to differ.
Herding cats is light years easier.
No, I think us Larry Correia fans are remarkably easy to coerce – show us a book with Larry’s name on it and we are immediately coerced to empty our wallets! 🙂
Otherwise, efforts to coerce are generally met with the soft metal-on-metal click of a disengaging safety and say something silly like, “You and what army?” or “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well? Do ya?” Or my personal favorite, “No, stupid, you’re holding it wrong. You hold it like this and, this here is the safety, you slip it off like this. Jeez, when was the last time you cleaned this, it’s FILTHY! Now, lay down, cross your ankles, put your hands out to the side, and be quiet while I talk with the nice police dispatcher.”
That “herding cats” mentality is also why conservatism hasn’t been able to build up a huge political steamrolling machine. We’re just too darn ornery to cooperate at times, even for our own good. We only manage it in relatively small groups. If only those small groups could just agree to work together at the group level and not fight each other, then we’d stand a much better chance of resisting the rapidly progressing cultural and political insanity that is rapidly falling on us (and has already fallen on government).
Mild correction: Like herding cats with thumbs.
Like herding cats with thumbs and guns.
So, so many guns.
The secret to herding cats is not driving them from unwanted places, but opening a can of tuna at the goal.
Works every time.
People (and cats) respond to incentives. Liberty minded people even more so.
Won’t work:
Vox offers a free WorldCon associate membership with every ebook sold. (the lefties would just buy his ebooks and vote against him)
Works:
Ask politely if people wouldn’t mind making Happy Jackals cry for $40. Yes, the tears are nectar to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ula8oi_M4Ww
@ Expendable Henchman:
I haven’t watched SouthPark in years. WOW! I LOVE IT!
Maybe Larry should start selling some T-shirts with the MHI logo with some clever mottos underneath, like:
SJW tears: sweet, sweet nectar
Ask me about CISmale gendernormative fascism
Manatees with munitions: when it absolutely, positively reeks of Special Snowflakes and needs to be destroyed overnight!
The Blow Against Puppy-Related Sadness Has Been Struck
Also, I’d beg Larry with tears in my eyes to take my filthy capitalist pigdog dollars if I could have a polo shirt with an MHI patch on the left breast, with Wendell in a Sith robe carrying a Manatee Nagant (plasma bayonet optional) silkscreened on the back with the words “Minions of the International Lord of Hate” underneath.
@ correia45
All those liberty-heads must but a bitch to herd. Us non-liberty people well just tell us what to do.
Every group that isn’t mainstream seems to be arrogant enough to think they are they are so free-thinking and independent. It is fucking hilarious to hear you say the same thing I constantly hear from atheist. We are all just so god damn subversive it is hard to organize us (*cough* none of use give enough of a shit about this issue to really do anything *cough*).
As Steyn observed, “intellectual diversity on the left is increasingly indistinguishable from Tupperware night with the Stepford Wives.”
Belly laugh of the morning!
Wow…. I think that BBQ smell in the air is coming from some torched lefty ears. Awesome!
And fat fires are the most difficult ones to extinguish.
I think I’ve read all of your books, love them all. Besides enjoying your writing and being a “gun nut,” I enjoy you saying what you think, instead of toting some BS party line. Thanks for giving your comments. Look forward to meeting you at GenCon.
Hah. I started the Wheel of Time when I was 15. So there.
OK, now I’m pissed. All this talk about hardcore fans and not a single mention of tattoos. What do I have to do? :o)
Keep up the good work, I’ve still got space on the Larry Correia shelf in the library.
I’ve got like 50 fans who’ve tattooed my logo on their BODY… Why is it such a stretch to think that I couldn’t get them to vote in a popularity contest. 🙂
Because….um…racism and stuff!
They are still in denial, or they never even bothered to check the Kickstarters. Heck, I would bet a significant part of Rob Wells Indiegogo funding is your fans, although the Instalanche helped. Of course the Instalanche probably wouldn’t have happened if the Professor wasn’t a big fan. Almost 30 percent of the way there after five days.
I’m still going for the MHI tattoo title, by this time next year I will have three, four if you want to count my dragon…but that’s a stretch.
Stay frosty.
I’d be curious how many of them could do $100k of merchandising in a month… Naw… You guys are just imaginary. 🙂
You mean the logo of your work which I guess for you in synonymous with all your political beliefs aka your reputation.
It’s amazing how many of them Just. Can’t. Cope. with the idea that someone might actually have LIKED those stories. Considering the heavy activity in the comments here (even when something like this isn’t going on) and looking at Larry’s Amazon sales rankings across the board, it should be clear that he has a LOT of fans.
I hadn’t read any of Vox’s fiction before, but grabbed the freebie of the Last Witchking while it was up. Not bad at all (I think he maybe needs to work on openings a little bit, but the bulk of the stories were fine). Certainly not the Mein Kampf-level racial hatefest that the SJW/GHHs would have you to believe. Quite the contrary, in fact (except maybe for the orcs. It’s still okay to hate orcs, right?). I enjoyed it, and will probably read him again after I get to the bottom of that to-be-read stack on my Kindle.
On Amazon I’m usually sitting somewhere in the top 100 fantasy authors, but it goes way up when something new comes out. Highest I’ve been on there is #3 overall. In audiobook I do much better. I’ve got way over 20,000 reviews on Audbile and I’m still at over four and a half stars. 🙂
Totally not surprised. You’re one of the few authors whose pacing & style makes reading the book feel like I’m immersed in a *good* action movie.
Totally waiting to see MHi on the big screen. Like a good Marvel movie, it would be, only better. . .
Wasn’t Toni up for a Hugo last year?
Yep. Because of Sad Puppies 1. That was her first ever nomination.
And all she needs to do to get the blessings of some nobody to be anointed Hugo worthy is disavow you.
I don’t know Toni personally, but from what I’ve picked up, Satan will be ice skating at home before that happens.
Toni is a badass.
Kind of what I gathered. 🙂
Took a moment this morn to search out more nominees so I could READ their works. Did discover tor is offering everything but the WoT for free.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/04/read-torcoms-original-fiction-hugo-finalists#more
Mostly I have been just glazing over the hatey hate hate that I am finding from these people. This one did kinda take me back. From
Abigail Nussbaum who got two noms Fan Writer and SemiProfanzine
“One can only sigh at Larry Correia’s Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles (serious, sigh) making it onto the best novel ballot, or Toni Weisskopf’s best editor, long form nomination. (As for the Wheel of Time series making it onto the best novel ballot, I’d just like to say to anyone who voted for this: feel ashamed, because you don’t even have the excuse of being a reactionary troll to justify your bad taste.) ”
http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-2014-hugo-awards-thoughts-on.html
This is the first time I have seen a attack on Toni from another nomine.
You are horrible, horribly good!
Speaking honestly and plainly, I am not a big fan of Correia’s work. (Well, thats not true, I love his minis.) Not my speed. But, since this kerfuffle, I have made it a point to purchase multiple copies just to stick my thumb in The Right Peoples eyes. To date, all have been shipped to Afghanistan in various care packages, where hopefully they find readers and create more Corriea fans. And, my thumb isn’t sore yet, so I have plenty of stickin’ left.
That is fantastic. If all my negative reviews were that awesome I’d be a happy man. Thank you. 🙂
“… stick my thumb in The Left Peoples eyes.”
FIFY
“To date, all have been shipped to Afghanistan in various care packages…”
This is the best thing in this whole comment section. Good on you, mate.
One of Larry’s co-author is an active deployed military personnel in Afghanistan. His novels have been big hits with our service member world wide.
Dead Six, which I coauthored with Mike Kupari, came out while Mike was deployed to Afghanistan. He’s Air Force EOD, but he was attached to an Army unit on a small FOB just across the border from Pakistan. He did his first ever book signing on that FOB after we shipped him a case of books to give away. 🙂
Thank you for giving me another author to add to my list of ‘buy books from.’
Which book authored with Mr. Kupari should I start with, if I may ask?
Dead Six is the first book.
Thank you! I have just ordered it.
I think you’ll enjoy it. But — it ain’t subtle…
😉
While I enjoy your writing, James T is quite right about your minis. They are quite good. I suggest that the next time you do a fundraiser, you include a “Correia Custom Painted Miniature” at a reward level. You might be surprised how popular that is.
Thanks.
Though to further demonstrate what this original post was about, on Twitter a few months ago, I was being attacked by some caring type for something, and since nothing is off limits he scrolled through my feed, found a picture of a WiP of mine (a really good one by the way, got a 7 on Cool Mini) and said “Why’d you smear some shit all over that figurine idiot” That is what people like me get to put up with. 🙂
So you old cismale gendernormative fascist Lord Of Hate you, tell us what you really thank… 🙂
I know! Normally he’s so shy and retiring… 🙂
I’m a moderate / left-leaning guy. Agree with some of your politics, disagree with some of your politics. What really gets to me is the hypocrisy of all the the baseless and unfounded attacks against you. What also gets to me is this idea that you can only like a “certain type of book” if you are of the “correct political persuasion”. I don’t need to be leaning right to enjoy stories about magically enhanced people fighting it out between themselves, monsters and aliens.
The optimist in me says that the very vocal left are of the extreme variety and not entirely representative of left leaning people. I’ll try to hang on to that optimism as long as I can…
Agreed. I’m about the same. Lean left politically, and probably disagree with Larry politically, more than I agree with him. But yeah, after this I’ll be grabbing copies of his stuff to read and share with friends. I’ll vote with my wallet. Micheal Z. Williamson and John Ringo I both disagree with fairly hard politically, but I like thier writing immensely.
Hell, I’m libertarian and a huge gun nut, but I wouldn’t have nominated any of Larry’s books. I enjoyed them all, but they’re not what I consider award-winning level.
But the way the scifi blogosphere is reacting to this makes me hope he wins all the awards ever.
The thing about conscience, whether I agree with it or not, is that it won’t.shut.up.
It is told that Quaker Wm Penn had scruples about wearing the ceremonial sword that went with the Governor’s hat. The sense of the meeting was “Wear it as long as you can.”
I am NOT going to read the Wheel of Time — I made it halfway through volume 1 a long time ago. Blah. Tor cheerleaders are INSANE. Everything else will get a chance.
Well said. Some of the most closed minded people I have ever met were Liberals. If you try to debate them, they just claim you are either “stupid or misinformed” because you don’t have their point of view. Orson Scot Card is a homophobic ass, but Enders Game is a good book. I have never read any of your books but I will be adding you to my list of authors to check out. The Hugos have always been a good place to look for the next best book to read but I think I’ll stick to the older lists for now.
Actually, Orson Scott Card *isn’t* a homophobic ass. He’s a very devout Mormon, and he’s been spending an awful lot of effort and reputation points to get mainstream Mormonism (which *is* generally very anti-homo) to be somewhat less anti-homo.
Scotty went to BYU, and majored in theater, where he encountered a LOT of homosexuals, and couldn’t care less how they leaned. He also managed to piss off the movers and shakers, because he was there to educate himself, not to become a white shirt and tie clone.
His essay (which I’ve read a couple of times) was specifically targeted to members of his own church. That church teaches directly that homosexuality is evil. (Our esteemed bloghost’s opinions notwithstanding…).
If you’re going to write an essay to a mass of anti-homosexuals, you don’t start by glorifying rainbow power. If you do, they’ll throw your essay across the room and ignore everything you say forever. Card knows this well, and his point is pretty much “Hey, let’s start to not get after them so much.”
Immediately after King Barry’s ‘evolution’ on gay issues (he used to be flatly against gay marriage, btw…) it became open season, again, on conservatives. They were attacking everybody, and Card is a conservative in Hollywood, so he was a perfect target for the hate. Hell, he’s a registered democrat.
Yes, he most directly said ‘you can’t be a practicing Mormon in good standing if you’re gay’. It’s a doctrinal issue, and Scotty aint the Mormon Pope. It’s not his call, they’re not his rules. I suspect he’d be the first straight LDS guy to cheer if a new revelation came along okaying gayness. But I don’t speak for him, and don’t see that revelation in the works.
As to Larry’s feelings on gayness, he strikes me as not caring in the slightest, except for how many copies of his books they might buy. At least, that was pretty much his answer when I asked in person recently. I seem to also recall him saying “none of my business” or some such. And neither of us were sparing the political opinions in the conversation.
Did he evolve, or was he just lying before?
He’s “evolved” so many times on this issue that I can’t even count them all. His position on gay marriage (or anything, really) at any given time can be predicted by asking “which option is the most likely to gain or retain power for Barack Obama”.
The point about Obama suddenly deciding that we’d always been at war with Eastasia…er…that gay marriage was awesome, followed by a Two Minutes Hate toward anyone who didn’t fall immediately into line is right on.
Me, I don’t think the government (and certainly not the FEDERAL government) has any business getting involved with marriage in the first place, so I’m neither for nor against gay marriage (or heterosexual marriage) in the legal sense.
Speaking as a clearly impartial observer (wink, wink), I find it fascinating how the ‘evolution’ occurred mid-election, and the corollary declaration that he was ‘pro-gay-marriage, but gay marriage is a state’s rights issue so the Fed won’t be getting involved’ came out in January (if I recall correctly). It almost smacks of pandering. “Vote for me! I’m on your side!” [Promptly wins election] “Thanks for the votes! Oh, I’m on your side IN PRINCIPLE. Were you expecting me to do something about that? SORRY.”
@CombatMissionary
Oh, but did you hear some bullshit story about his kids going to school with another student with lesbian parents. At the highest level every decision couldn’t possibly be motivated by politics, lol. Yeah I think these ‘evolutions’ aka stopping the discrimination are complete political bull too.
OK, I’ll type in all caps so you’re able to actually read my response (although, as history has shown, likelihood of comprehending it is small):
MAKE ONE COGENT THOUGHT AT A TIME. MAKE IT RELEVANT TO THE THOUGHT YOU’RE RESPONDING TO.
Here we go again…
“Homophobic” means “unreasoning fear or hatred”. In other words, to feel about gay people the same way I feel about spiders.
Not approving of SSM, not approving of ordained gay clergy, being Catholic, being Mormon… is NOT homophobia in the same way that failure to appreciate the subtle genius of the man who thinks America has 57 states is NOT racist. Keep on abusing the word and it’ll end up in the same place “racist” is now: an in joke, and that’s all.
“Keep on abusing the word and it’ll end up in the same place “racist” is now: an in joke, and that’s all.”
Homophobic is a joke already IMO.
Hmmm…. I’m way behind on my reading already, but I guess it’s time to go buy a Larry Correia book. Gotta reward good behavior. 🙂
Ignorance can be so comical. That’s all this hate speech really is: ignorance.
Oh, wait, my bad. Ignorance is when you don’t know any better. Stupid is when you do everything possible to make sure you never know any better.
Thanks for explaining yourself at the end.
Aww, does the delicate little snowflake want a cookie? I’m sure your masters will be more than happy to award you one for commenting on a blog like a brave little man. There’s a good little sheeple.
Whoops, friendly fire with my last post. I didn’t know you were referring to the SJW whackjobs. Larry, please kill it.
He probably won’t, but it’s all good. 🙂
No forgiveness around here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIMrFpnfvyI
Like atheists sinning, you make a mistake, it’s carved on your conscience forever.
That last bit is the definition of “active stupid.” I always liked the Ringo solution to active stupid in a combat zone: shoot the sumbitch.
Yeah, I’m pretty partial to that as well.
The challenge is to figure out how to get the entire world declared a combat zone for a few months.
I’ve almost got my zombie virus perfected to only infect the terminally stupid, Give me a few more months Tom, and we should be good:)
If your virus will only infect the terminally stupid, there’s going to be a lot of vacancies in government office, and you may leave the blue cities in America looking like ghost towns.
Proceed at flank speed, sir!
Awesome! I’ll check the zero on my rifle in the mean time. 🙂
They tend to suffer nasty injuries that get them evacuated from the front, actually, not killed. Because looking a man in the eyes and killing him may be a well-worn joke in the comfort and safety of the internet, but it’s a very, very different reality in the dust and the mud-colored blood.
The real tragedy are the folks that never can quite get it all together, and despite their great heart and willing soul, are an active danger to everyone around them. When your soldiers come by draft, not by volunteer, and there’s no good way to wash them out – those are the ones who “accidents” are the hardest to bear by the folks who know they need to go before they get everyone else dead.
Why the devil didn’t we nominate Hard Magic, Spellbound & Warbound together?
I suspect doing so wouldn’t have really made that much of a difference. Nominating WoT as a whole is somewhat different due to WoT’s unusual authorship. I’ve heard from a handful of people who liked the series but were unhappy with the books that Sanderson co-wrote. Nominating the series as a whole allows Tor to still draw in votes from those sorts of people.
And also, it’s WoT. Barring a new Game of Thrones novel being nominated this year, I doubt there was much that would stop the WoT entry (whether it was just one book or the entire series) from taking the win.
I don’t know. After 8000 pages or so of hair tugging and descriptions of the draperies I just realized I didn’t give a damn about the WoT series any longer.
Yes, but…
You’re in the minority.
I lost interest in Game of Thrones much more quickly than I did in WoT (the end of volume 3 vs the end of volume 10). And yet claiming that a new GoT novel wouldn’t clean up in the voting would be denial, pure and simple. Each release of a GoT book is basically George R. R. Martin printing money. It’s the same with the WoT books for Robert Jordan’s estate. I don’t know what the sales numbers were on Memory of Light, but I do know that they were extremely high. And people usually don’t buy the last book in a series unless they like the previous books.
I hope that one of the points you and Vox disagreed on was women’s suffrage. I try like hell to give real consideration to opinions that differ from mine; this particular point makes me think Vox and I would not be fast friends.
But if he wrote a great book, give the man an award.
I’m a woman, and I could care less. I’m not voting for the man as King. I read Throne of Bones, and it was a darn good book. What he thinks about suffrage is a personal oddity that affects me in zero ways.
I enjoy China Mieville, and he’s a flaming communist – a worldview I find horrific and rife with murder and genocide and oppression of the worst sort. So? I’m not electing Mieville world ruler. I’m just reading his damn books.
It really is that simple. If you write a good story, and your politics or pet causes aren’t getting in the way of the story, I DON’T CARE.
I’ve been watching the neo-fascist snit-fest for awhile, now. The only good thing I can say for it is that I now understand why the shelves at Barnes & Noble are full of junk. Tedious, mediocre, haven’t had a new idea since Tolkien, fantasy junk. (The only competent, entertaining fantasy I’ve seen in the past decade is from Jim Butcher. Yes, he has some very original ideas. Apparently a monopoly on such.)
Especially today, with savage, feral human neo-barbs dominating the political and cultural landscape, writers of the ability and political leanings of Piper, Pournelle, Anderson and Heinlein should be filling the shelves.
Nope.
Vampire crap.
Amorphous sexuality too-neurotic-about-my-genitals crap.
Sword and sorcery crap.
And the only thing original about any of it is the Leftist undercurrent.
So, when are the grownups going to walk away from SFWA and start something fro the adults?
That “something” is called Baen Publishing ;). Oh, and there’s some smart holdouts still with Tor (*cough*JohnCWright*cough* and David Weber).
Tangentially, WHY is weber publishing his safehold novels with Tor, and the Honorverse with Baen? Why not just stay with Baen?
Because money. And who can blame him?
Spoils of the Egyptians, or Tor being sane — doesn’t really matter. Weber’s allowed to feed his household however he can.
As long as he has an editor for the remainder of the honorverse books. The repeated chapters from previous volumes has reached an unprecedented and intolerable high.
“Why is Weber publishing his Safehold novels with Tor?” Because he can? 😉
Although I strongly suspect – given his apparent politics – that Tor wouldn’t be publishing Weber if he were just starting out (as opposed to already being well-established as a bestselling author). Indeed, I’m hard-pressed to name any actual conservative or libertarian writers at Tor beyond Weber, John C. Wright…and the late Robert Jordan his own self.
(One wonders how long Brandon Sanderson will last before the Tor Borg assimilate or excommunicate him…)
I’ll say one thing for Tor: Unlike Baen, they don’t seem to consider Weber “too big to edit.” (And I say this as a huge fan of Weber). Sir Brass’ comments below are one example of some of the issues the Honorverse books are facing; there’s also some jarring continuity issues and typos that have been popping up in them as of late. (“Elizabeth Pritchart?” Really?)
We should again remind everyone that Tor.com is a web site associate of Tor Books.
WES.
Wellll… I dunno if Jordan was a conservative, but I know some tolerant types who knew him and his wife. Loved his wife – “waste of oxygen” was the phrase applied to Robert.
As to Tor and not treating Weber as too big to edit – I’ll have to differ with you on that. I just went through the latest safehold, and the repetitiveness of some variant of “cold smile” started knocking me out of the story. I love the series, I GET why it’s so much show vs tell given the scope/etc. – but I’ve never had a phrase so repeatedly jump out like that in his books, even in the safehold series.
Left at the Radish, although I doubt it makes it through moderation
“”Ms. Luhrs,
I haven’t spent a lot of time on this blog, so I was hoping you could help me out.
Did you write about John Scalzi campaigning to be on the Hugo ballot when he used his blog for that purpose?
Did you write about how TOR.com likewise encouraged its readers to vote for certain works to be included on the ballot?
Considering the number of blogs that urge readers to vote for him for every work and begin promoting voting for his works *even before they are in print* will you likewise block Mr. Gaiman’s works in the future?
Considering that you face no more risk than a few comments on your blog or perhaps your twitter account, do you honestly think that joining with thousands of others in condemning two writers is actually ‘scary’?
And, finally, you state,
” …there was an insistence from both the trolls and other parties that I should judge the nominated works on their merits alone. These works do not exist in a vacuum and the context in which they are produced is, for me, relevant. The personal is political. I am not going to waste my time reading books written by people who hold me, my friends, and my family in contempt …
…My refusal to allow that sort of discourse to take root here is not a sign of weakness. It is a refusal to allow myself to be diminished and to be made smaller. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to be small, measuring out my life in coffee spoons.”
Does this mean you would support the return of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum?
Thank you in advance.””
Made it through moderation, but I think I am now banned
See? If you were just a member of the Groupthink Social Justice Squad, you’d have more friends! 😉
Apparently you are an a**hat. I don’t know why they bothered with the censoring… https://twitter.com/eilatan/status/459395207357018112
Looks like you got under her skin enough for her to tweet about it, though. LOL
I was nice too and got blocked from commenting further after my last one. Those people are nuts.
Yet us militant right wing hatey-hatemongers don’t edit or massage our comments. Hmmm… Could it be that one side actually believes in free speech?
LL,
You couldn’t have been nice. You failed to agree with Natalie’s “speaking truth to power”, and therefore were impolite.
Our side just never gets the memos on this kind of thing.
Wow! That was incredibly offensive. She probably did a double-take between banning you and dialing 911. I love her web site; it arguably makes men on death row happy they’re not in the situation of that great bag o’ privilege droppings.
And your arguments are all bad faith arguments.
How in the hell old Natalie figures that is beyond me. They’re all valid questions. Why is it that all these other people can do it and it’s OK, but the second Larry does (and it works), it’s somehow a Jihad against all that the Hugos stand for?
My comment also awaiting moderation:
[quote]The main thing I found incredibly interesting about it was how certain commenters felt they had the right to my space. The right to demand very specific answers from me. My refusal to engage except superficially led to goalpost shifting and increasingly vitriolic abuse and deliberate misreadings as well as outright lies about me.[/quote]
Holy hypocrisy, Batman! You just happened to write an entire blog post about 2 specific individuals cherry picking statements and blatantly slandering them with no evidence. And then you get upset when some commenters make a few statements giving you a taste of your own medicine?
I’ve got to say I’ve tried every way I can to understand your reasoning and logic but it just does not compute. The Hugos are a popularity contest. The rules for voting and nominating make it such. When a popular author makes an honest open bid for support that’s to be expected right? But it’s only horrible and unthinkable when someone who is a big meany to you and your friends gets it done?
Going back to Gencon? Sweet! met you last ,hope to catch more of your panels this year.
Larry has “spoken truth to power” or whatever the hell those leftists say.
Fisked sense at the insensible?
This is what I came up with when I did a google search on the meaning of the phrase: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_origin_of_the_expression_speak_truth_unto_power
That’s kind of the way I’ve always understood the phrase. Too bad the SJW’s have used it as a way to excuse their misandry. They’re not male bashing. Nope. They’re speaking truth to power.
The fact that I have zero power not granted to any other registered voter is irrelevant.
That’s my understanding of the “proper” use of the phrase. The Lefties still like to think of themselves as “Revolutionaries fighting the Evil Empire”. Unfortunately, they are closer to “Defenders of the Evil Empire”. [Sad Smile]
Just a note: I’m pretty sure that both Scalzi & Jim Hines have suggested to everyone reading their blogs to just READ the works, and vote based on what they think of things.
I don’t think there’s really a conspiracy to keep the right wing writers off the ballots in the past…. but I’ve got no problem w/ trying to get a few books I enjoy on!
You’re right, it’s not a conspiracy. It’s a boldly spoken agenda. Scalzi and Hines might not be directly involved, but the panty-twisting SJWs of no renown and even fewer morals sure are, and the links provided show you their own words.
Re-Read Scalzi’s blog. He’s doing it in a read everything wink wink kind of way. He is too afraid to do it openly.
“And, no, I’m not trying to be “the voice of reason” with regard to the Hugos. These are my views; disagree if you like. I COULD BE WRONG”
all CAPS is like a wink…linking to people that aren’t afraid of doing it openly. Basically endorsing them without doing it so he can say see I’m so great I support all sides “wink wink”
this paragraph talks about the virtue of the other nominations and backhanded complement of warbound
“* Indeed, with regard to the novel, let’s recognize the strengths each nominee brings to the table: Ancillary Justice has been nominated for just about every major science fiction award this year — Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, BSFA, PKD — and is arguably the most talked and praised science fiction novel of 2013. Neptune’s Brood is classic Charles Stross, and a very good novel of hard(er) SF, which is always popular, and Charlie is also the only UK nominee on the novel ballot, which doesn’t hurt when the Worldcon’s in London. Parasite continues Mira Grant’s novel nomination streak, is scary as hell and a damn fine read. Warbound is the surprise in the field (which is not bad), entirely different from the other nominees (also not a bad thing) and, as has been established, has its own passionate set of fans.”
It should have said something like.
“Warbound, is the final book in a trilogy that has sold extremely well, been translated into a bunch of other languages where it has also done well, gotten tons of positive reviews (out of the thousands of reviews for this series from across all the various different places I’m still at 4 ½ stars) won and been nominated for other awards, is one of the bestselling and most praised audiobook series there is, has won two Audies, is currently nominated for a third.”
but no its a “surprise”
Scalzi is pretty much the head of SJW. No wait he stepped down as president a year ago.
FYI, I feel safer with you AT the con I attend, cause you’re probably packin’ heat. 🙂
Larry, there is nothing so satisfying as knocking a bee hive over and watching the little buggers go crazy. Good job, They deserved it.
Gary, I nominate you for a Metaphor Fail award. Bees pollinate flowers and make delicious honey. Plus they kill wasps, so they’re super useful.
Special Snowflakes kill sweet freedom and prevent the germination of free thinking. So they’re kind of the anti-bee.
Shame on you. ;D
While you’re probably right that the Wheel of Time is going to stomp you…. (which, honestly – it shouldn’t – I haven’t read Sanderson’s novels, but I did read up to book 10 under Jordan.) The Wheel of Time is a lot of things. Overly long. Epic mostly for page count. Full of inconsistency because Jordan couldn’t keep his own political and geographical groups straight.
Its also the only series I’ve ever gotten to book five on, and stated to a fangroup of said novels – “Jordan has forgotten what exactly he set out to accomplish here. If he finishes this before he dies, it’ll be a miracle.”
And as it happens, I was right. Which, is really kinda sad. But yeah. Even taken as a whole… WoT is just not *that* good. It was some amazing world building and a whole lot of ambition… but the overall story…. meh.
I’d vote for Warbound over it without any qualms.
The SJWs are annoying / preying on their own. Attacking Scalzi for suggesting people read the works, and vote on their own merit – heresy! I guess on the positive side, they are exercising their tolerance with equal opportunity and similar depth of thought.
Purges always end up with in-fighting and in-purging.
Well, that was some blog post, Mr. Correia. 🙂 I actually tried one of your books awhile back, but just couldn’t get into it and dropped it. But, your blog posts are funny as hell, so I’ll be picking up one of your books to give it another try.
Which book did you try? There some variety in the style and tone of his different series, so one may be more to your taste than another.
It was the first of the Monster Hunter books, I think.
Larry, you should totally do this again next year. However, you have a Manatee problem. Most Manatees aren’t as fiscally well off as Wendell. I propose you arm them with cost-saving specially-modified-for-Manatee-use armor-penetrating Russian battle rifles chambered in 7.62x54R. These Manatee-Nagants will allow your Manatee Minion Masses to hold fire superiority over even the most determined SJW mobs. They’ll pierce soft body armor and are available at a fraction of the cost of Dragunovs.
Manatees weigh about 1,300 pounds, according to the Googles. They could probably fire .700 Nitro Express on full auto. 🙂
That WOULD get spendy, though.
Wendell doesn’t mess around. Whatever he does, it won’t be pretty.
Will he have cookie monster as a side kick? CM going on a rampage because someone provoked puppy sadness would be…. justice for the puppies, I think :D.
@ SirBrass
Let’s not get ridiculous. 😉
Reblogged this on westfargomusings and commented:
Larry Correia explains some of reasoning behind Sad Puppies and the controversy it’s caused in the land of SF/F. Personally, I think they tortured some interpretations in order to get Wheel of Time nominated (I’ve always been under the impression that definition was there for serialized magazine fiction rather than dictionary length novels). Because I’m a cheap ass, I won’t be reading hardly any of these nominees for a couple of years. But, congrats to all the nominees.
Vox Day is offering his nominee as a free download over on his site.
I never thought I’d ever give Scalzi kudos. I find him insufferable but he’s not an unhinged SJW nutcase trying to get us to take his First World Problems seriously. Good on him for being objective here.
Also, Tor has been dead to me for years, anyway. Their literary speciality seems to be in polishing turds and selling them as gold bullion.
There are a lot of good authors at Tor, and the guy who actually founded the company strikes me as an honorable man. But they’ve got some editors that are straight up crackpots. I’ve got friends who work for Tor (I bet they have to keep that secret!) and they were quick to let me know that Tor.com isn’t Tor the publisher.
Problem is Tor.com is the public face of “Tom Doherty Associates”, and it aint a pretty face.
Is there any way to backchannel the fact that Tor.com is costing the publishing arm goodwill and sales?
True — These days, I only buy a Tor book if I already know and enjoy the paticular author, because of quality issues.
With Baen, it’s quite the opposite — admittedly, I’ve bought some Baen stuff I didn’t enjoy that much. But by and large, I feel I have better odds picking a random Baen title I’ve never read by an author I’ve never heard of, over a book by an author whose other works I’ve enjoyed that’s published by someone else.
Baen simply seems to have a better crap/quality filter in place.
Meh, he’s annoying sometimes, but Scalzi strikes me as being a decent enough sort. I’m not surprised that he’s reacted the way he did.
Er, Scalzi wrote a novel-length piece of fan fiction then wrote a long screed AGAINST fan fiction. He is, at the least, a muddle-headed “thinker”.
Scalzi is the same guy who wrote an editorial from the point of view of a rapist talking about how much rapists support Republicans. “Decent enough” may be relative, but he’s got some atoning to do before he gets anything better than “crawling scum” from me.
Which is funny, since polling prison populations show that if they could vote, they’d vote democrat about 85%-90% of the time.
Oh, and republican women shoot rapists. 🙂
That rapist screed drove me off his site.
Epic.
I have been around you a few times Mr. Correia at various LibertyCons. I am a 5ft3in female, I have NEVER felt unsafe in your presence. The same cannot be said for some of the SJWs.
Larry didn’t strike me as rapey either but then again I am a 5ft10in male. Also the other commenters seem to be expecting me to to be a creep because I don’t agree with them politically. Apparently if you are asian I am supposed to stalk you or something, ah who knows.
If you are just shoot my ass, Larry will teach you for free to carry. Something about trucks and proving he isn’t racist. I could be an evil JSWs or the more sinister SJW.
Chlamydia, is that you? If so, no, you are not _supposed_ to stalk Asian females; you just do.
Naw, different idiot troll. He showed up a week ago after my reply to the Guardian, and said that I wrote too much in response, then he posted fifty times. Then in the thread about the French cover of a novel he tried to explain to a bunch of combat veterans about how gun confiscation would totally work in America. Now he’s spamming this one. He’s posted here dozens of times now. When you answer him he ignores it or doesn’t understand the answer, and when you don’t bother to answer him then he declares that as victory. He has a lot of down time behind the register at Taco Bell apparently.
Sadly for poor Stupid Snake, he has finally committed the cardinal sin of boring me.
Right, so file him not under “Chlamydia” but under “limppecker,” yes?
I hope you’re happy, Larry Correia. All this Hugo brouhaha has brought a repressed memory of trauma from my childhood (well, college, but I was pretty childish at the time.)
My little college had a published author teaching creative writing for some reason, and although she wasn’t a best-seller or anything (I don’t think she’d ever lived solely by writing) she did make a habit of stressing that writing advice from “writers” was more important than any advice from people “living the writer lifestyle.” Effort, production, editing and publication were all key factors in differentiating these two classes of writer-like objects.
My little college also had a contest for aspiring writers. Students could submit a portfolio of work and a panel of judges would award a $1000 prize to the best. The criteria were not explicit, but I figured I couldn’t lose anything by submitting, so I did.
When the results came back, the panel turned out to have exceeded even your unnamed Tor editor; they announced that they would not award the prize that year, because no works worth publication had been submitted. Yes, that was the public announcement.
I was not happy, but in fairness, I had not published any of the work I submitted. Of course, they had specified unpublished work in the submission guidelines, and I had two of the poems I submitted published later that year, but only in a small journal with a pretty specific genre, so, you know . . . not literary work. I did make a point of sending the publication notice on to my writing teacher, and I assume she followed through on sending it on to the members of the judging panel. She seemed fairly gleeful, in any case.
I think we’re probably getting to the time where there should be something produced like “Straight White Man Comics,” “white privilege” buttons, and finally, a “cis peeeoooople” t-shirt in honor of UK resident Alex Binary MacFarlane.
Also, a “Supercalifragiliciouscisheteropatriarchy” shirt might be nice.
A quote from PC SJW SFF illustrator Jim McDermott on a t-shirt might be good: “Is this a WorldCon or a WhiteCon?”
Other suggestions:
Post-Binary Comics
What the Cis-Het!?!
Privilege=MC2
Safer-Space Donuts
Trigger Warning: For Everything
My Privilege Itches
Or these might be ironically ironicallycally popular t-shirts:
“The power fantasies of disenchanted white men” (courtesy of two-time Hugo and three-time Nebula-nominated SFF author N.K. Jemisin)
“If you’re white, you have white privilege.” (courtesy of guest post at John Scalzi’s site by Mary Ann Mohanraj
“I was so pleased to realized that these people were brown.” (same source)
“the Campbell Award nominees are… at least 80% non-white-males… So that’s pretty great” (courtesy of non-racist Kate Nepevu who refuses to link directly to Larry Correia’s site because racism)
“‘escapism’: it’s geared to white patriarchy” (courtesy of anti-racist Hugo nominee Aliette de Bodard
“Western Imperialist white dudes from space” (courtesy of non-racist Carrie Cuinn)
“sour dough-faced” (courtesy of WisCon panelist and co-organizer of their racially segregated safer-space and dinner Jaymee Goh when describing the face of a white actor taking the role of Khan in Star Trek.)
Of course you can always have the buried-in-irony quote t-shirt from Tor.com blogger and post-binary girl Alex D. MacFarlane: “I suspect the ability to push boundaries and not cause hurt requires the pusher to not be a middle class white straight man.”
Just go through that list, change white man to Jew, and it reads like a European eugenics conference of the mid 1930s.
Spittake trigger warning next time, please.
Oh, you tempt me so, to take an actual speech from those, change “jew” to “white male”, and submit it as a guest post to tor.com or the comments in some of these blogs… Who do you think would notice?
I think it would take awhile for them to notice. I don’t think they’re very self-aware in that area.
DOOOOOOO EEEEEEETTTT!!! #egging on! 😉
I bet if you were crafty you could pull it off. I can promise you would get it published in some SJW platform.
Hahaha. What’s with all the Portuguese all of a sudden? When did that happen? They’re always playing samba music and eating black beans and rice. I don’t like samba music. I don’t like black beans and rice. And they pronounce “R’s” at the start of a word like “H.” WHO PRONOUNCES “R” LIKE “H” AT THE START OF A WORD? UGH!!! Sylvester Stallone didn’t make “Hockey.” I’m worried SF might default to Portuguese. Do we really need an SF version of Captains Courageous – mebbe with Gatling guns… 20mm?
Actually that might be cool.
First it was Mormons taking over sci-fi. Now it is the Portuguese. I’m cool either way. 🙂
As long as you don’t start writing your books by first staring into a magic hat to figure out what to write, I think we’ll be good, Larry 😉 😛
When I contemplate all these people eating fish, I say to myself “Yipee!!! More delicious cows for me!!! …and no nassssty fishes.”
They’re eating black beans and rice to save the delicious carne asada for you. Be grateful.
Of course you can always have the buried-in-irony quote t-shirt from Tor.com blogger and post-binary girl Alex D. MacFarlane: “I suspect the ability to push boundaries and not cause hurt requires the pusher to not be a middle class white straight man.”
We white men don’t know how to push the right boundaries, obviously.
White men are more or less like apes…
…who lucked into things like inventing time-keeping at sea by oppressing their plucky slaves.
Well, obviously.
Because WE don’t have any functional brain cells that would allow us to invent anything on our own.
Certainly nothing useful, just time-wasters like interchangeable parts, steam engines, electrical generators, physics, and calculus.
Yeah. Piddely little stuff.
you guys forgot monster truck rallies.
How about “The Space Caliphate: All Your White Patriarchy are Belong To Us”? 😉
In other words, Larry played the left like a fiddle. Heh. I like that.
Reading some of the lefty reaction to the Sad Puppies campaign…
Good Lord, I feel like I’m back in junior high. “Ew, yuck, I don’t like you. Go away.”
A commenter over at Vox’s place likened the Scalziites to a pack of Mean Girls, which I think fits. Myself, I’m taking notes of who says what, so I know who not to spend any of my hard-earned money on. Never have read, for example, anything by Scalzi or Charles Stross, and after this I won’t be reading of their stuff. And Seanan McGuire…well, I sort of liked the “Newsflesh” trilogy she published under her “Mira Grant” pen-name, but I won’t be buying anything else by her..,.
Personally, given the reaction to Sad Puppies, I think next year we ought to get Kratman a Hugo nomination for “The Rods and the Axe” or somesuch. The Mad Colonel is already responsible for popping more liberal heads than Michael Ironside in “Scanners,” so I can only imagine the consternation on the lefty message boards should Colonel Crucify ‘Em get on the ballot.
😉
Big Boys Don’t Cry should be eligible for next year for novella.
Ha! I saw that Mean Girls comment as well. It’s strikingly apt.
That’s a shame you won’t read any Stross. The Laundry books (Jennifer Morgue and so on) are a lot of fun, in a scp-project kind of way. The Trade Wars books are really great too. Saturn’s Children was…boring, but still had some really great SF concepts to it. It’s more of the “art” sf that’s…boring, but stuff does actually happen and interesting ideas are explored (how to build surface cities on Mercury, for example).
Don’t fall into the same trap as the lefties. There’s a ton of really interesting stuff out there that you might miss.
I like Stross’s first three Laundry books (the third is my favorite). But something was off with the fourth book, and I was somewhat disappointed with it. Unfortunately, I can’t put my finger on what was wrong.
At the very least, people should read the various Laundry short stories that are available for free on-line (which I think is all of them except for the computer RPG short story that’s found in the back of one of his novels). You’ll never look at Santa Claus or unicorns in quite the same way…
^^;;
I stopped reading Scalzi after I read a blog post where he pretty much blasted libertarianism. I’m sorry, but if you deride the philosophy that governs much of my life, then you don’t really need my money anymore.
The difference between me and the left is that I’ll still admit that Scalzi can write a pretty good story. They think it’s impossible that someone like Larry could tell a good one because of the hatey hate McHaterson stuff deep inside of him.
Of course, they also don’t think that someone can write a story and their own politics not seep out into it and take over the whole project either. That’s just a case of projecting though.
The truth about sf history is that there have always been a lot of arguments, fannish politics, and annoying people at the top of the field. The difference is that nowadays, a lot of this stuff is enforced instead of found annoying, and it’s in your face. Whereas in the old days you only heard about this stuff as embarrassing stories about people’s rants in fanzines or letter columns, or during convention parties.
However, it does seem that David Drake has been a favored hatey-mcHate target for a very long time, and the leftist approval for Samuel Delany apparently struck him as extremely racist. Even the first Worldcon had its Stupid Communist Political Moment. It took pushback to stop that, even in 1939.
Still, some of this is just crawling out from under a rock now. So it’s good that pushback is now occurring, and not a moment too soon.
I don’t look on it as “falling into the same trap as the lefties.” I look on it more as making the lefties play the game by their own spiteful rules…in a Saul Alinsky sense. Why should people who utterly hate me for not sharing their warped worldview (or because I read authors that don’t share their warped worldview, for that matter) receive so much as one thin dime of my money? And why shouldn’t I encourage others to play the game the same way?
Although there’s considerable merit in Dave P’s suggestion that if you want to read anything by the PC crowd, just buy it used….)
To paraphrase a certain beloved fictional libertarian space cowboy: “If somebody comes to despise you, then you despise them right back.”
🙂
I live under a rock, apparently.
Or have, since I pay extremely little attention to fannish things, and did not know that David Drake was one of their favorite dart-board fetishes. Odd, as he picks up a lot of their fave tropes- strong and highly skilled women, LGBT people treated as *gasp!* human beings like the rest of us (and no big deal made about it), colorful people… Wait. That’s not proper-think at all!
No wonder. I never read Slammers, or the RCN series as having no discriminatory bias is actually having discriminatory bias before. *shakes head*
And Tom, I’ll read Scalzi, or Hines, or heck, N.K. Jemsin when any one of them puts out a story I want to read. I read Old Man’s War, and it wasn’t awful- but subsequent books didn’t keep my attention. Hines’ Jig the Goblin books, first couple, were interesting. But the story got squelched in later books, and lost interest. So it goes.
For the longest time I knew not the slightest thing about any author’s personal politics. Just that some books made more satisfying projectiles than others. I’ve gotten an idea of why that is, since. Still, I’m not going to let an author’s politics get between me and what I consider a good story.
That’s what the other side does. For me, it ain’t happenin’ like that. *shrug* To each his own.
But I’ve not gotten into a single one of Scalzi’s or Hines’ books in a long time. Maybe I’ve gotten pickier in my tastes. Never had that issue with Larry’s books. Or Kratman’s. Or Sarah’s.
Some of Stross’s work is pretty good, in my opinion. The Laundry stuff is an amusing conceit–spy novel + Dilbert + Lovecraft + hackers, played for bleak laughs–though already too much of them is Stross taking center-stage wearing the flayed skin of an author-avatar character and ranting at the reader about how much he hates the Yanks.
“A Colder War” and “Missile Gap” are either existential horror or hilarious black humor–the difference seems to be in how you approach them and how you read them.
The Problem with Charlie, though, is that he only wants to tell us one kind of story–a story about how we’re all buggered and life is meaningless and everything is bleak and horrible. Whether or not any of the characters snark a bit about it doesn’t matter so much. He even rants on his blog about “steampunk,” whatever that genre term means this week, about how it’s not bleak and depressing enough for his tastes, which therefore, somehow or other, means it’s bad writing. Now, I grant, his work sells. And, I grant, Mr. Stross doesn’t have to get permission from Her Majesty’s government to write a novel. He doesn’t have to pass everything he wants to write before a censorship board–not yet, anyway. I am not saying that he shouldn’t write what he wants to write or tell the stories he wants to tell. I am not saying that governments, or publishers, or SWFA, should censor him. I’m saying that I find his work depressing. He seems to want to shock, horrify, and sadden his readers. M. John Harrison and Peter Watts have the same obsession, and the same problem.
The problem with Stross (At least with his latest writings) is that it’s painfully obvious that he was bitten by a Christian when he was a child and he has years of vengeance fiction to write about it.
I do like Watts quite a bit despite his ridiculous politics and “EVERYTHING IS SHITTY FOREVER” way of writing. I bombed out on the Rifters series before finishing it because of the way the–one character, who ditches his moral programming, is suddenly all about being as sexually horrible as possible–but I really did enjoy Blindsight.
But then I also enjoy taking apart his assumptions and Big Smart Scientist!! act. He likes writing well-researched (for a given value of “researched”) books, which I appreciate, but his habit of footnoting everything and then talking about what an awesome dude he is for doing it in the afterword amuses me.
“I look on it more as making the lefties play the game by their own spiteful rules…”
Except then you’ve agreed to play their game, instead of the one you really wanted to play.
(I will avoid authors, or actors, who’s work I can’t dissociate from whatever dumb thing they’ve said or done. I try not to notice too much, though, and practice a certain amount of selective hearing as long as possible.)
My problem with Scalzi is that he actively attacks and denigrates me. He’s a pretty good author – I loved Redshirts, and I’ve enjoyed several of his novels (didn’t much like his reboot of Fuzzy Nation; it read like a Hollywood screenplay aimed at the Occupy mindset).
Contrast him to Eric Flint who (as far as as I know) is actually *politically* farther from me than Scalzi claims to be, but he doesn’t go out of his way to actively attack and denigrate me. And he’s a helluva good writer. I literally have not read anything of his I didn’t enjoy and repeatedly reread.
One of these two strikes me as a mean spirited, hypocritical punk with plenty of talent who can kill my boredom the first time I read his stuff, and one as a gentleman who is a master of his craft who enthralls me even when I read his books to tatters.
Guess which one I spend more money on?
Correction “Little Fuzzy”. What was I thinking?!?
I liked Stross just fine until his work degenerated into one long screaming atheist rant.
Yeah, atheist, I got it, can we move on? No? Really no? Again the ranting? After two hundred pages it got kinda old.
Its like he got big enough the publisher decided he didn’t need to be edited anymore, and once they let him off the leash he went completely apeshit.
Same thing happened with Ian M. Bank’s last book. Kind of a shame, I liked most other things he did.
You are missing some great books. McGruire’s “inCryptid” novels are a delight, and probably would be enjoyed by anyone who likes Correia’s Monster Hunter tales. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever ready by Scalzi with the sole exception of Fuzzy Nation, which suffered by comparison to the original H Beam Piper work he was trying to reboot. And Charles Stross writes a lot of very good books. His “Laundry Files” series of novels and short stories is a particular favorite, as well as his near future second person Scottish police procedurals, “Halting State” and “Rule 34”. I also enjoyed his “Merchant Princes” series.
I know if I limited my reading to books by writers who pass my ideological purity tests, I’d be missing out on some great stuff. I encourage you to reconsider.
I want to read McGuire because the synopses of her stuff appeal to me, but I cannot get through her writing. It’s very–I’m not even sure how to say it other than it reads to me the same way teenage-girl slice-of-life novels do, and I cannot connect with it at all.
I enjoyed the Merchant Princes books, until the fourth or fifth one. Then, he started bash the then vice president. Message took precedence over story, and I found a different place to spend my dollars. YMMV
Fuzzy Nation suffered by comparison to Little Fuzzy, because it was *radically* different than Piper’s story in feeling and purpose.
It’s as if someone rewrote Time Enough For Love and made W.W. Smith a Puritan and coward. Or the Vanderhoaxen version of Starship Troopers.
H. Beam Piper was also, by all descriptions of those who knew him, a true gentleman- and solidly opposed to collectivism. I don’t think he would’ve approved of either the treatment or the artist.
Buy ’em used, ‘migo. And make sure the authors know you did, andd know why.
“Here’s why I went out of your way to make sure you didn’t get a royalty from me…”
Public library’s another option.
Naw, don’t want to say anything at all to ’em. Saying that will get other glittery hoo-haas to feel sisterhood, and others will get motivated to send them money or buy books or something equally as society destroying.
To really hurt an author, let the tumbleweeds blow through their blog.
I’m reasonably willing to take one for the team, Wes, but, as Vox pointed out on VP once or twice, I’m even more hated by the left than he is…which is saying something. But note that “take one for the team,” above. I said it before, maybe here or maybe in FB: The _only_ reason to nominate me would be to clear the slate for someone else.
Yeah, Tom — if they found a copy of Vox’s work on their shelf, they’d call an exterminator, maybe wipe down with Clorox sheets.
If they found one of yours, they’d have to invent a secular humanist exorcism. . .
On the contrary.
See, the level of anger and bile that folks like you, Mr. Correia and Vox, uh, “engender” (snicker) is really unhealthy. By causing all the head ‘splody angst and bile we’re shortening their lives.
Since their lives are so miserable and painful we’re helping end their misery early.
Since they’re annoying (at least some of) “us”, ending their lives early puts them out of OUR misery.
So it’s a win win.
Well…wouldn’t that also be clearing the slate, William, as I suggested? 😉
It seems that the slate-clearing has already begun. Quote:
“Anyway: if Kratman really gets nominated, then I would lament, in a way that I have not been made to this year. Correia passes – again, for *me, ymmv – the plausibility threshold; VD does not but is at least trying to write and showing some minimal-pulse level of ability. Kratman’s stuff is both utterly reprehensible *and* completely void of any storytelling or language-manipulation ability. Yeach.”
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/015838.html#2242499
Quick work, Colonel. 😛
“Kratman’s stuff is both utterly reprehensible *and* completely void of any storytelling or language-manipulation ability. ”
Whoa, whoa… we can discuss the relative (de)merits of writers like Corria, Scalzi and this Vox Dei fellow y’all are talking about… but the Kratman comment is spot on. Isn’t he the guy who wrote “Caliphate” (my apologies if I’m wrong)?
“forced to drive their mobility scooters into the SAFE AREA whenever I came around.” Thanks for laugh of the day. What a great visual. Demographics are changing around here in SoCal and it’s sad to see all the young people who can actually walk being ignored and put down by the Scooter Store crowd.
Remember, Larry, this sage advice: When the game playing of the simple-mined wears your patience thin take a few minutes and look at your bank accounts and smile.
“Smile”, hell. He probably shakes the roof from rolling on the floor belly-laughing himself sick…
Hi. I have been a SFF reader for about 36 years now and have read widely and kind of indiscriminately. (You know, for fun.) I haven’t really participated in much fandom, because I’m not really that kind of person. But I’ve been reading more blogs/fanzines etc this past year, and I can’t say I’ve seen a lot that I like. There seem to be two different crowds (you know who you are) and I’ve seen A LOT of uncivil behavior on both sides. It has only convinced me that I really don’t want to participate.
But the thing that has freaked me out the most is the insistence (by folks on both sides) that one should not read books by an author whose personal beliefs do not match my own. Really? Cause I might get offended. And just for the record, I am so liberal, I can’t even call myself a Democrat in good faith. Gay marriage? Awesome. Gun control? You bet. But I also fervently believe in the rights of others to believe and say whatever they want within the letter of the law. And that means ideas that I might find offensive. And I might read books with ideas I hate. I reserve the right to engage with ideas I don’t agree with and to let others do the same. I’m going to read all the Hugo nominees this year and vote for the ones I think best. I think that’s how one does it.
I hear ya. All of the Hugo hooha aside, I never thought I’d see the day when people were encouraged to read or not read an author based on the author’s personal beliefs. The idea is absolutely ludicrous. What person agrees 100% with another? No one. Therefore, if we all followed such a system, no one would be able to read.
They’d be cool with that. Most of those people don’t sell many books anyway. 🙂
Er. Good point.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone on this side of the aisle, but as for me, I’ll tell you who I think you should read. Anyone who writes a good story.
Politics be damned. I’ve got a couple of writers I won’t buy, not because of THEIR politics, but how they’ve derided mine. However, I won’t tell anyone else to not buy their stuff.
I have exactly one author I won’t read because of her personal beliefs. She was the first person to suggest such an idea to me with a straight (virtual) face. Yes, she’s one of those SJW people. I thought banning her from my reading list was poetic justice, but I don’t actively campaign against her works. My mother raised me to have better manners than that.
Same here. I’ll mention the name, but usually among other people who aren’t buying his stuff in the first place. However, like I said, I won’t say he can’t write. He certainly can. If he had been a bad writer, I’d probably never have bothered to find his blog and see what he thought of people like me.
I like Eric Flint and have read a lot of his stuff, both solo and in collaboration with others.
Even though he’s supposedly a communist, I feel sure he’s not down with muzzling anybody or putting them in camps.
Miéville, I won’t read. Scalzi, I won’t read. I won’t read anything that the Nielsen Haydens have touched. And I won’t read any of these people who are trying to prevent folks from reading Correia. That last one won’t be much of a sacrifice, since I’ve yet to see any who sound like they’re worth reading.
The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital are both on the net for free. Why would I want to pay money for some dullwitted remake?
I like Flint’s stuff too. Despite his politics, he tells stories that appeal to me. In part, it’s probably because he knows that his politics don’t have any place in a good story.
Loved the Belasarius series the most, but I’ve liked some of his other stuff too.
See? We right wing types DO read non-right wingers. We just don’t want to hear how left wing they really are in stories that are supposed to be about entertainment.
Adelkaide —
It’s not their personal beliefs that cause me to avoid certain authors based on philosophy. (Point of fact, I think Eric Flint is a better *writer* than Larry in many respects. Sorry, Larry, I love ya, and would read your grocery lists, but Flint’s got some mad game. 😉 )
I *do*, however, refrain from financially rewarding people who use the fame and money thus gained to overtly attack me and my core beliefs on a nearly continual basis. Especially when they aren;t even as good at their business as otehrs who do NOT go out of their way to tell me how evil they think I am. Pro-tip, SJW types — don’t spit in my face and try to sell me a towel to wipe up with afterwards. (Sell me something I actually *want*, and feel free to spit on my shadow as I leave. Machts nichts.)
Silly sad little SJW Stalinist. A little lesson from history, just for you. People keep trying to shut down freedom of speech. Often times the motives are pure and noble (we don’t want people saying undeserved and mean things about people). But it soon becomes a way to shut out critisism- because critisism hurts, and people like to self justify.
Thus, one winds up with massively obvious flaws that nobody is allowed to point out or fix, because that would go against the official party line and Chairman Mao Thought. See also the Bloody History of the 20th Century.
Thus, free speech is essential. It allows problems to be brought to light, and fustrations to be vented. But what about the hateful, the SJW may ask? Simple- let them talk freely. They’ll self discredit. However, one can give them legitimacy by trying to supress their views. They become countercultural, hip, and rebellious that way.
So this was brought to my attention. On of your fans tries to use reason and logic and is banned and later made fun of on Twitter…
http://radishreviews.com/2014/04/21/do-i-dare-disturb-the-universe/#comment-31283
https://twitter.com/eilatan/status/459395207357018112
I usually try to stay clear of this shit but The Other Rick’s comments are so far from “trolling” that I felt his valiant effort deserved to be pointed out.
Way to go, Rick. 🙂
And what the hell is a “bad faith” argument?
Badthink is bad. Shrug. Ms. Luhrs can return to her panel moderating and minor cons and romance novel editing.
The argument here is that trolling is the only possible reason anyone could nominate any of the books on Larry’s list. The books are so self-evidently bad (because, penis! and right-wing!) that no one could possibly nominate one of them in good faith.
Once again: judging from sales figures, Jeff Bezos must be in on the conspiracy, ’cause it sure looks like a lot of people have laid out their cold, hard cash to read these supposedly terrible books.
Well, in law, “bad faith” usually means intent to deceive, which is the usual motivating action for the crime of fraud. Philosophically, as far as I can make out, “bad faith” is equated with doublethink — an intent to deceive ONESELF, which usually involves rationalizing away one’s own hypocrisy by inventing complex reasons not to apply to oneself the same set of rules one expects others to live by.
This SJW type seems to catch onto some nebulous combination of the above definitions, define “bad faith” as “fundamental dishonesty”, and condemn her opponents on those grounds. Mainly because she’s still intelligent enough to know that calling him a “lying son of a bitch” will still be regarded by some as bad manners.
SJW types project a lot.
Well, to be honest, SBP, some of us HAVE bought multiple copies of the same of Larry’s work. . .
I’ve worn out a copy of MHI already, and I had to buy a loaner copy, so even if loaned out I still had access. . . {grin}
re: Geodkyt I’ve personally bought all of the books written by Correia multiple times, albeit electronic form. It’s cheaper than booze (and I don’t drink). So I buy them in Baen library format, Audio Book format, and since I’m impatient, eARC. So Larry, when is Nemesis audio book release date?
Usually, imputing bad faith is meant to discredit the speaker’s argument on the grounds that the speaker does not actually hold that position (i.e., is trolling, a practice once referred to as Tartuffery).
The desired further implication seems to be that no thinking person would genuinely possess the frame of mind required to ask questions such as Rick’s unironically. Who is the Tartuffe now?
I think what it really means, as used, is “he’s being a big meany and I can’t respond so I’ll just blame him and ignore these uncomfortable questions”.
Fun quote of the day:
“Natalie Luhrs @eilatan 2h
“@katsudonburi I’ve never worn a corset–in part bc I would have to get one custom bc I am SUPER short-waisted.”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Is “I am SUPER short-waisted” code for “it would look like someone shrink-wrapped a tube of cookie dough”?
Wow. My favorite bit about that? She couldn’t even answer any of his questions. Just banned him. Because SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!
We’re dealing with some intellectual heavy weights here. //eye roll//
“We’re (un)wanted men. I’ve got the ban sentence on twelve SJW systems!”
Nice.
Damnit Combat…
I had forgotten what soda in the nose feels like.
Sorry, can’t help myself. It’s just my ADD-riddled impulsivity.
*Victimhood flag hoisted*
*New skill level UNLOCKED!!!!!!*
😀
Having wandered around the ‘net for a few days reading posts about this, I’ve started wanting to leave comments that are simply “Hail Hydra!” on most of their boards. Since that seems to be the sort of world they want to promote, they should be acknowledged for it.
But only the good Soviet Russia Hydra is to be acknowledged. The evil Nazi Hydra is to be ignored.
Mr. Correia, if only I were a pagan, I would erect to you a shrine, and sacrifice a manatee while forcing my wife and daughter to dance around the sacred statue of you. Alas, I am a member of a heteronormative plutocratic Islamophobic fascist pro-Aryan phallocratic religious cult where I pray fifty times a day to a Jewess named Maryam, therefore forbidden from the enlightened Roman practice of having the Patrician senate vote you deification honors.
You’ve talking me into buying the sequels to your HARD MAGIC as soon as I can beg money from She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Good thing I am a phallocratic male chauvinist patriarchy. (And by the ‘Patriarchy’ of course I mean the government of the bellicose catlike aliens of 61 Ursae Majoris, of course).
I must use caution in asking She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed for book money, but am willing to do so for your sake. Here is an explanation of my domestic arrangementshttp://www.scifiwright.com/2009/08/she-who-must-be-obeyed-has-commanded-friday-postings/
I appreciate that very much, John, however the manatees are on our side. We don’t want to sacrifice them. Most people are unaware of the extremely free market, pro liberty nature of the noble manatee.
That and I stuck one in a funny short story, where he helped save Christmas, so Wendell was an obvious choice for spokesman for my campaign. 🙂
So they’re Scottish manatees? 🙂 (That’s probably a joke only philosophy nerds will get.)
Turns out Adam Smith was a quarter manatee on his mother’s side. No joke.
John, I am willing to dance around a manatee–a live one, mind you–in Larry’s honor…but the Princess never will. Alas, she is too fastidious.
As to Mr. Correia’s books, I am all for it.
Very well. When you are elected to the post of divine Godking by the Forced of Evil, we will spare the Manitees. I propose sacrificing Vegans instead. This can either be intelligent life forms from the planet orbiting the star Vega, or Earthlings who do not eat meat, milk, or eggs. Your choice.
If it’s someone/thing on the *other* side it’s not really a sacrifice, now is it?
And by the ‘Patriarchy’ of course I mean the government of the bellicose catlike aliens of 61 Ursae Majoris, of course
Shouldn’t that be “Petriarchy” then?
Hell, at this junction, I’ll buy the 3 books in your favor format and ship it to you. I’ve bought enough of your book already (currently reading Golden Age).
Mr. Correia,
I doubt you will read this, but I just felt that I needed to let you know that I originally didn’t believe you and what you were saying about the politics of the Hugos. I am a big fan of your books and recomend them to everyone I know who wants a good book to read. I also happen to be a fan of Tor.com and was listening to their new podcast “Rocket talk” specifcally their episode of going over the Hugo nominees. When I heard them talk about your writting, or more correctly your politics and not your writting I was honestly flabbergated that for some reason they were complaning about your politics and not your writting. What also started to boggle my mind was that some of the people who posted stated planning ways to prevent “a large and action oriented” fan base like yours from having an effect on the Hugos again. I don’t always agree with your views, but I hoestly hope that you win the Hugo to shut these people up! The Hugos are about good stories first politics second if at all. If you or any of your readers are interested the post I made:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/04/rocket-talk-episode-5-the-hugo-awards
I’m the long one #11 under BigJim. Again, I hope you win, and I will continue to buy and read your books. Thanks for being a voice of reason and good writting in the wilderness I have unfortunatley found myself in.
Jim, I try to read all my comments.
Thank you for posting over there. People like you are exactly who I did Sad Puppies for. I wanted to demonstrate what I’d personally witnessed so that everyone could see.
And your user name? My wife is from Milpitas.
I was thinking, which Milpitas? ’til I Googled it, and confirmed there is only one of us, or at least only one G can find. (I’ll admit to only looking at maybe a dozen pages of results before giving up 🙂 )
Embarrassing how many years I’ve been here, and never realized it had a unique name. I’m thinking that’s not a common status in the US.
So, did you drag her out of here, or did she run on her own? 😀
We’re both from California, but met at Utah State. Been here ever since.
@Will:
I think she’s a white wimmenz, which means that the filthy hispanic stole her. He also stole the some writer’s job.
Upon reflection, after comparing sales numbers, he stole the jobs of a many hundreds of message fic writers. They’ve been ‘outsourced’.
They forgive him, though, since by writing good stories, he’s doing a hard, dirty job that they won’t.
I remember it well… There I was, hanging out in the Home Depot parking lot when Toni Weisskopf pulled up in her pickup and said “I need two guys who can do tile and a novelist.” I hopped in back and have been taking their jobs ever since. 🙂
Ah, yes. Milpitas. I recall a contest our gun club once had. First prize was a week in Mipitas. Second prize was TWO weeks in Milpitas. Just i kidding, though my mother (when quite young) once in describing how much she liked to travel to different places, said “I’d even go to Milpitas.” Great hilarity ensued amongst the East Bay listeners.
I am SO glad I no longer live in California, the straw hat broke the camel’s back being when I started seeing billboards in San Jose written entirely and only in Spanish. I felt as if I had been pushed out of my own house…
Portagee migrant authors — taking work Americans won’t do!
@Correia45. Yeah I remembered that your wife was from here> I know her Dad. and met you out here one time, I was the guy without the pen. 🙂
At some point, they have to realize that their uproar is counter productive. For instance, Clamps was a moron, but I never would have read Vox, John C. Wright (Awake in the Night Land is awe-inspiring), or a handful of others without his Crusade Against Evil here and on other blogs.
So, Clamps, SJWs, please, by all means, tell me what I shouldn’t read and think. I need more reading material and your negative endorsements have turned out to include some really good reads.
Clamps/Yama/Andrew Marston is the literati poster child. I should have dedicated this whole campaign to him. Sadly, he’s voting against me. So I’ve lost the creepy stalker sex offender vote.
Ah, darn.
Gosh, if I’d known that Yama had the power to generate free publicity by the sheer force of stupid, I might not have banned him from my blog.
Larry, Vox Day devoted 2 pages to emulate Clamps/Yama/Alauda/Andrew Marston in his novel A Man Disrupted. I think it was harder to write that block of text than the rest of the novel.
Yama’s kinda responsible for my finding out about you, and if it hadn’t been for him, I’d never have discovered your L5R writings, and then from there, your books, which are such delightful reading. If he hadn’t been sneering about you, I wouldn’t have your stories to read!
So, I guess he’s done at least one good thing in his life?
I know about the creepy stalker part – the sex offender tag is somewhat new to me. o_o
Maybe Clamps should come with his own trigger warning? 😀
Our very existence is a trigger, I’d guess. There would be waaaay too many warnings to issue – and rather than read ‘Warning, Correia trigger!” or “T.L Knighton trigger!” or Shadowdancer trigger!” ad nauseum, I’d much rather read a new post or L5R story ^_^
“Correia Trigger” sounds catchy though.
Actually, I was thinking that some script should be written so whenever his IP address shows up, WordPress put text at the top of the post. Something like:
Trigger warning: Strange stalker behavior and possible mention of fish semen.
I like this idea – a warning to the readers that he’s around, seething in silence, glaring at our merry conversation…
But a poorly executed script might open vulnerabilities, and given the various WordPress CVE emails I’d been spotting lately… *sigh!*
So, we agree that a trigger warning for Clamps’s presence is good. It’s the execution we need to work on. 🙂
Certainly a library of randomly chosen trigger warning descriptions might make it (more) amusing.
Alas, writing scripts or coding anything beyond basic HTML font and paragraph markup is not one of my skills…
I actually bought a book once because of the trigger warnings. It had things ranging from “paganism and the occult” to “cohabitation of a non-married male and female couple” and a few others that were just hysterical.
Reminds me of the person who thought “Libertarian gun porn” was a negative review of Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold.
Holy crap. Monster Hunter International would have caused an aneurysm.
For me, a review like that ranks the book as a “Must Buy!”
….those things need trigger warnings now? *boggles*
Well, in all fairness, it was pretty clear the warnings weren’t to be taken seriously.
Sadly these days it’s difficult to tell.
Yep.
I have thought about putting out “Trigger Warnings” based on me having Asperger syndrome (which is true).
Said trigger warnings would be things like “Warning I don’t suffer fools lightly. If you’re a fool I will attack you.”.
The problem is that I think somebody would take me seriously. [Sad Smile]
This had so much mundane stuff, like “failure to use proper safety equipment” that it was pretty obvious.
If it wasn’t meant in humor, then I want to blow up the world.
A Trigger Warning for Clamps/Yama/Andrew Marston? WARNING: These spammy blog comments may contain stupidity, ignorance, obliviousness, really pretentious bad fiction writing, drool, all from a creepy stalker of Asian women. 🙂
And fish semen. Don’t forget about the fish semen.
Here’s the funny bit: the UK has no First Amendment protections for free speech. Hate-speech which amounts to racial incitement is against the law. If that were pressed home in a truly neutral fashion, the social justice Torlocks lose Hugo nominees: 12 to 1. That is what law is, and why law, principle and neutrality are worthless to the PC. That ratio shows the amount of bald-faced delusion the PC indulge in to justify their racism.
Keep in mind: the UK is where a guy was arrested for racism for singing “Kung Fu Fighting” because it was heard by a passer-by. ARRESTED!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1380971/Simon-Ledger-arrested-racism-performing-Kung-Fu-Fighting.html
Start shame-walking those perps out of the Hugos right now.
Yeah, UK’s speech laws were often used as the basis for “libel tourism”. A book would be published in the US by a US author that was perfectly in-line with US speech laws. Some party annoyed by something mentioned in the book would rant and rave about “hate speech”, but wouldn’t be able to do anything because the things stated in the book were perfectly true (and thus protected). Then the book would go on sale in the UK, and the party in question would file suit against the author based on the UK’s speech laws.
iirc, a few years ago the US passed a law that essentially made the judgements from such cases non-enforceable.
I’m sure that’ll be very comforting to 6 of the 12 who live in the UK.
?
Not sure what that’s about.
In any event, US laws can’t protect UK residents. But at least you have the opportunity to get hold of books that might otherwise be withheld from release in the UK due to the lack of proper free speech protections.
It’s worse than that. You don’t even have to publish in the UK, it just has to be available. ISTR that the definition used of “available” was “a copy has been imported”.
Yeah, UK Libel laws are atrocious. See the case of the British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCA_v._Singh ). Fortunately, Simon won, but at the cost of many thousands of Pounds. I recall hearing there was a movement afoot to change those laws, but apparently that’s not happened yet.
Now watch someone make a criminal complaint in the UK against Loncon and the Hugos because they are allowing the works of such a notorious racist evil hatemonger on the ballot!
Well, they have no quotes against Correia, which is why they so rarely use them, preferring instead libel and slander, which are also much easier to prosecute in the UK than the US. Several times I’ve seen Charles Stross mention he’s not going to get specific on his blog about a given UK dust-up for that very reason. It’s different in the US – a free-fire zone.
Reblogged this on The Worlds of Tarien Cole and commented:
Larry’s latest on the Hugo hatcheting.
To the morons who keep talking about how they wouldn’t “feel safe” if I attended WorldCon, you may untwist your panties
God, what’s WRONG with these people?
(I confess I’ve never read your books, though not out of dislike of your politics … just never gotten around to it. Maybe one of these days.
I concur completely that a man’s politics don’t make his books bad; Iain Banks was a flaming Communist, but the Culture novels are brilliant.
Now, when someone’s politics actually invade their work and it distracts, that’s another matter. Literally, another matter.
Banks does well because the little economics he talks in the Culture books works because they’re post-scarcity; his failures there, which are minor, are offhand remarks about how savages hadn’t stopped using money yet, despite not being post-scarcity.
Not bad enough to get a “will not read”, as he almost never does it.)
I have to wonder about the people who “wouldn’t feel safe” — have they ever been to an SCA event? Everyone has a knife, many of the people there are trained in how to use them.
Some of them would not “feel safe” because they wet themselves at the mere thought of weapons in the hands of citizens.
Some would not “feel safe” if the weapons were in the hands of non-communists.
Most merely use “not feel safe” as a passive-aggressive, cowardly way of saying that they want to silence those they disagree with.
For example: the feminazis at Wiscon claimed that they “felt unsafe” because an invited guest expressed the opinion that the fundamental texts of Islam contain material that mandate intolerance and war. There is no rational basis for claiming that expressing such an opinion makes anyone “unsafe”, but the little kommissarettes in Madison WI were too cowardly to actually give their real reasons, which revolved around their intolerance of opinions that contradict their lunatic ideology, especially when rational and honest discussion of those issues would reveal the schizophrenically irrational contradictions in their beliefs.
Yeah. Standard SCA joke: “Anybody got a knife?” – followed by belt knives being unsheathed by 20-30 people within hearing range, offering to be helpful.
Avoiding the over-reactions of modern-dress visitors who happen to be SJWs is a major reason for most SCA events to encourage only those who are willing to dress the part and go along with the culture / site rules.
Alan —
My ex-wife got a similar response from some DC-based corporate types when someone asked for a knife, and she whipped her “dressy knife” (a small, flat assisted opener) from her bra strap and snapped it open.
Apparantly, there are some people who leave their homes feeling fully dressed without carrying the most basic of paleolithic tools with them. . .
That’s hilarious! You think SCA is real combat training…
Pretty left leaning guy here. Reposted this on FB, with a comment along the lines of ‘If it really is about the art, Larry’s got a point’. Read the books, make the decision based on the book. I read plenty of books from folks I disagree with politically.
I think you meant “gender-normative”. Sigh 😉
Nope. It is Gendernormative. No hypen. Or at least that is how it was used on me as an insult. Think of it as a Buckminster Fuller style word smoosh. 🙂
All languages borrow from one another. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rummages through their pockets for loose grammar. When that doesn’t work, English will just make crap up.
Now, you didn’t Need to reference Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but damned if it didn’t make that post better
I hope Wheel of Time doesn’t win. I thought the first book was good. The second was OK. Couldn’t finish the third.
Couldn’t stand WoT either, but was forced to read through them at gunpoint. The series got good once Sanderson started writing.
Any how, people buy them and love them, including my friend with the gun. They don’t buy stuff I write.
Yet.
I only heard about the kerfuffle today, and frankly wouldn’t have blown $40 to get involved in it anyway.
But i paid for and own all three Grimnoir books, (and all your other books) and think they absolutely rock. So I guess I’m a rightwing hater of hatey-hate hateitude too.
(and on a personal preference note: Thank you thank you for writing a kick-ass trilogy with a beginning, middle and end rather than writing an X-number-of-books series into the ground, as seems common in the Baen universe.)
Something I just noticed. Didn’t Mike Resnick get virtual-lynched for using the term “lady editor” (among other things) in the SFWA Bulletin recently?
One of the nominees is “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”, by Mary Robinette Kowal. LADY Astronaut.
Isn’t that badthink on her part or something?
… but it’s THEIR ‘Lady Astronaut!’ Not one by the Minions of HateyHate. So it doesn’t count as badthink.
Because doublestandards. And by a WOMAN. So there! …or something.
(and every single time I try to write something up that sounds like the gibbering mob, it hurts my head to try think even a bit like they do. )
I’m the exact same way.
Yeah, you gotta be careful not to crack your brain. Or contort so much you sproing your corpus callosum.
This is… a very long post.
It has been a very long culture war.
I don’t normally enter into interweb arguments any longer, they usually give me gas. I did want to comment, however, because I’ve been following the explosion of rhetoric about all the Hugo noms.
Big fan, by the way. Six people in our family (parental units and four boys), and we’ve all read all the books in the Monster Hunter series.
I read this today:
“However, the position of a white, cisgendered, heterosexual man is a demographic position of privilege and power both in fandom and without it. ”
Do whut?!! Huh?
Do people actually talk like that? Seriously? What the hell does “cisgendered” mean anyhow?
And what’s with all the folks spouting the vitriol… yet they have no desire to read what other people might believe? Freedom of speech for me, but not for you?
I teach. Band. In a junior high. Beginners. (I’m deaf, btw). Teachers LOSE arguments with students (serious arguments, not the “but I didn’t kick the crap out of him” arguments) when they refuse to listen to their students. Students, especially middle school kids, aren’t always right, but they will (in most cases) respect a teacher that listens to them before pronouncing judgement. If I can show that much respect to a 12 year old kid, then why can’t grown-ups do the same with an interweb blog?
Seriously folks, I find the entire hub-bub nauseating.
By the way, if you ever want to see a school full of teachers turn into drooling zombies, announce that they have “standardized test” training at a faculty meeting.
“Cisgendered” means, as I understand it, to be born of a certain gender (male or female), happy with it, no sexual/gender/identity confusion, and remains as such.
Or, short version, born with a penis and likes it/born with a vagina and likes it, and stays that way.
Damn, that’s weird.
denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex.
Yep, it means “normal”.
And that, in a nutshell, is how I think many people see the world: Anyone just like you is “normal” and anyone else is not. That doesn’t just mean your gender identity or sexual orientation (which are two different things, in case you didn’t know it), but your race and ideology as well. You define yourself as “normal” and everyone else as abnormal.
Maybe you just don’t realize just how grating that is to people who aren’t just like you. I certainly do, and I’m a white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, English-speaking American.
Yep, that’s the problem in a nutshell. If we’re normal, we should be ashamed of being normal. [Sarcasm]
And if we’re not ashamed of being normal, it is ok to hate us. Which is what we see happening.
Word have actual definitions you know, including words like “normal“.
On the other hand, writing poems that suggest “libertarian” = “Nazi” is perfectly okay. Because that’s not at all insulting.
Right?
” a white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, English-speaking American.”
I’m a person, myself.
Of course it’s insulting. See the saying that a proper English gentleman is never unintentionally rude.
People who are deliberately insulting are “asking” to be insulted back. Is that the world Liberals want? Do you really want a world full of hatred because that’s what Liberal insults seem to creating.
I’m going with ‘anyone just like 98%+ of the population is normal.’ While I have no doubt that some people are offended by the word meaning what it means and not what they /want/ it to mean, I’m not losing any sleep over it.
@ kastandlee
Let’s look at “normal”
<b<nor·mal
adjective
1.
conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
“it’s quite normal for puppies to bolt their food”
synonyms: usual, standard, ordinary, customary, conventional, habitual, accustomed, expected, wonted; More
ordinary, average, typical, run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road, common, conventional, mainstream, unremarkable, unexceptional, garden-variety, a dime a dozen
antonyms: unusual
(of a person) free from physical or mental disorders.
2.
technical
(of a line, ray, or other linear feature) intersecting a given line or surface at right angles.
3.
MEDICINE
(of a salt solution) containing the same salt concentration as the blood.
CHEMISTRYdated
(of a solution) containing one gram-equivalent of solute per liter.
4.
GEOLOGY
denoting a fault or faulting in which a relative downward movement occurred in the strata situated on the upper side of the fault plane.
noun
noun: normal; plural noun: normals
1.
the usual, average, or typical state or condition.
“her temperature was above normal”
informal
a person who is conventional or healthy.
2.
technical
a line at right angles to a given line or surface.
let’s look at adjective 1, and noun 1.
Conforming to a standard. Usual. Typical. Expected.
In this context, one could say that it is nromal to run into a few people who are not straight in any sufficiently large crowd (20-40 or more).
The usual, average, or typical state or condition. Informally – a person who is conventional or healthy.
Even with the most optimistic estimate of the percentage of people who are gay, it could be said as above that it is normal to run into gay people, but not that it gay people are the norm….
When someone says that we should be tolerant in understanding the adjective – that gay people exist, et over it, that’s one thing.
When people insist that we MAKE non-normal gender the redefined “norm”, they are asking us to redefine language. And as Lincol reputedly observed – you can name a tail a “leg” – and though a dog may then have five “legs” – he will only have four LEGS.
People aren’t computer variables to be interchanged like spare parts.
“You define yourself as “normal” and everyone else as abnormal.”
Sorry, no, we don’t, and it is extremely ugly of you to make that accusation. No one has said anything negative about “abnormal” at all. Only that “normal” should be allowed, too (and in SFF, that’s hardly going to be “normal” anyway).
I am sick to death of people like you accusing me of beliefs I do not hold, based on no evidence whatsoever, only your own prejudices, in order to allow yourself some manufactured outrage. Do you feel all superior now? Are you really that petty?
Petty? I reacted angrily to the dismissal of an actual value-neutral term (“cisgendered”, which is the opposite of “transgendered”; “cis-” and “trans-” being antonyms) with a loaded term of “normal,” implying everything else as “abnormal,” which is generally a negative term. I’m sorry, but that dismissal infuriates me, because I’ve seen just how much harm it causes to the people who don’t fall into those nice little “normal” buckets.
Proper English gentlemen don’t lie.
Other than that, great point.
It is a lie, Kevin. You’re not stupid. You know that it’s a lie.
It’s a lie no less reprehensible than claiming that Jews make matzo out of the blood of Christian babies.
You’re comfortable calling people who do stuff like that “your side”? Really?
I guess I’m going to have to revise my previous statements about accepting your word.
And because the replies are so intertwined, I’m going to have to post that again with the quote to which I replies included because it’s probably impossible to figure out its context.
Can you write that again with the reference replacing “It”? I honestly couldn’t figure out what you were saying.
” that dismissal infuriates me”
There is no dismissal of anything here, no matter how much you need this to be so. And you do need it, I think. Again, manufactured outrage, allowing yourself to hate, even if what you hate exists only in your head. There’s a word for that. It’s “bigot.”
Perhaps you are tired. Perhaps you’ve been listening to the bigots on the other side too much – and they are bigots. But right now, I’m beginning to question your assertions of honesty, if you are this dishonest now.
Would I be right in assuming that you are a cisgendered person yourself with no personal knowledge of any transgendered people? (I’m not talking about seeing them on TV or on the internet.)
Would I be right in assuming that you are a cisgendered person yourself with no personal knowledge of any transgendered people? (I’m not talking about seeing them on TV or on the internet.)
Sir, your assumptions and biases are remarkable.
How about, with all your talk of sensitivity and appreciation of diversity you try avoiding the assumption of a monolithic culture “over here?” Do you think you could see your way there?
Or is it necessary to reduce any apparent opposition to a simple stereotype in order to bolster your sense of truth and honor?
Equating libertarians with Nazis. That’s a lie, Kevin.
Let’s see… so far we’ve had you defending political blacklisting and Goebbels-style Big Lie tactics. I’m really curious to see just how far a “man of honor” will go down that road.
Thanks. Seriously.
Yeah, I don’t think most libertarians are actual Nazis, just as I think the accusations of being communists thrown at US-type political liberals are overwrought as well. I think many of them, given the world they claim to want, would not get what they think they would out of it. Based on the behaviors of I’ve seen of some-but-not-all self-described libertarians, I tend to think a society that started out with pure libertarianism would collapse into feudalism at best and gangsterism at worst, but Nazis? Nope.
I also don’t subscribe to any of the other words you’re trying to put in my mouth. But then again, as far as the Big Lie goes, I at least am not anonymous. Or does everyone else here know who you really are and you’re not just hiding behind a pseudonym and piece of artwork?
— Kevin Standlee, whose icon photo is in fact of him in September 2002 just before the 2002 Hugo Awards Ceremony.
“Would I be right in assuming that you are a cisgendered person yourself with no personal knowledge of any transgendered people?”
No, you would be utterly wrong – best friends and family, and many dead of AIDS in the 80s.
You really are a bigot, aren’t you?
Okay, you don’t have the excuse of ignorance. Sorry.
And thus he attempts the Kafkatrap.
@kastandlee
Odd, you hear the word “normal” automatically think “abnormal” about people who don’t fit in as “normal” and somehow it’s other people’s fault?
Exactly.
Everyone’s abnormal in some way. Personally, I’m ADHD and dyslexic (big fun for a writer). Those are abnormalities.
How someone views the term “abnormality” tells us a lot more about themselves than the people pointing out that it’s not normal much of the time.
“Yeah, I don’t think most libertarians are actual Nazis”
So some are, you’re suggesting? Names? Quotes?
“I at least am not anonymous”
Well, Kevin, your “honorable” friends don’t want to blacklist you, now do they? That’s what they’re doing to people, you know. Teresa Nielsen Hayden has admitted it, in public.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden has published, front and center, a poem that suggests libertarians are Nazis. He’s not stupid. He knows it’s not true, just the same as you do.
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nope. Statistics; lots of people, lots of opinions. Some of the far left are authoritarian Communist-types. Some of the far right, libertarian-identified people are Nazi-types. In no case are they hugely significant numbers of people though.
You can’t name any but they just have to exist, is that it?
So, basically you either made it up or are mindlessly repeating others claims without any substantiation.
So, anybody want to invoke The List on mr. “kastandlee”‘s posts?
My name is Kevin Standlee (the handle is an artifact of how the login system works as far as I know; the “a” is my middle initial). I was co-chairman of the 2002 World Science Fiction Convention and have served in a variety of other roles in various Worldcons and in WSFS administrative duties, from gopher up to deputy Chairman. I’m not anonymous, unlike most of the people who post here. (Or on Making Light as well; I don’t like it there either. And my LiveJournal is in my own name as well.) Indeed, my name is so oddly spelled that I’m trivially easy to find. Who are you, thewriterinblack?
Oh, a very good diversion from the post. You can’t name anyone, can you? All of this “who I am and who are you” BS is just a smokescreen to cover that.
Yeah, I use a handle. The term, in case you aren’t aware of it, is “personal branding.”
Just how “anonymous” is someone where the link associated with their handle takes you to their WP blog (currently in the process of porting over from blogger) which has, plain as day, a “My titles for Sale” where their name is plastered all over their covers.
Here, I’ll give you a direct link to the blogger version:
http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
My name is David L. Burkhead. In addition to being a writer I am also in metrology and have written software that supports more than half of the DVD production worldwide and was instrumental in the development of Blu-Ray. So if you have a DVD or Blu-Ray player and disks that actually work in it: you’re welcome.
As for who you are? I don’t give a rat’s ass. The content of your posts is all that concerns me.
And it’s still diversion from the the fact that this “libertarian nazi” thing is pure fabrication. You can’t name a single case.
“Okay, you don’t have the excuse of ignorance. Sorry.”
Excuse for what? You’re the one making vile accusations with no evidence. The only person who has brought up anything about anyone being anti-gay is you.
Bigot.
Anti-gay? Hardly touched on it. Sexual orientation and gender identity are different things. But if you want to put it in those terms: There was a time when the perceived antonym of “homosexual” was “normal.” I’d like to think we’re past that now, an that “heterosexual” isn’t perceived as an insulting term of some sort. Similarly, the opposite of “transgenered” is more appropriately “cisgendered,” not “normal.” That’s what got me riled up.
Mr. in some ways I’m not “normal”. I’m an asper. However, I don’t go around “whining” about it or expecting others to “bow down to me”. I do my best to deal with other people as an adult not a child.
Unfortunately, in the Liberal world as a white I am said to “live life on the easy setting”. In the Liberal world, as a non-gay male, I’m said ‘to live life on the easy setting”. I haven’t heard much about “Christian privilege” but I’m sure some of the Liberal bigots would say that as a Christian (not as good of one as I should be) I live life on the easy setting.
Sorry but I find it too easy to hear talk about “living life on the easy setting” as Bigotry.
“Some of the far right, libertarian-identified people are Nazi-types”
Nazi means “National socialist” – and Nazism is a form of socialism. Hitler hated capitalism and the free market, and everything was under government control. That’s the opposite of libertarianism.
Yep. I agree with you. I also think that there are people describe themselves as libertarians but who, given the chance, would impose their will upon people as much as any other authoritarian types. Personally, I lean (social) libertarian in some aspects myself, except that the actual behavior of some (most definitely not all!) self-described libertarians makes me not want to associate with them. What I said earlier applies: I believe that given a chance, the libertarian utopia would turn into “gangsterism” (see parts of Northern Mexico for an example) with a potentially stable form at a kind of neo-feudalism, as the biggest, strongest, and best-armed ones subjugated the other utopians. Depressing, really.
“So, anybody want to invoke The List on mr. “kastandlee”‘s posts?”
Well, we’ve certainly got Disregard inconvenient facts and Make Shit Up. Would groundless accusations of anti-gay count as Racism?
@Laurie: You are impure for using doubleplus ungood terminology. Confess! Confess! *eyeroll*
Though it’s interesting how he is the one who uses “abnormal” to define “not normal” and presumes everyone else does and does so in a negative context… like he does. Yet it’s those icky awful people who don’t use “cisgendered” and other buzzwords who have problems.
Nazis are socialists. So are fascists. Neither has anything to do with anything that could remotely be described as “libertarian”. As I pointed out elsewhere on this thread, Nazis are only “on the right” if you’re a Stalinist.
lib·er·tar·i·an [lib-er-tair-ee-uhn] Show IPA
noun
1. a person who advocates liberty, especially with regard to thought or conduct.
2. a person who maintains the doctrine of free will (distinguished from necessitarian ).
adjective
3. advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty.
4. maintaining the doctrine of free will.
Na·zi [naht-see, nat-] Show IPA
noun, plural Na·zis.
1. a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ party of Germany, which in 1933, under Adolf Hitler, seized political control of the country, suppressing all opposition and establishing a dictatorship over all cultural, economic, and political activities of the people, and promulgated belief in the supremacy of Hitler as Führer, aggressive anti-Semitism, the natural supremacy of the German people, and the establishment of Germany by superior force as a dominant world power. The party was officially abolished in 1945 at the conclusion of World War II.
Yep, those two are very similar, to be sure. An understandable mistake.
“Similarly, the opposite of “transgenered” is more appropriately “cisgendered,” not “normal.” That’s what got me riled up.”
I’m assuming you work either in academia or publishing*, because no one, and I mean NO ONE, in the real world, including all my gay friends and family, use words like “cisgendered.” Sorry, but no. In fact, we laugh at people who do – as you saw on this forum. But that’s just academic silliness. Publish or perish has produced some pretty ludicrous stuff.
The fact that you would actually attack people for not using it is even worse, not to mention your ugly, self-righteous assumptions – these are SFF readers, fergawdsake. We read stuff like this all the time, we’ve done it for decades (because none of this is new, believe me. I remember one writer used a new pronoun for gender neutral, way back in the 70s, but it was really annoying to read.)
“cisgender” is jargon used by a couple of specific ingroup, consisting of transgendered folk, feminists, their allies, and the academics that study those issues.
Having an ingroup apply a jargon label to an outgroup, and then become offended when the outgroup doesn’t accept the jargon label and use it to refer to themselves is absolutely absurd.
“Having an ingroup apply a jargon label to an outgroup, and then become offended when the outgroup doesn’t accept the jargon label and use it to refer to themselves is absolutely absurd.”
Being offended is the whole point. In the mind of a certain kind of offendee, it conveys automatic superiority. Same as knocking down strawmen.
I have friends who do this, and every one of them, while personally likable people, has something lacking inside of them, something broken. And none of them have pursued careers that would help fix this – they’re in academia, mostly, or writers. A good dose of the real world, and solving some real problems would do wonders for their psyche – get them out of their heads, at least. Instead, they’ve chosen the most isolating, crazy-making paths possible, surrounded by people who are equally isolated and crazy.
Part of this discussion emphasizes the quantitative meaning of “normal,” as in being x standard deviations away from the mean. People on this thread are talking across each other in part because what the transgendered and their advocates want is for us to think that “transgender” is value-neutral, and that’s why they insist on “cisgender” as its opposite. People are right-handed and left-handed, not right-handed and normal.
However, transgender is not quantitatively -normal-but-value-neutral, like being left-handed is. In at least the case of those who take steps to change gender (i.e., true transgendered people vs. transvestites), there is a problem, or there would be no need to fix it. Either there is a problem with the desire that causes them to want to change gender, or there is a problem with their physical gender that they need to change. There is no need for remediation where there is no dysfunction.
I reject the term “cisgendered” *because* it is an attempt to be value-neutral. And I fully expect to be excoriated for that, but I don’t see how I can be intellectually honest and do otherwise.
This doesn’t mean transgendered people are evil or whatever other awful thing you think I want it to mean. It means they suffer with a legitimate problem in their lives, with potentially devastating consequences, and we should be sympathetic to that.
But let’s not pretend that there’s *no* problem.
*quantitatively-abnormal-but-value-neutral
“There’s no problem”? Actually, those sorts say that there’s a problem but the problem is with “normal” people. [Sad Smile]
Being left-handed used to be considered “abnormal,” rather than just being part of normal human variation, and left-handed people were subject to “correction” sometimes rather nasty. And that wasn’t very long ago, either. It was effectively the use of the power of the state (working through the public schools, because that was the most likely place for such coercion) to “cure” people of their deviant behavior of being left-handed.
Being left-handed used to be considered “abnormal,” rather than just being part of normal human variation, and left-handed people were subject to “correction” sometimes rather nasty.
I wondered if you’d say that. The clear difference is that other people felt that left-handedness was qualitatively abnormal, and tried to change left-handed people; with transgendered people, they themselves feel that something is amiss and want to be changed.
You can’t say on the one hand that there’s nothing wrong, and on the other hand want to remediate it.
Therefore “right-handness” should be considered bad. [Sarcasm]
kastandlee said: “It was effectively the use of the power of the state (working through the public schools, because that was the most likely place for such coercion) to “cure” people of their deviant behavior of being left-handed.”
You want to experience some “power of the State working through the public schools” kicking you ass, you should try having a helping of Asperger’s syndrome. That’s a whole lifetime of people fucking with you because you “don’t act right”.
Talking to me about “normal”? Check your trans-privilege at the door, baby.
*bleak look* I know more about this than you would likely be aware of.
It’s wrong to do that to people with Asperger’s. It’s wrong to do that to left-handed people. And it’s wrong to do it to trans people.
I note that I have not named any “it” that would be substituted into “do it to trans people”. I was discussing what transgenderism vs. normalcy, not any specific actions.
“By the way, if you ever want to see a school full of teachers turn into drooling zombies, announce that they have “standardized test” training at a faculty meeting.”
Ooh! Larry, here’s a scene you need to put into your next book.
Very late to the party with this, but I think it’s relevant to what Larry’s been talking about. From the angle of a past triple-nominee.
http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/fear-and-loathing-at-the-awards-table-3/
As a bonus, famed Vox stalker and creepy crappy writer Clamps has decided to, um, “grace” you with his presence.
He’s using the handle Alauda. Lets just say this individual is a known stalker of women in his hometown.
So this is Clamps, eh? Interesting.
We’re all neocons now 🙂
The only good that came from that was I learned a previous head of the Republican Liberty Caucus was a big fan, saw that, said there was no way in hell I was a NeoCon, and claimed me as a Liberty Republican.
Because seriously… I could hang out with Mike Lee, Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz. I don’t think I could hang out with John McCain or Karl Rove.
The only true thing about ‘neocon’ is the ‘con’.
If, for example, you had a horrible parasite phobia and were simply unable to finish an excellent novel, how would you tend to rank it?
Can I still register?
Admittedly this has more to do with my lingering bitterness over the last wheel of time book delaying its eBook release than anything else…and me wanting a copy of Stross’s space opera…problem is I tend to hate his space operas.
I lean left as often as right, but, I wish you well. Half of it is that I rather like to see vocal twits being embarrassed. The other half is that the Hugo, independent of politics, seem to underemphasize readability. Eg, did I miss something or did Redshirts just suck?
,(and I personally think it is as grossly exaggerated as anything else these people decide to attack)
Although this is usally true, I think in this case they are not exaggerating based on what Beale has actually writen.
Now, I do suspect that Beale is doesn’t actually believe half the stuff he claims to, but is merely interested in blog traffic, but that’s not something that I’m in a position to prove
As, given all those descriptors that have been heaped upon you, I think those morons are conflating you and Beale.
Oh wow, this’ll leave a mark. From a fellow named Jake Freivald:
“If you’re not watching the Hugos this year – and why would you? They’re normally a popularity contest among people who think they can understand how alien species would think when they can’t even understand how people from their own culture think — you might just consider paying attention.”
Whoever Jake is, he owes me a keyboard. 🙂
Forgot the link: http://jake.freivald.org/wp/hugos-correia-vox-day-conservatives-sad-puppies/
Jake is a very cool guy…with nine kids.
Heh. I guess after you have 4 or more, the number of children you have suddenly becomes your identity.
“That’s Janice. She fought in Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan, was on the intelligence team that got Bin Laden, she won 6 gingerbread baking contests in 4 different states, AND SHE’S GOT NINE KIDS.”
Guaranteed response is -“NINE KIDS!?”
Book: YES. 🙂
Thanks for the mention and kind words, Wes and Yagi.
@Book;
Fought in Turkiye? Any chance of explanation?
No, Jake, thank *you.”
One good thing about this whole kerfluffle: I’m also finding plenty more bloggers to read…
I spent the first day I was ever in Britain in the British Museum, and want to go back so I can spend another day in the British Museum. And some days other places.
Sir, your post made me cheer! It is so delightful to know that there are genuine heroes left in the world. Bravo!
And thank you for your support of Brad! He certainly deserves it!
(Currently reading Hard Magic.)
Mrs. John C. Wright
Frankly, the thing this post made me most curious about is what the hell Vox’s day job is.
Technically its game designer. He also opened a new publishing house.
Ditto. 🙂
i would only like to disagree with one thing:
“This SJW angry mob inquisition has been a gradual and relatively recent development in our culture, mostly as a result of the anonymous and instant internet.
it’s not recent. and it’s NOT because of the internet.
this is the final flowering of the Gramscian ( marxist ) ‘Long March’ through the institutions of western power. the western institutions of education were suborned back in the early 1900s.
you can read Ayn Rand’s “The Return of the Primitive” to see her observations on the creatures from the 60s-70s.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841
or you can follow Mike Adams adventures with college admin, who don’t behave any better than the shitstains who are trying to ostracize you from the Hugo:
http://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/
or you can watch Bill Whittle’s historical retrospective on Gramsci:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrt6msZmU7Y
Interesting post. I agree that those who are supposed to be tolerant are the most intolerant ones around.
I would note in response to a comment near the start of your post that some of us oppose so-called homosexual marriage since it is the act of shoving it down our throats. They can claim to be married to whatever they want, but when the state steps in and forces the embracing of that it has gone too far.
The problem is the same as this awards issue, you have to embrace the full scope, not just let people do whatever they wish.
The best part is that, no shit, they’re *demanding* government registration of homosexual relationships. For themselves.
It boggles the mind.
If they had any brains at all they’d ask why the 2A folks are against gun registration.
Or perhaps these folks have absolutely no idea where the hell the pink triangle came from. I guess I can’t blame them for not knowing, since most of the publicity is for the six million Jews murdered at the same time, in the same place.
Utter idiots. Absolutely everything they want to accomplish by gay marriage could have been had, and in far better ways, by simply getting power of attorney laws and medical insurance eligibility laws amended.
You rely on public pronouncements as being the true goal. These awards would be purely about the quality of the written work if that were true. The homosexual agenda is ultimately one of being embraced for their choices, kind of a feel good situation. It won’t happen, but it takes increasing government involvement to make it happen. Kind of like how it will take increasing “government involvement” to keep these awards pure in the eyes of some.
Expendable Henchman –
“Absolutely everything they want to accomplish by gay marriage could have been had, and in far better ways, by simply getting power of attorney laws and medical insurance eligibility laws amended.”
If that were true, then the Civil Union laws would have been sufficient. And Civil Union laws were quite popular in the places where they were suggested. But instead the pro-SSM crowd basically ignored them except as a stepping stone. We had a Civil Unions law on the books here in California, but the State Supreme Court ruled that (paraphrasing here) the fact that Civil Unions existed meant that not allowing SSM was a violation of the State’s constitution.
The point of gay marriage is to shock and appall “Ozzie and Harriet” Christians.
The joke of gay marriage is that the Ozzie and Harriet Christians they’re targeting have been dead for forty years.
Great post – I’ll be honest, I only discovered The Wheel of Time series a couple years ago, shortly before Robert Jordan passed on. I actually really like the series, and it has nothing to do with political messaging – the story engaged me and got me to care about the characters.
I am perfectly fine saying that I also really like Mr. Correia’s work as he caught my attention the same way Mr. Jordan’s work did. In both cases I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up one of his books in a major bookstore the day before I had a flight and realized I had been standing in the aisle for twenty minutes reading their respective books when I had only intended to read the first page to see if it would catch my interest. Normally, though, I tend to go to the library before I buy a book simply because all too often, something I thought might be an interesting read turns out to be one long snoozefest full of message wankery.
I’m also a huge Wheel of Time fan, for Robert Jordan’s skill at world-building as well as characterization. (Those are two things Brandon Sanderson also excels at, which made him, in retrospect, the perfect choice to finish the series.) Actually, Jordan was so skilled at world-building that he didn’t seem to want to leave it…which might explain why it took twenty-six years, fourteen books and two authors to finally finish the series.
George R.R. Martin seems to have that same “problem” with Game of Thrones…although his Westeros is so friggin’ depressing that I’m not sure why you’d want to spend one more minute there than you had to… 😉
I’m not going to go all sparkly “YAY!!!” (like Leigh Butler over at Tor’s website) over a prospective WoT Hugo win, but it certainly wouldn’t break my heart to see RJ (and Brandon) so honored. From what Larry has been saying, it probably won’t break his heart, either.
Yay! (but I don’t care that the Last Battle is over. I STILL WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!)
I’ll read anyone who tells a good story, with interesting characters, and doesn’t insult my intelligence doing it. Now, there are a handful of good authors whose personal views I consider so completely beyond the pale that I refuse to put money in their pockets — but that’s what used bookstores and the public library are for.
Keep writing just as you have Larry. I picked up Hard Magic despite a few misgivings because frankly, anything at that Barnes and Noble that was worth buying was in my collection already or just couldn’t catch my interest. I gave your book a chance and enjoyed it enough I read the first three Monster Hunter books also.
As has been noted, much of the genre is complete dreck these days. Driven in part at first by the residual cache of the prize from when it was a sign of something note worthy and interesting. Publishers keyed on that and emphasized the appearance of value until they drove out the writing with real content and merit. Much of it simply meets checklists for the pc crowd. Despite what the rabbits think, a large portion of the fans look at the Hugo awards these days as a contra-indicator of value. I mean hey, didn’t Charles Stross tweet something about them being used to choke chimpanzees or something? That’s just plain wrong, man.
Okay, I may not agree with your political views, but who cares!Your entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine.
I love your writing and the stories you tell!
I’ve long been of the opinion that entertainment (be it films, books, etc) that win huge awards like Oscars and Hugos and the like usually turn out to be long, boring slogs that are meant to make one feel terrible about oneself. That or they’re long boring slogs that just don’t make any sense.
Personally, I could care less if a book wins an award or calls attention to a particular cause. I’m just after something good to read. Thank you, Mr. Correia for actually voicing something I’m sure many people have felt for a long time.
That being said, I do hope Warbound wins. It, along with the other of the Grimnoir books and the MHI series (I’d mention Dead Six, but I haven’t started it yet), is quite worthy of recognition.
My wife insisted on us viewing “No Country For Old Men” because it had won an Oscar. She repented after we had finished it.
Get ready for an Instalanche.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/187369/
I wish Heinlein were here to give them hell.
Heinlein has millions of children, and we’re giving them all kinds of hell.
Yup.
I’d bet, based on a SWAG and nothing else, that if you did a Venn diagram of “people who loved RAH’s juveniles” and “people who comment on Larry’s blog”, you’d hit an awful lot of overlap.
SJW will auto exclude you if you state that liked RAH juveniles. It is an instant reveal of a patriarchal, priviledged white cismale.
I was careful to give all my sons access to Red Planet, Starman Jones, Podkayne of Mars (they liked the little brother) etc. when they hit 8-9 yo.
Never thirst, bros.
Walk the Glory Road, brother.
Good for you man. Congrats on speaking up and against the usual liberal hordes who claim fairness, tolerance and equality and all those other feel good liberal words that don’t apply to anyone who disagrees with their crap. You’re already a winner in my book.
Yeah, WoT is going to curbstomp everybody. It will not be over quickly, and we won’t enjoy it.
But next year. The SJW have shown their true colors, Larry will have a title from his flagship series up (I am assuming that MHN will be eligible, correct?), and there are people like me who didn’t participate this year and have realized how much fun we’re missing out on. If I were you I’d have space for a rocketship cleared on the mantle.
Maybe we can get John C. Wright a Hugo nod. Judge of Ages is certainly worth it. 2014 so far is starting out as a better year for SF/F than last year.
I’m enjoying the hell out of this kerfluffle. The Hugos have long since gone down the toilet due to political correctness. I think it’s great that the rats are coming out of the woodwork and are showing what they’re really made of.
I’m certain the publicity isn’t hurting Larry’s sales in the slightest.
I hadn’t really heard much about all this, and hadn’t read any of Larry’s books. Both of those are now changing, as I’ve purchased and started reading Hard Magic (not too far into it yet, but it’s good so far).
Yeah, but in the aftermath of a WoT win we’re going to hear the snowflake brigade crow about how their staunch resistance was instrumental in keeping our favorite cisgendernormative fascist out.
But it will make next year all the sweeter.
The aftermath of the WoT win is also going to be a chance for a major rule revision. It will start with “WoT really shouldn’t have been competing” which I agree with.
The revision will continue with “We need some common sense limits o̶n̶ ̶g̶u̶n̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶a̶g̶a̶z̶i̶n̶e̶s̶ on nominations that game or abuse the system. We promise never to abuse this new oversight. Really. Pinky swear.”
“We have to have it to make sure that L̶a̶r̶r̶y̶ ̶C̶o̶r̶r̶e̶i̶a̶,̶ ̶V̶o̶x̶ ̶D̶a̶y̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶l̶e̶s̶ another series of books doesn’t get in.”