Fisking the Guardian's Village Idiot: Part 1

Damian Walter is that dude over at the Guardian who made shit up about me before. That time he put words in my mouth, said that I warned writers not to write about gay characters if they want to remain commercial, and he even put it in quotes as if it was my actual words. That isn’t even close to what I said, or what I’ve actually done, and doesn’t match up with my real life actions, writing, or even the philosophies of other authors I’ve promoted, but hey, whatever.

Here is the last one: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/15/larry-f-correia-international-lord-of-hate/

Note, this is going to be two part Fisk, with today being the article, and tomorrow I’m going to go through Damien’s comments where he threatened me with some nebulous harm if I don’t apologize for and confess some sins, and then he went on Twitter to ask his followers to find bad things I’ve done (normally journalists do research before writing about something).

So here is Part1. As usual Damian gets damn near everything wrong, so let’s go through and take a look at what passes for journalism at the Guardian. This is going to be long, but Damien has a real gift for shoving two or three lies, half-truths, or distortions into nearly every line. Hmm… I heard Jay Carney’s job is open.

As usual, the moron is in italics and my comments are in bold.

Here is the current article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/30/science-fiction-real-life-war-worlds but it is all reprinted below for your enjoyment. Note that Damian’s article is absolutely filled with links, let’s see… a dozen of them in fact, but not a single one of those links are to the actual words of the people he is maligning… Curious.

Science fiction’s real-life war of the worlds

For many years, a very particular and very narrow set of authors has dominated SF. But battle for a broader fictional universe is under way.

When is a giant lizard not a giant lizard? When it’s a metaphor for the might of the military-industrial complex. Audiences turning up for the latest cinematic incarnation of Godzilla have expressed some disappointment that much of the battling kaiju action was kept off screen.

Keep in mind, his last article about what evil homophobic hatemongers conservative writers are started out by explaining the reason male gamers played female characters in video games was so they could explore gender roles… as opposed to it being nicer to stare a girl’s butt for 200 hours of Skyrim. But nope, exploring gender boundaries.

Because when I think of socially conscious, non-binary enlightenment, I think of the LOL WUT tits or GTFO denizens of Xbox Live. So keep in mind, Damien isn’t very smart and does a lot of grasping at straws.

In its place director Gareth Edwards makes the smart decision to tinker with the kaleidoscopic political meanings that surround the giant lizard. What Edwards chooses to place front and centre are the twin legacies the second world war foisted on modern society – nuclear weapons and the United States military in all its glory. By the end of the movie we’re left in no doubt that, whatever risks they pose, we need the monstrous forces mankind can control to defend us from the monstrous forces – be they real or imagined – we cannot. Audiences want sci-fi to entertain us, but even blockbuster movies come loaded with political messages.

Okay, heavy handed straw grasping intro out of the way, I wonder how many people bought tickets to see Godzilla for the political messages versus how many went to watch giant monsters smash stuff? But hey, let’s roll with it. I think Damian’s point is that political messages in sci-fi exist… Yep. As much as they try to rewrite my old posts to be that message fic shouldn’t exist at all, on the contrary, I said it did, but that if you wanted to be successful, you needed to put the story first, and once you’ve provided your readers with enjoyment, then you can slip in your message… Message first can turn off readers. And as much as they try to change the narrative, my words (which they never actually link to) are right there.

Or in this case, the giant lizard came first, message second. Damn, Damien, even your intros get the slander wrong. I really hope you’re just an unpaid intern or something and the Guardian isn’t actually giving you money for this shit.

In recent months the community of science fiction readers and writers has been embroiled in an escalating war of words over the genre’s political soul, catalysed by the nominations for this year’s Hugo awards.

By escalating, he means some people on my side actually got involved for once and quit letting his side set the narrative unopposed. It was so much nicer when my side just immediately shut up out of fear of backlash, career sabotage, and threats of character assassination.

Allegations of bloc-voting arose

Yes, allegations of block voting, which means I asked my fans to vote. A quick search found about thirty other authors, fanzines, bloggers, and even publishing houses that did the same thing I did. Only I had the audacity of having the wrong kind of fans (and more of them!). Damien knows this, but he’s simply obfuscating the issue to get in some more snide insinuations.

He’s leaving out the allegations against me of fraud, misogyny, racism, homophobia, wife beating, and threatening puppy murder… No. I’m not making any of those up, but when dealing with Social Justice Warriors you will quickly discover that they will say anything to sabotage their ideological opponents. Proving that was sort of the whole point of my nefarious campaign. They certainly rose to the occasion.

as a slate of little-known writers appeared among the nominees,

That’s right. Little known writers. Since I’m the unnamed guy who put together this evil voting plot and is up for best novel, let’s take a look at how little known I am.

My 11th novel comes out this summer (Don’t worry, I’ve got 13 more under contract). I’m a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and bunch of other lists bestseller, and the most accurate bestseller list of all is Nielsen Bookscan where I’ve been as high as #5 and stayed on for 20 straight weeks. On any given day I’m usually in the top 50 fantasy authors on Amazon and that’s without anything new out (highest I’ve been is #3 after Martin and Gaiman). I’m published in 7 languages. I do even better in audiobook, where I’m one of the bestselling and best reviewed authors on all of Audible, and I’ve been nominated for 3 Audies and won 2 of them. (those are pro juried, so sadly no allegations of ballot stuffing there).

According to the Guardian’s own stats about how much authors actually get paid, I’m way above the cutoff for the top 1%. But to be fair to Damien’s inability to actually know stuff, I’ve only been professionally published since 2009. The fact that I’ve only been doing this for 5 years kind of sucks for my detractors, since so many of them have been doing this far longer yet are much less successful. That has to gnaw at them.

But little-known. Got it!

after a concerted campaign by a small group of writers to get the books on the ballot.

By concentrated campaign, he means a couple of blog posts, a poorly drawn cartoon, and a video of sad puppies. No, I kid you not. My spokesman was Wendell the Manatee. Unlike Damian, I’ll actually post links to the topic, here is where I go into it in detail: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/ The whole thing and the reasons for it were out there in the open the entire time I was doing it.

Behold the architect of your doom.
Behold the architect of your doom.

A startling conspiracy theory was at the heart of the campaign. It alleged that a powerful clique of liberal writers and editors had taken control of science fiction, and worse, were politicising a genre that should exist purely for entertainment. They were filling the genre with heavy-handed “message fiction” and excluding conservatively minded writers. So conservatively-minded fans should vote for those writers to redress the imbalance.

That’s sort of related to what I said, as rewritten by somebody with a paint huffing addiction… I do like how Damien stated it all super nefarious like that though. But strangely he didn’t link to the posts where I talked about the demonstrated bias against non-leftists, or the posts about how the heavy handed message fic was driving away readers and causing the market to shrink? I’m sensing a trend. I wonder why Damien never seems to link to what his opponents actually say, when it is so much easier to make up really dumb straw man versions instead?

I wouldn’t call any of this startling though. I pointed out that the awards were biased, and if any openly conservative author got on the awards ballot they would be attacked and sabotaged. I was called a liar. So I got some conservative authors on the ballot and they did exactly what I said they would. (they were even shriller than expected, and major professionals jumped into the witch hunt, so for that, I sincerely thank them for being so predictable).

Point proven. Hilarity ensued.

Of course there is a certain irony in forming a political clique and launching an overt pol1itical campaign to de-politicise sci-fi– although registering the irony requires more self-awareness than these authors can seem to muster.

I like how he restates my publicly proclaimed goals to be something they weren’t so he can say I’m dumb for not achieving them.

The goal was exposing people like you, Damien, and you can try to say I failed, but poor, depressed little British man, my campaign consisting of manatees, big eyed puppies, and cartoon moose rocked your little world so badly that you’ve repeatedly talked about it in your national newspaper column now. So, I’m very aware of the irony, and it is so very delicious.

This dastardly clique was my fans. If your crowd hadn’t been such obnoxious, pretentious, bossy assholes on Facebook, Twitter, and blog comments, constantly bitching at us, explaining how conservatives and libertarians can’t ever be *real* writers, and calling anybody who disagreed with you racist/misogynist/homophobic without any actual evidence continually for the last five years, then getting a bunch of fans to pony up $40 to vote wouldn’t have been so darned easy.

And that irony is only made stronger when 2014 has proved to be a pivotal year in liberating science fiction from its own innate political biases.

Yes. The publishing industry—which is mostly based in Manhattan—is politically biased. For once we agree!

For decades, science fiction’s major awards were given, year after year, to white male authors.

That’s fantastic… Except when Damien says decades, he’s not talking about any of the recent ones. There have been blog posts (written by reasonable moderate types who really don’t like me or my campaign either) pointing out that women have won about a third to half of the awards over the last forty years, so once again, Damien is just a liar.

Women writers have asserted a growing presence in the genre, leading this year lead to a strong presence in all of the genre’s major awards.

Great. Despite the narrative about me to the contrary, I like female authors. I support female authors. I support authors from any group you can think of as long as they tell a good story and they’re not complete douchebags, so I guess you could say that I just support authors in general. I’m all in favor of anybody from any group being able to write what they want, more power to them.

So if we want true equality among writers how about we give awards based on quality rather than what box the author checks on an EEOC form?

Oh, but wait. I forgot. I like to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That’s racist now. I also like to judge a book based upon whether I like it or not, rather than ranking the nominees based upon the acceptability of their political outlooks or which ones best assuage my warm-beige guilt.

(speaking of irony, when the announcements were made and I immediately started getting character assassinated for being a hater of women, homosexuals, sunshine, and goodness with zero evidence, the book of the week I was promoting on this blog was written by a non-white immigrant woman and had a gay hero, but hey, narrative).

Women and non-white writers swept the board at the Nebula awards, winning every major category.

Normally, if there is a bunch of gloating and back slapping about how one particular group was totally shut out of something, we’d consider that bigotry. However I tend to forget that to a libprog diversity is literally only skin deep, while diversity of thought is evil and must be crushed. The same people crowing about this year’s diversity were happy to attack nominees last year for their religious beliefs, because that’s the wrong kind of diversity. They routinely attack non-whites and women if they aren’t of the correct political persuasion.

Speaking of gloating, Twitter after the Nebulas was interesting. If you take the tweets of the Social Justice Warrior crowd, Ctrl H, find and replace White Male with Jew, they totally sound like snippets of Heinrich Himmler speeches. It is hilarious until the nausea sets in.

High profile crowd-funded publishing projects such as Women Destroy Science Fiction are proving the commercial potential of a more diverse genre.

Not to bash this particular anthology, because I know nothing about it, but this super example of commercial potential raised $53,136. Good for them. But to illustrate just how profoundly disconnected Damien is from reality, keeping in mind that I’m a “little-known” author, my Kickstarter for a role playing game based upon one of my series raised $80,681, and my Kickstarter for merchandise related to my novels raised $101,396.

So I wouldn’t recommend taking business advice about commercial viability from a lying euro-weenie-socialist who has probably never held a real job. Now fetch my latte, Damien!

It is fair to say that SF is coming to terms with its historic gender and racial biases.

From a genre that really came to be in the 1930s to the 1950s there may have been bigotry? This is my shocked face. Well, good thing you guys are ready to attack people now for the sins of those that came before, because they share similar plumbing, DNA, or sexual orientation.

But not without some resistance from reactionaries within the genre.

They really need a boogieman, don’t they? Isn’t it interesting about how my campaign to demonstrate that there was bias and sabotage in the awards system, is immediately changed by the biased to be all pro-racism in order to sabotage it?

As Samuel Delany noted, at a time when he numbered among the very few black writers in the field, prejudice within science fiction would “likely remain a slight force – until, say, black writers start to number 13, 15, 20% of the total.” Author NK Jemisin employed Delany’s quote in her own Guest of Honour speech at WisCon. Her incendiary argument to fight against bigotry comes at a the time when she and other writers of colour including Aliette de Bodard, Sofia Samatar and Nalo Hopkinson command a higher profile in the genre than ever before. And the resistance Delany predicted has come true.

Does that mean that since I’m the only non-white author up for best novel, I have your vote, Damien?

It is no coincidence that, just as it outgrows its limiting cultural biases, science fiction should also face protests from some members of the predominantly white male audience who believed it to be their rightful domain.

That doesn’t even make sense. So, I’m not a white guy, but I hatched this elaborate plot to keep sci-fi white… even though us right wingers are capitalists who want to sell books to everybody. Sure, I’m super excited for my Chinese translations to come out this year, but that must be because of the billion white men who live there.

Since Damien brought up irony, here’s some for you. My audience is diverse. That’s what happens when you are popular and actually sell books. Look at the picture of the Diversity panel at the Nebulas. It is a bunch of old white people fretting about their white guilt. It is so white and old it looks like a Klan rally compared to my average book signing. My fans are the rainbow fucking coalition compared to that picture.

You know an organization that is actually diverse? The US military, #1 book in Baghdad and Baghram, baby.

But as we’ve already repeatedly seen demonstrated, it doesn’t matter that my fans are all over the board, young and old, straight and gay, all sorts of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and even some liberals (though by that I mean they’re actual well intentioned liberals, as opposed to the wannabe fascist control freaks who’ve taken over the term), but my fans don’t count, because they’re the wrong kind of fan. They are united in that they’d rather enjoy books than get snidely insulted by people like Damien for racist attitudes of their grandparents might have held.

What the conservative authors protesting the Hugo awards perceive as a liberal clique is simply science fiction outgrowing them, and their narrow conception of the genre’s worth.

That makes pretty much no sense whatsoever since over recent years sci-fi readership has been shrinking. It hasn’t been outgrowing anything other than Damien’s dignity.

Why has our market been shrinking? Well, it can’t be because people don’t like sci-fi and fantasy, because they love throwing lots of money at it in movies, TV, and games.

The opinion that I’ve long held, and which helped inspire my dastardly campaign of evil to begin with, was that sci-fi readers were leaving our genre because they were getting tired of being preached at with liberal cause of the day message fiction. They were bored with dying polar bears, murderous bigoted Christians, lectures about the dangers of capitalism, and thinly veiled Dick Cheneys as bad guys. You can really only slap half of the country upside the head and tell them their beliefs are stupid and backwards so many times before they quit buying your stuff. (but keep in mind, the left are supposed to be the inclusive ones).

How did I come to this belief? Because the people who’d been quitting told me so. I kept getting messages from readers with some variation of “I’d quit reading SFF because I was bored/tired/annoyed etc. but your stuff is fun!” over and over and over and then they’d provide me with large royalty checks. This got me to thinking that there might be something to this crazy idea of putting reader enjoyment ahead of placating the perpetually outraged Damiens of the world, where everything including Godzilla and Tomb Raider had to be boiled down to cisgender patriarchal neocolonial military-industrial privilege.

Of course, if those authors really wanted to de-politicise science fiction, they could easily help to do so – by admitting the genre’s historic bias and applauding its growth.

I don’t think anybody has ever said that bias hasn’t happened somewhere at some point, so thanks for that piece of straw. As for applauding its growth that’s the point, you moron. It isn’t growing. You guys are shrinking it. You might think you’re all about diversity and inclusiveness, but you’re not. You’re the opposite. You’ve drawn battle lines and then done everything possible to damage the careers of anybody who believes differently than you.

De-politicize? I was never in this to sway people like you, Damien. That’s impossible. We can’t de-politicize genre fiction any more than we can get leftists to stop banning university commencement speakers, boycotting businesses, or getting people fired for having differing opinions. Censorship and intimidation are simply in the nature of all statist bullies.

My mission was to convince the undecided. My side aren’t the ones trying to silence anyone, and all of the observers have watched your side try to stomp me (and fail miserably). Of course, your side will immediately cite somebody disagreeing (or failing to cheerlead sufficiently) with one of their ludicrous ideas as silencing, which will require them to retreat to their convention mandated racially segregated safe zones with a case of the vapors.

But in reality it isn’t the right trying to shut anybody up. Quite the contrary, Damien, we want you guys to keep talking so the world can see what censorship happy little fascists you are.

My successful campaign was met with a concentrated effort that would have made most normal authors apologize, run away, and hide (that’s what usually happens, but the fact that there isn’t anything you people can actually do to intimidate some of us must drive you nuts).

And by doing everything within their power to welcome new authors from diverse backgrounds, instead of agitating for protest votes to push them out.

And by diverse backgrounds, you mean as long as they are in complete political lockstep with your side?

The real prize for science fiction is not diversity for diversity’s sake

(although I happen to believe that would be prize enough).

A nugget of truth? Now we’re getting somewhere.

Since you’ve never actually created a single piece of fiction anybody has ever wanted to purchase, you are perfectly happy for sci-fi/fantasy to crash and burn, because then you can self-righteously brag about how at least it was mostly straight white males who died in the fire.

We live in a world of seven billion human beings, whose culture has not been reflected or rewarded in ‘the mainstream’. Science fiction

Wait… You mean the ENGLISH LANGUAGE award and books haven’t fully reflected genre fiction from the entire rest of the world? How dastardly.

– from cult novels that reach a few thousand readers,

I wouldn’t know what that is like.

to blockbuster movies and video games that dominate contemporary culture – has the potential to talk across every remaining boundary in our modern world. That makes it, in my opinion, potentially the most important cultural form of the 21st century. To claim that potential, it cannot afford to give way to the petulant protests of boys who do not like to share their toys

What a bunch of pretentious dribble from a sad little man who has never created anything of worth in his life.

So tune in tomorrow as I go through Damien’s pathetic threats, his complete lack of research skills, how my teaching women to carry guns is actually misogyny, and his pathetic attempt to channel Stalin.

Continued at:

Fisking the Guardian's Village Idiot, Part 2

 

Fisking the Guardian's Village Idiot, Part 2
The Drowning Empire, Episode 55: On Discarded Parchment

290 thoughts on “Fisking the Guardian's Village Idiot: Part 1”

  1. Crossposted from Vox Pop:

    Hmmmm…You may consider this a prediction.

    Someday, Damien Walter is going to realize that his entire life has been an exercise in futlity, that he is without literary, intellectual, moral, or, indeed, physical value to anyone, to include himself. One wonders whether, at that point, he’ll throw himself off a tall building or bridge, or hang himself. Shooting is right out because he’ll never accept the existence or number of guns floating around the UK since, as everyone knows, criminals always obey gun control laws.

    But I predict he’ll never even think of doing something that masculine. No, he’s either going to overdose on pills, stick his head in an oven, all Sylvia Plath-like, or slit his wrists in a warm bath. Whatever method he chooses will be tradtionally feminine.

    1. Most likely. I mean, most of us write novels in hopes of a pay day down the road. Damien reportedly just gets the UK taxpayers to foot the bill to fund him while he writes. He doesn’t even have the balls to want to work for a payday, so why would he off himself in such ways?

      1. I expect that impending moral crisis Col. Kratman was talking about will come when Damien loses his government grant. At which point…Sylvia Krath time. Although I suppose stepping in front of a train might suffice as a “feminine” way of doing onself in as well; it worked for Anna Karenina, didn’t it? 😉

        Speaking of crossposting from Vox’s site, here’s what Vox had to say in his own response to Damien:

        “They don’t understand that Larry, John (C. Wright), and me are under absolutely no illusions that we agree on everything. Or even most things. We are three very different men who belong to different population sub-groups, different Christian denominations, we vote for different political parties, and we have very different interests and communication styles. Larry is the tetsubo, John is the rapier, and I am the Ka-Bar, best suited for close-in combat gutting. We simply happen to have earned each other’s respect for various reasons and to share a disdain for SF/F that elevates left-wing ideology over every other aspect of storytelling.”

        I’m just wondering how long it’s going to take Damien to get tired of all the repeated brutal clubbings, skewerings and rippings. Seriously, Damien must be possessed of more masochism than every submissive character in the “Fifty Shades” novels and John Ringo’s Paladin of Shadows series…*combined.*

        1. I’m looking forward to seeing that grant get yanked out from under him. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the UK is the kind of place that will actually do that.

          Would LOVE to be wrong on that, and would love for Damien to find out the hard way that it can happen to him. 😀

      2. I’m sure a near-future UKIP government would be more than pleased to pull his government meal ticket.

    2. Tom, what Larry is doing is exactly what this libtard most fears. Google hits that make this idiot look like the little worthless hack that he is are absolute career death for this ilk. There will be no “someday” retribution. This is immediate retribution.

      Bad google hits can cost him his job and future jobs.

      If anyone wants to help Larry finish pounding this idjit, link to this rant.

    3. I’m sorry, why is everyone ignoring that Samuel Delany is such an outspoken supporter of N AMB LA that they have a tribute page dedicated to him on their website? It’s not like he’s tried to hide this. How the hell is everyone letting this pass?

      1. Oh good lord…. I just made the mistake of reading the wiki entry for his novel “Hogg”. I want to un-see that or I’m going to have nightmares. No wonder the NAMBs like him.

      2. Yeah, if you plug his name and the above organization’s name into Google simultaneously, you get a surprising amount of quotes back about how much he admires and defends them. Vile. *gag*

        Anyone have any brain bleach I could borrow?

      3. I had a look at the wiki page… and … he doesn’t look black to me. Sort of light brown at best. Which is … oddly interesting, given that he supposedly self describes as black and is so described by the fool being fisked. And the summary of Hogg is hair-raising. Even moreso the feedback supposedly given the novel. But Delany’s a ‘gay and lesbian studies’ dude so Damien is totally okay with that…

        …rather squicked now, at what that implies of Damien’s character and what he considers acceptable given that he’s okay with folks based on their political opinions according to his own ‘approval-methodology’.

        Yet Correia, et al, are ‘evil.’ If we are what he considers ‘evil’ then I’ll take it and take it HAPPILY.

      4. So, does Delany first have to tell people he’s black and then they’re racist? Does he say “I’m black y’know” and then stand back with arms crossed?

        What about NAMBLA? Does he hand out leaflets to everyone he meets so they can be offended? Do the leaflets say “PS: I’m black too”? As far as I can tell Delany and Jemisin are angry they were published every year and nominated for awards. There’s some logic, some cause and effect I’m missing here. Could this be like some Bizarro Syndrome where the more you like them the angrier they get? What if they use sandpaper to wipe their asses? That might explain a lot.

  2. Dear Mr. Correia,
    Have you ever heard of a media-analyzing wiki called TV Tropes? I noticed that you tend to use the phrase “Hilarity ensued” and there is a trope called Hilarity Ensues? I am sorry if I sound annoying or rude. Have an excellent day!
    Sincerely,
    Zach K.
    P.S. Here is the link to the trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HilarityEnsues
    P.P.S. As far as I know, you do not have a tropes page on the site but you have been mentioned.

    1. I love TV Tropes. There’s a page on there for me and each of my series, and whoever put them together was very thurough.

      1. Upon a second glance, that sounded unintentionally rude. I’m sorry! I just checked again and it’s listed as Monster Hunter International. When I searched for it, I used Monster Hunter National. Oops.

      2. I’m sorry, I have to share this. I found the page two clicks away from Larry’s page. Here’s the quote:

        More Dakka
        The theory goes like this: You pull the trigger on a machine gun until the whole world turns into blood, and it is awesome. You can’t argue with that; that’s science.

        I’m pretty sure my maniacal laughter could be heard next door.

        http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoreDakka

      1. True wisdom is learning from other people’s experiences without needing to be trapped on TV tropes your very own self…

  3. Well said Larry. And you can add me to the list of folks that stepped away from Sci-Fi because of the “message du jour” mentality, that your brand of creative genius brought back.

    1. Ditto here. Although, to be fair I can’t call myself a long time reader of sci-fi. My fiction reading began with mysteries and detective novel stuff at first. Then some friends had recommended some sci fi books* to me. But when I looked around for new novels to read in the sci-fi genre, I couldn’t find anything new that wasn’t thinly veiled navel picking and self indulgent angsty message fic. It was BORING. Preachy. I read to relax and get a good tale- I’m not really into reading so that I can bemoan how evil, horrible, and terribly unfair the world is. /wrist to forehead/

      So I floated around genres for a time. Read some detective, some historical fic… was a long time before I ever read another straight up sci-fi. Especially of the urban fantasy/ tech fantasy type. And when I found MHI, I read the entire series. When the Grimnoir chronicles came out, I DEVOURED them. Then I gave my copy of Hard Magic away to a friend who I knew would love it. Then I was sad because my copy was gone so I had to buy another. Then I loaned that one out too. I have a feeling I’m not getting it back. Probably going to have to get a third copy. Going to chain it to my bookshelf this time.

      Anyway, the point is, yes, you’re absolutely right. Message fic is boring. Good stories rule. Damien Walter’s column is full of strawman poopies and he deserves this fisking.

      That is all.

      *Enders Game was one of them. I know, its author is evil because he doesn’t have the correct Goodthink mentality or some crap in that vein. But I didn’t know that at the time and thought it was a damn good book. Hell, I still do. Go figure.

    2. Also, same. I’d given up on written science fiction for years, but Weber was the one who dragged me back when I stumbled across the Honorverse in the early 2000’s. Since then I’ve metastasized into a Baen fanboi . . . Flint, Ringo, Kratman, Hoyt, Corriea, etc. (apologies to the etc’s–I’m getting to you, I swear!)

      Story first! ‘Human Wave!’

    3. Stopped reading SF when I couldn’t get stuff like the Sten series from Cole & Bunch (excellent stuff, to me, that).

      As for message fiction, I love(d) James P. Hogan’s a lot more than Ayn Rand’s. Rand bored me. Hogan’s stuff made me go, “uh-Huh!”

    4. Hogan’s pro-libertarian message SF was (is) still a-okay by me.

      OTOH, Rand’s is too-too; too much, too long, too talky. What’s the soliloquy in Atlas, like 36 pages?

      Anyone who likes Larry’s writing might also like Alan Cole and Chris Bunch’s “Sten” series. No message, just an interesting character (with a cuts-anything knife up his arm).

      Sten was a lotta’ years ago for me now.

  4. I love your notion that because you sell a lot of merch and have dedicated fans, that’s some reason to think you belong on award ballots. I guess the 50 Shades chick (aka Snowqueens Icedragon) and renowned author Dan Brown should both have the Nobel Prize for literature.

    1. Or you could actually judge the works based on quality and how much the readers like them… Crazy, I know!

      1. Judging on quality and popularity is racist, Larry. Jeeze, haven’t you been listening to Dave?

        I mean, how’s a non-White, non-cismale author going to get an award if things are being judged on quality and popularity?!

        Oh wait, that didn’t come out right…

      2. I’m not an SJW, in fact SJWs drive me up a wall. But getting yourself on the ballot for what amount to political reasons is just as bad as what you claim they do. Moreover, your work (like Brown’s and Icedragon’s) is at best a lowbrow guilty pleasure and would never win on its actual merits. It’s like nominating Michael Bay for an Oscar.

        I also think John Scalzi writes low-quality, lowbrow work, btw… it’s too bad the awards are going to hell the way they have been the last few years, but I’m afraid your stunt will only speed up the process.

        1. “lowbrow guilty pleasure”? Well, to quote Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse, “Opinions vary.” Needless to say, I don’t share yours.

        2. So all those other professional juried awards this series won was because of… shit… beats me! (2 Audie wins out of 3 noms) Thanks, Dave! In France, where nobody knew my politics this series only lost to Martin and Rothfuss, but it must be because of how the French are known for their lowbrow guilty pleasure reading.

          But out of curiosity, did you actually read Grimnoir, or are you judging my entire body of work on Monster Hunter? Because your description fits one, but not the other. For instance, big brain super author John C. Wright, who usually made every critics top 10 lists of best living sci-fi author (or at least did, until he came out as not a prog, so no more best of lists for him!) thinks it is one of the best series he’s ever read: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/05/21/john-c-wright-reviews-hard-magic-using-the-periodic-table-of-awesome/ Oh, and that was the first one. He just finished the second, and he said that it moved me up to being his 2nd favorite author. The nomination is for the 3rd one.

          Don’t worry, Dave, I’m not going to win, but yes, my stunt will surely speed up the process. (since it has always been a popularity contest for one small clique of fandom, I’m really not sure what exactly I’m speeding up though) I’m a relative nobody compared to some popular authors who could crush the entire thing with a single blog post request (on that note, my money is on WoT this year) But hey, good thing the SJWs spent all those years telling us how it wasn’t a popularity contest. 🙂

      3. A “low brow guilty pleasure”? For you, maybe. For me, it’s something I can actually enjoy reading as opposed to most so-called award winning fiction.

        Or maybe you’ve just got more high brow tastes than we do.

      4. What I wrote…. down there… lowbrow?

        What that means is it’s about tribal signaling… as being “high brow”.

      5. Larry Correia wrote “Don’t worry, Dave, I’m not going to win.”

        You might be surprised. Tor upset a lot of people by getting the entire Wheel of Time series listed for “Best Novel”, and Orbit upset a lot of people by refusing to allow etexts of their nominees (Ancillary Justice, Neptune’s Brood, Parasite) to be given out as part of the voter packet people have gotten used to getting. There might be enough “not getting free stuff they felt entitled to” angry voters and “a fifteen book series is NOT a novel” angry voters to swing things your way.

        Also, I can’t help but read your response in a HAL9000 voice.

      6. Dave’s opinions on literature must be like a Modern Art Critic’s. Being difficult to read and painful to think about constitutes quality. “Challenging” literature (That in reality is simply poorly written) is award-worthy. Throw in an ignorance of the history of the genre – that all the stuff they are wishing it would produce has been done to death, decades ago – and there you have it.

    2. Dave, I love your notion that the quality of the writing is what gets an author a Hugo award. Particularly since the express purpose of this whole Sad Puppies thing was to disprove that particular canard.

      Your dedication to naivete in the face of crushing evidence to the contrary is unique.

    3. Wow. Obtuse much? The sales and fans are evidence that Larry is not “little known”. Did you read that part or did you skim? Rhetorical, don’t bother answering, Checklist Man.

      Also, sales do matter in a popularity contest, which is what the Hugo’s are. You get that right? People were voting with their dollars before they knew the Hugo’s existed. Now they know and they’ve voted with actual ballots as well.

      1. “People were voting with their dollars before they knew the Hugo’s existed. Now they know and they’ve voted with actual ballots as well.”

        Great response. And truth. But that actually goes to the clique mentality. *If they don’t know about it, we’ll run unopposed.*

    4. The only award that really counts is the royalty checks. I am proud to have helped build Larry’s mountain compound of Hate.

      1. Soon as payday comes, I’m going to get in trouble with the wife by throwing a fistful of sweaty cash at Larry for a copy of Nemesis. That’s EXACTLY because Larry does quality work. Us lowbrow proles don’t waste money on crap work.

    5. Some people take popularity as proof of LOW quality… those people tend to view art and literature… “high” culture… as a way to separate themselves and elevate themselves from the masses. It’s not the quality of the cultural/art/literature, but the winnowing element that is important. If something that used to appeal only to the chosen few becomes popular (everyone starts demanding arugula) the *tribal indicators* of that thing no longer have value so some other unpopular thing to show you’re a better person than the unwashed masses has to be discovered.

      Personally… I think that popularity is an excellent indicator that the author/artist has truly tapped into an important element of our common humanity. In that sense, and if that is what “literature” is supposed to do, then popularity works very well as an indicator of true quality.

      Yes, even 50 shades (which I’m not even slightly interested in reading) must, *by definition*, have reached some essential element of humanity.

      As does blasting monsters to smithereens.

      Or finding out that you’re the chosen boy and a wizard and going to defeat evil.

      Or fall in love.

      1. Then again, authors from Terry Pratchett, HP Lovecraft, ‘Doc’ Smith, all the way to old Bill Shakespere have been derided as “lowbrow guilty pleasures”.

        How sad a person’s life must be if they have to forgo things they actually enjoy in entertainment, because they must read the “right” books, watch the “right” movies, and listen to “proper” music.

        1. To this day my favorite negative review is the one that said “though he uses Lovecraftian themes, Correia is no Lovecraft. He is more of a modern Robert E. Howard.” and they said it as an insult! Holy moly, I wanted to use that as a cover blurb! 😀

      2. Mickey Spillane like his book low brow enough, all the way to the bank. He wrote I, the Juror in less than 3 weeks to buy a house. The house is wonderful, and that book is STILL in print.

      3. 50 Shades was a classic case of “famous for being famous.” Yes, it happens. Cry me a river. I read the whole thing expecting it to improve.

        It didn’t. As with reading McCarthy’s “The Road,” I’ll never make the mistake of reading a book by that author again.

        The key is repeat business, not total sales of a book. An author can be a one-hit-wonder with a novel that just is “right place, right time.”

        Unless the book is actually good, however, that’s all it will be. People went back to Pournelle, Niven, Heinlein, Pohl, and a host of others because their works were consistently interesting (even if “only” space opera, in Heinlein’s case). Not every read must be high literature where characters change in believable ways via plot progression, but repeat sales only occur over time to people who actually like the stories (or in a few cases, are into impressing their friends based on what message fiction book they’re dragging around in their bag).

        I like Monster Hunter. I like its characters and I like its action. Hard Magic, not so much. Just one opinion, and Larry will get a few more royalties as he adds to the MH series.

        Everyone’s happy.

      4. Responding to Larry Up above, b/c WP can’t handle more nested replies. Did the idiot ever realize that the two were best bros and include references and even occasionally featured each others characters?

        1. Probably not. But I was like, “Oh man, I’m being compared to the guy who invented Conan and Solomon Kane? Yes, please insult me more!”

      5. If it’s accessible to the common folk, it must be second-rate. Keep the vulgar out of our country club!

    6. From Dave:

      Moreover, your work … is at best a lowbrow guilty pleasure and would never win on its actual merits.

      So what, exactly, are examples of high brow work that should deserve to win awards such as the Hugos?

      1. Dan Simmons, Iain M Banks, Michael Swanwick, Robert Reed, Octavia Butler, Jack Skillingstead, Lucius Shepard, Robert Charles Wilson, Walter Jon Williams, Nancy Kress, LeGuin, Greg Bear, China Mieville, Gaiman, CJ Cherryh, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jonathan Lethem, William Gibson, Ted Chiang, Atwood, Ishiguro

        Gene Fucking Wolfe

        1. Dan Simmons is one of the most talented authors there has ever been. The dude is amazing.

          But like Card, he won all the awards until he said things that outraged the perpetually outraged, and then no more awards for him.

      2. And while we are at it, your list is done et up with white, heterosexual men! Geeze, man…

      3. “China Mieville”

        No thanks, I got enough Marxist lectures in grad school. Besides, I don’t much care for Judenhass.

        “Atwood”

        Whatever, dude. The only thing I read of hers was that “U.S. becomes a fascist religious dictatorship, yet somehow Canada is still a going concern” pile of steaming feces. At least she had enough taste to rip off a Heinlein plot.

      4. Pave I don’t know why you’re complaining man. after reading the first of Dave’s comments and the ensuing replies…should have known any replies to any more comments Dave made would be spew warning worthy. 😛

      5. Also Gene Wolfe is Catholic just like low-down no-good John C. Wright, so he should be exiled.

        And Mieville is tiresome. Cherryh writes some very good thinky stuff but I’m beginning to think she’s actually got a tin ear for language because I read her in spite of her style of writing, not because of it.

        Atwood has said herself she doesn’t write science fiction and would be offended by being nominated for the Hugos. No, really. As far as she’s concerned, The Oryx and Crake trilogy is not sci-fi, because sci-fi requires aliens and spaceships–or something.

      6. Dave the only one we can agree on is Kim Stanley Robinson (and she only deserves one for her alternative history “The Years of Rice and Salt”

      7. I would put Neal Gaiman but he already gets acolades a plenty and really doesnt want to be famous. And William Gibson is well (personal Opinion) a one hit wonder Neuromancer was good but the Rest of the Sprawl Trilogy is meh. He got kinda famous in Geek circles then its like he phoned it in.

        1. Neuromancer to this day is still one of my favorites, though I also liked the rest of the Sprawl trilogy (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and the Bridge trilogy as well (Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties) For many years, I’ve been naming my home PCs after AIs and devices from Gibson’s work. 🙂

          Which reminds me, how can I forget Neal Stephenson? Zodiac, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are still among my favorites. I keep meaning to read Cryptonomicon, but those 900+ pages look massive.

          1. I liked Cryptonomicon, but I wouldn’t ever describe it as “light reading”. There is an entire chapter about the science of eating Captain Crunch. I couldn’t get into the Diamond Age series but I did like the first one, can’t remember its name right now, but it makes you appreciate the bad ass big brain of Isaac Newton.

    7. Thanks for stopping by with your ignorant, elitist BS! I love your notion that because Larry sells a lot of merch and has dedicated fans, that’s some reason to think he doesn’t belong on award ballots.

      And then you go on with “…lowbrow, guilty pleasure and would never win on its actual merits.”

      Let me break it to you, going on in this silly fashion is a fine indication of a shallow intellect more interested in engaging in crass denigration without the slimmest justification for your blanket denunciations. At best, you’re relying on the work of others to provide cogent critiques of the popular works you name. You’ve contributed nothing of substance to any critical analysis of the works in question.

      At worst, you have no knowledge of any cogent critique performed by others, you rely solely on the thought-leaders to signal your position so that you might parrot and get your tasty treat. (Let me place my bet…)

      Piling on with the same tired, intellectually dishonest pap and condescension lumps you in with all the other hollow thinkers proudly wearing their disdain.

      Come back when you can formulate some argument in support of your implicit highbrow/lowbrow dichotomy. Bonus points if you can demonstrate some understanding of the role of creative work in various cultures at various times, particularly this culture and this time.

      Huge kudos if you can spark a single ‘give a fuck’ in anybody around here.

    8. I’ll be less diplomatic than Larry. Money talks, and bullshit walks. Tell me, how many jobs have YOU retired from, and THEN build a dream home and have all the money and time you want for geeky hobbies, and, oh, BTW, STILL write best-selling books in your spare time ???

      I’ve tried reading Nobel Prize Literature. It’s great, for those nights you just can’t sleep, and are out of Benedryl. . .

  5. “calling anybody who disagreed with you racist/misogynist/homophobic without any actual evidence continually for the last five years”

    And those are the nicest things they say.

  6. Interesting to me as a retired GI and a WWII history buff that Damien totally misses the point that without American hardware and supplies and USAAF bombers, fighters and transports, a few divisions of infantry, artillery, tanks, logistic support (oh, and U-Boat sinking from 1941 on) the Brits may well have lost the war. So, yeah, the “United States Military in all its glory” saved your little island so you could snivel and whine about your lot in life instead of explaining to the Gestapo, you dickweed!

    1. Bob,

      That comment caught my eye as well. Startling ingratitude.

      WWII is far from the only example. I would also add WWI, in which Britain was in dire straits both at sea and in the mainland, when, in 1917, Germany had but one front to fight in, after defeating Russia. Without American troops that war might have ended quite differently.

      The Cold War is another example of Mr. Walter’s ingratitude. Without the U.S. Army NATO would have been a paper tiger, had it existed at all, and nothing would have stood in the way of the Red Army, had the USSR decided to march to the French coast and beyond to Britain itself.

      1. “I must not conceal from you the truth as I see it. It is certain that Europe would have been communized and London under bombardment some time ago but for the deterrent of the Atomic Bomb in the hands of the United States.”
        -Winston Churchill: Address to MIT, 1949

        1. Bob, are you asking the calumnist to be grateful that the UK isn’t Communist? Probably the first thing he has against the U.S. is that we stopped the inevitable victory of International Socialism.

      2. “Calumnist.” I’m so stealing that.

        It’s even better than “presstitute” (which might also fit the government-funded Damien).

      3. Correct Johnathan, I agree. The WWI Germans did everything they could to end the war prior to the fresh American troops coming into the lines. And yes, NATO during the Cold War would have been less than a speed bump without American forces on hand in Europe and the Air and Sea lift capacity we had. (See “Red Storm Rising” for the best view of this aspect of a 3rd WW.) As someone else pointed out, the very fact we may have pissed in Damien’s Wheaties because he would really enjoy seeing Great Britain and Europe as a whole even more socialist than they currently are, not realizing that his whole rant would probably be proscribed by such a system of government.

      1. You should do so even if you are reading this in German, as the US Army is what kept the USSR from rolling into West Germany and what helped bring down the Nazis who turned Germany into a police state.

      2. Weylllll – there is a strong argument that the then USSR had a leetle something to do with defeating the Germans.

        However, if you want to talk NATO versus WP deterrence… then proceed.

      3. ratseal: Have you read “Viktor Suvorov” ‘s ‘The Chief Culprit’ or ‘Icebreaker’? He makes an interesting case that it was the USSR that gave old Adolf his pin money and his good start in politics…

    2. In the old USSR, Stalin invented electricity, phones and the light bulb. In France, the French army was awesome and beat the Germans with no help from anyone. In England Monti and Churchhill walked across the English channel and smote them hip and thigh.
      History is in the eye of the beholder.

    3. As one of my old US Navy instructors used to say to his British wife, “I love England, it’s the US Navy’s biggest aircraft carrier!”

    4. When life is too easy and safe and comfortable, it’s easy to forget that it cost blood to achieve. I sometimes wonder how people would react when their first world comfortable living suddenly implodes. There is always some country at war somewhere, and it’s naive to think it will never spill over.

    5. Even during the war there were plenty of Brits complaining about Americans being overpaid, oversexed and over here. To which my father always responded, “and you Brits, you’re underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower. “

  7. The Guardian is viewed as tabloid journalism even in the U.K. They have even been blackballed by the Independent Press Standards Organization until they “start valuing accuracy.” I understand where the frustration comes from but about as many people take the Guardian seriously as take MSNBC seriously.

  8. Damien carefully doesn’t mention the authors in question, because he’d have to admit to being racist against Latinos.

    And admit that some of them are women.

    So he’d just be revealed as another white, racist “liberal” playing the race card for political hay and a few quid.

  9. Mr. Walter is growing more desperate, it seems. His latest column is reprehensible. A new low.

    In regard to genre sales, can anyone point to sales figures that document the downward trend in Science Fiction?

    1. I’d love to see that too. I don’t doubt that it’s true, and it certainly seems true given anecdotal evidence. But anecdotal evidence isn’t really what you want for this type of question.

      1. That said, I also supect that it depends on what you mean by downward trend. The genre itself is growing enormously. But it’s getting very diluted… what I hear from a lot of anecdotal sources about authorship and whatnot is that the sales of most given individual works are greatly diminished from past expectations.

  10. I think you captured the entire thing at the beginning Larry, when you said the big problem this year is your fan base didn’t all stay home and shut up during awards season like usual.

    The nerve of them guys, eh?

    1. Barflies coming out of their bars and into the streets all drunken and hatey-hating are never socially accepted. 😉

      1. They will never be rid of us. We have cellars fully stocked with Valu-rite vodka and smoked Hobo.

  11. With the exception of Baen’s offerings and Jim Butcher’s books, message fic has driven me out of sci fi entirely.

    1. Ray, I was going to start listing some other sci fi authors that I enjoy, and then I realized that they are all published by Baen. I think you’ve basically hit the nail on the head there.

    2. I too was pretty much turned off by most non-Baen sci-fi; the only non-Baen stuff I’ve bought over the past decade or so was David Weber’s “Safehold” novels (a Baen author), Mike Shepherd’s “Kris Longknife” series and Jack Campbell’s “The Lost Fleet” stories. It’s getting progressively (ahem) harder to find stuff outside Baen that doesn’t insult the intelligence of the reader, and/or guilt-trip him/her.

      I will say that since recently getting my Kindle, I’ve found quite a bit of good self published/indie sci-fi and fantasy available, and for a lot less than the stuff from the big, self-important gatekeeper publishing houses.

      1. I like military SF and I’m thinking (just now) about the reasons why I like it. And I think that I’d like non-military adventure/exploration stories, too, for the same reasons if there were authors writing them. Sort of golden-age sensawunder wow-look-at-the-shiny exploration of alien worlds… without it having to be an Avatar downer OMG-humans-are-evil and technology-is-bad. …. anti-colonialism manure piles…

      2. Synova, there are authors writing non-military adventure stories. Well, there’s one, at least. This is the part where I shamelessly plug my recently released first novel, which is my take on the venerable planetary romance sub genre of science fiction.

        The title of my novel is Scout’s Honor and is all action and adventure (with some romance thrown in because my hero and I both happen to like girls). It was released in late April by Bruce Bethke’s Rampant Loon Press (which, for those who know me, is a truly fitting publisher for my novel) and can be purchased from Amazon for the amazing bargain price of $1.99. It’s not my first published work, as I wrote comic books long, long ago, but it is my first novel. You can get it here:

        http://www.amazon.com/Scouts-Honor-Henry-Vogel-ebook/dp/B00JXLCXDY

        Did I mention it’s my first novel?

        Here endeth the shameless plug of the day.

      3. Crap. I didn’t realize the link would throw that big ass graphic up in the middle of the comments. I’ll understand entirely if this needs to be deleted!

      4. I’ve been reading a lot of Alastair Reynolds lately. He’s an astrophysicist so he writes very hard sci-fi and his characterizations can be a little spotty, but it’s really good thinky stuff. His Terminal World and House of Suns are very good, and the Revelation Space books are delightfully chewy.

      5. Give Spider Robinson a try. Its Hippie social fiction but its GOOD social Hippie Fiction. Not to mention the man can play the English language for laugh like a Ray Charles at a Piano. Any man that can come up with Shared pain is lessened and shared joy is Squared… is a pretty smart guy. And besides… His 3 main Settings are in a Series of Bars(Callahan’s).. A Whore House in Brooklyn NY (Lady Sally’s) and Vancouver Canada with a Cop a Hippie and a Telepath (Very bad… series) He also collaborated with his late wife on the Star Dancer Series plus a few one offs.

      6. There is also A Lee Martinez.

        A Company of Ogres

        Chasing the Moon

        Epic Road Quest

        Gil’s All Fright Dinner

        Monster (The main character who should guest appear in one of Larrys books just because why WOULDN’T there be a Cryptobiological Animal Control service in the MHI universe!)

        And

        Emperor Mollusc Versus the Insidious Brain (which is just about 100 times more awesome than it sounds

        Divine Misfortune ( I swear if this was made into a movie they should get Jeff Bridges to play one of the leads divinities)

      1. I’ve got Wright’s “Awake In The Night Land” on Kindle, and recently picked up “Orphans of Chaos” in paperback; both are awaiting their turn in the rotation. “Count To a Trillion” is on my to-buy list.

        1. Totally agree, Awake in the Night Land completely blew me away. One of the scariest settings I’ve ever encountered, IMO. Just…. WOW. It was like Lovecraft had a bad dream.

      2. I’ll second that recommendation for “Awake In The Night Land”. It’s superb.

        greatly fleshes out the world of “The Night Land”, but in every way it fits in perfectly with the original… the settings, the characters, the language (despite not being the faux archaic style of the original). He evokes a sense of wonder and dread and proves again that the best way to make something deeply creepy is to be subtle.

        Plus, he doesn’t start every paragraph with the word, “And”. 😉

    3. Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen is also really, really good. It reads like Baen, but it’s from Roc.

      1. Thirded…. Also a Resounding BOO for making me wait a day for the rest of the Drubbing of the Incontinent Twit Larry….Dammit.

  12. While I don’t buy your books(sorry about that, but wrong genre for me) I agree with you. I find you to be an excellent spokesman for the entertainment first, political viewpoint second people.Please continue to do what you do so well. I appreciate it.

  13. Larry,

    I do want to point out that while reading this, you were taking his use of phrases, like, ‘science fiction outgrowing them’ to be meant in terms of marketing and market-share. I don’t believe that was his intent. My interpretation of his use of the phrase is that he is actually trying to say ‘science fiction is evolving away from its (obviously) bigoted past into a new, purer, enlightened realm.’

    Of course, having pointed out this distinction, my own interpretation of his use of such terms as ‘outgrow’ is that what he is actually trying to SAY is ‘We are better than Them.’

      1. Are you implying that, with the adoption of “identity” criticism, F&SF’s appeal has become more selective?

      2. To the leftists, weeding out the unwashed masses IS growth. You know, kid of like purifying their blessed Aryan stock or something by shooting the disabled and the mixed-races.

    1. Yes, I also got the impression that “outgrow” was used in the sense of “mature”, rather than “get bigger”, but if that means driving it into the dirt, who wants that?

      1. There are more than one actual ‘Joe Buckley’, but I believe I’m the one you’re asking about.

  14. “Daddy, what are those ruins over there?”

    “Well, sweetheart, that used to be a place called London. It was a wonderful city that spanned for miles before the destruction. To be honest, poppet, the buildings you see are the small percentage that survived The Great Cataclysm.”

    “What happened?”

    “A Progressive writer awakened the Correia. And in his well-written wrath, he unleashed a dreaded manatee to smite the unworthy.”

    “Oh. What’s a Progressive?”

    “I’ll explain when you’re older, kiddo.”

    1. “Once Wendell evolved telekinesis powerful enough to ward off nuclear blasts and fling carriers miles, that was the end of it all.”

      “Is that why Florida became a conservative state?”

      “Yup. The manatees got fed up with leftist land-dwellers and then the Social Justice crowd spontaneously combusted on the Fourth of July. Oddly enough, so did the Castros. NEVER piss off a manatee, dear. They’re great people, but they’ve sworn to never tolerate idiots again.”

      “Well, when are New York, Chicago and Detroit going to be vaporized, dad?”

      “Those places are a little cold for Wendell and the boys to care about, but there are rumors the Asian Carp are actually sent up the Mississippi by the Manatee Republic and are developing mind powers like Wendell’s, just weaker. As for New York, my guess is their day is coming, and it’ll be uglier than London.”

      1. Now I’m flashing back to an old Freakazoid! episode where a mad scientist voiced by Tim Curry gave us this gem:
        “They called me crazy! Insane! WENDELL!”

        Truly, a show ahead of its time.

      2. The Stellar’s Sea Cow tolerated the cold waters better, but it has been extinct since the mid-1800s. Perhaps the Russians knew something about sea cow wrath and systematically destroyed them?

    2. Daddy, why did the puppies used to be sad?

      Just eat your breakfast dear, and later we’ll go to the Wendel Day parade.

    3. Mayhap a cloning experiment is in order? California could certainly use the influence of the noble Manatee as well.

  15. In order to believe as Damien believes, one must inhabit a bizarro-world alternative reality where it’s perpetually 1958 and Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke are immortals. Of course, Heinlein was a libertarian and both Asimov and Clarke were liberals; the latter being gay. Doesn’t matter. They’re still part of the Republican conservative white patriarchy keeping the womens and brown peoples DOWN, man.

    The most glaring fallacy in all of this, is the masturbation regarding “diversity.” As Larry notes, actual diversity would involve embracing people with different values, morals, and ideas. Damien’s side of the equation considers diversity to be skin deep. They like you if you come wrapped in a pretty “diverse” package but you are actually just like Damien on the inside: you vote the same, you think the same, you enjoy the same things, hate the same things, are politically motivated in precisely the same ways, etc.

    So, the “diversity” parade becomes a vulgar carnival of Marxist douchethink as the “diversity” police shame, shun, frag, and slag anyone and everyone who is actually different in any substantial way. And of course, the Damiens of the world are so blind to their own smug biases they cannot see any of this for what it actually is. Thus the invention of the bizarro-world alternative reality.

    Facing the truth — cold, hard — would be emotionally overwhelming for the Damiens, and disprove too many of their foundational beliefs.

    1. Brad,

      Perhaps you’d care to comment as another “little known” author on Larry’s slate? I mean, you’ve been nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Campbell award before and now are on yet another Hugo ballot, surely you have some opinions on what it’s like to be so “little known”. 🙂

      1. I voiced my thoughts to Damien on the blog proper. I’ve been trying to figure out how best to address him in a blog of my own, but I think Paul Kemp and Larry may have covered 99% of it. I am still thinking on what to say, that might be productive. Because it might just come out as FUCK YOU DAMIEN YOU LITTLE FUCK, which would not be gentlemanly. (grin)

        1. Write a book where Little Damien is a character and have him get his tiny brain eaten by zombies for a light snack. That way you can trash for cash. Yay!

          1. My redshirtings can raise good money for charity. Damien is unworthy of dying in one of my books. 🙂

        2. I agree with most of what Kemp said, but as the Alpha Shit Stirrer what I did had to be done, otherwise his #2 would have gone unchallenged forever. As for this being click bait, if all I wanted to do was drive blog traffic I’d just write articles on gun control. Holy crap, there’s no comparision. 🙂

        3. Maybe you need to hang out with more rednecks. Being gentlemanly should be a consideration, but sometimes there’s no substitute for a well-timed bird finger followed up with a swift punch to the face to make a point. 😉

      2. To be fair, a great many of today’s Hugo and Nebula nominees qualify as little known, even in their own genre. 😉

        1. Of course, but Damien doesn’t get to have it both ways. Either awards matter – and if they matter, then it’s hard to say a Writers of the Future winner and triple nominee can be “little known”, at least by the right people – or they don’t.

          I still remember Brad telling someone which stories in Lights of the Deep were nominated for what, and I followed up with, “But don’t let that fool you. It’s actually really good!”

          Guess which camp I’m in? 😀

    2. “The most glaring fallacy in all of this, is the masturbation regarding ‘diversity.’”

      I’m glad you denounced this tripe about “diversity”–the most overused and abused euphemism in this whole controversy.

      To quote the original piece: “The real prize for science fiction is not diversity for diversity’s sake (although I happen to believe that would be prize enough).”

      Such an aim would be absurd if taken at face value. After all, if the real goal were pure unqualified diversity, we wouldn’t just need apologies and reparations for members of approved victim groups claimed to have been barred from SFF, but for illiterate and unintelligibly insane writers, as well as just plain bad ones. “Diversity” is a relative term with no intrinsic value.

      Kemp deciphers Walter’s Newspeak when he writes: “…with ‘diversity’ here implicitly defined as being more inclusive of, and, in fact including more, women, persons of color, and persons of non-hetero sexual orientation…”

      Thus revealing that Walter invokes “diversity” to lend undue moral weight to a circular argument which amounts to nothing more than, “These writers should capitulate to my political biases because it would support me in my political biases.”

      1. “… illiterate and unintelligibly insane writers, as well as just plain bad ones.”

        Waitaminit!

        Is there a sub-genre for that? I want to be an author and that sounds just my style.

  16. Damien and his special little thoughts. Still as pathetic as ever.

    The same man who blocked me after something like five tweets for not being “open” to discussion, in part because I wouldn’t agree with him about what my motives really were. Yeah…not gonna happen.

    I remember the hatchet job he did on Larry before the Hugo nominations were announced (and how convenient the timing was). I didn’t really know much about him besides what Larry wrote about here and what John C. Wright touched on elsewhere. What I know now is that this pathetic little worm simply has to hide behind the safety of the internet because he’s too much of a dipshit to have to really stand up for something.

    As for the message fiction thing, I read Larry’s post regarding that. I read Alex’s response (which consisted a lot of the phrase “piss off”). Larry’s comment about message fiction was dead on. Alex said she wanted to end something in science fiction that most of us don’t have an issue with, and Larry basically said, “Do whatever you want, so long as you put the story first.” OH HEAVEN FOR-FUCKING-BID! The message isn’t supposed to be first?

    I don’t care who you are, I don’t particularly like message fiction. I’ve read libertarian message fiction, and as a libertarian, I’m going to tell you it sucks. Fiction that has libertarian undertones? Who other ballgame. Larry commented on as much in his post.

    But Damien doesn’t want to acknowledge that, because he’s a pathetic piece of shit who doesn’t want to see his worldview challenged. The fact that someone like Larry – or to a much less well known extent, me – would do that apparently infuriates him. It infuriates him to such a degree that he begs for research help from his Twitter followers.

    As a former journalist myself, I’m ashamed that this guy is a representative of that profession to people who don’t know any better.

      1. No argument.

        Unfortunately, a lot of people who don’t know any better will equate journalists with Damien. It’s almost enough to make me cry.

        Almost. 😉

    1. Tom, al-Guardian is hardly journalism. Albeit, in order for you to get hired in BBC News, you must first work there.

      1. Again, it’s the perception that he’s a journalist that bugs me. I know he’s not. Everyone here knows he’s not. Other Americans? Maybe, maybe not.

        The true tragedy is all those people who don’t know the difference.

    2. “As a former journalist myself, I’m ashamed that this guy is a representative of that profession to people who don’t know any better.”

      You and me both, brother, you and me both. I was also an editor on my second newspaper, and I keep wondering why the editor does not tug backward on the guy’s leash a little.

      1. Or, perhaps, to hoist him into a tree with that leash.

        I don’t think it would bother me so much if he just disagreed with those of us on this side of the aisle. No, that’s just how it goes, and I’m fine with that.

        What bothers me is that he not only maligns us at ever turn, but does it with outright fabrications and alleged telepathically obtained information. After all, he knew how I was “feeling” about the Nebulas despite me not even realizing how I felt.

        Take issue with me, and that’s alright. Make up crap and skim until offended? No, we’ve got a problem. Me and Damien Walter? Big damn problem.

      2. As I mentioned in my reply to Tom, this is al Guardian we’re dealing with. The standard bearing paper of the proper thinking folks in England. Correct thinking is the only criteria of getting published there, not the actual worth of the content.

  17. “…how my teaching women to carry guns is actually misogyny, and his pathetic attempt to channel Stalin.”

    At first glance, I thought you had written that Damien was attempting to channel Satan. But, you know, tomato, tomahto.

    Oh, also, I hate to be that guy, Larry, but…
    “What a bunch of pretentious dribble…”
    Dribble is the product of Damien’s mouth and ends up on his chin.
    DRIVEL is the product of Damien’s mind and ends up splattered on the interwebs. 😀

  18. “Allegations of bloc-voting arose as a slate of little-known writers appeared among the nominees…”

    Notice how Walter keeps practicing quite a bit of legalese mush-mouth here. Instead of outright accusing people of bloc-voting he says “allegations of bloc voting arose”. The media loves to do crap like this.

    Hey- fun drinking game! Next time you watch the news, take a shot whenever you hear a reporter say the words “Some people say!” or even “experts agree…” without clarifying WHICH people or experts. Or how many. Or whether or not said people and experts are full of shit.

    Damien is trying the same nonsense here. There were allegations! And “these conservative authors” don’t like diversity! (which conservative authors? Oh, you know, the vague ones… // waves hand // over there.)

    No links? Of course not. It’s a tidy way of making accusations without legally making accusations. But don’t expect liberals to possess critical reading skills. They don’t need evidence or quotes. Insinuations and sinister warnings are enough for them to believe this tripe.

    1. What surprises me is that he can pack two glaring contradictions in one sentence like that and not have the cognitive dissonance blow his head off. If the Larry is “Little known” how can he assemble a voting bloc big enough to influence the ballot?

        1. But what does that say about the other nominees then? They can’t be much better off.

          Of course, we won’t know until the results are released after the awards if Larry made it in by the skin of his teeth, or was the #1 nominee. I suspect the latter.

          1. Oh don’t get me wrong. My point is not to impugn Larry in any way. But I actually found it shocking, having never looked into it before but having heard about the Hugos as THE SCIFI award, to look at last year’s stats and see how FEW people actually determine the winner. I want to say there were 1900ish voters total last year. Spread among 5 finalists, that means the winner could conceivably have had as few as 400 votes. Total. For the biggest. Award. Ever.

            I suddenly became a lot less impressed with the Hugos after that.

  19. I largely stopped buying recent science fiction a long time ago because it was boring, pretentious, and worse depression (Yes, that’s right I thought SF was too depressing.)

    Then I found this one particular publisher who seemed to be bucking the trend.

    And, lately, having discovered Indie publishing I’m finding a lot more stuff that I actually want to read.

      1. I’ve only really gotten into a couple of things so far. I like Cedar Sanderson’s “Pixie Noir” and Amanda S. Green’s “Nocturnal Lives” series. Sarah Hoyt is also releasing some of her older stuff Indie.

        And, of course, I’m taking the opportunity to release some of my own short works in electronic form as well.

      2. For sci/fi – particularly of a space opera/military bent – I enjoyed Christopher Nuttall’s “Ark Royal” novels; Marko Kloos’ “Terms of Enlistment” and “Lines of Departure,” and Steve Rzasa/Vox Day’s “Quantum Mortis” series.

        For urban fantasy/horror, check out Steven Bannister’s “Black” novels (“Fade to Black;” “Back to Black” and “The Black Net’). If Phil Rickman had written “Prime Suspect,” this is what he might have ended up with.

      3. Ah, indy authors! I love me some zombie fiction, so there are several indy authors in that genre that I’ve discovered and thoroughly enjoy. You can find all of these on Amazon for Kindle (I haven’t looked on B&N). In no particular order:

        TW Brown: Dead series
        Eric A. Shelman: Dead Hunger series
        Mark Tufo: Zombie Fallout series
        John O’Brien: A New World series
        Shawn Chesser: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse series
        Bryan James: LZR-1143 series
        William Bebb: KECK zombie series (first book, “Valley of Death: Zombie Trailer Park”, is currently free on Amazon. This book is one of the few to have zombie scenes really make me nauseous at times, and that’s saying something. It wasn’t like he was trying for the gross-out either, it was just zombies doing what zombies do.)
        Andrew Mayne: You may have seen his recent A&E street magic TV show “Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne”, but he’s also an author. He’s written about 7 novels in different genres: zombie, mystery/thriller, noir detective, scifi, action. Most only cost 99 cents on Amazon, too. Each of them are serious page-turners.
        Jason Kristopher: The Dying of the Light series
        Armand Rosamilia: Dying Days series
        JW Vohs: Zombie Crusade series

      4. Apologies for tooting own horn, but if you like alt-history, “Elizabeth of Starland” by Alma Boykin might be to your taste. The “Cat Among Dragons” series is more straight sci-fi, mostly short stories, one novel with more coming.

        And I’ll second the votes for Marko Kloos, Christopher Nuttall, Amanda Green, Peter Grant, and add Kate Paulk’s “Impaler” and her Con series (ConVent, Con Fur, ConSensual). Just don’t read the Con books when you are in a place where you have to explain outbursts of wild laughter.

  20. “This dastardly clique was my fans.”

    Damn if that doesn’t sound like a Golden Era title:
    The International Lord of Hate and his Dastardly Clique!

    1. I’m sure that in the alternate reality that exists within in Mr. Walter’s head that is exactly how he is seeing this. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a narrative in his head that is running with something like this:

      “Fear Not! Flash Damien will defeat the International Lord of Hate and his Dastardly Clique with his rapier wit and commitment to TRUTH!!!!11!!1one1!”

      Sad thing is, there isn’t really a way for anyone to smack him and others like him into reality. When someone disagrees with them, they reject without thought. When the consequences of their foolish decisions come home to roost, they always place the fault at someone else’s feet. They are the heroes of their own narrative and nothing short of a act of God will convince them otherwise. (And even then God usually has to be heavy handed.)

      Still, the debate has been pretty entertaining.

  21. Well, one thing I can say for sure is that Damien completely misunderstood Godzilla.

    Unlike some movies, Godzilla’s central theme was explicitly stated during the course of the narrative: namely, that Nature always restores the balance, and Godzilla himself is a manifestation of that balancing force. This was made explicitly clear to anyone who actually watched the movie. It had nothing to do with WW2 or the evils of the military-industrial complex. In fact, the military was portrayed in a fairly positive light.

    Yes, it mentions that during the 50s and 60s (after WW2 ended, mind you), the US government tried to kill Godzilla with nuclear weapons, but that is such a minor detail that it could have been omitted from the movie with no change to the story.

    But I guess an eye for artistic interpretation is not a prerequisite for working at The Guardian.

    1. Actually Godzilla is not a metaphor for the military industrial complex. He is a metaphor for America itself.

      Consider
      The first Godzilla movie was in the aftermath of WWII. In it Godzilla came from the sea; so did the Americans.
      Godzilla was unstoppable and impervious to the best efforts of the Japanese armed forces; so were the Americans. Godzilla destroyed Japan’s cities like Tokyo, Hiroshimo and Nagasaki with fire, so did the Americans. As time passes in Japan, Godzilla goes from destroyer to protector and back again, so do the Americans as tensions between japan and america rise and fall. .

      Godzilla is America.

  22. I took a look at The Guardian’s Editorial Guidelines, and found some relevant bits.

    From Section 1, Professional Practice (p. 4):

    Fairness “The voice of opponents no less than of friends has a right to be heard … It is well be to be frank; it is even better to be fair” (CP Scott, 1921). The more serious the criticism or allegations we are reporting the greater the obligation to allow the subject the opportunity to respond.

    From Appendix 3.1, the Editors’ Code subsection of the PCC (Press Complaints Commision) Code of Conduct (p.8):

    2 Opportunity to reply

    A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for.

    Larry ought to demand to cross-post his responses to The Guardian.

  23. I took a look at The Guardian’s Editorial Guidelines, and found some relevant bits.

    From Section 1, Professional Practice (p. 4):

    Fairness “The voice of opponents no less than of friends has a right to be heard … It is well be to be frank; it is even better to be fair” (CP Scott, 1921). The more serious the criticism or allegations we are reporting the greater the obligation to allow the subject the opportunity to respond.

    From Appendix 3.1, the Editors’ Code subsection of the PCC (Press Complaints Commision) Code of Conduct (p.8):

    2 Opportunity to reply

    A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for.

    Larry ought to demand to cross-post his responses to The Guardian. 😈

  24. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. 🙂

    Also, the women and guns thing… except that it would be messy, he can take my (carefully unloaded) pretty black pistol and stick it where the sun don’t shine… I’m only sorry that I don’t have a scary black military style semi-automatic rifle for the job… yet.

  25. I’m not defending his actions but certain words that are being used may be considered slightly offensive. For example, ‘libtard.’ I chose that one as an example because my little brother is autistic. I’m sorry if I’m being rude. Have a good day, everyone!

      1. Libtard == Liberal Retard. For some of us, that’s a wee bit redundant. But we want to be a bit specific.

          1. You can be offended if you like, I suppose. Free country and all.

            But let’s not pretend this had anything to do with an actual retarded person, shall we? I’m considerably more than slightly offended by your insinuation.

            [mock happy voice] And have a great day! [/mock happy voice]

      2. The actual term is insulting to genuine disabled. These folks only achieve their level of ignorance after being indoctrinated in expensive university.

      3. What do you mean? I’m sorry, I’m new to politics. I can’t wait to vote! I’ve heard that the term ‘liberal’ applies to Democrats. That’s all I know, in terms of this conversation.

      4. Rephrasing of my earlier statement:
        I know a good amount of politics. I think that I’m going to be properly educated to vote, but I don’t understand the statement about universities. I think it might be a part of the political news that I haven’t heard about.

      5. miscellaneoussoup- you’re not being rude. being rude would be to say”hey phantom! Eat me!” You did not do that. I have dealt with people like you brother, and you have my admiration. I prefer Libprog, for Liberal Progressive, or Libturd for Liberal Turd.

      6. Miscellaneoussoup:

        The statement about universities which has you confused can be summed up as follows: Universities are supposed to be centers of education and learning, but for the past half-century or so have instead become centers of leftist propaganda. Many students with right-leaning politics are verbally maligned by the very educators that are supposed to be teaching them, not indoctrinating them into a particular groupthink. And the more expensive the university, it seems, the more intense the propaganda becomes.

        As you’re about to reach the point where you’ll be entering those hallowed halls, the best advice you can have is “Ware: Here There Be Dragons”. Learn to think for yourself, and not accept as Authoritative the statements of your professors.

    1. My son is autistic. He is, in fact, severely retarded. I am not offended by the use of this word because I know what English words mean. Retarded=”slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress”

      Larry, please ignore anyone who attempts to police your language. The audience has a duty to show at least a small amount of fortitude.

      1. I have a cousin with Down’s syndrome, miscellaneoussoup, so I can understand the feeling of hurt on the part of a relative. 99.98% of the people here, though, I am willing to be have no actual animus against people who mental disabilities–just the people who have the mental capacity to know better and refuse to, thus “retarded”.

        “Deliberately ignorant” just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so well, sadly.

        But high school kids are tremendously cruel, so I am not in the least surprised you’re sensitive about it. Just know it’s not used with any hostility toward people like your brother (or my cousin).

      2. I’ll be the a-hole here.

        Stop trying to shame people for saying what they think. You are using your “victim” status to dictate what other people can say. Fuck you.

        This “I’m offended, conform to my standards” business offends me.

      3. Kristophr, the kid’s in high school.

        “I’m offended, conform to my standards” is the social standard of the day. The fact he’s even deviating in the slightest by apologizing for his own rudeness is an enormous step up from the usual breast-beating of SJWs.

        Not that I’m even getting an “I’m offended, conform to my standards” vibe off of him so much as “I’ve only ever heard this used with malice so I’m not sure how to feel about people using it”.

    2. Hello,

      I don’t find you rude at all but rather polite and courteous. I doubt if anyone here uses this term in relation to autistic people. All the best to you and your brother.

      1. Kristophr- do you see the irony in you saying that you don’t want to “conform to my standards” yet you use a-hole instead of using the word Ass. I don’t conform to any standards but my own. I choose not to use not use libtard for my reasons, and you choose to be an asshole for yours. It’s called freedom.

  26. Speaking of the whole “message over story” thing, I see that Tor.com is currently running a special “Queering SF/F Pride Month Extravaganza!” thing.

    That is a direct quote, to include the exclamation point.

    Two posts on the front page so far, with, I’m sure, many more to come.

    *facepalm*

  27. I, too, don’t read much sci-fi, even though I love it in TV/movies. It seems like TV sci-fi actually focuses on characters and developing relationships and such, while most of the sci-fi books I’ve read have been all about the author explaining this neat idea that they had, usually about some form of civilization they thought up. In other words, they put the concept before the plot and characters, and it ends up being very boring for me. Fantasy, especially urban fantasy, doesn’t seem to have nearly this problem, which is why I read more of it.

    I took a sci-fi lit class in college, expecting it to be interesting because, in a general sense, I love sci-fi. Except then we read The Sparrow, which apparently was some kind of religious message story (I don’t know, I couldn’t finish it and don’t really remember the part I did read). And a couple other stories that are considered classics but were all about the concept rather than the characters.

    Although I do have to say that one of the other things that drove me away from sci-fi (and some fantasy authors) were male authors who wrote female characters as if they’d never met a woman in their lives. Female characters should not just act like a man’s fantasy of a woman, but like actual women. Which is something that I’m glad to see is less of a problem with more modern writers. (I do get slightly annoyed when all women are beautiful in such stories, although I can’t get too annoyed since female writers do the same thing with male characters in their stories, a lot of the time. But really, not every person needs to be crazy hot to be a cool character or even a love interest.)

    1. Niven and Clarke are famous for creating ideas that basically become the equivalent of characters in their books. But those ideas are just a cool framework, not the protagonist. Unfortunately, some authors don’t understand this and let the “neat idea” overwhelm the story line and characters.

    2. Shawna, I totally agree. (and I’m a guy, wow) Watch “Dance of the Dead” when the nerds rescue the hot cheerleaders.

  28. Funny little anecdote.
    For a while now people have been telling everybody how: “there is no blacklisting, there is no effort of exclusion, there is no effort to paint people with the brush of badthink”
    There is only the desire to be inclusive, to have serious debate.

    Now look at the first comment of theat Guardian article.

    I can take the snide retoric and the sarcasm. Half of the discussions between Will Shetterly and the rest is soaked in passive-agressive snark.
    I can even understand some of the agression and the cynicism.
    But what makes these discussions a joke for me(if you can call them that) is the two-faced nature of a lot of people:
    There is no desire to tar the old writers, but Heinlein = fascist.
    We only want to be inclusive to everybody, but mr Correia damages himself by not publicly denouncing mr Beale. In fact we should all denounce Vox, Larry and Wright to be on the right side.
    People point to allegations of bloc-voting and ballot-stuffing, when you have kastandlee in the comments of https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy telling everybody that the Hugo voting was done fair and according to all the rules.

    People are standing there with the tar bucket in hand and telling us that there are no tar and feathers. Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining.

  29. This is the greatest fight since Bambi took on Godzilla. Can’t wait for Part 2.

  30. So, once again, a best selling author is attacked by a nobody. It’s just a stupid ploy to get traffic, that’s it. Notice that none of the liberal (or at least moderate) spec fic authors that actually sell books give a shit about any of this.

    Seriously, ignoring DW, who is a complete nobody, look at the people that are really vocal about this whole situation. How many are actually real, published authors? Kameron Hurley, a b-lister at best. Jim Hines, a b-lister that gets outraged by everything, Robert Adams, a talented author… but no one buys his stuff.

    Now look at at a few of the the best selling authors from the left and their responses: Jim Butcher- nothing, Pat Rothfuss- nothing, Brent Weeks- nothing, Peter F. Hamilton- nothing, Alastair Reynolds- call for civility, GRRM- one slightly snarky comment and that’s it, Joe Abercrombie – mocked the entire situation.

    Methinks that jealousy has a lot more to do with the outrage than politics.

    1. Would it blow your mind to know that some of the authors you list are actually in favor of what I did? Or that I was contacted and thanked for exposing the perpetually outraged for what they really are? Pretty sweet. 🙂

      1. Actually, it reaffirms my faith in the speculative community in a little bit. I don’t have any problem with someone getting offended by something, and then explaining why they were offended.

        I DO have a problem with people that are mindlessly offended by everything. Between working his day job and the time he spends being OUTRAGED (!!!), I don’t know how Jim Hines finds the time to write books…

        I couldn’t believe when I saw that Kameron Hurley talked trash about Pat Rothfuss and his pin-up calender thing. Pat is about as liberal as they come, a self proclaimed feminist, and a major philanthropist… god forbid he use drawings of sexy women to raise money for a fucking charity. His response… basically chill out.

        I was glad to see Paul Kemp chime in with a rational response to DW’s idiocy (and guess what, another author that sells a shit-ton of books ends up being reasonable).

      2. Silent approval is like pissing yourself in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling but nobody notices. They approve, but don’t want to get involved in the fight, afraid of liberal backlash, which is what got us in this situation to begin with.

        I can’t really hold it against them, it’s not their fight and they can’t get involved in EVERYTHING, but it’s not actually helping.

    2. If anything, you’re understating it. Pat Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, and John Scalzi have all called for civility, and the voices of tolerance attacked them for their trouble.

  31. Reblogged this on The Worlds of Tarien Cole and commented:
    Yes, it was so nice to see Godzilla as a parody for the military-industrial complex. Oh wait. That’s not how I saw it. In fact, the military in the movie wasn’t played as ‘evil’ at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure Godzilla went out of his way NOT to attack the US Navy and Marines. But I bet Damian missed that part.

  32. I saw something on Twitter recently. Lightspeed RTed N.K. Jemisin about how something was the first piece of original fiction she’d had the chance to write in quite a while.

    Um…you’re a writer, right? I mean, I understand that it’s not your full time job, but you’re a writer. That means you freaking write. You don’t have time to write between your job and your activism? Then perhaps you need to take a step or two back and figure out what’s more important to you.

    You want to be an activist? Go right ahead. You want to be a counselor? That’s cool too, especially since that’s apparently getting you paid. But if the two of those are keeping you from writing, then maybe you should rethink calling yourself a writer.

    Just a thought.

  33. Dear Mr Correia, or (if I may..), Larry,

    I came across your blog thanks to Vox’s blog (you and some other authors I may add). Got interested after reading the “about me section”. Then got hooked on the fisking(s) – and may I say, well done Sir, both on the content and delivery. So after finishing VD’s ATOB and Lt Col Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry, I got my hands on MHI… about halfway through, and I already know it’ll be the first of many of your books that I read if they’re normally even half as entertaining. The fact how your success makes people like Walters react, is just another entertainment cherry on top of the fun the book provides. Keep it up, wish you lots of good ideas, time to write and all the best for you and your close ones!

    1. Dunno. I think pretentious intellectualism is a bigger problem than message fiction. That’s the part where authors spend time pushing an innovative concept in an attempt to achieve literary merit instead of writing something readable. Sadly, some of those authors are pretty talented. (Stross…Scalzi… looking at you) Clever is not a substitute for entertaining.
      The biggest real effect that I suspect Larry had on the nominations was to fill his readership in on the information that registering resulted in a big swag bag. This brought cheap people (me) into the Hugo process.

      1. There is a strange sort of “Emperor’s New Clothes” thing amongst the pretentious. After all, only the truly artistic, educated and intelligent souls can appreciate the sophisticated and nuanced nature of (insert item here).
        Sadly, unlike the classic fable, the child who points out the nakedness of the Emperor still has to write a report on just how wonderful the New Clothes are.

  34. I understand that a lot of people think SF/F should “say something important”. What I don’t understand is why they don’t think it’s important to portray people of good will opposing evil with all their might, risking life and limb for something greater than themselves. People who trivialize such tales and still expect the others to stand up against evils in the real world are missing the point and helping to make the “men without chests”. A story that captures the imagination and helps explain to a new audience, that while it will take struggle and sacrifice, good can in the end triumph, adds a small spark of hope in our world.

    I’d much rather live in a world where children want to grow up and be Honor Harrington and Jake Sullivan than a world where children learn that such types of people are worthy of derision.

    1. I often wonder about this. Is it possible they believe the will to stand is an inborn quality? Finding themselves lacking, they don’t seek to strengthen their will, believing it beyond them. Instead they seek to denounce nobility, courage, fortitude?

      Perhaps they don’t understand struggling beyond pain, terror and certain death to do what must be done? They instead believe these are qualities they were born lacking, and so must go to the grave lacking?

      I’ve got a different view, of course. These qualities are made, and remade in the hearts of good people. They’re built despite suffering, fear and loss. And they’re built from a perceived value.

      Whatever the truth, I think you’re right, they make the “men without chests,” and they make them in their image.

  35. a) I’m sorry for saying this, because I don’t want to put you off your food, but that poor man wants you bad. And since his psychological development is circa 12 years old and female (aka middle school girl) he’s going to keep hitting you to show you the depth of his crush. And when you hit back, he’s all happy because he has your attention. b) This and John Wright’s piece have to be some of the best writing I’ve seen in a long time. c) At the root (I almost typed it rot) of the problem is the fact that these people think that writing is social work. So they’re “Growing the field” by putting off the majority of people and appealing to the “marginalized” (of circa 100 years ago.) Honest to heaven, I wouldn’t care, except that they’re destroying the PERCEPTION of the field I work in, so that most people DO walk away and think it’s all boring tripe. Worse, and something you don’t suffer from, they put people off MY books because I’m female and have the occasional gay hero (no, not my fault. They are who they are.) I’ve had more people say “I was afraid to read you because I thought you were going to lecture me.” At an estimate this perception cuts my potential sales in half.

    1. “This and John Wright’s piece have to be some of the best writing I’ve seen in a long time.”

      Yes exactly. I really can’t pop enough popcorn for this.

    2. “At an estimate this perception cuts my potential sales in half.”

      Good. Lord. I had no idea things were so out of hand.

    3. I don’t know about “lecture”… but after exposure to several female authors who had a desire to score points, I went through a period of about six years where I wouldn’t read any f/sf not written by a male. I had dropped one (fairly popular) book series because all the male characters were either such saccharine, cardboard-cutout ‘gentlemen’ you wondered if they came packaged in shrinkwrap or brutal sadistic molester/rapists, with no middle ground; the next one I picked up- by a different author- had left off the first subgroup and all the males were of the second.
      Fortunately, a friend prevailed upon me to read “Shards of Honor” and that ended that.; but I wonder if some of these people know how many readers they’re driving off.

      1. Dave P.
        And in case you feel bad, I’m a woman and I reached that point in the middle eighties. I remember going up and down a bookcase at a store, snarling “Who the hell let these women write, and why do they ALL write about abusive fathers?” causing my husband to choke with laughter, since of course I’m a woman and aspire to writing.

      2. Ms. Hoyt-
        Y’know, that was almost exactly my response? I can remember actually saying, “Geez lady, I don’t know what your problem is with your daddy but I wish you’d stop taking it out on me!”
        “Draw One in the Dark” is on my Kindle in the to-read queue, BTW.

      3. Just avoiding female authors sadly doesn’t do it any longer. There’s any number of male authors riding the SJW train who like to write their women as 100% perfect and empowered and their men as perfect respecters of women or total monsters.

        Jay Lake isn’t actually this bad but his Green trilogy had me going “oh great more of this war of the sexes bullshit” in between bouts of enjoying it thoroughly.

      1. Oh god, I’m terrible. The word that popped into my head?

        damiense.cx

        Yes, I’m awful. I’ll go stand in the corner now for my timeout.

    4. I got to the point (right around the time Laurell K Hamilton went completely off the rails with Anita Blake) where I simply refused to buy or read anything with a female protagonist. The sex of the author was and still is irrelevant to me. If the hero wasn’t an adult male (and preferably over the age of 30), I gave it a pass. Still do, if the author hasn’t demonstrated an ability to write competent non-asshole men.

  36. I vote for the writers I like in the best and most obvious way possible. I read their books. Period. I buy them to read and enjoy. It matters not diddly squat to me whether they are written by gays, women, WASPs, Klingons or ethereal spirits. I am willing to give any writer ONE chance. If the work clicks, I buy more. If it doesn’t I don’t.

    So here’s the thing. In order for me to enjoy a writer I have to empathize with, support, cheer on, whatever the main characters, get into the story, suspend disbelief, and generally forget mundania and join the author’s universe. I won’t do that if the story is badly written, or if the author is so obviously on a message that he/she is trying to push that it knocks me out of the created universe.

    Books that are obviously written to push a viewpoint are dreck because the authors are so intent in seeding their message into as many places as possible, it becomes practically, and to all intents impossible, to follow the story — let alone enjoy it.

    I am sure I am not alone in this, so I am vastly untroubled by the thought that the Feminazis and Gaystapo have taken over the awards and publishing houses. Great. They can knock themselves out. But it will do them absolutely NO GOOD AT ALL if people do not buy the books they award or publish.

    Thus and therefore, I am vastly untroubled. While I always love reading new authors, there are hundreds, if not thousands of books written by authors that I already know I enjoy that I have not yet had the opportunity to read, so if the most recent politically correct, acclaimed, and approved works do not meet my tastes, it’s not like I’m going to starve. They can gather dust in the discount bins, as they most likely will.

    Besides, Indy publishing and digital media has blown the doors off the publishing house paradigm anyhow, and it’s only going to get bigger for indy and worse for the big houses if they ignore their fan’s. Fans who are not in the business to push a message, will always find ways to inform each other of who’s hot and who’s not. So I am sure to have a tasty assortment of newcomers to sample, regardless of whether they meet with gatekeeper approval.

    So bottom line? Let them have their fun. They can gloat and pat themselves on the back about their capture of the awards and their lock on the big publishing houses (except Baen, obviously) but it matters not because they WON’T SELL ANY (or many) BOOKS. That sort of stuff is self correcting. Until then, I’ll continue my journey through the good stuff that’s already out there and wait for the capitalists running the business to come to their senses.

  37. Ugh, that guy. He used to write a reasonably good column covering the geekier end of the publishing spectrum, but then got infected with the SJW virus and started flinging poo at most of his audience. I stopped reading after he had a hissy fit at one of my comments and not-so-subtly threatened to use the resources of his paper to unmask my writing pseudonym (a big no-no for erotica writers, for obvious reasons). Having alienated most of his audience it looks like he’s fallen back on the time-honoured media strategy of shouting contentious nonsense to get attention. Damn stupid waste but whatever, life’s too short and I’d rather be writing books and entertaining readers than having projectile excrement fights with other writers (assuming Mr Walter ever finishes his book during his lifetime).

    Ironically, I doubt I would have heard who Larry Correia was without the outraged shouting of people like Walter. I came over here to get a perspective on the other side and realised it reflected a lot of the same concerns I had about where the SFF community was heading. I also liked the style and checked out the first MHI book based on that. I’m glad I did as I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mr Walter is doing you favours whether he realises it or not 😉

  38. There seems to be this assumption that only books worthy of awards are those that provide a social message, a statement reflecting the state of society, and that only these kinds of books are intellectually worthy.

    So, here is my shower thought: Wouldn’t the very fact that Larry sells a gazillion books be a social statement on its own?

    Admittedly, I’m no intellectual and every time I try to be I get a flaming headache, but my reasoning is that when you write a book, you pour onto paper your voice which is unique only to you. You then release that book to the public where it will be consumed by readers who may like or dislike it, or who may not feel anything at all. If a lot of people like your book, whether it be for the unique voice, the story, or both, and they come back for your subsequent books, they are saying, “What you write resonates with me. It makes me think. It makes me happy. It makes me want to shoot monsters with automatic shotguns.” It’s a reflection on what people like, what they find entertaining, and what they want. Very important that last bit–‘what they want’. Thus, to me the popularity of Larry’s books is a social message all on its own. Of course it doesn’t reflect the whole of society, but then, it doesn’t have to.

    I’ve a headache now, and I didn’t even try so hard.

  39. As one of your even a few liberal fans can I just say that Damien DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME. I read your books because they’re good and would stop buying them TO-DAY if they stopped being good even if you’d pulled my wife out of a burning building.

    1. I’m sure that Larry probably has a ton of fans that consider themselves liberal. I’m sure plenty of conservatives like George R.R. Martin too. I know I don’t really give a damn what the author is like personally as long as he (or she… or cis 🙂 ) can write a good book, and I think most people are like that.

    2. “As one of your even a few liberal fans can I just say that Damien DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME. I read your books because they’re good and would stop buying them TO-DAY if they stopped being good even if you’d pulled my wife out of a burning building.”

      That is what readers are supposed to be like!

  40. I love these fisks so much I just bought Hard Magic (had been avoiding it because I am sure it will become yet another series I can’t quit). Keep kicking the libs in the nuts until you get bored or tired and I’ll keep applauding…

  41. Mr. Correia, I can think of still another reason why this Damien Walter, and his employer, the Guardian, should hate you — and, by the mechanism of projection, impute hate and hatefulness to you: You uphold the common person’s right to arms. The Guardian (name derived from the rulership of Plato’s “best state”?), being Left, institutionally hates the idea of an ordinary citizen owning arms in general, and handguns in particular.

    Leaving aside speculation about resistance to the State, the personal handgun is the lawful person’s first line of defense against interpersonal criminal aggression. Disarming the citizenry, however, turns the streets over to muscle-bullies, knife-people, and other low-lifes of like ilk. As this is so, one can wonder whether the State which does this, is affected with kleptophilia.

    (As a parallel aside, I would like to see The Weapon Shops of Isher brought back. Fantastical elements of vanVogt’s story notwithstanding, the novel is a bell-ringing defense of the ordinary person’s right of arms. Also, in view of the remark that, for the SJWs it is still 1958, I can just imagine that pink-shirt hatred for vanVogt would put their hatred for you and Mr. Beale [Vox Day] to shame.)

    In my own opinion, any State which abrogates its citizens’ right of arms, whether overtly/blatantly, or under color of a set of bureaucratic hurdles onerously difficult to pass, does N O T D E S E R V E to survive.

  42. “…as a slate of little-known writers appeared among the nominees,”

    Here’s a foolproof way for Damien to determine who is and who isn’t a little known writer:

    1. Go to the bank and tell them you want a loan to buy a really nice house.
    2. Put “writer” in the Occupation field.
    3. Enter your yearly income from writing.

    If the loan comes back approved, you’re not a f*cking little known writer.

    As someone who bought MHI about a week after its first run with Infinity Publishing and everything since, I am pretty sure Larry writes a more entertaining grocery list than anything Damien has written so far.

  43. Example of good message fiction

    Spider Robinson. “Callahans” series or Kim Stanley Robinson “The Years of Rice and Salt” Piers Anthony “Incarnations of Immortality”

    Bad Message Fiction the folks this guy listed who by chance I could not find at the book store at all.

  44. Larry, I came here hoping you’d be having some fun with NK Jemisin’s NY Times Book Review piece, both the nature of her criticisms and the ludicrousness of thinking she’ll be able to fairly review Vandermeer or to a lesser extent Walton. Come on, this is a 70 MPH fastball hanging right over the middle of the plate…how can you not take a swing…

  45. Larry, you failed to refer to Damian as a “sniveling little rat-faced git”. And you SHOULD. He defines it.

  46. I never left reading sci-fi because before I ran out of good books from the 80’s and 90’s, I found Baen Publishing in the early 2000’s 🙂

  47. I’m betting that Damien’s last article on Larry probably produced as many hits as those that are featured on Drudge–from both sides of the argument.

    So what’s Damien to do when he goes back to writing in obscurity?

    Let’s see, I got a ton of hits when I did that Correia thing . . .

    1. Maybe his editor asked why they are still paying him when he doesn’t generate any hits for the website? Then again, this is assuming he doesn’t have a position compensated only with the ‘prestige’ of working for the Guardian.

      1. The Guardian isn’t exactly a profitable newspaper. They’re well known for NOT paying contributors who wants to have Guardian in their resume for future jobs. BBC News literally only hire Guardian alumni.

  48. Larry, I confess that until today I did not know who you were nor have I read any of your books. I came here due to reading Vox (with which I don’t necessarily agree on too much, politics-wise) and following links.
    I will be buying at least one of your books based on this post alone. You made a new fan. I live in the UK and I write too (yes SF. No, not very successfully yet, but I think my stuff just need better exposure. I have pretty traditional male-female roles, space Nazis, aliens and pretty graphic sex in there, so, not exavtly PC, but I also work full time so no real time to market myself too much) and readin Damien made me nauseous. I can’t wait for your post tomorrow.

  49. May I please jump in to the conservative writer’s club? I can’t pass-up publicity opportunities like this. Many conservative fans are probably being drawn into this debate and since I actually AM a ‘little-known author’ I need all the help I can get.
    For credentials and as a time-stamp for when I came out of the closet, I present an article that I wrote several years ago in my blog…

    http://bhousley.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/the-incredible-shrinking-genre/

    The comment thread is one of the longest that this little-known author has ever triggered.

  50. I am one of those who’s reading of Science Fiction had dropped to nearly zero – I let my 25 year Analog subscription lapse in 2008, had never been able to stomach more than 1 story in 4 or 5 in Asimov’s,
    Yet, I eagerly purchased every new publication from Lois Bujold and Dean Ing – cause they can tell great stories.
    I had no idea that Samuel Delaney was black until I read it here, but I had tried on multiple occasions to get through even one of this books, with no success – I just did not like the stories. I really do not care what color skin an author has, this is NOT a beauty contest, can they tell a gripping story?, and not insult my intelligence with PC notions of the disaster du jour that must be averted, even though even rudimentary math skills would demonstrate that human activity is only contributing X tiny fraction to whatever the issue is.
    Keep on telling your stories Larry, I will keep on buying them – even though the only type of RPG I am interested in are one-time use items.

  51. Maybe Larry should send a small dividend payment, to Damien for all the free advertising Larry has received. 🙂

    1. Nah. Larry brought Damien more traffic than he’d ever pull on his own. Favor repaid.

      😉

  52. When I read the remarks about how the field of science fiction and fantasy was not giving sufficient awards to female authors till recently, I decided to do some research.

    At the official Hugo Awards site, I find that the first Hugo awards were awarded in 1953. There were no Hugos in 1954, and no fiction Hugos in 1957. In 1959, the fifth time Hugos were awarded for fiction, I find three females nominated. Also, 1959 was the third time awards were offered for Best New Author, and three of the five nominees were women.

    Now granted, one of the three women was Pauline Whitby, who was writing as “Paul Ash”, who was nominated for her story “Unwillingly to School,” and also as best new author. The other two nominees for “Best New Author of 1958”, Rosel George Brown and Kit Reed had names that might have seemed masculine. And another fiction nominee was Katherine MacLean, a mere co-author, (though she’d been published in Astounding as early as 1950 at the latest; what was this about John W. Campbell not publishing women?). But the third fiction nominee was Zenna Henderson, who never used a male pen-name. And Ms. Whitby was out as a female by 1960 at the latest, as “Pauline Ashwell.”

    Finally, of the six publications nominated for “Best fanzine”, three had a female co-editor (only one of the six had a single editor). One of them, Yandro, became the Green Bay Packers of the era’s fanzines, showing up as a best fanzine nominee for ten consecutive years. In 1965, it took the Hugo, making Juanita Coulson the first woman to ever win a Hugo Award (unless I missed something in the lists).

    In 1960, Amazing Science Fiction Stories was nominated for “Best Professional Magazine ” From 1960-1972, magazines Goldsmith edited were nominated ten times for the “Best Professional” Hugo.

    In 1961, Marion Zimmer Bradley became the first woman nominated in the novel category. In ’68, Anne McCaffrey tied with Phillip José Farmer for the Best Novella Hugo, and in 1970 Ursula K. LeGuin won the Hugo for Best novel. LeGuin was also nominated for “Best Short Story” that year, and it was soon common to see her nominated for multiple works in a single year. “James Tiptree, Jr.”, real name Alicia Sheldon, showed up fairly frequently in the seventies, though it wasn’t till she published “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” that it became obvious that ‘he’ was really a she. (t also became obvious that she was the moral equal of Hitler and Stalin with that novella, but boy was she a great writer.)

    From ’72 onward, there has been at least one woman nominated for a fiction Hugo every year. (Btw, Kim Stanley Robinson is a man, but most of the Hugo nominees named Pat are women.)

    So Damien is worrying about a problem that hasn’t existed for over forty years at least. Was he even born the last time there was an all-male Hugo slate?

  53. Damn WordPress for not having a preview or edit function! Let’s try that again:

    When I read the remarks about how the field of science fiction and fantasy was not giving sufficient awards to female authors till recently, I decided to do some research.

    At the official Hugo Awards site, I find that the first Hugo awards were awarded in 1953. There were no Hugos in 1954, and no fiction Hugos in 1957. In 1959, the fifth time Hugos were awarded for fiction, I find three females nominated. Also, 1959 was the third time awards were offered for Best New Author, and three of the five nominees were women.

    Now granted, one of the three women was Pauline Whitby, who was writing as “Paul Ash”. She was nominated for her story “Unwillingly to School,” and also as best new author. The other two nominees for “Best New Author of 1958”, Rosel George Brown and Kit Reed had names that might have seemed masculine. And another fiction nominee was Katherine MacLean, a mere co-author, (though she’d been published in Astounding as early as 1950 at the latest, under her own name; what was this about John W. Campbell not publishing women?). But the third fiction nominee was Zenna Henderson, who never used a male pen-name. And Ms. Whitby was out as a female by 1960 at the latest, as “Pauline Ashwell.”

    Finally, of the six publications nominated for “Best fanzine”, three had a female co-editor (only one of the six had a single editor). One of them, Yandro, became the Green Bay Packers of the era’s fanzines, showing up as a best fanzine nominee for ten consecutive years. In 1965, it took the Hugo, making Juanita Coulson the first woman to ever win a Hugo Award (unless I missed something in the lists).

    In 1960, Amazing Science Fiction Stories, edited by Cele Goldsmith, was nominated for “Best Professional Magazine.” From 1960-1972, magazines Goldsmith edited were nominated ten times for the “Best Professional Magazine” Hugo.

    In 1961, Marion Zimmer Bradley became the first woman nominated in the novel category. In ’68, Anne McCaffrey tied with Phillip José Farmer for the Best Novella Hugo, the first time a woman won for fiction. In 1970 Ursula K. LeGuin won the Hugo for Best novel. LeGuin was also nominated for “Best Short Story” that year, and it was soon common to see her nominated for multiple works in a single year. “James Tiptree, Jr.”, real name Alicia Sheldon, showed up fairly frequently in the seventies, though it wasn’t till she published “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” that it became obvious that ‘he’ was really a she. (t also became obvious that she was the moral equal of Hitler and Stalin with that novella, but boy was she a great writer.)

    From ’72 onward, there has been at least one woman nominated for a fiction Hugo every year. (Btw, Kim Stanley Robinson is a man, but most of the Hugo nominees named Pat are women.)

    So Damien is worrying about a problem that hasn’t existed for over forty years at least. Was he even born the last time there was an all-male Hugo slate?

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