We don’t do current events often, but every once in awhile it’s appropriate. This week hosts/authors Steve Diamond and Larry Correia discuss a recent event in which a world famous author was savaged for using the right words in the wrong order.
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My hearing isn’t the best in the world. When you started with the comment about SFWA, and pronounced the acronym; it sounded like you said syphilis. Which left me asking myself why you were talking about a venereal disease; until you mentioned that it stood for Science Fiction Writer’s Association. At which point I started laughing at myself for mishearing it. But then it occurred to me that you may have intentionally been pronouncing it that way.
What an amazing mis-hearing. SFWA being a venereal disease does seem appropriate somehow.
You were not alone….
Of course, it was followed by the disaster that was Balticon 56. It is a never ending cascade of schadenfreude for all that warned about the danger.
Finally started listening to your pod cast.
Already listened to two, with a third playing now.
I am Hooked!
I remember when Jerry Pournelle, a former head of SFWA, commented on the Mike Resnick situation for which he was pilloried for defending him.
Both are now gone, miss them both!
I am a fan of Mercedes Lackey, and also of Eric Flint, niether of which I agree with politically, but they write such great stories! 1632 and Flint’s editorship of James Schmitz books for Baen, and the Serated Edge books are what got me reading both.
To bad that the “intolerant, hate-filled, homophobic bigots” are more tolerant than the oh so tolerant Left!
Sometimes I think HATE is about all they know how to do.
I will probably never be a writer, but I enjoy the podcast, and will probably waste the rest of the day listening to them! (And tomorrow too)
I prefer to think he did that on purpose.
The way you describe SFWA at first sounds a lot like the Liminal Order.
I will have to assume that this was released on Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day on purpose.
Rant Incoming:
The thing Larry is too polite to say is that Samuel Delany (the person Mercedes Lackey “offended”) has repeatedly expressed support for NAMBLA. That’s the North American Man Boy Love Association, ie an organization that once existed to legalize pedophilia. Yes, that is as bad as it sounds. There’s no “but wait, they must not really mean that” laying under that. It’s literally just a bunch of pedophiles trying to get together to legalize pedophilia. It’s people who want to fuck kids trying to make it legally okay to fuck kids. It’s so evil you almost can’t even wrap your brain around it because it just doesn’t connect to most of the other kinds of evil you see in your regular life.
I’m cynical enough to believe he might have said he wasn’t offended by the Lackey comments in hopes the issue would just drop so nobody brought this shit up into the conversation. I know he’ll never get canceled because he’s black and gay and no one has the cancel button cares about male rape or pedophilia, but Jesus Christ this shit sets my blood on fire.
Samuel Delany had an interview on Will Shetterly’s blog where he explained his support in no uncertain terms. Just a bunch of five dollar words to express the idea that maybe it’s a good idea for an older man to rape a child. Seems the interview has since been deleted from the internet including the Wayback machine but I have it saved, fyi, as I figured once someone realized it would be a PR disaster they’d be deleting that shit at some point in the future.
I don’t know if you can legally call Samuel Delany a pedophile, but he wrote a book called Hogg that, if his pro-NAMBLA comments weren’t enough, certainly seems to paint a giant pedophile question mark over his head. A kid is graphically, sexually abused and later on in the novel people are talking about how you shouldn’t talk about science in public because hey, everything is social conditioning so how can raping a kid be wrong(barf).
All the SFWA people who will jump on a seventy-something year old woman for fumbling her words give a pass to literal pro-pedophilia politics. They consider it worse for someone to accidentally say something barely racially impolite than for someone to say “I think we should be able to fuck kids, and legally advocate for that. Also, I’m totally serious about that and this isn’t just a thought experiment. Let me talk on that subject for several thousand words so you can remove from your brain any sense that I am speaking in jest.”
The SFWA people all know this information. I personally *know* they know it. It’s not a case of “if only we’d had some idea.” I know they know, because I made sure to tell them when this shit came up in 2014 when their favorite past time was dunking on Larry. Lots of them responded to my comments.
I’m a child sexual abuse survivor so I dropped a few comments on it back in the day because this is the one thing I just can’t walk past. I just saw my cousin the other day, who was another victim, and he’s probably got a few more months to live before his liver kicks out because he couldn’t stop drinking himself to death after it happened. He’s barely forty.
Granted, I can’t “understand” the pain someone experienced at the slip of a tongue but fuck SFWA for this equivocal bullshit. Seriously. Fuck them. I’m not racist, I’m not homophobic, and I’ve even got a trans cousin and I just really want them to know and internalize my complete lack of prejudice against any class of people so it can hurt their feelings more when I express what total and complete unprincipled pieces of shit they are in their individual human souls. I’ve really taken the time to understand the SFWA crowd as people and they fucking suck.
Larry is like the only public figure who acknowledged that it was fucked up when this stuff came out. Have been team Monster Hunter ever since.
I’ve got a whole list of names, etc, but I don’t think the podcast wants the drama.
Anyway, for anyone still scrolling, I fucking hate the SFWA people, in a deep Ahab “from hell’s heart, I stab at thee” kind of way. Just scum from top to bottom, devoid of almost any redeeming qualities. I used to work on a drilling rig with literal murderers and I’d literally rather go back there and have lunch with those guys than spend five minutes in conversation with any random SFWA member.
As a final fuck you to SFWA, my great uncle who lived next door to me growing up liberated a Death Camp during WWII. Didn’t even find out about it until after he died because he didn’t consider his contribution significant enough because he’d just had to walk in with a bunch of other guys and the guards all surrendered (and I think about this every time one of these fucks tweets about their awesome victories for equality). For all their talk about how great they are, no one in SFWA reminds me of him at all.
Okay, I feel better now.
From one sexual abuse survivor to another: I get it. We’re on the same page regarding Delaney and SFWA. And Marion Zimmer Bradley too.
Stay strong.
Condolences and yeah, when I saw how smug and dismissive that whole crowd was to Moira Grayland I pretty much wrote them off. I try to be super fair to everyone but I guess that was my limit. What bothers me most is the utter shamelessness to do something like that, persist in doing it in the Delany case, and still act as though you’re morally super to everyone else. How the fuck do you even sleep at night knowing that’s who you are deep down?
Andrew,
I had forgotten about the details on Delany, but thank you for the reminder. People need to be reminded of this bullshit and not give a single step on normalizing it.
My condolences on your past. No child should ever have to deal with that, in any way, shape or form. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.
Thanks but I’m an older guy now with a family and the only real ways I suffer from it now is pangs of survivor guilt when I meet people who just weren’t able to get their lives back on track afterward. I feel obliged to remind people about that dude because (and I can never get over how racist and condescending it is) the left wing sfwa morons are like “but you don’t understand, he’s too important! He’s black AND he can write!”
Black, check.
He can write? Meh… He’s not written anything I’ve gone back to over the years, and I’ve been at it since the 1960s.
James H. Schmitz, -that- guy could write. Keith Laumer, Fred Saberhagen, they could write. Larry can write. (Go Larry!)
Delaney? He has his supporters, who do seem to like him more for surface albedo than literary reasons.
Don’t forget Roger Zelazny, and Ray Bradbury. The way they could weave words would take your breath away.
You know, I have to say that I read a bunch of Bradbury back in the day, and it didn’t do anything for me. Zelazny I’ve read as well, and again I didn’t take much from it.
But Bolos, Tezley Amberdoon, Berserkers, Niven’s Protectors, Heinlein’s Mobile Infantry, these kinds of things stick with me. And -nobody- in the mainstream is writing that stuff anymore. Major sore point with me, and the reason I’m writing my own now. Heroic heroes with weapons forged by the gods themselves, facing down demonic villains from the deepest pits of perdition. And the problems one has wielding the thunderbolts of Jove in a suburban environment. ~:D
It wasn’t my cup of tea but he had talent. He’s also a horrible piece of shit. I try to be very fair for the cynical reasons it’s more likely you’ll be taken seriously and it will productively hurt the feelings of the person you’re speaking out against.
All the major SFWA people know about Delany. All the people who think they are Michelle Pfeiffer in a movie about minority achievement instead of human beings interacting with and have genuine relationships with and concerns for fellow human beings who are their equal in the eyes of God, are such surface level thinkers and so dumb and unprincipled they can’t understand that a gay black man might be a bad dude.
Anyway, you’re right the best answer to this is just to make better art. Good luck to you with yours.
I think that some people who were victims make a lifetime of trying to prove to themselves and others that nothing that happened to them was actually wrong.
That’s among the common responses in men, ie Milo Yiannopoulos and apparently Delany based on his interview. Some people go nuts over it and hold onto “They didn’t fuck me, I fucked them!” Until they go into the ground. Less so in women. Or that it didn’t impact you at all, which seems to be most common and where I pretended to be for most of my life. I went to a survivors group when I just finally had to accept that I needed help and (Changing some details here, as that stuff is secret, but general vib is the same) this dude told the worst story I’ve ever heard in my entire life and ended it with “but that was just boys being boys and it got out of hand, and I’m fine and I wouldn’t even be here if my wife hadn’t threatened divorce.”
It’s an ugly thing to confront, talking about it even to condemn it makes people feel filthy, but since I’ve already looked behind the curtain I consider it a duty to pipe up when I see that shit.
You’d think some people would try to check the other side of the story before making statements
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/06/01/debarkle-the-epic-saga-of-how-a-culture-war-came-to-consume-science-fictions-most-famous-literary-award/
If it’s by Camestros Felapton it’s extremely biased to the liberal side. I would take anything he says with a cattle salt block or three.
I wouldn’t take anything Camestros Felapton wrote, with salt or anything else. He’s proven over the years to be a disingenuous gadfly of the Pharisaical variety.
Lol. It’s Camelstraw Flappydouche. The guy’s a nutjob dipshit.
He did a podcast with some American fan blogger. It is worth wading through the sewer of China Mike’s bot farm to hear the camel speak. All questions are answered with his first couple of sentences.
Posting this on the actual origin of the Sad Puppies saga (is saga right? Event? It’s hard to call it a movement) is hilarious. You can truly find the purpose, origins and progress by just searching through the blog.
Yes, because if there’s one place where people wouldn’t know anything about the Sad Puppies campaigns . . . it’s Larry’s blog.
(man, we need an eyeroll smiley)
From your link, Mr. Dougan:
“The biggest plot twist in Debarkle is not what happens with the science fiction awards—unsurprisingly, given the socially liberal views of the author and fan communities, they ultimately shrugged the whole thing aside—but rather the gradual political radicalization of the Puppy groups, paralleling right-wing radicalization in this country more generally.”
“Right-wing radicalization?” Dude. Please. They flipped out in 2016 and literally changed the rules to exclude Conservatives, and they have never shut up about it since. Even coat-tail rider Vox Day stopped caring about it in 2018, but the camel never lets up.
It is 2022 now. The camel has been milking this cow for eight years. It’s been dead for five of those years. Meanwhile, the Leftish cognoscenti at the SF conventions have stopped trying to find Conservatives to cancel (because they all walked out already) and started cancelling the likes of Mercedes Lackey and Stephanie Burk, both of them so far Left they’ve already left the planet.
We all remember what happened, Mr. Dougan. We were there.
Where were you?
“…unsurprisingly, given the socially liberal views of the author and fan communities, they ultimately shrugged the whole thing aside…”
Right here. Right effing here.
There is an “author community” and it is liberal.
There is a “fan community” and it is liberal.
Brad: Where is my space adventure? Science fiction used to have space adventure.
Them: WAAAAhhhh! You just want everything to be WHITE! WaaaaHHHHH!
Brad/everyone: WTF?
Just today I saw a series of tweets by some random lefty sort explaining why conservatives simply don’t exist in the arts and humanities. They just don’t! Do you know why?
Because conservatives are uninterested and unable to understand the perspectives of other people, and so they avoid those areas life dependent on understanding the perspectives of other people. Like History. Like Art.
So now we get a review of a book clearly misstating the perspective of the Puppies, their motivation and their humanity. By, yet again, the same “Conservatives just aren’t…creative…you know” sorts who believe they have a cornered market when it comes to understanding other perspectives.
It’s not that conservatives were trying to take over the Hugoes or science fiction, but merely saying “We are here!” Sort of like Horton and the Whos. Well, dang if finding out that there are actual conservatives or libertarians lurking in the shadows doesn’t upset the extremely self-congratulatory fiction that left-wingers are particularly and specially creative sorts. Blessed. Called.
Ordained.
Because conservatives are broken, limited, blinkered, and unable to empathize or understand other perspectives. They just can’t do ART, darling, not like WE can.
So if conservatives and libertarians are able to do art, to write terrific books, what remains special about you? Anything?
“Just today I saw a series of tweets by some random lefty sort explaining why conservatives simply don’t exist in the arts and humanities. They just don’t!”
I think the biggest reasons leftist think like this is two fold.
First, it begins as many conservatives don’t feel the need to wear the politics on our sleeves. Yes, we may have strong opinions (I certainly do), but I also consider it one of the less interesting things about myself and life in general. It’s important, but I’d rather talk to you about books, religions (respectfully please!), contemporary events, economics, or personal life events. This has been true for a long time. My grandma was one of those VERY passionate conservative political people. She wrote articles to the newspaper, called her congressmen, went to rallies, etc. Yet it was not what she lead off with almost anywhere. She thought things like how people treated each other, the foster system, the tragedy of human suffering, etc. were more important if she was going to get in a debate with you.
Your average modern social media lefty, on the other hand, seems to lead with their politics or the culturally adjacent issues (i.e. SJW stances). They cannot perceive of someone having an opinion they don’t declare all the time. It’s as if they replaced religion with politics, and are all zealots.
Second, and this is more recently, they have screamed at so many people that, outside of the more combative voices (i.e. Larry), most of us just get quieter about our stuff. They made it clear they don’t want differing opinions, and have actually taken out people, so most of us just keep our mouth closed and put the nose to the grindstone because we don’t want trouble, we just want to do work, enjoy the book, etc. If we don’t like it, we’ll move on to something we do. Previous decades, if we’re really mad, we’ll write the organization a letter about why we won’t do business with them and then move on.
That latter one is becoming untenable, and thanks to people like Larry, there’s a growing amount of people just tired of this BS who are standing up.
The thoughtcrime prosecutions continue, this time catching author Stephanie Burke, who was ejected from Balticon 56. The chair apologized for how it was done, not that it was done.
Her statement describing her fun day at the con is on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.burke.1048/posts/3299538603649459
Listened to the podcast with great interest. But I am confused. What does NAACP stand for?
You can google it- top result.
We can’t tell you. Ms. Lackey got cancelled from a con for saying the “C” in NAACP.
No, not kidding, that’s what it was. For realz.
Wait, she actually just quoted the name? I’ve not heard much about what happened, but please tell me she just got cancelled for literally pronouncing the name of the NAACP. If that’s true, we are almost to pure woke nirvana.
Edit: And I’m behind on podcasts after listening to a Phillip Hamilton audio book and it’s 439 tangents.
She used “colored” to describe Delany. The context was respectful and the two of them are old enough that this was the ‘good’ word to use when they were young.
Woke is about counting coup, like African big game hunting and showing off your trophies. It’s about being the first to pull the trigger, and in so doing proving that you’re the most aware, awake, and on guard.
Someone actually scored Mercedes effing Lackey.
AT 32 minutes in, you make a statement about the leadership of SFWA being nobody you have ever heard of. Certainly true these days, but definitely not always the case.
Jerry Pournelle was president of SFWA back in the day. And back then, they certainly went to bat against the publishers for their members.
Damn but I miss Jerry sometimes.