So the Cancerous Tumor on the Prolapsed Anus of Fandom is Upset With My Letter About George Martin’s Laziness Fucking Over a Generation of New Writers. Oh Well!

How pathetic.

Full disclosure. I named this screen cap “Stupid Glyer”.

For those of you who aren’t aware who Mike Glyer is, stick that name into the search engine of this blog, and then buckle up. He’s got a long history of being a disingenuous, manipulative, truth distorting piece of shit.

Short version, this is a scumbag who runs a shit tier gossip column about the sci-fi/fantasy publishing business. Back in the old days he used to have the illusion of importance. Using Chinese bot farm traffic before most people were aware of how that worked, he liked to brag about his massive traffic, and that he was actually a big important deal who could make or break careers, and then used that fake clout to bully and intimidate authors who were scared he could hurt their sales. He was the worst kind of parasite. Creating nothing, but sucking the life out of those who do.

Until he fucked up while trying to fight with me and accidentally revealed his scam to the world (all while stupidly trying to say how many more readers he had than I did, by putting up screen caps showing that 96% of his readers were from China… which I’m sorry, is fucking hilarious)

Now his power is broken and he languishes in obscurity, furiously masturbating to his 27 Hugo Awards while catering to a gang of bitter has-beens and never-weres, who screech and bellow endlessly about every author who isn’t a left-wing bootlicker whenever Glyer puts up some passive aggressive insinuations.

And I ain’t even exaggerating about how many Hugos they gave this shit tier gossip column. It really is something like that. He had the industry so snowed that he actually mattered that they pulled out all the stops to suck up to him.

Now it’s over, once distinguished awards are now a meaningless wasteland, and sane people know it is safe to ignore this vapid shit suck. A few of my fans are gluttons for punishment (similar to how Glyer is a glutton for raw sheep testicles) so they lurk there on his shit tier gossip column website and send me screen caps whenever he tries to boost his pathetic traffic by talking about me, all because these fans know I enjoy writing the occasional reminder to Mike Glyer to keep my name out of his whore mouth.

But I am busy, and unlike my detractors, actually have a job, fans, readers, loved ones, and self-esteem and am busying writing books which rank higher than the 3 million range on Amazon. So I can’t always spare the time to remind this former tax collector (I shit you not) to keep my name out of his whore mouth…

But this one is so glaringly stupid, I’ll make time. Not for Glyer, who has the intellectual processing power of a sea sponge and is thus incapable of learning, but for the audience. But this stuff is comedy gold. šŸ˜€

First off you guys need to realize that the dregs who inhabit the fetid comment section of File 770 are very predictable. If Larry Correia dislikes something, they will adopt it and love it forever, no matter how stupid it is. If Larry Correia likes something, they will reflexively hate it and rail against it.

So as usual whenever I state the obvious, Glyer barfs up some passive aggressive mush like: “a cruel rant blaming a couple of well known fantasy authors for allegedly crushing the nascent careers of other fantasy novelists by failing to finish their series and creating reader resistance to new writers’ series”

And then his dumbfuck loser commenters reliably have a come apart about it.

But let’s break this disingenuous mush down-

“cruel”. Yep. Because the truth is often cruel, and cowards and chickenshits don’t like to come out and say truthful things, because the truth often makes people uncomfortable. Glyer, being the self-appointed Tone Police, often likes to cry about obvious truths as mean and hurtful. Oh well. Suck it up, buttercup.

“rant”. Lol. Not particularly. That was fucking understated all things considered.

The couple of well known authors are the two main guys who caused the issue I talked about. GRRM and Pat Rothfuss dominated the genre for a while, and then their lousy failure to finish what they started soured a giant chunk of the market to the point that those customers are now punishing an entire generation of young authors because of the wealthy dude’s laziness.

Duh.

There ain’t no allegedly about creating “reader resistance”. Whenever the topic of those two lazy millionaires comes up there’s hundreds of comments from epic fantasy customers saying they’re not gonna get burned again and will wait for the series to be finished before spending money on it, and dozens of comments from epic fantasy authors going it sure does suck that my car got repossessed because nobody will buy my book.

How much did these vapid fucks screw over their own industry? Ask DAW. Oh wait. You can’t. They’re now owned by the Communist Chinese.

You’d think a gossip columnist who supposedly has his finger on the pulse of genre publishing would understand the market of actual human book customers and how they feel about stuff, but you need to realize that Glyer inhabits an echo chamber of fucking dipshits who don’t actually sell books or understand readers. Their entire thought process for business is: Left Wing Propaganda Bullshit Good, Everything Else Bad.

Of course a lot of readers are resistant to starting new series, you fucking mopes. Crawl out of your yeasty slime cave and talk to them. They’ll happily tell you so, endlessly and constantly. There’s more to fandom than the bunch of unemployed, old, weirdos on the sex offender registry you usually consult with.

And regular readers feel burned by Martin and Rothfuss to the point that they’re starving out the next generation of writers. Guys like me who squeaked in before they tainted customer expectations are doing fine, but we’re getting older, and there needs to be up and comers to replace us when we age out. My post was an attempt to get some of these readers to realize that their hesitancy to take a gamble on new guys is long term screwing over the future of the genre they love.

Of course in the comments, the Vile 770 fuckstick crew is saying that this is me being motivated by selfishness, like I feel George or Pat are stealing money from me. That’s because they’re a bunch of socialist nincompoops projecting their own insecurities because they think the pie is finite, and if somebody else make a buck, they stole that buck from them.

No, you financially illiterate dopes. I literally buy ammo by the pallet. I’m doing okay. It’s the guys who don’t have 10,000 loyal customers on their fan page that readers need to take a gamble on. Because if they don’t, those authors won’t be able to stick with it and get the practice they need to become the future greats. You fuckers are still out there trying to pick your future greats based upon which newb has the most victim points, so you can shut the fuck up and let us actual professionals focus on the important stuff like story telling and making readers happy.

Then there’s weak ass shit like this here: “Then finding he had mud left over, he deposited some on a third author who has an unfinished SF series”

No kidding, bumblefuck. I mentioned scumbag and all around toad David Gerrold, because he takes the all star world record for coasting on an unfinished series to loot rent money from his gullible yet eternally optimistic hard core fans. I brought Gerrold up specifically because he represents the Proto-Rothfuss, and some reader always cites Gerrold when discussions of unfinished series arise. This is a man whose greatest claim to fame is that he once stole an idea from Robert Heinlein which got used in a TV show back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president, and the only thing he’s done of note in the last decade was be a spiteful douchebag handing out wooden anuses to a bunch of authors and editors who didn’t deserve that kind of mean girl pettiness, all because they’d been recommended by the likes of me.

On that note, try not to upset the secret police or get thrown in a Covid gulag at your Communist Chinese WorldCon, you miserable trash. šŸ˜€ (Edit to add: see if your hosts will give you a tour of the Uyghur concentration camps! Edit 2: and ask the Guest of Honor how he feels about war crimes. That’ll be a hoot!)

But back to David Gerrold. His “unfinished sf series” started when I was in grade school, the last book came out the year I graduated high school, and I ain’t exactly a spring chicken, so cry me a river, I’m fresh out of pity. Of course readers are gonna bring him up when talking about writers who failed to finish what they started. This time I just go there first. And I only mentioned him once, because honestly, David Gerrold is a washed up irrelevance now. Unlike Martin and Rothfuss, his rep has no real effect on the industry. He’s a footnote.

You could say he’s an asterisk.

It amuses me to no end to watch you losers squander what little credibility you have defending the indefensible. Oh who am I kidding? Your credibility died years ago. Even the File 666 regulars know they’re all full of shit. They just have to go through the rituals so they don’t lose face and get devoured in your side’s next inevitable cannibal feeding frenzy. Deep down they know how sad they are.

And deep down, you all know how sad the situation created by Martin and Rothfuss is too. Only you can’t ever admit I’m right, so go ahead and pretend their example isn’t damaging the careers of young authors. I’m also firmly against drinking antifreeze, so go for it.

WriterDojo S4 Ep16: Passive Voice
WriterDojo S4 Ep15: Editorial Round Table (Round 1)

150 thoughts on “So the Cancerous Tumor on the Prolapsed Anus of Fandom is Upset With My Letter About George Martin’s Laziness Fucking Over a Generation of New Writers. Oh Well!”

  1. “who supposedly has his finger on the pulse of genre publishing …”

    …who has his tongue up the anus of the social justice howler monkeys.”

    There. FIFY.

  2. To be fair to Gerrold, he is trying to finish the Cthor series. I can’t remember when but he said he had finished the next book and only had one to go. Not that I really care about the series at this late date.

      1. We actually might this time, because a few months ago they finally managed a fusion reaction that put out more energy than they put into it.

        The experiment used a setup that isn’t scalable, but it was hard and verifiable proof that it really can be done.

        1. Not really. It only put out more energy than the amount put in by the lasers. (And even then, I’m more than a little skeptical that the journalists got that right: journalists always make major mistakes in science articles.) When you add the energy required for the magnetic bottle to contain the reaction, it was a large net loss. So nowhere near practical yet.

          Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone fudged the numbers in order to get a positive result and good press, which means more funding. I’m not saying it happened (I have no proof one way or the other), just that the temptation is there. So I’d like to see that experiment replicated by a different team before I’d call it “hard and verifiable proof,” myself.

      1. That’s exactly what I was about to say, Larry. I believe he’s announced he’s “almost finished” several times, and then the product never appears.

    1. I really think he plotted himself into a corner. Interesting and disturbing concept,but he had no idea how to resolve it, so he stalled out.

    2. mother fucker is as full of shit as a cow manure holding tank. He HAD book 5 a good chunk finished, to the tune of 50k words, when book 4 originally released in paperback.

    3. Last news were in 2017… Since then he just published three teaser stories.
      But I don’t really care either. Not giving him my money.

    4. I read those in high school. Lots of water under the bridge since. Even if he finished the series, it’s doubtful I’d read it.

    5. Wyman Cooke

      Yeah, he’s been claiming that for a while. It was clear he was trying to write the life story of a Heinlein Individual, and he had RAH’s blessing on that, as I understand. As a result, I presumed he was waiting until he got old enough to get into the head of the “old coot” final stage.

      Well, he’s way into that, now, so I’m not particularly holding my breath for him to finish what WAS, actually, a pretty good idea for a series pretty well written. The idea of an advanced alien race coming in and just “Chtorraforming” the planet with a much more advanced set of lifeforms is a very intriguing one.

      I’m presuming his problem is that he doesn’t have RAH any more to give him ideas for it, and, as a result, can’t figure out how to take it any further. He’s supposedly had two more books “near completion” for about 2 decades now.

      Some of his other early books have been good — When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One, and The Man Who Folded Himself were both pretty decent. And his Dingilliad series is not an awful Heinleinesque juvenile

      Larry’s a bit harsh on him. He certainly is in the same collective as the other two as far as “incomplete series”, with somewhat less success overall, but he’s certainly been a fairly respected writer at times.

      I kind of find them blaming Larry for this at all, given that every time I’ve tried to discuss the matter, it is fair to say that he has adamantly rejected the notion that any author has any obligation to the readers to complete *any* series they’ve started. He is free to take that position, but I personally disagree with strong codicils on the disagreement. But no, I’m not a writer, either.

    6. Wikipedia says book 5 was ready in 2015. Update in 2017 says it was sent to Beta readers and Book 6 was almost ready with a planned 7th book. Guy is 79, I don’t think he is going to finish it.

    7. It’s been THIRTY years since book 4. I haven’t read any of them, and probably won’t start now but the man is 79 so the Grim Reaper may well appear before he’s done.

    8. Why is it taking so long for him to be finishing this series, at all? The man’s in his ’70’s , and most likely doesn’t have a lot of time left; he should get cracking and give his weekly jeremiads on Facebook a rest (he also needs to stop bitching about how CBS Studios is treating him with regards to Star Trek, because that franchise is getting along fine without him, detractors be dammed.)

      1. As I noted above, my suspicion is that he’s attempting, with TWAtC to create an entire lifespan of a “Heinlein Individual”.

        The problem is, RAH passed away, so he’s out of ideas about how to develop the character.

        I always hoped he was waiting until he got as old as the last one, but giving up that, these days.

        Gerrold is a decent writer, but he’s largely derivative, working off ideas of others (one of his first books, The Man Who Folded Himself, is a clearly extended version of All You Zombies. Arguably, Tribbles are RAH’s Flatcats).

        Larry Niven never said it, but he did make it clear that he and Gerrold did not work well together.

  3. Oh goody, Vile couldn’t help himself, and I get to read the latest in the saga of the Guiness World Record for longest Mutual Hate Boner!

  4. Does Jordan get a pass just because he died? He milked tehe Wheel of Time series for everything it was worth and far, far more LONG before his passing. I could almost see giving him a pass if he had the decency to give it some sort of ending prior to his passing, but I guess he just could’nt resist milking every last sour drop from the readers who just could not give up on it .

    1. I honestly gave up on Wheel of Time around book six or seven, when Rand was maybe ten paragraphs of the entire book. Never even thought about going back either. There are websites that list how to read the series and skip HUGE chunks of it just to get a faster, more enjoyable experience.

      1. I gave up on it when, after a thousand plus pages, I realized NOTHING happened until the last chapter. I’d already been growing dissatisfaction because it felt like the action was slowing more and more, but when I realized there was zero plot progression and no character development until the last chapter, I just quit caring. I’ve been tempted to go back since Sanderson picked it up. I really like his work. But I just can’t find the emotions to care about WoT anymore.

        1. I red it so long ago, I would need to start over again, but just thinking about makes me sick. I would better re-read “Exaclibur Alternative” 30th time.

        2. I’m afraid I started fantasy at age 10 with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and never really found any of the rest of it worth reading for decades. I would look 3 times a week in every book store you can imagine in 7 states all over the US. I pretty much read science fiction and left fantasy alone until my wife picked up Hard Magic. Then I started looking at it again.
          I’ve greatly enjoyed the little tussle Glyer keeps stirring up every time he mentions our host. It may even be why I read all the rest of his books.

          1. Try some Robert Asprin. He got me about the same time and if it wasn’t for the Myth books I’d not be in fantasy and sci-fi. Probably some sort of gamer nerd or harder core Star Wars.

      2. I canā€™t recall the book or particular Girl Boss moment that did it, but at one point I threw one of the books across the room and gave up on the series.

        Never felt even a little desire to pick it back up either.

    2. I would definitely say he gets a pass for being dead. You can’t finish writing after you die (unless you’re a character in the fantasy novel, but let’s avoid breaking the 4th wall).

      That said, see my comment in reply to Niko. I will add that in the end I quite Jordan, not fantasy. Because I don’t treat writers like they owe me, or like one writer is the global representative of all writers. When I’m no longer enjoying a series, I quit and move on.

      1. aivanther: Because I donā€™t treat writers like they owe me

        I believe it is reasonable to suggest that there is an implied contract between the readers and the author, to the end of:

        “Here is part of a story I am writing. Please buy it now, in its partial form, because I’d like to write full time and it helps a lot if I get paid for this part of the story while I am writing the rest of it.”

        Now, if it does not sell enough to pay for further efforts, I don’t blame the author for that. Nor if the publisher declines to publish any more, and no other publisher is interested in picking it up.

        I just think they are not being fair if they don’t TRY and finish the story they’ve begun if it is in their power to do so. It’s not a serious failure — we’re talking about getting a minor traffic ticket level of “social faux pas”.

        But I do concur, it’s ridiculous to blame other writers for the failures [assuming you agree with my PoV] of a small cadre of other writers… I have about 15 different series’ reading underway even now — excluding the three EUs (“Eternally Unfinished” series).

        1. BTW, I would recommend “The Slow Regard of Silent Things” by Rothfuss. It is very very VERY different from the other two books, being told from the PoV of the somewhat insane Auri. I can’t promise you’ll like it, because it is so different, but it does feel like he got very well into the head of his character.

          I’m put in mind of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book in some ways.

        2. You and I have very different views on this. The contract is I bought a story, and I read a story. I got what I paid for. I hope they do part 2 through X, but in the end that’s not what I bought. If they want to KEEP me buying, they better produce part 2 through X and make it a satisfying product. If they don’t, I spend my entertainment money else where. They don’t owe me that story, but I also don’t owe them my money or attention.

          If you want the rant that Larry did that is much more entertaining than what I just said, the ILOH did do a post on such:
          https://monsterhunternation.com/2017/11/13/a-capitalist-novelists-guide-to-fan-expectations-and-how-not-to-be-a-douche/

    3. I’m pretty sure Jordan wasn’t “milking” Wheel of Time.
      He committed a basic authorial sin of falling in love with his characters and world, leading him to compulsively explore every corner of it, spend half a book on three characters hiding in circus (because cute and funny moments), etc.
      The books were selling like hotcakes so the publisher would have been afraid to tell him “no, tighten this up” even if his editor hadn’t been his wife… and she was.

      1. Oof. I would say Jordan’s sin was the exact opposite.

        He fell out of love with his main characters. To the point of going out of his way to write about everyone else in the world and ignore them. He also discovered he could slap “Wheel of Time” on whatever he wanted to write, and it would sell.

        So he did. Until mortality slapped him upside the head.

      2. As someone who met and discussed writing with Robert Jordan before he died, I agree with you. He wrote every single day. I believe that the more he got into his series, the more he loved it and found other stories he wanted to tell. In my opinion, he was a very good man who loved his fans and would not dream of milking them for cash (the complete opposite of Rothfuss).

        His wife Harriet is one of the greatest editors in the history of SFF. For those who don’t believe me… she edited Ender’s Game, the entire Wheel of Time, and helped Brandon Sanderson by doing an edit on The Way of Kings. 99% of editors today would kill to have one of those accomplishments. I’ve met her twice and she is absolutely lovely. I hope she gets the recognition she deserves someday.

    4. Before that he had a release rate of about every two years, so I would give him a pass on not finishing. Especially since they hired BS to finalize the series.

    5. Jordan was publishing books every 1-2 years with 1 book having 3 years in between. From 1990 to 2004 he published 12 books in the series. It’s in no way the same. He also had a thorough outline of the entire series and wasn’t stuck writing the next book.

      Now you could make an argument that he wondered in his series and it didn’t progress properly etc. But his writing work ethic was great.

    6. Larry’s original post mentions Jordan specifically. Why wouldn’t he get a pass? Dude wrote up until the day he died.

      Yeah, he slowed down a bit later on, but even as much as fans at the time complained about the wait, the longest he ever went between books was still less than 4 years. And yeah, the plot started to meander after book 6, but other authors have done much worse as they get bogged down in the minutiae of their world, and in the final book he finished, Knife of Dreams, he finally started to tighten things up again, as if he realized he was running out of time, and he absolutely went out with a bang!

      And to top it all off, he left extensive notes (and quite a few fully written scenes) describing how he wanted to end it all, when he was practically too sick to write.

      The Wheel of Time certainly had some issues after book 6, but Jordan’s work ethic was not one of them.

    7. Yes, dying and leaving copious amounts of notes for your editor widow to hand over to a hand-picked fill-in to complete the series for the fans and to realize (as best they can in his unavoidable absence) that author’s vision does, in fact, get a pass. You can piss and moan about books 8-10 being a waste, sure, but he had an ending, had a plan for finishing, and cancer (weird blood kinds all the way to run of the mill lung and colorectal) fucking sucks. But it’s not even in the same league as just laziness and greed.

    8. Not in my mind. I heard a lot of, “You should probably wait until he finishes the series, if he ever does,” from Jordan fans long before Rothfuss ever published anything and while Martin was still putting out exciting books at a reasonable clip. I don’t know if Jordan was milking the fans, if he fell in love with his world and wanted to keep exploring it, or if he just didn’t know how to wrap things up, but Path of Daggers and Crossroads of Twilight may very well have driven as many people away from epic fantasy as the non-appearance of Winds of Winter has.

      In fact, as I argued in the previous post, I think that a big part of the reaction against Martin and Rothfuss is that they managed to convince fans that they weren’t like that and would never “Pull a Jordan”–only to demonstrate that they were even worse.

      That said, Jordan did buckle down and try to finish when mortality slapped him in the face, and yes, he gets some credit for that. The fans got an ending, and I would even call it a satisfying ending, even if another writer had to be brought in to continue from his notes.

    9. Milked? Decency? The nerve of THAT BITCH DYING before he GOT AROUND to finishing the series ON HIS DEATHBED. Do you seriously want to run with that line?

  5. It’s not like you’re pointing out anything other authors don’t already know. Or that isn’t true. It’s not like you said things about their religion, family, or whatever… (looking at you, VICE). It would be one thing if you were saying all fantasy authors etc… but we all know you work like a dairy farmer and Brandon Sanderson can’t not work 19 hours a day. There are thousands of authors who work day in and day out to put words on the screen and food on the table. That these two guys can’t for some reason, isn’t because writing is hard. It’s always been hard. It wasn’t easy when they started and it’s not easy now. But why work for money when it’s given to you for free? Pat made an estimated 20 million off his first book alone… He doesn’t have to work. For some people, that’s the same as not working. I feel bad for their fans, and for them to a lesser degree. Pat, at least, could have gone down in history as a great (and may still if book 3 is as good as 1). GRRM will be forgotten in 20 years because the only thing interesting about his books is the mystery of who will sit on the throne. Once that’s solved, no one will care.

  6. Mx Glyer… oh yeah, he’s the person David Bowie and Iggy Pop wrote a song about, way back in the 70s…

  7. I wasnā€™t aware File 770 was still around. Talk about a fossilized website.

    If they think Larryā€™s remarks were something shockingly new and unheard of, then theyā€™ve been living under an even older rock than the one theyā€™re slowly turning into.

    1. If you want to talk fossil websites, there’s always the Space Jam website that lasted till that awful sequel, and even after that they preserved it under a /1996/ subpage due to the fame it had attracted as a vintage website.

  8. “But this one is so glaringly stupid, Iā€™ll make time. Not for Glyer, who has the intellectual processing power of a sea sponge and is thus incapable of learning, but for the audience. But this stuff is comedy gold. šŸ˜€”

    And we thank you for your service. It’s greatly appreciated!

  9. To Epic Fantasy readers who are poo pooing trying new authors…

    READ SOME WEBCOMICS.

    When the 50th webcomic you think is great stops updating and then vanishes from the internet, call me back.

    You WILL get disappointed by series that don’t get finished. Sometimes, when you’re writing, if you’re not in the right head space you CAN’T continue an old work, especially if there’s trauma/pain attached to it.

    And personally, because I’ve had so many webcomics either vanish or change into something it wasn’t at the start, I LOVE when a series reaches a conclusion, and I enjoy the series if it’s incomplete.

    And speaking on specific authors:

    I was a teenager, and a young teenager (I’m 40) when I read David Gerrold’s War Against the Cthorr series.

    He ain’t published SHIT since then.

    I’m ignoring “Wise Man’s Fear” for now, partly because I hate Kvothe for being a self destructive asshole who can’t think over his actions before he creates his own doom, and partly because the series looks like it’s going to languish for another decade before completion.

    Game of Thrones is “rape von brutalmurder mckillingyourfavoritecharacters”, wrapped up in too many side plots, which GRRM has ignored.

    Tracy Butler hasn’t updated her webcomic in YEARS, and the cartoon pilot/short has a similar plot to her comic, but lazy animation, and she’s not delivered physical books from a kickstarter that are years overdue.

    And more. So much more disappointment.

    I’ve lost count of the number of webcomics that don’t update anymore, that I’ve seen just end. Same goes for books/anime/movies.

    But I’ll still read NEW stories, and I don’t punish other people because one person has been a douche.

    This just pisses me off, because it’s a problem in society right now.

    Too many people get hurt and think that hurting someone else is acceptable, instead of applying blame to the one who actually hurt them.

    1. I had a webcomic, way back in the day when it was still a fairly new thing. I went for a year solid, updating on a daily schedule, then pulling back, then eventually not updating at all.

      What happened? In my case, not enough reward. The people who loved the strip did tell me thatā€”but probably one every two months or so. I was increasingly broke, sometimes hungry, and eventually, it became a bunch of unpaid work. And I needed paid work.

      And then I had a job that used creative energy, and then I had kids… heh.

      But at least I didn’t break any transactions. If anyone ever wondered what happened to my characters, you can ask. Someday I may draw them again.

      1. I used to read Dex Lives on a regular basis back in the late 90’s. It was part of my regular rotation of two dozen or so webcomics (now down to only four or five). It never would have occurred to me to send you an email saying how much I appreciated it, so consider this the much-belated note of appreciation.

    2. Or read fanfiction. Glah. Whenever you get something really good, there’s a fifty/fifty chance that the author won’t finish it, and, what’s worse, will stop writing at a point where you’re invested in the story

      1. I’ve started applying a “Complete: Yes” filter to all my fanfiction searches. Then sometimes I don’t do that, and scan through incomplete fics looking for something I like ā€” but I always look for ones whose last update is sometime in the past month. If their last update was in 2021 (or even earlier), sorry, no; I’m not going to start reading that one, because I already know it’s got a 99% chance to remain forever incomplete.

  10. Larry, you get me every time! I love what you do with words, whether rants or books. Thank you for saying and portraying those things we all should value- truth, courage and more.

  11. Gerrold has a book series? News to me. Only thing I knew of him was “The Trouble With Tribbles” and “When HARLIE Was One”, which he later re-wrote and published as “When HARLIE Was One, Rev 2.0”. Not terribly original. I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over the possibility of some book series by an author whose high point appears to have been in the late ’60s not being finished.

    1. Well, to be honest, his War with Chtorr series were good, hard sci fi, especially first two.
      But I wouldn’t recommend it, by obvious reason.

  12. I read somewhere that Gerrold has the first and last sections of Book 5 (?) of the War Against the Chtorr written, but the middle section requires Gerrold to write from a non-human perspective, and he just can’t do it.

    I cut him a *tiny* bit of slack for that; Ted Sturgeon famously had an unfinished novel Godbody that required Sturgeon to write from a divine perspective, and he couldn’t do it either.

    1. Yeah, I don’t buy that story at all.
      Anybody who is an actual writer is gonna call bullshit on that lame excuse.
      Part of being a speculative fiction writer is learning to write from other perspectives. I’ve written from the PoV of a shoggoth and made it cool.
      And he’s had 30 years to figure it out.

      1. So what I’m reading is that Star Citizen wasn’t the first instance of Empty Promises (TM), just one of the highest grossing.

        1. Star Citizen may not be done, but they’ve made a LOT of progress in the last few years. I bought my first ship in 2020 and have put some good coin into the game and don’t regret it at all. Is it frustrating? Yep. Do I get mad and rage quit? Yep. Is/was it worth it? Absolutely! Because despite the problems, I’ve still have some VERY cool adventures with my buddies thanks to it. Backing anything is a gamble, just like starting a new series. It’ll either finish or not, just like it could take a weird turn and you not enjoy it at the end.

          Just enjoy the ride, man, and pick up SC so I can show you around the ‘verse šŸ˜€

      2. I don’t know. The theory that Gerrold is too incompetent to possess the basic skills expected of an SF writerā€¦ well, it seems pretty robust to me, actually.

      3. Mr. Trash Bags was a great minor character. Mysterious introduction, moderate development, and a brave but minor hero! With the elements of chaos swirling around the Shacklefords — why not?

  13. All else being equal, I do want to read stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. Pointing out that GRRM has stalled out in a mediocre series (*tiny voice* Sorry! I just hated the whole thing.) is not being cruel. I had not the faintest who Rothfuss was, but have reserved his first tome from my local library, and will give it a try.

    As for Gerrold, I read his summary of the next book or two in the last one he published, back in the mists of time. It was so depressing I never even looked for the next one.

    So no, not cruel, and not mud-slinging.

    BTW, I will give any new author a try.

  14. Hey! Don’t insult sea sponges! 1. They’re smarter than him. 2. Have more actual fans. And 3. You’re bringing him up to an undeserved level of intelligence.

    1. Sea sponges also play a valuable role in the ecosystems they inhabit. Glyer is an utterly worthless, useless little parasite clinging to the internet.

  15. Gerrold will finish “War Against the Chtorr” as soon as Heinlein writes the sequel to Starship Troopers; he ran out of material to draw from….

  16. I really do think these guys might utilize AI to finish their work. Particularly DG-hole. They’ve all made promises they haven’t kept. It’ll be interesting to see which one does it first.

    1. Now that would be funny

      Feed a ChatGPT engine the existing books, plus any outlines he’s dribbled out, and then ask the AI to complete it with a happy ending

      Now, odds are the ChatGPT will provide the wrong type of “happy ending”, but it still could be an amusing read

  17. There you go again, telling the truth Larry! I didn’t realize Vile was still around either… I have better things to do (like writing). And what you’ve said is EXACTLY why I won’t even try epic fantasy. I’d like to keep what few fans I have.

  18. I just realized that I’m doing the same job as George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, because I haven’t been writing an epic fantasy novel either.

  19. Gerrold? Geez, I remember starting the Chtorr series before my wife and I married 32 years ago!

    I seriously assumed it had been wrapped up by now.

  20. Larry, can I just say, *please* consider teaching online courses on how to grow super-thick skin like yours, as well as trash-talk haters. I’d pay the $$ and need the education. šŸ™‚

    And PS, time to go full Reverse Psychology. Tell these idjits there’s nothing you hate more than ingesting the contents of local septic tanks. In 24 hours these trolls will have actually eaten so much sh!t, they’ll glow golden brown in the dark.

    Glad you’re out there.

    1. I don’t think that going Reverse Psychology is going to work the way you expect …..

      I strongly suspect that the only thing that’s going to change after Larry says “there’s nothing that I hate more than ingesting the contents of local septic tanks” is that the readers will feel vindicated that they were right to enjoy that all along!

  21. I read those in high school. Lots of water under the bridge since. Even if he finished the series, it’s doubtful I’d read it.

  22. HEY! Donā€™t judge prolapsed anuses, theyā€™re just hanging out.

    To be honest though, I love him to death, but Jim butcher is starting to scare me a little. Thereā€™s a lot of books left for Dresden, but those waits in between keep growing.

    Side note: Any news on the tower of silence audiobook? Iā€™m dying over here!

    1. No there was a long wait between while his life was upended and then he did what he made quite clear and wrote another steampunk cats novel and then back to Dresden, the same pattern he had with his actual enjoyable hobby series of Codex Alera

  23. I lost interest in GRRM’s magnum(?) opus long before he did. Fortunately there are other authors.

    I’m willing to take a chance on a new author’s series, just as long as they don’t leave me with too much of a cliff-hanger. Peter Nealen’s Maelstrom Rising series is a great example. There are 9 books. Each is complete in and of itself, but the same characters reappear from book to book and all the stories are part of the same overall arc.

    Come to that — the same applies to the MHI universe. It’s better to read them all, but they stand on their own very well.

    Give me a series where the individual books can stand alone, but are better read in context of the others, then it doesn’t matter if it takes 5 or 25 years for the series to be completed.

    1. I prefer Japanese Anime over American series for two reasons:

      First, it’s not episodic: occasionally you’ll get a “fluff” episode, but overall, each one ends on a cliffhanger that’s addressed in the next episode.

      Second, the stories tend to end at the end of each season. Even if there’s a big cliffhanger, there’s also a big resolution of a major plot line!

      So I have concluded that the best pattern for series and books is to have a resolution and a cliff-hanger. The resolution gives you catharsis, and the cliff-hanger makes you wish for a sequel. If that sequel is not forthcoming, you at least have the catharsis!

      Oh: and I’m still angry that Firefly turned out to be a serial, but the suits required it be treated as episodic! I remember enjoying a handful of episodes and thinking “I like it, but I prefer a series with a continuing story, at least for the season!”

      1. They did the same thing to the Babylon 5 sequel/spinoff ‘Crusade’ ā€” aired the episodes out of order. And then canceled it halfway through the first season because somebody had a bug up their butt about JMS being ‘hard to work with’.

        A sensible network executive, now, one actually able to think, when approached by JMS with a proposal for a new Babylon 5 series, would look upon the epic achievement that is the original Babylon 5 and say: “Here is a shitload of money. Do it again!”
        ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”
        Can not run out of time. Time is infinite.
        You are finite. Zathras is finite. Thisā€¦is wrong tool.
        No, no, no. Very bad. Never use this.

  24. But Larry, even as we speak The Chinese are vigprously redefining scoence fiction for the next WorldCon…

    1. Oh good night that was pretentious and whiny.

      Here’s the TL;DR version: Brandon Sanderson is good at self-promotion, uses workmanlike prose to tell stories people like, has a ferocious work ethic, and isn’t dramatic or flashy, which makes him boring and uninteresting to “sophisticated” journalists like the writer of the piece. You can tell that this twerp would much rather be writing about someone with spicy takes on the latest news who writes beautiful prose in service to an impenetrable or unpleasant story and probably has a skeleton or five in the closet.

      Seriously, how entitled do you have to be to complain in an article about someone who you interviewed and spent time with that they’re insufficiently quotable?

      1. Right?

        Professional jealousy is ugly. I really liked the part where it took him “five months or so” to write a fucking magazine article. That “or so” part probably means it was closer to six months.

        It’s not like it was a research-heavy piece, which still shouldn’t take five months. I, and probably 75% of the readers of this blog could crank that out in a week at most, and with 100% less whining, entitlement, and backstabbing.

        1. In fairness to the writer, I don’t think that particular article was all he was working on during that time, and a good chunk of that five months and change was probably spent arranging both the interview with Sanderson and his attendance at the convention.

          That having been said, the account of his time with Sanderson really grinds my gears. The guy was trying to be friendly, welcoming, and helpful and was maybe a little awkward about it, and the writer’s reaction was basically “you are sooooooo uncool, unlike me, because reasons.”

      2. I got the idea that he genuinely liked Sanderson and enjoyed his visit but his audience expects a National Geographic article talking about the strange creatures that inhabit the edges of the maps as they exist in their native environments.

        1. Nope, this was a hit piece from the beginning. Sanderson’s church isn’t all that approving of gay marriage, and Sanderson is coming under more and more pressure to leave that church, or at least disavow it.

          They are trying to cast him out as they did to Orson Scott Card. Unless Sanderson leaves Mormonism, or at least starts campaigning to make Mormonism accepting of gays, the media will be giving him a lot more of this kind of treatment.

          1. Pete, if he wants people to buy his novels, he has a choice; he can either repudiate this church he loves so much and find one that isn’t homophobic (such churches do exist-there’s one like it here in Toronto) or he can continue on as he is now and suffer the loss of said readers and the eventual no-sale of any of his novels, with whatever negative outcome that will be. As I said, it’s his choice, and he’d better make the former one, because things are different now due to the Internet and the voice it’s given LGBT people and their heterosexual supporters, and homophobic bigotry isn’t going to be tolerated any more, by anybody.

          2. You are such a fucking idiot.
            If somebody repudiates their religion because that religion disagrees with the fashionable political dogma of the hour, then they never actually believed in their religion to begin with. Their real religion is the world.
            He’d better make the choice you want or else!
            Lol.
            Also, your understanding of what Brandon’s religion actually believes about homosexuals is wrong and stupid, which frankly considering the history of your comments here, ain’t a shocker. And in fact I’d be surprised if you actually got something accurate for once.

          3. Also, for the record, I don’t let anybody trash any other poster’s religion in my comments. Don’t care if it is Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or whatever.
            I always find it fascinating that alleged champions of tolerance who theatrically rail against bigotry, turn into lying, ranting, dopes the instant some religion’s doctrine disagrees with their politics.
            Because that kind of scummy dishonest stereotyping is good when they do it.
            Fuck off with that weak and tiresome bullshit.

          4. Somehow, I don’t think Brandon Sanderson is losing any sleep over the few assholes that hate authors for their politics.

            I didn’t like Eric Flint’s politics, but he wrote good books so I read them.
            ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”
            ā€˜Progressivesā€™ suppress free speech because they donā€™t have the means to suppress free thought.

            Yet.

          5. @Mark Hood

            Bullshit. People are really tired of the shitty attitude you display here. And the illiteracy. No one is homophobic.

  25. This rant is what my brain would do if it could. ~:D

    But let me help out a little: “How much did these vapid fucks screw over their own industry?”

    It may interest one and all to know that there is a number for that. The number is $8600.00.

    https://madgeniusclub.com/2023/04/20/trad-vs-indie-author-earnings/

    $8600 is the -median- (not the average, but the most common) annual income from writing in Britain. The bulge in the bell curve, as it were.

    Which means that Dead Tree published authors, generally, are not making any money. Their books, to put it plainly, are not selling. At all. (All those Hugo-beloved tomes? Nope. Not selling.)

    Which is not at all surprising, given the collapse of the retail book business. Which collapse was inevitable given the Woke TM garbage that passes for science fiction/adventure/fantasy these days.

    You guys know what the TOP SELLER is in comics these days? Manga. From Japan, you know. In translation, no less. Because why? Because Marvel and DC are all-Woke, all the time. Same for novels, but we don’t have sales numbers for those, because shenanigans. But you can tell, because authors are flipping burgers instead of writing.

    Now, is all this George Martin, David Gerrold and Patrick Rothfuss’s fault? Like, personally theirs? No. Clearly not. This is a publishing-wide phenomenon.

    But did they contribute to this decline? Oh yeah. That’s three BIG selling series that they just couldn’t be assed to finish, leaving BIG fandoms disappointed and pissed off to the point where they just stopped buying SF/F books.

    Look at it this way. My book sold dozens of copies. Best case scenario, there are dozens of people waiting for the next one. (Its coming, I SWEAR.) If I were to crap out for some reason, dozens of people would be mildly disappointed.

    GRRM has -millions- of fans. (I can’t understand why, but he does.) -Millions- of people are disappointed that he’s promised another volume and not delivered. That’s a pretty big deal. That level of disappointment has had an impact on the sales of other people’s books. Readers just gave up.

    And now the median author income is $8600 a year. Meaning the next Tolkien/Rowling/Correia is FLIPPING BURGERS so he/she can eat, instead of writing. Because time spent writing does not make any money.

    So, to quantify how full of shit China Mike and the Viletones are, they’re $8600 bucks worth full of it. That’s a lot of bulllshit right there.

    1. And speaking of “It’s coming, I swear”… I still owe you a book review for book five. (Or maybe it was book four, I can’t quite remember which one I have right now). You sent it to me over a year ago, and I still haven’t given you the review I promised you. I’ll send you an email about it.

    2. Speaking of manga, I went to the nearest B&N (where I also happened to see Mr. C and get my SotBS hardcovers autographed) for the first time in over a year because I wanted to pick up a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. Not a single copy. The classics section had been dramatically pared down.

      Disappointed, I walked over to the SF&F because I wanted to pick up some Bujold. Nothing. Maybe two rows of SF&F where before it took up five or six rows on the second floor. What took up all the freed space? Manga. At least three big rows. And that’s where most of the shoppers were.

      Unfortunately, I’m not really into it, so all I could do was shrug and walk out. But I did come to the same conclusions you did as to why things had changed.

  26. I braved the sewage stream and discovered, hilariously, that several commenters at the vile hive CONFIRM what Larry said about people not buying series until they’re finished.

    But Larry is still wrong for saying it. So very wrong.

        1. To be fair, antifreeze consumption was a plot point in the HBO series Big Love, which was about Mormons. Thus one could conceivably stretch some sort of point about Utah and Sanderson and antifreeze.

          Martin and Rothfuss bother me not at all because I haven’t read any of either. I’m getting old, my reading time is finite and I’m fussy about the material these days. Wow, remember when one could read just about everything published in the genre? When did that end–early 1980s?

  27. Well, shoot; it happens.

    I started what was suppose to be a trilogy in the ’90s; I’ve only seen one book so far. Our heroes were about to accidentally drive a hummvee off the Ile de le City in medieval Paris at the end of book 1.

    Writer had gotten badly ill, is my my understanding. That individual has been a co-writer on one unrelated book since then.

    But I think I get our host’s point that those individuals he mentioned aren’t honoring the implied contract with their fans to deliver satisfaction.

    1. Don’t use the phrase “implied contract” around the ILOH. He will bring out the tetsubo.

      I prefer the term “understanding”–as in, there is an understanding between the storyteller and the audience. The audience lets the storyteller take them where he wants to go, and the storyteller makes sure he’s not wasting the audience’s time.

      Failure to provide an ending to the story falls under “wasting the audience’s time.”

  28. I don’t even WANT to write a fantasy series any more. When people don’t buy it, that doesn’t motivate me to write MORE just to guarantee the series is over. Cozy mysteries aren’t sexy but as long as you crank it out, it doesn’t really matter if it goes anywhere in the long run or not. (I mean, also, eventually you run out of murder victims.)

  29. Speaking of charity, could we take up a collection to SEND Glyer to China? Leave him there, of course, but SEND him?

    1. If you really hate him this badly, then remember – there are innocent people in China who deserve better than having him for a neighbor.

  30. I’m beginning to get the sense Larry doesn’t like this Glyer guy! Kudos to Larry for giving a damn about his competitors. Let’s call it out bluntly. Larry wanting to promote other authors and make the career path better for new authors is not directly in his best interest to maximize his own sales long term. And yet, Larry brings the fire and the fury down in defense of his future competitors which he didn’t need to do, and THAT’s what Glyer and his clown brigade are carping about.

  31. I always get a kick out the China Mike rants. I mean, he was an IRS agent and Larry was an accountant.

    They were born to be mortal enemies! It was written in the stars!

    Kidding aside, its so obvious China Mike uses Larry to get traffic because, if you gird your loins and drink your Pepto, and wander over to Vile 770, you will see which entries mention Larry: they will always have a much, much higher comment count.

  32. I used to have some kind of apologetics that could be made for these people but now Iā€™m pretty red pulled. Glyer got me when he deleted a very dry factual comment I made referencing and linking to Samuel Delanyā€™s own Pro NAMBLA comments. After that Iā€™m knives out.

  33. In some cases, there are or can be valid reasons for this sort of thing. Scott Lynch is known to have health issues, for example.

    But if a Big Name Author’s stuck on a series, what prevents him from bringing in a promising newcomer whose style he likes, giving him the story outline, and collaborating? That was how we finally got Pournelle’s last “Janissaries” book, after all. (And I noticed you didn’t mention Pournelle, even though Mamelukes was coming Real Soon Now, Honest! for many many years.)

    1. I started the Janissaries series with the first book.

      I always wanted more of them

      But Jerry was actually still writing, still selling.

      Which puts him in a very different class than the 3 Larry discussed

  34. I am just a few years older than Larry I remember buying and reading David Gerrold’s ā€œunfinished sf seriesā€ back in the early 90s. They weren’t bad and was looking forward to the series.

    Just checked wikipedia, says book 5 went to beta readers in 2015. Update in 2017 says books 5 and 6 are almost done, with a 7th book planned. The guy is only a year younger than Biden, better get it to Sanderson now so I can read it in my lifetime.

  35. Look Larry, most of the folks whining are either young or thoughtless. They don’t seem to understand that “LIFE HAPPENS.” Life happening can cover the spectrum from being lazy to physical and or mental illness.
    As for you, I am amazed that you have gotten so much done. You have a big family and all that entail which is alot of work and annoyance at times (oh god middle school band concerts).
    Those that don’t understand this I refer to them as “The Great Wad of Humanity” or “Wad” from Trevian (the author who wrote Shibumi and the Iger Sanction). As a whole I find they tend to see the world as they want it to be not as it is. Your doing a great job. You are good at your Art, I hope most of your fans are not part of the Wad. Remeber those of the Wad tend to be loud and obnoxious. Do not give them free rent in your head, they dont deserve it. Your freinds and family do.

  36. This is one of the most narcissistic blogs I’ve ever had the misfortune to be exposed to. Why so angry? Why so triggered?

    BTW how many Hugos does Corria have?

    1. Lol. I have zero Hugos and I turned down my nomination.
      Kiss my ass and bark at the hole, dipshit. šŸ˜€

    2. BTW how many Hugos does Corria have?

      Larry committed the massive public service of creating the Sad Puppies, so that the rest of us could have our noses rubbed in the reality that “Huge Nominated” and “Hugo Award Winner” translate into “this is sh!t, avoid it at all costs”.

      So I’m very happy to say that “Larry has no Hugos”, because at this point having one is solid evidence you’re a crap writer

      1. Correction: having a Hugo awarded after about 2000 is a sign you’re a crap writer. Before that, it meant something.

        Larry started writing in 2008, soā€¦

        Babylon 5 got a Hugo award, and it had a cameo as one of General Ivanova’s desk knickknacks in the final episode.
        ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”
        Mollari: ā€œDo you know what the last Xon said, just before he died? AAAGHKK!ā€

    3. Better question would be how big is his mountain of gold compared to yours? …did your dick just shrivel up and fall off? Here ya go. What’s that? No I didn’t see any balls attached. Be careful where you step, I guess

      I’m not a fan, I’m actually at odds with Larry over some unrelated bullshit, but he’s spot about China Mike and Martin too.

      I never read Martin’s books but the GoT catastrophe turned me off all TV series, like Targaryens, until the final season is complete. I’ll buy the CD set at Walmart for $19.95 three years after, assuming the reviews are good. And I can see how that same mentality would destroy good writers.

      Anyways, I wanted to troll you but I’m just not feeling it. Maybe scoop your balls off the floor and come back with something better than Why So Angry Bro.

      1. Heh. I love this post. Regardless of our disagreements on any other topic, all reasonable people should be able to reach across the political aisle and agree that Mike Glyer is a piece of shit.

    4. Why is he like that? Because it’s okay for him to be angry about what pisses him off, just like it is for others to be when they comment on things (not so much okay when it’s somebody else whose views he doesn’t share.)šŸ˜‰

  37. Honestly, I think traditional publishing is problem. The rate of publication is painfully slow and people have shifted their expectations. There is one traditionally published author I buy and it’s Larry. Every new author I’ve discovered in the last 5 years has been through a few friend recommendations or Kindle Unlimited. Some of the books I’ve tried through KU have been crap, some have been amazing, but I don’t have to shell out $10-$30 to find out if it’s crap or amazing. If it’s amazing, I buy it. I read far far more now than I did even as a kid raiding the library by the wheelbarrow load. According to my Kindle app, I read 97 books last year and have read at least a little for 528 consecutive days.

    This is a binge consumption society and traditional publishing is still giving us a taste every couple of years, it’s no wonder it’s dying.

    I love Larry’s books, and he’s one of the faster traditional published authors, but they give him an MHI slot every couple years or so.

    One of the best indie authors I’ve found published his first book in May of 2021. He’s now on book 6 of the series, which will be its finale. So 6 books in roughly 2 years, or one every 4 months or so. Most successful indie authors, successful being the ones doing it as their day job, average a book every 3-6 months.

    For myself, I don’t even pay attention to traditional published titles, the cost is significant and even if I find something I like I know it’s going to be a year, or 2 or never before I get the next book. Back in the 80’s that was just the way it was and we had to live with it. Now we don’t.

  38. I also feel like I have to defend Gerrold. A little. A very little. Like (holds thumb and forefinger about a millimeter apart) _that_ much. “Tribbles” was not plagiarized; the idea was checked by Paramount’s legal department, the Writers Guild, and Heinlein himself before the script was cleared for production, and all agreed that there was no plagiarism.

    That being said, I otherwise have to agree that Gerrold today is a has-been. I never much liked his non-Star Trek writing. I can’t imagine why anyone would like the utterly stupid “Deathbeast”, and I skimmed around half of “The Man Who Folded Himself” in search of something resembling a plot before giving up on it. The Star Wolf novels were decent space opera except that both ended with the protagonist getting cheated out of his victory. The Chtorr series was okay as far as it went, but I lost interest when ten years passed after Book 4 and Book 5 was nowhere to be seen. The last time I saw anything he’d written, it was a short story in some anthology or other around fifteen years ago. It was supposed to be funny, I think, but I saw it as nasty, petty, and cruel. Not entertaining at all. I’ll forgive a lot of sins in a writer, but I read for entertainment first and foremost. If it ain’t entertaining, fuggedahboutit.

    I also was able to interact with Gerrold personally on Compuserve back when Compuserve was a thing, and my perception is that something happened to him in the mid to late 1990s. Don’t know what, don’t know why, won’t speculate, but the effect was that he got a lot less lighthearted and pleasant, and a lot more partisan and nasty toward anybody who aroused his ire. From what I hear, that side of him has only gotten worse over the years. A lot worse.

    1. In fairness, Gerrold’s only angry towards anything that pisses him off that’s an injustice to others, like people not caring about others , as shown here:

      My usual unfriendly reminder — if you cannot stand for the equal rights of all human beings, you’re in the wrong place. Do us both a favor and unfriend me. Otherwise, I’ll have to do it when you start posting bat-guano on my wall.

      I’m a cranky old man — there’s only one thing in the world I know to be an absolute truth — life works better when we care about each other.

      Yeah, it’s sometimes an ugly bumpy turbulent ride, ask anyone with a teenager about that, but the adventure of life is how much we can learn from each other if we’ll just just the fuck up and listen to each other.

      We don’t have to agree with each other — but when we take the time to understand, life works, because listening means that no one is standing alone.

      Right now, millions of Americans are out of work, hundreds of thousands are losing their homes, young people are desperate for education, people of all ages need health care, women’s health issues are vastly misunderstood (because a lot of men don’t want to know about all that squishy stuff), our veterans are coming home emotionally scarred — and I haven’t even scratched the tip of the iceberg.

      The generation that lived through the Great Depression learned how to take care of each other. The generation that fought World War II learned how to take care of each other. Those are lessons that they sought to teach their children and grandchildren — and for some of us that lesson sank in. Yeah, wouldn’t it be great to have a new car and a wall-sized TV and a vacation in Hawaii and all the other nice things that come with financial well-being — but I’ve never seen a tombstone that said, “made a lot of money” or “paid his bills on time.” Every tombstone I’ve ever seen has said things like “beloved father” or even something much more poignant: “we miss you, Mamma.”

      That tells me what’s really important to people. That tells me what we should be thinking about in our daily lives — it tells me on what basis we should be making our political decisions. What’s going to make the biggest difference for our parents’ health care, our children’s education, the well-being of our veterans, and even the poor and homeless?

      I’m not interested in what your church says.*There are several thousand different religions in this country — each of them claiming to have their own personal hot line to God. And I’m not interested in the talking points that come from the Koch Bros.’ private think tanks either. That’s rich people paying rich people to tell poor people to vote against their own best interests.

      F. Scott Fitzgerald said it very well: “The rich are different than you and me.” It’s true. When you can buy anything you want without having to look at the price tag, you fall into a strange alienation from reality. You lose your dependency on other people, and soon you lose your ability to relate to them as equals. You begin to disrespect them for not being as rich as you. You begin to gauge the value of human beings by wealth — and you forget that you’re a human being because you’re owned by your fortune, not the other way around.

      And when a whole political party sells its soul to the highest bidders, the result is a political philosophy that is no longer about the people of America — it’s about the business of America. Cutting jobs, cutting wages, busting unions, sending jobs to China, and eventually gutting the economy that made them rich in the first place.

      It’s this simple — if a hug from your wife or husband or your kids can make you forget for a moment that the mortgage payment is looming, you’ll get through it somehow, then your family works. But if you’re terrified that some out-of-work, rape-victim somewhere might be terminating a pregnancy, and maybe it’ll add three cents to your tax bill — get your head out of your ass.

      This is about all of us making sure that all of us are living up to the responsibilities of having an America that works for all of us.

      And once again, the question is not “Why is David Gerrold angry?” The question is “Why the hell aren’t you?”

      https://m.facebook.com/davidgerroldauthor/posts/380283491996521/?wtsid=rdr_0230aGKXs2DpnAICi)

      */A response to what Larry said in defence of an author he was attacking me for having expressed what things are now as far as homophobia is concerned.

      1. That was a lot of words to say “I use high-minded ideas and language as cover for being an obnoxious twerp.” I’ve never met someone who went on like that who didn’t act like any deviation from his preferred way of doing things is out of hatred or bigotry rather than disagreement about the best way to go about things.

  39. This discussion is fascinating to me. 90% of my reading is romance novels, 8% nonfiction, and 2% fantasy novels my roommate gets me to read. I have read Monster Hunter International through Franks’s book because my roommate got me started, but then I had romance books to read and I’ve fallen behind. I really need to catch up though because I’ve been told that Franks now has a girlfriend?

    Anyway, in romance (including all its various subgenres) the overarching plot revolves around the couple. There can be major background issues, but the main story is the romance. However, in an epic romance series (think Nalini Singh or Sherrilyn Kenyon) the villains might never be defeated. In fact, in a series like the Dark Hunters or Psy-Changeling, if the background problems got solved the series would have to end.

    I realize that fantasy and scifi readers are looking for different things in their books, but I don’t understand why such a large group of them are so resistant to new authors. Romance readers seek out new authors like panhandlers looking for gold in a creek (we’re just better dressed). The excitement of finding a new author who writes well and has the potential to continue to write books for decades is bananas high. And if an author stops for whatever reason, we reread their backlist and keep searching for the next new author.

    1. Hi Megan,
      Many SF/F readers are resistant to new authors partly because new authors are an unknown quantity — you don’t know what you’re getting for your money. That didn’t matter much when a book cost $3.99 or maybe $4.99, but now that paperbacks cost $9 or $10 apiece, if I try a new author and don’t like them, it’s a significant hit to my budget.

    2. Franks had a girlfriend for a long, long time, we just never knew. Franks isā€¦not big on sharing. šŸ˜€

      He’s a fallen angel, she’s a succubus, it’s a match madeā€¦somewhere other than Heaven. It works, more or less. Neither has killed the other yet, anyway. Or, not much.ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”
      Cast Away: Only Tom Hanks could make two hours of talking to a volleyball great.

      1. Man, I really need to pick this back up! Romance readers are like sharks, tell us there is a hint of love in the air and we start circling ā™”ļ¼¼(ļæ£ā–½ļæ£)ļ¼ā™”

        I can’t believe he kept it a secret from everyone! Hidden relationships are a fantastic trope.

      2. Archangel Michael: “You think we…
        Asmodeus: “Just leave those two alone? What a good idea,”

    3. Megan, some of us have been burned by starting a book by a new-to-us author and discovering that the cover copy and first few pages are NOT the actual plot/writing style/genre/story of the book. Or we start series and the publisher ends them with the story still unfinished (not the author’s fault). We tend to be hesitant to spend much money on an untried author after that happens two or three times.

      SF/F is a smaller world than romance, with different reader expectations for resolving the story, even if it takes several books to get there. We fans tend to know each other, and put more weight on word-of-mouth than readers in other genres seem to.

      Full disclosure: I’m also a SF/F writer as well as fan.

  40. I’ve always been a bookworm, bibliophile, whatever you want to call it. Truthfully, I never pay attention to critics, because my pop, who is a bastion of practicality, imbued me with several phrases that stick in my mind to this day: Keep it Simple Son(or Stupid, especially that one when I was being an idiot).You can have something Good, Fast, or Cheap, pick two. But the pertinent one here is, Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t even teach, critique. When I want something new to read, if it’s a series, I’ll get the first book, buy it and read. If I like it, I’ll read the whole series, plus anything I can get my hands on by the author. I’ve got the whole MHI run, plus Hard Magic series for example on my shelf (and thank God I’m not a huge J. Patterson fan, not enough shelves in the world.) Point is, I think critics in general are a waste of time. Try things out for yourself, see if you like it or don’t, and use your own brain to form your own opinions. That’s what truly matters anyway. My best friend is an independent author, with at least 5 self published high fantasy novels, and I’ve seen his struggles. Try the new comers, maybe you’ll like them.

  41. “Wheel of Time” was the series that made me reluctant to get into new series. I was into them until, I dunno, book seven or so, when I realized little to nothing had happened to advance the plot.

    Then Jordan passed away.

    Yes, I’m aware they were picked up and finished, but…

    1. Aw, what a shame, you had to settle for Sanderson…
      #Lemme get that in MY will…#

  42. Rothfuss wrote exactly one good book. One.

    Reading the second book was an exercise in getting into the mind of a karate dojo nerd who thinks that repeating a move a dozen times means he has any idea about how a fight works. You all know the type. The kind of gutless moron that walks up to his well meaning friends and cheap shots them with his BadAss Karate Move and claims he is ā€œhelping themā€. And when that former well meaning friend breaks his nose with a well placed left hook to the face he starts whining like a massive bitch.

    Thats what reading Kwithes experience of ā€œtraining in the arts of warā€ felt like.

    And dont even get me started on a 17 year old broke virgin being taken in as a sex apprentice by what was literally The Hottest Woman On the Planet.

    OK Patrick. Calm down now.

    This is the exact same goober who is obsessing over a semi OK looking chick in her mid 20s that regularly rejects him, even tho sheā€™s likely (if the author had ANY integrity) been banging every tatted bad boy chad she could get her paws on. (Oh behave you naughty girl!). Same girl who works as a loanshark.

    Sure Patrick, sure. If book 2 had been honest, Kvithe would have either had his heart broken by finding loanshark girl in bed with his Worst Enemy, gotten his ass handed to him in the first fight he tried that Arts of Combat Ballet on, barely escaped from super hot demon chick when he realized she has a massive demon penis, and at then end when he decided to piss off some duke by speaking Truth To Power, found himself as a guest in the torture chambers.

    Thats the difference between Martin and a sniveling idiot like Rothfuss. Martin actually knows the score, and doesnt lie to himself about it.

  43. My problem is that Iā€™m getting old I used to read all new fantasy books as they came out, but now if I do that I forgot what happened by the time the next book comes out. I guess I can re-read them but for large series thatā€™s a lot of re-reading. Also if Iā€™m reading a lot of new books Iā€™d just be re-reading them all the time and wouldnā€™t have the time to give new authors a chance.

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