Awesome! It is hate mail time! It has been awhile since I got some hate mail, so I was beginning to worry that I have become inoffensive and meek. If I’m not offending somebody, then I’m failing. Luckily, a moon bat happened to read my thread about why right wingers are so filled with hate. http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/understanding-media-or-why-are-you-right-wingers-so-filled-with-hate/ As usual, the guest is in italics and my response is in bold.

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It’s really telling that the author of this unhinged spittle flecked rant

Yep. Filled with boundless rage. That’s me. I’m kind of like the Incredible Hulk of fantasy novelists.

immediately cast the shooter as ‘left wing’ yet spends most of this angry rant supposedly upset when people on the left do the same thing, trying to assign blame to the right.

Uhm, I do believe the entire point was that your side STARTED IT. To be fair, I believe I spent most of the post discussing how he was a nut more than anything. But don’t let your lack of actually reading my blog post stop you from pontificating on it.

If you want to play the blame game, fine, let’s do it.

Yes, but your side does it so much better.

How many liberals talk about the gold standard? That’s straight up tea party, Ron Paul nuttiness.

Actually, the only people I’ve heard that really take up that issue are the Libertarians rather than the Republicans. I kind of fall between the two, because I’m registered as a Republican only because Libertarians can’t get elected to county dog catcher.

How many liberals talk about the ‘illegitimate tyrannical government? That’s pure Alex Jones paranoia.

Yes, I’ve not heard anyone on the left use those terms since… Well, 2008. Oh, and after the elections in 2004 and 2000.  

You see how easy it is? It doesn’t help the matter at all.

You are right. The most helpful thing to do is blame Sarah Palin.

No one said Palin is responsible for this shooting,

It was only insinuated by the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, the Democratic Underground, a dozen senators and congressmen, and the sheriff that failed to prosecute the killer on earlier violations.

or at least no one worthy of paying attention to.

Looking at the above list, pretty much.

People are saying that Palin and many on the right have been using excessive language and rhetoric for a few years now, and while unrelated, it’s not something that should be done in a civil society.

As long as we are a free society, there is no such thing as excessive language or rhetoric. You should be able to argue for what you believe however you want. And when you lie about it, you should be called on it and made to look like a fool.

Let me try to address this in all seriousness. I find that most liberals have no concept of history. Our country was founded on impassioned debate, then we had a big war, then we had more impassioned debate. America is built on passion, on fighting for what you believe to be right, on struggle, on effort. The fact that the first amendment is the First Amendment displays this.

Our language continues the tradition. You want heated rhetoric? Read the debates between Lincoln and Douglas. We are such a CIVIL society that at one point we broke in half and held a war. Wait… what was that one called again?

You think it is bad today? Then you are a fool with no concept of history. Once upon a time, a republican president sent the US Army to roust a camp of 15,000 peaceful marchers. They were removed with tear gas, bayonets, and tanks. Several marchers were killed and hundreds were injured. That was in 1932 and it was not that abnormal an event in our history.

There have been duels between government employees. The Sergeant at Arms has used a club to break up congressional debates. Honestly, compared to our forefathers, our current leadership are a bunch of pansies.   

Why is it so important to use violent language in a political debate?

Almost all political language is based upon violent terms relating to warfare, because the two are related. We have “campaigns” in “battle ground” states. Politics are what societies have when we’re not having war. War is a continuation of politics, and always has and always will be.

A better question is, why do we have to destroy our right to free speech?

I think the Democratic Underground is populated by a bunch of morons, but they’ve got the right to say whatever they want. They can burn effigies of George Bush if they feel like it. Skinheads and Black Panthers can say whatever they want to, no matter how awful it is, because this is America.

Irony is just not a frame of mind right wingers are really capable of processing.

Oh, trust me. We do irony just fine.  

The immediate defensive tone taken by those on the right is very telling.

Because if I walked up to you in public and called you a child rapist, wouldn’t you get a little defensive? Maybe if I only said you were a supporter of pedophilia, but that some horrible crime only happened because you were such an awful wannabe child molester, then do you think you might get a touch defensive? Now, what if representatives of every major news station in the country showed your picture as soon as there was a report that a pedophile had been arrested? Defensive?

So, when the half the country that believes what I believe gets immediately blamed for something that we had nothing to do with… Duh.

Oh, and if we are silent, you just do it more and say that our silence shows we feel guilty. If we defend ourselves, it shows that we are defensive about something because we feel guilty. Ironic… See? I told you above that we understood irony. We have to live it every time we turn on the news.  

Maybe, just maybe, you can think twice before casting tens of millions of Americans as traitors

For the record, I don’t throw around the word traitor, (like the left did all the time with generals, vice presidents, and military contractors like me) because treason is a very specific law. Treason is not defined as “anything that disagrees with me”.

or saying stupid things like liberals want to implement socialism

Liberals don’t want to implement socialism. Liberals are just useful idiots used by socialists to implement socialism. Get it right. Nikita Khrushchev figured that out a long time ago.

to take away all your guns.

Nope. There hasn’t been six different pieces of federal gun legislation proposed this week. Not at all… No magazine bans. No new assault weapons ban. No ban on a gun within 1,000 feet of an elected official… Nope. Imagined the whole thing.

And for the record, if my side really was as dangerous, evil, scary, crazy, mean, and hate filled as your side seems to think we are, you would need a lot more than a thousand feet… The people on my side can hit squirrels at that.

That’s just crazy talk, plain and simple. No one is coming for your little guns, people.

That would be difficult… mostly because we have guns.

You are free to carry them to tell the world what a failure of a man you are thinking your gun equals the glorious lack of manhood between your legs.

You got me there. My penis, though it has been sufficiently keeping my wife happy for thirteen years of marriage, is completely inadequate for self defense purposes.

I do love that one. Lefties love to use Freudian BS as if I have a gun only to compensate for the size of my equipment. (which is really kind of funny since I’m 6’5”, can palm a basketball, and wear a size 15 shoe… draw your own conclusions) Nope, I carry a gun because I can’t throw a 230 grain lead projectile at 850 feet per second with my dick. Also, in a second amendment sense, I highly doubt that my penis would be able to overthrow a tyrannical government, either.

 

http://www.renovationsf.org/hugo-intro.php 

The Hugo Awards are fan based awards given out at each WorldCon. Only people that have attended the prior WorldCon or bought a membership to the current WorldCon can nominate. However this year WorldCon is in Reno, so I know a bunch of folks that read this blog are attending, and if you are, you need to vote!

If you aren’t going, but you want to vote/nominate, then you can buy a supporting membership for like $50.

You need to get your nominations in quickly. They are due by January 31st. The information is at the link above.

You can nominate up to 5 things for each category. I’m not telling you how to vote, but this is what I’m voting for. I think that all of these things are deserving of an award, and even getting nominated makes you look cool. I fully do not expect to win, because not even a single robot is raped during the events of MHI or MHV, but getting nominated would be neat and that actually doesn’t take too many votes. 🙂

John W. Campbell Award:  Larry Correia – debut novel: “Monster Hunter International” (2009) and sequel: “Monster Hunter Vendetta” (2010) from Baen – This one is for best new author that has come out in the last two years. And yes, I’m an egotist. But come on, I am pretty awesome.

John Brown – debut novel: Servant of a Dark God from Tor

Dan Wells – debut novel: I Am Not a Serial Killer from Tor

The following categories had to be released in 2010.

Best Novel:  Darkship Thieves – Sarah Hoyt from Baen

Grand Central Arena – Ryk E. Spoor from Baen

Live Free Or Die – John Ringo from Baen

Mr. Monster -Dan Wells from Tor

And finally, because I am biased – Monster Hunter Vendetta – Larry Correia from Baen  – because okay, was it brilliant literature that will reshape the academic landscape? Oh hell no. But admit it, was it the most fun you had reading a book this year? Come on… Admit it. This would be like giving the Oscar to the Expendables. 🙂

I’m sure that there are many other wonderful novels that I’m missing, but I was not able to read a lot of 2010 release novels in 2010. That’s what happens when you are running behind. I’m still reading the ’08 and ’09 books that were recommended to me.

Best Novella: ???

Best Novelette: The Price – Michael Z. Williamson (in the anthology “Citizens”)

Best Short Story: Memorial at Copernicus – Gray Rinehart

Exanastasis – Brad Torgersen

The Greatest Science Fiction Story Ever Written – Eric James Stone

All great writers. Next year I will have a couple of short stories out that I hope you all enjoy, but nothing currently.

Best Related Work:  Writing Excuses Podcast Season 4 by  Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells & Howard Tayler

Best Graphic Story:  Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel – Howard Tayler  (not only is Schlock Mercenary awesome, I wrote the introduction for the one that is coming out next!)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Inception

It was sci-fi and though the writing made it needlessly cloudy at times, it was a good film. I nominate Avatar for best remake of Pocahantus.

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): The Walking Dead on AMC. TV shows involving monsters need more love, and I’m rooting for this production company for personal reasons.

Best Professional Editor (Long Form): Toni Weisskopf, – Baen Books. 

Jim Minz, – Baen Books

Laura Haywood Covey – Baen Books

Have to go with the editors that I know and have worked with one this one, and these folks are all awesome and deserving of your vote.

Best Editor (Short Form): John Ringo & Brian M. Thomsen – anthology Citizens  Because he is John Ringo, damn it.  Plus, everytime Ringo gets nominated for something it causes literary critics to have strokes.

Best Professional Artist: Kurt Miller

Alan Pollack

(got to go with the guys that have done my covers, and they are AWESOME. Next year I’ll nominate Zach Hill and Justin Otis for Grimnoir work)

Isaac Stewart (for the interior artwork on Brandon Sanderson’s Way of Kings, also the guy that did Mistoborn, but that was from prior years)

Best Semiprozine: 

Best Fanzine:

Best Fan Writer: Chris Nuttall (going off of the Baen Barfly’s recommendations)

Best Fan Artist:

EDITED: Because I can’t spell ‘eligible’. Bob Westover and Kathy Jackson both caught that one. :p

No comment.

I was surfing on We The Armed (which believe it or not, has a great creative writing section for all of you aspiring writers looking for a place to post samples to get feedback) and I came across this thread:

http://wethearmed.com/index.php/topic,12410.0.html  called Ever read a “must read” just to go “And”?

It was about how some books that are “classics” really aren’t that special, or even good. I wasn’t surprised to see a bunch of smart, educated, intelligent folks chime in about some of the awful trash that they were forced to read when they were in high school. I’ve got pretty strong opinions on this and it seems that I’m not alone. I quickly posted the following rant (edited here because I cranked this out in 3 minutes and can’t spell) :

Don’t get me started on high school English. The garbage that gets force fed to kids in the guise of education is why so many Americans do not read. We beat it out of them. We club them over the head with boring tripe that is only a classic because some professor declared it to be a classic a hundred years ago. We force them to read these things, until in their mind reading equals tedium, and then we’re shocked when as a nation we don’t read as much.  FRIGGIN’ DUH! You ignorant literati sluts! You are too busy giving each other awards to realize that nobody reads your nonsense.

True story. A friend of mine is a successful fantasy novelist. He was asked to speak to a creative writing class about his first book. The teacher asked him what it “meant.” He gave her the plot synopsis. No. What does it “mean”? It is a fantasy, about magic, and– NO. What is the real “meaning”?  You see, college English is the only place where Freudian psychology is still legitimate. Everything has to have a deeper meaning. A book just can’t be a story. It has to be an analogy for some social commentary. And heaven help us if it wasn’t, because then all those no-talent hack English professors wouldn’t be able to write 1,000 page commentaries on what the whale in Moby Dick REALLY represented.

I’m a professional writer. I’ve made a career out of it more than 99.9% of the English majors in the US will. Because what they are being taught is mostly crap. And. They. Just. Don’t. Get. It.  The education establishment hates people like me. We’re pulp. We’re trash. And at the end of the day, I will have one thousand times the readership of the most prestigious literary journal.

If I wanted to win some awards, I’d remove the humor, put in more bleakness, despair, depression, and then maybe have somebody get raped, and then have a thinly veiled reference to the evils of something liberals hate. Boom. I get an award. If I’m going for a sci-fi award instead, I’ll do that, only I’ll have a robot get raped. Everybody cries. The end. I get an award and sell fifteen whole copies.

And some of these books mentioned here really are good, but they shouldn’t be FORCED onto fourteen year olds! Pick books that these kids will actually, I don’t know, something crazy… ENJOY?

Worst book for me was the Scarlet Letter. I almost became illiterate after being forced to read that piece of crap. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer. More suffering. Oooh, look, suffering. Tedium. Bored. Suffer. Oh, now let’s make her horrible child a bad analogy. Didn’t see that coming. Oh, please is it almost over? I can barely read through the tears of boredom. Please let it be over soon. Suffer. Whine. Suffer. Everybody dies. The End.

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Okay. So that was the rant. Yep, I was sitting in my angry chair on that one.

Afterwards, I got to thinking about it, and I want to address this some more on my blog because I’ve been thinking about this topic, of what is literary and respectable and wins awards and gets critical acclaim but nobody actually reads, versus the kind of stuff that I write that is wildly popular and makes piles of money but gets sneered at by the literati elite. This also relates directly to the crap that is foisted on kids in school in the guise of an English education.

Oh, but Correia, we need to expose our kids to the classics of literature! Okay, sure. What makes some book a classic?

Uh… It just is?

Why is the Scarlet Letter a classic? Reading it gives you a sensation similar to repeatedly giving yourself paper cuts across the cornea. Let me ruin it for you. Spoiler alert. A woman has to wear a big read A. People suffer. All the light will flee your soul. Puritans are jerks. Yet, it is a classic because at some point in time, some dude with a doctorate in English proclaimed it to be a classic.

One definition says that these are pivotal or influential works that influenced society… Uh huh… Pivotal because an English professor said so. If being influential was the official definition for a classic then my kids would have to read the screenplay for Star Wars in school, and my grandchildren will have to read the collected works of Twilight.

Maybe we should have our kids read books that are award winning! Well, except that just because a book won an award doesn’t mean that it is good either. (though many people can’t seem to make that distinction).  Literary awards are usually circle jerks of like-minded people giving each other awards. It doesn’t matter how good or popular a book is, if it doesn’t fit the mold of what that group wants, it doesn’t get an award. And in some cases, it doesn’t matter how bad a book is, because if it fits the criteria or some tiny group of judges is fond of it, it wins.

I remember getting in trouble in high school English class because I had a disdain for “good books”. I was too busy reading awesome DragonLance novels to really give a flip about James Joyce. (who just goes to show that if you want to sell a bunch of books, you just need to get banned somewhere!)

Let me explain what I was like at the time. I was probably the most well read kid in school. I lived way out in the boondocks, was the first one picked up in the morning, and spent close to three hours a day on the bus reading a novel. I had read every single book (not an exaggeration) in the tiny El Nido public library before I ever went to high school. I had read something like 90 Louis L’amour novels. My favorite book in 6^th grade was Dune. I was that kid.

Yet, despite the fact that I read way more than most adults, I got terrible grades in English. I had a finely tuned BS detector at an early age. Since I was extraordinarily well read for a fourteen year old, I already had a grasp on what a ‘good’ story was. I recognized that most of the books we were being forced to read were just plain boring, and then we were expected to read these terribly dull books and discuss them for like a month! Sorry, there just isn’t that much to talk about. I would normally read the book in a day, and then by the time the rest of the class was done reading The Great Gatsby and discussing the “hidden” symbolism of a bunch of hedonist socialites and their tedious existence, I’d have read ten other more enjoyable books.

The one good thing about being forced to read The Great Gatsby was that I discovered Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft afterwards because I figured that not everybody from that time frame could have been that incredibly annoying.

My sophomore English teacher dismissed those works as “pulp” not “literature”. Really? Because who has influenced more people in succeeding generations? Cthulu or Gatsby? My money is on the big squid.

So, at the end of my education, I hadn’t done most of the assignments, thought most of my teachers were dolts, lost all respect for academia, got mediocre grades, and slept through class. I did everything absolutely wrong according to my teachers, yet, I’ve gone on to read thousands of books and have a successful writing career despite teachers doing their best to make me despise the written word. Yay, school!

You want to get kids in high school to like reading? Don’t force them to read the same old tired crap. It isn’t educational just because it was written by a sexually-frustrated Victorian woman. Let them read other things. Let them read modern books. Let them read from different genres. Give them a giant list to chose from. News flash, not everybody likes the same thing. I know that is incredibly difficult for academics to swallow, but it is true.  

Is the purpose of a education to teach you to think, or is it to check a box saying you read X number of approved books? If the purpose is to check a box, then congrats most teachers. You win. Sure, these kids grow up and hate reading for the rest of their lives, but whatever. You checked that box real good.

I loved Don Quixote. I enjoyed Silas Marner. Count of Monte Cristo is bad ass. I like a lot of Shakespeare, with MacBeth being my favorite. Those are classics by most accounts… And not a single one of them was enjoyed because of an English class. Odds are that if I’d been forced to read any of those in English class, then months of discussing the hidden themes (that may or may not have been there) and then getting tested on it would’ve beaten any enjoyment right out of those works.

I’ve been surprised how many e-mails I’ve gotten in the last couple of years from mothers telling me how excited they are that their kids liked my books. It is usually some variation of “Johnny hates to read, but he read your book in three days! He’s never liked a book before.” Well, that’s probably because the other books Johnny has been exposed to just aren’t interesting to him.

Teachers, there’s nothing wrong with that! Some people hate fantasy but love thrillers. Some people have an affinity for romance novels but would never touch a western. Let them find their niche. Believe me, once reading becomes a habit, they will expand into other things… But nobody, and I mean nobody, likes bullshit written by angsty whiners about their laudanum fueled binges of pathetic boredom. Even the literary geniuses at the finest universities foisting this crap on us only skim it. They say the love it, but they lie. They just read the Cliff Notes to impress chicks from the Art Department.

I’m not saying that my work is a classic. Heck no. By no means. I’m proud to be a pulp writer. I don’t write books with themes or hidden meanings. A gun is a gun and werewolves are not a symbol of feminist liberation. Most normal writers are in the same boat. We don’t have literati pretensions of smug superiority. We write to get paid, and the more entertaining we are, the more we get paid.  

Now, if you don’t want to be one of those boring old writers that make a living off this stuff, and instead you are in this for the “art” and to win prestigious literary awards, let me give you some helpful hints on things you need to put into your book to get awards. The more the better.

1. Make it dreary and impossible to understand. The more befuddling the better.
2. Don’t resolve anything. Resolutions are so bourgeois.
3. Somebody has to get raped. If it is sci-fi, rape a robot.
4. Suicide is good too.
5. Humor is not allowed, unless it is ironic hipster humor that mocks the establishment.
6. If there is an antagonist, make him a thinly veiled version of Dick Cheney.
7. Right-wing dystopia OR evil all-controlling religion. (bonus points for both!)
8. Gay cowboys eating pudding.
9. Make every single character unlikable. If you accidentally create a likable character, see #3 or #4.
10. Moral compasses are so passé. Have your protagonist sexually assault a horse or something.
11. Drug abuse is fun for the whole family. Somebody better be huffing paint.
12. Global warming. Award juries love dying polar bears.

Seven or more gets you a Pulitzer. Get 10 and I guarantee you’ll win the Nobel prize for literature. All 12 might just get you on Oprah.

Tomorrow night from 6-8 at Sam Wellers in SLC, I’ll be doing a book signing with a whole bunch of bad mamba-jambas of the writing world. Including:

Tracy Hickman

Eric Flint

Kevin J. Anderson

Rebecca Moesta

Brandon Sanderson

Dan Wells

Jessica Day George

Brad Torgersen

Eric James Stone

Mary Robinette Kowal

Some dude that looks like James Gandolfini and has written some books about monsters, another one about the 1930s only with more dirigibles, and a thriller about some guys doing stuff in the middle east with lots of expolsions, or something.

AND MORE!

As in there are probably others that I don’t even know about. There are a bunch of best sellers on that list. So come on down to Sam Wellers book store in downtown Salt Lake City. Inevitably when I go downtown I get accosted by crazy homeless people, so a fun time will be had by all!