Tag Archives: Sad Puppies

Fisking the NYT: It isn’t just me. My whole religion can’t be real writers!

November 11, 2013 correia45 232 Comments

Several people sent me this article on Facebook yesterday. I supposed I kept getting tagged because everybody knows I’m Mormon and my writing has such a “sunny outlook”. Then I saw a few other Mormon authors making fun of this on Twitter.

At first I just laughed at the article because it is the usual pretentious New York Times piece written by somebody remarkably clueless about the subject (and as a gun rights activist I’m fairly used to that), but the more I thought about this article, the more it pissed me off. It just hit too many of my pet peeve buttons: “you’re not a *real* writer”, academic self-righteous posturing, and cultural/religious ignorance based on stereotypes masquerading as unbiased reporting.

The original article is here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/us/mormons-offer-cautionary-lesson-on-sunny-outlook-vs-literary-greatness.html?_r=1&

As usual the original article is in italics and my additional comments are in bold.

Note. I don’t normally post about my religious beliefs on the internet. I am in no way a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, because I really struggle with all those important love and forgiveness parts of the gospel, so anything religious I say after this is strictly from my point of view, hence the casual swearing and complete lack of patience for idiots.

MORMONS OFFER CAUTIONARY LESSON ON SUNNY OUTLOOK VS. LITERARY GREATNESS

BY MARK OPPENHEIMER

The title offers a great look into Mark’s predetermined world view. Normally “cautionary lessons” are learned when somebody fails so badly that their only purpose in life is to serve as an example to others. So our “sunny outlook” has caused us to fail at achieving “literary greatness”. Like most NYT*** articles, we’re going to learn a lot more about the author than their subject.

In 1888, speaking about the possibility of Mormon literature, the church leader Orson F. Whitney made an audacious promise to his fellow Mormons: “We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” Yet 125 years later, there is no Mormon Milton. There is no Mormon Milosz, no Mormon Munro.

That’s fantastic. 125 years later and we don’t have 3 copies of three dead guys, two of whom are so famous and widely read still that I had to look them up on Wikipedia. But what makes someone a literary great? That’s the big question. Well, Milosz won a Nobel Prize in 1980. And as everybody knows, if it doesn’t win the Nobel Prize it is crap.

Mormons are, on average, better educated than most Americans,

Yep. And we tend to be disproportionately successful in a bunch of different careers as well, but I’ll get back to that.

and they have written popular fiction.

Understatement of the year, but I’ll get to that too.

But Mormon authors tend to cluster in genre fiction, like fantasy, science fiction, and children’s and young adult literature.

You mean we tend to cluster in the areas of fiction that are the most popular and widely read, rather writing *real literature* where we will only be read by a handful of college English classes and have to supplement our income by being a guest lecturer or barista at Starbucks. Go figure.

Orson Scott Card, who wrote “Ender’s Game,” the sci-fi novel on which the country’s current top-grossing movie is based, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So is Stephenie Meyer, author of the “Twilight” series.

Sure, Card is one of the best selling authors of all time, who wrote one of the most pivotal works in sci-fi ever, and who has entertained millions and millions of people over the last three decades, but where’s his Nobel Prize? Huh? Okay, he was probably collecting about fifty grand in royalties a month before the movie, but who cares about success, money, and popularity if some douchenozzle with a PhD doesn’t like you?

Yep. Stephanie Meyer is Mormon too, and though I personally hate her writing style, she’s entertained millions of people. You can’t deny that she is very successful. She sleeps on a giant pile of money inside her house made of gold bars.

In the United States, Jews, blacks and South Asians, while they have produced no Milton or Shakespeare — who has, lately? — have all had literary renaissances.

Well, if it isn’t the soft racism of the left rearing its ugly head. Because you know, Jews, blacks, and South Asians are all the same. They are a perfectly homogenous group with no individuality, just like Mormons!

And the fact that he keeps bringing up Shakespeare (the original popular *genre* author) to mock authors who write popular stuff in order to get paid, is very ironic. If Shakespeare was alive today, is anyone stupid enough to think that the guy who specialized in writing entertaining plays for the masses would be writing stuffy, pretentious dreck for what works out to be $3 an hour in the hopes of winning a prestigious literary award? Hell no! We’d all be watching William Shakespeare presents Star Wars vs. The Avengers III: The Jedi Hulkening this summer, and it would be awesome, and the NYT would hate it.

“Ye olde mission statement readest thus, deadlines loom, find they gonads within thy trousers, place thy ass upon the seat, set quil to parchement, and get paid, bitches.”

And Milton? He’s mostly famous for an epic poem involving a civil war with angels and devils and monsters, interdimensional portals, with the devil as the big bad, and on the side he was a snarky political blogger. Oh, and like all writers you’ve actually heard of, he liked getting paid. Maybe in 300 years I’ll be considered a *real* author too.

Mormons are more likely to produce work that gets shelved in niche sections of the bookstore.

Niche… In most of the country that means the big part of the store where people actually purchase things. Romance and thrillers are *genre*. They’re not *real* writers either. Guess what sells the most? It sure as hell isn’t lit fic unless it ends up on
Oprah’s Book Club or something like that.

Let’s put it this way. I live in a new 4,500 square foot house on a mountainside across from a ski resort paid for by my *genre* writing. My wife doesn’t have to work to support me like most *real* writers. I don’t have to beg for patrons. I don’t have to kiss ass at my local university for a guest lecturer position to make enough that my car won’t get repossessed.

If you want to actually make a living as a writer, you will focus on writing things that people will actually give you money for. If you want to focus on highbrow writing have fun, and yes, I would like fries with that.

Think of it this way, thinking that *real* writing is the correct way to be a writer, is exactly the same as people thinking it is better to go to college for 6 years and getting $200k in debt so you can have a masters in gender studies and then be unemployed and living in your parent’s basement, but still looking down your nose at the debt free guy who makes $30 an hour welding or fixing diesel engines.

And as it turns out, Mormon authors themselves wonder if their culture militates against more highbrow writing.

Not really.

They have a range of possible explanations.

And now we will hear from somebody a lot nicer than I am.

“It is a fair thing to point out,” said Shannon Hale, a Mormon who writes young adult fiction, “that there have been very prominent Jewish writers that have received a lot of accolades, and worldwide the number of Mormons are comparable to the number of Jews, so why hasn’t that happened?”

I’ve met Shannon. She’s cool. And she does ask a good question why hasn’t that happened? Why haven’t Mormons gotten a lot of accolades?

Serious answer? There are more liberal Jews than there are liberal Mormons, and awards go to whoever checks the correct boxes. If you are an active Mormon you are going to have some fundamental beliefs that go against the establish group think of the literati elites. Now someday they’ll find a disgruntled ex-Mormon that says all the things that makes them happy, who can also coherently string together words into sentences, and he will be showered with awards.

But more importantly, most real writers understand that accolades are fundamentally crap. Accolades don’t pay the bills. Prestigious literary awards mean absolutely nothing except that your book appealed to a one small awards jury, and since most awards juries are circle jerks of like-minded individuals patting themselves on the back about how brilliant they are, who cares?

I get my accolades every six months when I cash my gigantic royalty checks.

Yet, I’m still going to do another Sad Puppies Campaign to get a Hugo because I’m just filled with spite. 🙂

Ms. Hale’s theory is that literary fiction tends to exalt the tragic, or the gloomy,

Or in other words, lit-fic tends to be dreary navel gazing about dying polar bears where nothing interesting actually happens for hundreds of pages, and boring, unlikable people sit around talking about their problems.

while Mormon culture prefers the sunny and optimistic.

Meaning that Mormons aren’t a bunch of whining pansies.

“When I was an English major, then getting a master’s, most of the literary fiction I read was tragedy,” said Ms. Hale, whose “Princess Academy” was a Newbery Honor book. The books she was assigned treated “decline and the ultimate destruction of the human spirit” as necessary ingredients for an honest portrayal of life.

Gee whiz. That sounds like some fun reading! No wonder lit fic is so wildly successful!

But what if Mormons do not think that way?

You mean we tend to actually go and accomplish stuff, rather than whine about it? (or wait for the government to come fix it for us, but that’s a topic for another day).

“I think Mormons tend to have hope and believe in goodness and triumph, and those portrayals can ring false in a literary world,” Ms. Hale said.

Shannon is being very diplomatic in her response. My response would be a little more direct. “Why the hell would anyone want to read dreary, pretentious, wordy bullshit, and why the hell would I want to sit in front of a computer for hundreds of hours to write that?”

If the NYT reporter actually knew jack about his topic, he’d know that Mormon history has been filled with suffering. For not being around very long, we got run out of one state, then run out of another state, and another, freezing and starving the whole time, then our homes were burned by mobs, and it was actually perfectly legal to shoot us on sight, so then we all suffered and died in the worst exodus of the last few hundred years, in order to settle in the most godforsaken bit of country available. Then we worked our asses off and turned a wretched desert into something decent through the power of our industry and the strength of our backs, and then the army invaded us.

Ask any Mormon about the Haun’s Mill Massacre. Ask us about Johnston’s Army. Or Liberty Jail. Our church was founded in hardship, grew in hardship, but we are the definition of will not quit. We stick to our guns, stick to our principles, and now we’re 15 million badasses worth of can do attitude who won’t quit until we feel like it.

My wife is descended from those pioneers. Mormons are still super proud of our pioneer history and learn about it constantly Me? I’m a convert, but I grew up descended from surly, angry, Portuguese dairy farmers, so strangely enough I fit in great.

The reporter seems to like comparing Mormons to Jews. They’ve had a much longer history of suffering. The thing is he’s probably writing this with liberal New Yorker Jews in mind, while Mormon culture is much more in line with Israeli Jews and their “Come at me, bro” attitude. Mark sees it as sunshiny. We see it as roll up your sleeves and get stuff done.

One of our popular hymns says Put your shoulder to the wheel and push along. Do your duty with a heart full of song. We all have work. Let no one shirk. Put your shoulder to the wheel.

Writing as a career means you have to work your butt off and hustle. Mormon culture still takes pride in having a work ethic. Anybody who takes this to heart will succeed in life. It isn’t a Mormon exclusive, and not even all Mormons get it. Mike Rowe gets it. So there’s another reason Mormons succeed in writing…

When Mark uses the word sunshiny it is code for naïve. “Oh, those quaint and foolish Mormons, out there in red state in flyover country, clinging to their guns and religion, with their absurd outdated moral values. If only they could be enlightened, like the people who think exactly like I do.”

Rachel Ann Nunes writes in the romance, paranormal, fantasy and young people’s genres, and she founded LDS Storymakers, an organization for Mormon writers. She said that Mormon theology makes otherworldly and escapist genres natural fits for church members. “We believe that God created a lot of different worlds,” said Ms. Nunes, who also writes under the name Teyla Branton. Jesus Christ came to Earth, and to America, but “atonement stretched for all the worlds,” she said. “It’s natural for us to think that a lot more might be out there.”

There are a ton of Mormon authors. Of course we can have some philosophical explanation for it, or it could just go back to that first bit about how we’re more educated and we like to read more than average. Readers make writers. And the generation of us that is writing genre now also happens to be the generation that grew up with that stuff as our primary reading material.

Of course, many non-Mormon Christians work in genre fiction, too.

No! Really? The NYT is super good at the maths!

J.R.R. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and C. S. Lewis a devout Anglican; Christian readers are among their biggest fans. Christianity and genre fiction both depend on Manichaean, good-versus-evil plots, and the savior motif, in which an anointed one saves the kingdom or the world, is important to sci-fi and fantasy and central to the Christian Gospel.

Well huh… All this time writing all these successful novels I thought I was depending on telling a fun and entertaining story! I never realized I needed… Manichaean… whatever. I’m sure Mark didn’t just use that word so he’d sound all sorts of smart.

Yet Mormons gravitate even more powerfully than other Christians toward genre fiction, and for reasons that have nothing to do with theology. For example, if you are a bookish young Mormon, your church role models work in genre fiction: major figures like Mr. Card and Ms. Meyer; young adult writers like Ms. Hale; and many others, like J. Lloyd Morgan and James Dashner, who work in genres within genres, like fantasy fiction for children.

Or me, or Brandon Sanderson, or Dan Wells, or Howard Tayler, or Jessica Day George, or Brandon Mull, or Richard Paul Evans, or Jason Wright, or Dave Wolverton, or John Brown, or Eric James Stone, or Steve Diamond, or Amber Argyle, or Zach Hill, or Brad Torgersen, or Rob Wells, or George Hill, or Julie Wright, or Tracy Hickman… All of those are writers who are Mormon who write for the national market, not “Mormon authors” writing for the LDS market.

Hmmm… Looking back over that list (and I know I’m missing a ton of folks since I’m just doing this off the top of my head) I see a bunch of bestsellers and really successful people. I also see a bunch of award winners. (but those awards like totally don’t count, because the NYT said so and stuff).

Success breeds success, established writers help new writers, and there are only two and a half million people in Utah. So the writing community tends to know each other, and we also tend to be a helpful bunch. It isn’t even a Mormon thing as much as it is a Utah thing (heck, look at my own Writer Nerd Game Night, Paul Genesse and Patrick Tracy are both Utah writers but not Mormons) only Utah is like 70% Mormon, so statistically it is going to work out that way.

Sure, the NYT can look for some weird philosophical underpinning that all Mormons—or blacks, Jews, or Asians—share (because you know all groups are just homogenous little voter blocks to big city liberals) but looking at that partial list above, I think it is more about strong networking in a relatively small community than anything.

But then we couldn’t have this pretentious article!

Unsurprisingly, the heavily Mormon state of Utah has become an incubator.

Duh.

Brigham Young University, in Provo, hosts an annual Symposium on Books for Young Readers. Many members of LDS Storymakers live in Utah, where they can connect in person as well as online. The Utah-based children’s author Rick Walton runs an email list that further connects people.

“A lot of writers who might have gone another way have gone to children’s or young adult because of the strong communities,” Ms. Hale said.

So that part there hits on the nuts and bolts reality of the matter, but don’t worry…

But there is a specifically Mormon logic to the trend, too.

Because Mark quickly dismisses it in favor of his own pseudointellectual interpretation.

Realist literature for adults often includes aspects of adult life like sex and drinking, and the convention is to describe them without judgment, without moralizing.

Note that he proclaims this convention, but he doesn’t establish who it belongs to. That is a fun trick, like writing “some experts say (insert made up bullshit here)” or “FACT (insert more bullshit)”.

I think Mark is flat out wrong on this one. I’m going to proclaim the opposite. Strong writing is going to have judgment and moralizing based upon the perspective of the Point of View character. But what do I know? I’m not a *real* writer.

Mormons don’t write about drinking? Huh? Just because I don’t drink doesn’t mean my characters won’t, and each one will have their own take on the subject. Jake Sullivan drinks, but usually only when somebody else is buying because he’s cheap. Owen Pitt doesn’t drink, but that’s because he worked as a bouncer and has zero patience for drunks. Lorenzo drinks sparingly, but only because he’s a health nut. Earl Harbinger drinks lots and lots of beer. But my record holder PoV is Francis Stuyvesant who is only outdrank by the master Raymond Chandler himself! And come to think of it all of those guys had premarital sex, because their actions are consistent with the make-up of their character.

I’m pretty sure Dan Wells isn’t a serial killer. I don’t think John Brown serves a dark god. Brandon Sanderson, to the best of my knowledge, has never killed anybody by shooting nails with allomancy. And holy crap, some of Orson Scott Card’s short fiction is DARK. I’m talking child molester dark. So why this hackneyed nonsense about not being able to separate authors beliefs from their characters?

Because it simply isn’t true, but something being true will never hold back the New York Times!

By writing for children and young adults — or in genres popular with young people — one can avoid such topics. Mormon authors can thus have their morals and their book sales, too.

I’m a perfect example of why this isn’t true. I very specifically don’t write for kids. I write extreme levels of violence. Depending on the series, I write very realistic violence. Dead Six and Swords of Exodus were co-written with a veteran and proofed by a bunch of combat vets, and in the second book they take on the sunshiny topic of modern slavery. Or I write crazy over the top violence (I am the leading cause of Google searches for the term Snow-Go).

Personally, I don’t write sex scenes. Though I write things where you know damned good and well that sex has happened. I just tend to do the 1950’s movie style of cutting away. Why? Because of the audience I write for. Do you really think the average Correia reader, somebody searching for technically competent, two fisted action, explosion-o-rama adventure yarns wants to read a scene featuring my attempt at writing a steamy, yet totally pointless, sex scene? Hey, Tom Clancy readers, how many of you remember and cherish his few ham fisted forays in writing sex? Remember Bear and the Dragon? Yeah… Exactly. I don’t need more descriptions of the Chinese secret agent’s magnificent wang again, thanks, Tom.

Now, if I was writing for Laurel K. Hamilton’s audience, then I’m going to sex it up. Different audiences, you give them a different product. (Gasp! He called it product! He’s not a *real* writer!) Brad Torgersen, Mormon author, who has been nominated for the Hugo/Campbell/Nebula (totally doesn’t count) is a great writer, and I know for a fact that man will go all sorts of sexy in his writing. I’ve had to make him clean up game fiction before I could put in on my blog. My kids read this page!

But of course, if I was a *real* writer, then my dreary navel gazing about the dying polar bears should be sporadically interrupted by sex scenes where afterwards everybody cries and talks about the cismale gendernormative fascism of the patriarchy and the symbolism of who was on top.

“I’ll tell you why they write young adult,” said Ms. Nunes. “Because they don’t have to write the pages and pages of sex. They don’t want to spend a lot of time in the bedroom.”

The NYT is confusing all genre with YA, which is just one genre, and they’re also assuming that something YA can’t be sexy… Which shows that Mark hasn’t read much, because there is some R rated YA out there. YA doesn’t have straight up porn in it, but I can think of more Mormons who write adult than YA.

In an email, Mr. Morgan added that the absence of sex in a novel can lead booksellers to pick a genre for it: “I believe that most writers who are LDS are by default labeled as ‘young adult’ writers because graphic sex scenes, graphic violence and swearing are omitted from their writing — even if the material is for a more mature audience.”

And here is another problem, one which I’ve talked about before. The entire concept of genre is fake. Genre categories exist for one reason, and one reason only, book stores need to know where to put stuff on the shelf. Period.

Look at my Grimnoir Chronicles trilogy. They are written for an adult audience, they’re well researched alternative history, but they’re fantasy with magic, only the magic is like super heroes, except the whole thing is written hard boiled noir pulp style… Yeah… I didn’t know what genre they were until Amazon assigned them to a category, but apparently they are Paranormal, because I’ve won two Audie Awards so far in that category, and in France they’re fantasy because I was a finalist for Best Fantasy there. So go figure.

But to the literati elite, what category you put a book in is everything. They don’t care about if the book is actually good, or fun, or entertaining, or uplifting, or thought provoking, or even sellable. They just care about checking boxes on a checklist. So why the hell should a bunch of college professors who’ve sold dick be the final arbiters of what is good or not?

Another factor is possible church disapproval.

This next portion is utter crap. I’ve written scenes of murder, torture, mutilation, genocide, and have brought in religious plot elements from Catholicism, Asatru, Wicca, myth, everybody’s folklore, and all of it has been heavily laced with profanity, and I’ve had one… count them one comment from a church leader in all this time, and it was “Wow. You sure do have a potty mouth” from a Bishop who then went on to read the rest of my novels.

The novelist Brian Evenson said he was forced out of Brigham Young University for writing fiction that displeased church leaders, and in 2002 he was excommunicated.

Okay, since the vast majority of my blog readers aren’t Mormon, you probably didn’t catch that this part raises some red flags on the BS meter. Let me give you a doctrinal, nuts and bolts look behind the curtain of how my religion works.

First off, BYU is a school earned by the church, but it isn’t the church. It is our Notre Dame. When you go there you sign an agreement that you’ll follow their honor code. And personally, I think their honor code is ridiculous (and filled with a bunch of extraneous stuff that isn’t against any actual commandment in our religion, like drinking caffeine, which still drives me nuts because that is perfectly fine for the rest of us, but every time I go to a con people think I’m a bad Mormon because I’m drinking coke, thanks BYU) I figure college students are adults with their own free agency, so they shouldn’t need the threat of getting kicked out of school to help them keep the commandments they’ve already committed to uphold. But I went to Utah State. Go Aggies.

So this dude got kicked out of BYU for writing fiction, yet I look at that list of authors above and I know that several of them went to BYU, and they’ve written all sorts of weird crap with no problems… I start to get suspicious. I’ve never heard of Brian Evenson, but 9 times out of 10 when the NYT trots out some disgruntled ex-Mormon (I swear they must keep a list) they usually have a grudge and can be counted on to reliably portray the rest of us as knuckle dragging morons.

Next, he was excommunicated in 2002. You’ve got to understand that Mormons save excommunication for serious stuff. Excommunication means we kick you out of our church entirely because your fundamental beliefs or behavior are no longer compatible. If you commit adultery or are convicted of a felony you usually only get disfellowshipped, which means you can still come to church, but you’re not allowed to hold any callings or do anything special or participate in any ordinances until you repent and get your life back in order.

Getting excommunicated means that you really pissed us off. Normally that means you murdered somebody (I’m assuming even the NYT isn’t that desperate) or you are continually preaching false doctrine which goes against the established teachings of the church. So a cursory Amazon search shows that Brian’s books are about the typical anti-Mormon BS of early church leaders murdering people in blood atonement and some weird crap about temple marriage, and having been married in the temple and knowing our doctrine rather well, from just reading just the back cover description of his book Open Curtain, uh… WTF is this crap?

So for my non-Mormons readers, this would be like some member of your local church loudly proclaiming that he doesn’t believe any of your church’s doctrine, actively subverting what your church believes in, leading your fellow parishioners astray, and testifying that your preacher/pastor/priest has gay sex with farm animals. You don’t believe our doctrine? Fine. We’re not going to change it to suit your weird ass beliefs. Bye bye. Of course, now this person is exactly the unbiased source people should go to in order to learn about your religious beliefs.

When he was a child, he kept a journal, and his parents told him to “only record the happy things, and not the negative things.”

What a strangely useful remark from our disgruntled ex-Mormon that handily validates our reporter’s predetermined narrative!

It is the kind of instruction one cannot imagine coming from Jewish parents, or even from sin-worried evangelical Protestants.

Because remember, you all fit into neat little boxes. My kid’s journals have notes for windage and elevation adjustment clicks based on what load they are using… but I suspect they may be an anomaly.

In the Latter-day Saint culture of uplift and consensus, it somehow makes more sense. But it did not strike Mr. Evenson as being helpful for the budding artist.

Gee whiz… Yet hundreds of us have managed to sell millions of books while not being douchebags tearing down our religion! Poor Mr. Evenson. He’s quite the special snowflake.

“That kind of attitude, which is symptomatic in Mormonism as a whole, makes it very hard for some serious things to come out for Mormons,” Mr. Evenson said.

Yes. It is hard for *serious* things to come out of Mormons… Sure, we excel in science, engineering, math, finance, business, and even the arts, but we have totally failed to meet the NYT’s arbitrary and capricious standards of *real* writing… But don’t worry, the minute an active Mormon (or any other member of a group they don’t like) wins a Nobel Prize for Literature, it won’t count anymore either.

“There’s a weird pride in the limitations of the culture, and that to me is something that kills the possibility of artistic creation.”

Kiss my ass. Yeah, the way my religion says I shouldn’t beat my children while snorting cocaine off of a dead hooker is so limiting to my muse.

This is for all the aspiring authors out there who are hung up about creating art, put your big girl panties on, read this, and get to work: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/ask-correia-14-how-to-be-a-professional-author/

Patrick Madden, who teaches English at Brigham, says that there are Mormons who write excellent poetry — he mentioned his colleague Lance Larsen — and intellectually ambitious fiction. But he agreed that Mormon writers were comfortable with genre conventions.

This is kind of funny, because they are citing BYU as some sort of help. WRONG. They used to be good but over recent years the BYU English department has become as deluded with pretentions of literary greatness as the rest of the country. They’ve done their best to squash genre and focus on *real* writing.

One reason Utah has such a vibrant writing community is because of Dave Wolverton who writes under the penname Dave Farland. He taught BYU’s creative writing program for years, and he focused on the actual business end of writing instead of muses and dead authors nobody ever read to begin with. He had over 200 students go on to become professionals and 40 become bestsellers. That’s amazing. That’s a better success rate than any other creative writing program in the world. Brandon Sanderson, one of Dave’s former students, took over teaching Dave’s class. If an article about Mormon/Utah writers fails to note what Dave accomplished, then you know that zero research was done. And Dave did it despite BYU, not because of them.

Then there is the LTUE writing symposium. It is one of the best creative writing symposiums in the world. It was held at BYU for most of its existence. However, since BYU’s English department was hung up on *real* writing, we moved it first to UVU, and now it is being held off a college campus entirely. Thank goodness. If you want your writing to actually grow up GET OUT OF COLLEGE!

One problem with lit-fic, since it is almost impossible to make a living at it, is that it is mostly written on the side by college professors, published in prestigious literary journals (where you will be read by literally dozens—if you count the editorial staff) and then forced on students who’d rather be reading something actually entertaining. Newspapers then review it as brilliant, and socialites skim enough of it talk about it at parties. Meanwhile lit-fic ignores the rest of the world, and now we’re supposed to feel bad because those of us winning at life don’t satisfy them? Whoop-de-fricking do.

“I think there is a pretty thriving LDS book culture,” Professor Madden said. “But a lot of it is faith-affirming and uncomplicated-type writing. Maybe that’s why there’s a pretty strong thrust of LDS genre writers. Because when you write sci-fi and so forth, things aren’t as messy as with realistic fiction.”

He sees uncomplicated. I see entertaining.

Realistic fiction… Why? If I have the ability to create whole new worlds from nothing, and populate them with fantastic characters, and then take them and do amazing things, why would I want to write “realistic” fiction? Most people read books to escape their reality. Why do I want to shove an even shittier reality in their face?

And you don’t need to be Mormon get that. You just need to exist outside the echo chamber of the literati elite and academia.

***One quick note while I’m bashing the NYT’s sloppy writing. I’ve had people ask how come I mock the NYT, but I’m proud to say that I’m a NYT bestseller. Fair enough. The NYT bestseller list, despite being terribly inaccurate, is still the most prestigious bestseller list in publishing mostly because everybody has heard of it. I tell somebody who isn’t even much of a reader that I’m a NYT bestselling author and that conveys a level of success. So I use it. As far as accuracy? It is crap. The list is based on a sampling of the sales of around two hundred secret bookstores, most of which are clustered in the north east, specifically New York. Nielsen Bookscan on the other hand, tracks about 75% of the book sales in the country, so it is way more accurate. And I’ve made the Nielsen list more often, ranked higher, and have stayed on it longer than I have on the NYT. Only when I say Nielsen Bookscan, the average person has never heard of it. So that’s why I use the NYTBSA bit.

Various updates, Sad Puppies, fishing for reviews

September 2, 2013 correia45 21 Comments

This is going to be a really quick post because I’m swamped today.

First off, I got the results from the Hugo awards last night. My Sad Puppies campaign (wherein I played Sarah McLachlan music and showed abused conservative writers) to get MHL nominated for best novel sorta worked, in that every single other person in every other category I pushed got a nomination, except for me. But the stats were released last night and it turns out MHL was #6 and missed the top five by only 17 votes.

Next, Into the Storm came out last week and so far everybody has been enjoying it. Now I’m fishing for reviews to be posted.

http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=monshuntnati-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00EUSMLLE

So if you read it, please post an honest review… Unless you didn’t like it, because nobody wants your negative waves. For the non-Warmachine players, it really doesn’t matter, and I want my regular readers to check this book out because I honestly had a blast writing it.

On that note, if you want to leave a review for Warbound there, or any of my other books, that’s great. My Amazon reviews are pretty good, but nothing like my Audible. Holy moly, I checked that the other day and I had over 18,000 reviews and I was still averaging four and a half stars. If I could equel in books what I do in audiobooks, I’d be making Twilight money. 🙂

Third, I’m at SLC Comic-Con next week. I’m looking forward to that. They’ve sold 22,000 tickets so by Utah standards that is a huge event. But that’s what happens when you have William Shatner at something.

Fourth, all of my patch orders and autographed book stuff as of a couple of days ago have been shipped, so your stuff should be arriving shortly if you are waiting for something.

And finally, back to work on Monster Hunter Nemesis. It is coming along nicely, but man, it is a challenge to write about somebody who takes “strong, silent type” to whole new levels.

Reminder: Only a few days left for Hugo voting

July 25, 2013 correia45 3 Comments

If you signed up to nominate for the Hugos, you should have gotten an email from the HugoPinBot. The final ballot is up and your votes need to be cast before the end of the month.

I didn’t get nominated, but everybody else I pushed for did get nominated, so if you were part of the Sad Puppies campaign, you can still vote. Toni Weisskopf is up for best editor. Elitist Book Reviews is up for best fanzine. Vincent Chong is up for best artist. So don’t forget to vote!

The Sad Puppies Hugo campaign… Sorta successful for everybody but me. :)

April 1, 2013 correia45 36 Comments

So the Sad Puppies Hugo stacking campaing was a success for almost everybody else I pushed, but me, as we didn’t get enough to break MHL into best novel. It will be interesting to see how close we got when the numbers come out after the awards.

Considering how many of the Monster Hunter Nation picks made it, that’s pretty cool, since my fans aren’t exactly the WorldCon type. Oh, but we will be back… Just out of spite. You think Sarah McLachlan music is sad? You ain’t seen nothing yet. 🙂

Toni Weiskopf is up for Best Editor, long form. She really really deserves to win, but SMOF hates all of Baen except for Bujold, so we’ll see what happens there. Jim Baen, who launched tons of careers of some of the biggest names and series in sci-fi, had to die before he got a nomination, and even then he lost to David Hartwell, who has spare Hugos cluttering up his house.

Vincent Chong, who did the Mage Brute (French Hard Magic) cover is up for Best Artist.

My friends at Elitist Book Reviews are nominated, and deserve a win for having the best review place on the internet. If they lose, it will be because somebody in SMOFdom discovered I like them.

Stan Schmidt needs to win best editor, short form. He’s retiring now, but he’s only run the leading sci-fi magazine for like the last couple of decades, launching the careers of literally hundreds of writers. But he’s no Doctor Who.

Here is the list of all the nominees:

http://elitistbookreviews.blogspot.com/2013/03/2013-hugo-award-nominees.html

And for those of you that follow this stuff, it is pretty much what you expect, as in a big SMOF popularity contest where various people with lots of WorldCon factions politicking for them are insta-noms, and everybody else is shut out. Luckily, only one of the nominees for best novel is a dying polar bear story of global warming sadness and evil capitalism, which would normally win, but it will surely lose to Scalzi, who is liberal blogger who happens to write books too, and God help us if they ever start doing Doctor Who novelizations because that will be your five nominees a year.

For the other Best Novel noms, Lois Bujold is awesome, but she’s won like 8 Hugos. Mira Grant is cool as heck. In person, she’s really great, and I like her, but notice that since she is beloved by SMOF, she is nominated in every Hugo category except Car of the Year. Saladin’s a nice guy, and beloved by SMOF (we were up for the Campbell at the same time), but I’m predicting he’ll come in last, becasue this is his only book and he’s not built up a huge SMOF backer faction yet, but just having nominated a guy with an ethnic name will make the SMOFers feel all warm and tingly inside and good about themselves, so that’ll be enough for them. (Note, I’m not actually placing any bets that the voters actually read all the works).

My buddy Brandon Sanderson is up for Novella, but he’ll probably lose for not being popular enough with the SMOFers, which is too bad because the story is unfreakingbelievable. Mira Grant would normally win this one because of how many WorldCon fans she’s got, but Jay Lake will win this category easily. Sure he’s very talented, but he’ll win because he’s fighting cancer, and the votes aren’t decided on the actual books. Once again, I’ll be surprised if half the voters actually read the stories.

My buddy Howard Tayler is up for one for best graphic story, but he’ll probably lose for not being trendy enough because he’s only been telling this story every single day for 12 years. Both Brandon, Howard, and my friend Dan Wells are up for Writing Excuses again (a Podcast which helps thousands of aspiring writers improve their craft and learn the business) but they are up against something Doctor Who related, so they will inevitably lose.

In Novelletes, Seanan McGuire has two noms, and she is Mira Grant, so she wins this one. Also, the way the Hugo votes work so the lowest count nom is dropped, then the next, and the next, and your 2nd and 3rd places votes count too, you don’t have a problem with faction’s splitting the vote. To be fair, Seanan got screwed a couple of years ago for best novel, and had the most 1st place votes, but still lost once they worked out their weird Hugo vote tabulation magic.

Game of Thrones isn’t being considered a movie this year, because it got its Hugo. And now it is back to the Doctor Who love, because you know, there were absolutely no other TV shows made over the last decade.

I found this because of the blog trackback to my Sad Puppies campaign. It is a pretty good overview of some of the problems with the Hugos. And I think he is only scratching the surface of the issues: http://www.staffersbookreview.com/2013/04/can-we-stop-talking-about-the-hugos-now.html

Political Fun with Facebook

March 13, 2013 correia45 171 Comments

I know that many of my blog readers also follow me on Facebook or Twitter, so you probably know that I have a bit of a reputation for getting into political debates. Often these aren’t my own fights, but usually I jump in if I see a friend of mine getting bulldozed. Combine that with a topic that I happen to know a lot about, and I just can’t help myself.

I got into this kerfuffle yesterday. You guys have heard me go off on the topic of how the publishing industry has a liberal bias, and how the Secret Masters of Fandom go out of their way to squash writers who have dissenting views, either through threats, boycotts, intimidation, or slander. (do a search here for anything labeled hate mail) I’ve pointed out this pattern before.

This is really two seperate issues. First, if you are an out of the closet, politically active, outspoken anything-other-than-left-wing author, your odds of getting published go down, and it is a running joke in sci-fi/fantasy that if you fall into that category your only hope of getting picked up is Baen. Second, once writers come out with any opinion that deviates from the group think, they are pounced on and intimidated into silence.

Before on this blog, we’ve gone through the liberal response pattern to any dissenting thoughts (had a lot of fun picking out these in the 2,500 comments of the big gun control essay). Skim through the article far enough to find something to get offended by and then dismiss the whole thing. Or, if you feel like putting in the work, find some way to say they’re not a *real* author, ridicule them, say that they’re too “angry”, strawmen their argument, pick something that is unanswerable or unsatisfiable and then demand proof, if given proof ignore it, (and remember anecdote isn’t evidence until that anecdote is printed in a reputable publication like Salon or Mother Jones) and when all else fails insinuate racism.

Between these two issues it makes it so that there are fewer outspoken conservative or libertarian authors, and those that there are, have to keep their mouths shut because they are afraid of offending their editor/publisher, or being the victims of a SMOF lynching.

I’m cool on both type of problems, becaue I’m with a publisher that cares a lot more about the quality of my writing and how many books I can sell than my personal beliefs, and I’ve got enough fans that I can freely mock the Righteous Indignation Brigade. Luckily I’ve found that for every one person I offend by honestly sharing my opinions, I pick up two or three new ones who are happy to have a writer who doesn’t mock their belief system.

But this is still a pet peeve issue of mine.

So my buddy, Super Author Brad Torgersen, (who happens to be conservative, and is an Chief Warrant Officer in the US Army) wrote this article about the nerfing of sci-fi.

http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/science-fictions-political-failure-3-han-solo-shoots-first/

So of course, this popped up on Facebook about it. I didn’t get involved for a bit, but when I did, it got pretty funny. The originator eventually deleted it, but of course, one of my fans had saved it. (because you guys are awesome like that). Thanks, Ken.

For the record, I’ve got no issue with the thread originator. Marguerite conducted herself well, and wasn’t a freak out ninny-hammer like many of the posters. Good for her. She struck me as somebody who I’d disagree with, but she was cool.

I really wanted to share this, and also add some more comments, because this little FB thread illustrates how arguments between liberals and conservatives usually unfold. There are so many delightful little patterns in here! My additional comments will be in bold. I tried to cut out all the extraneous FB crap. (note, whenever I post “I had waffles for breakfast” 72 people will Like that comment).

Marguerite Reed via Brad Torgersen

OH SWEET FLEECY HAND-POTTED INDIGO CHRIST YOU GUYS JUST. DO. NOT. GET. IT.

Science Fiction’s political failure 3: Han Solo shoots first

My friend and editor at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Scott M. Roberts, posted this rather stunning piece of commentary to Facebook this morning. I’ve quoted him in blocks below, …

Virginia Phillips The article is too long, and your comment too concise, for me to follow you clearly. What upsets you most about it?

Marguerite Reed It’s bitching about “cultural sensitivity” in specfic. The essay is agreeing with someone else’s essay arguing that the policing of “culturally sensitive” issues in specfic has rendered science fiction toothless.

Michelle M. Heitman I don’t know…I rather liked it. It’s so rare that you see such a perfect and shining example of reducio ad absurdum published, these days.

Robert Feldacker I think I agree with Marguerete here. The author seem to take the incident of people objecting to Orson Card’s odious views and inflate them to a rejection of all characters with bad traits, if I’m understanding the article. I actually think readers like flawed characters and always have, but readers are also aware of the character and actions of the authors- and often were in the past as well, which contributed to the colorful lives of some authors by allowing them to build character through suffering 🙂

Marguerite Reed Now, certainly I can agree that TV and film SF are pretty toothless, but that’s pretty much the nature of the medium these days. NOT in the written form.

Brad Torgersen If SF still has teeth, they only bite one-way. Again, the genre that ties itself into knots over who it may be offending on any given day is not a genre that can call itself dangerous anymore. JMHO.

Marguerite Reed If I may go out on a limb here–this is the same sort of whining we women hear from Nice Guys™.

Marguerite Reed Mr. Torgerson, let’s establish whether we’re discussing written SF or viewed SF, before we join combat, deal? 🙂

Brad Torgersen Deal.

Brad Torgersen Also: precisely how do “Nice Guys” whine, and what does it sound like specifically? I am curious.

Dexter Guptill I read plenty of sci-fi with teeth. And don’t own a TV.

Marguerite Reed I am personally talking about written SF. As I said above, pretty much anything on film or on tv is toothless–why? Because MONEY.

Marguerite Reed So sure, Lucas is gonna be all poopy about Han shooting second.

Marguerite Reed After all, Ewoks.

Marguerite Reed So Brad, can you give me an instance in the world of written SF where the genre tied itself into knots over who it offended?

Brad Torgersen If you belong to SFWA you might be aware of one going on right this second.

Marguerite Reed I am torn between responding to this facetiously and respodning to this maturely.

Marguerite Reed Mr. Torgerson, as I am not yet a member of SFWA (and rather unsure that I’d ever want to become a member) would you tell me what the latest controvery is?

Brad Torgersen Presently, members of SFWA are quite upset that a certain cover appeared on the SFWA Bulletin, and that a certain Hugo-winning author and editor noted that beautiful editor Bea Mahaffey was beautiful. Many knickers have been twisted.

Marguerite Reed But that’s not a genre, that’s an organization.

Brad Torgersen The organization pretends to own the genre. One of the organization’s problems, I think. I am critiquing the genre according to the rules as established by the “bastion” in our midst. (not the scare quotes.) But this is just one in a long, long line of floggings, scolding, public upheavals, etc, in recent years. Many authors and editors have been dragged through the mud. Often by people with far less talent and far more time on their hands than the target(s) themselves.

Marguerite Reed As long as you’re here, what’s the differnece between cultural sensitivity and cultural awareness?

Brad Torgersen I think Scott M. Roberts said it best: the former is reactive and exclusive, while the latter is proactive and contex-conscious. I would add: the former is concerned with avoiding controversy, while the latter may invite controversy, but intelligently and for the right reasons.

Marguerite Reed How can one make that objective rather than subjective terminology? Could it be simply that the word “sensitive” has developed into a term that elicits a knee-jerk reaction, while “awareness” is still somewhat neutral?

Marguerite Reed How is being sensitive any different from being aware?

Marguerite Reed And now that SF belongs to everyone, rather than simply a specific demographic, the opportunities for bravery, courage, truth-telling, BOLDNESS have only increased.

Brad Torgersen Yes, it is subjective based on the experiences of all of us, of course. My experience is that any time someone begins talking about sensitivity, that’s code for shutting people down and shutting people up. One can be aware and still tell a story that reflects truth. Especially truths that are not exactly flattering. Sensitivity is often a tool used by people who demand flattery, or silence. One or the other.

Marguerite Reed But Brad, did you ever think thatit is maybe time for your demographic to be silent for a little while?

BOOM! This is the comment that got my attention. It was like somebody just turned on the Correia Signal. Liam Neeson spoke with the voice of Zeus and shouted “RELEASE THE CORREIA!” Sadly, there was a bunch of other stuff afterwards before I had a chance to jump in.

Brad Torgersen Look at what you said. Now, look at it again. Now, look at it a third time. Tell me if you think you can spot the problem.

Marguerite Reed “now that SF belongs to everyone, rather than simply a specific demographic, the opportunities for bravery, courage, truth-telling, BOLDNESS have only increased”

Marguerite Reed (Mind you, I don’t disagree with your statement that SFWA pretends to own the genre.)

Barth Anderson Wait. Before this goes too far afield. What are you really talking about, Brad? Commit to defending something culturally/politically “dangerous” in written sf. Your comment defending the n-word as written in Huck Finn is duly noted, but that’s Mark Twain, Certifiably Dangerous for over a hundred years. You seem to be talking about something in sf specifically. Are you? Can you give an example of the Mark Twain equivalent in our literature and not in some internet kerfuffle going on behind closed doors? Honestly interested, not baiting, I promise.

Francis Murphy To Kill A Mockingbird is more recent and features controversial words. Someone will want to redact that soon.

Scott M. Roberts >>But Brad, did you ever think thatit is maybe time for your demographic to be silent for a little while?<<

My demographic is “people who believe that freedom of expression is paramount to to the exercise of all other human freedoms.”

Given that, I will be silent when I’m dead.

Wait- I’m a writer. Given luck, I’ll never shut up! Even if its just an echo.

Barth Anderson Francis Murphy — How about sf. Written in the last 10 years. Let’s set up some parameters and see who’s been POLITICALLY INCORRECT (TM). 🙂

Susan Groppi wait wait wait, the bit where some SFWA members have objected to their professional organization’s trade publication having half-naked ladies in cheesecake poses on the cover, that’s the best example of “sensitivity run wild” that Brad can come up with? I think that when your great example is such crap, you should just concede the argument.

Marguerite Reed No, Mr. Roberts, I don’t think that’s your demographic.

Scott M. Roberts Okay. 🙂

Marguerite Reed When I say it’s time for your demographic to sit down and be quiet fr a while, I mean the people who have had full rein at play in the fileds of SF. Perhaps instead of acting defensive and hurt because you or people whom you perceive as people being like you got called out, you should close your mouth and open your ears and listen to what they have to say, instead of simply waiting your turn to talk. I got told to sit down and shut up at my first WisCon, and while that stung like hell, I did it–and I learned.

For the many people here who don’t go to sci-fi conventions, Wiscon is all about feminism and all of the usual buzzwords for when liberals go to pray at the sacred altar of victimhood.

Marguerite Reed On the other hand, perhaps we should go back and define jsut what the hell “toothless” means.

Francis Murphy Barth, Mark Twain wasn’t SF for the most part.

Marguerite Reed No, but Mark Twain is referrd to in the piece as an example of tooth-pulling.

Marguerite Reed I think it’s a serious mistake to equate the valid concerns of people in SF with the ignorant distress of people who wish to sanitize Mark Twain by taking out the word nigger.

Francis Murphy It was referenced in the original blog as a prime example of parents wrapping their kids in intellectual Nerf and wanting to yank them from the shelves.

I see things haven’t changed much over the years in certain aspects of the science fiction community. I could burn an afternoon on this or I could go spend my time doing something more productive.

Byron Bailey “How is being sensitive any different from being aware?”

I think you can be very aware of something but not sensitive to it. Vampires, for example, are purported to be senitive to sunlight. I tend to be merely aware of it, though, unless I’m out in it way too long. Likewise, you can be very aware of other cultures, but not very sensiitive about them. In fact, you can even use your awareness of cultural differences to demonize the other which is anything but sensitive or figure out how to use their differences to destroy them or manipulate them to your advantage as some who have advocated anthropology in the military have suggested. With that said, so far as culture sensitivity can be developed, it’s usually built upon cultural awareness coupled with a certain amount of empathy.

Barth Anderson The argument FOR “sanitizing” Mark Twain is that generations of African American kids might be able to read Huck Finn without having the mind-spinning and very hurtful jolt of hearing the word nigger over and fucking over again. I don’t pretend to know whether that’s a good idea or not. But it’s a unique and compelling question of censorship that has real world implications for the context in which kids are being taught in American society.

My question: Is there a remotely comparable question of censorship in sf, as the essay writer seems to imply?

Marguerite Reed There is a classic example of privilege right there–of my white privilege. I never got that before. You know why? I never had to. Thank you, Barth.

Barth Anderson The counter argument works for me too. A writer’s work should never be censored. Ever.

Barth Anderson ~crickets~

This Barth guy is a jackass. Because you know, when you demand something of FB and people wander off to take care of their real lives rather than answer your demand, that proves that you won… or something… hell if I know.

Fortune Buchholtz Crickets? Here’s what I’ll say. In my high school I had 2 African-American students in my English class when we read Huck Finn. The girl, LaNita, was offended by it and made an eloquent argument about the racism inherent in the “black sidekick” motif seen so often in American literature and film. The guy, Taylor, said that Twain was just echoing his times, and that we had to have that slap in the face to understand how far equality had come. But the clock on this has been turned so far back now via the Teafolk; certainly things have been said in the past 2 or 3 years that were unimaginable just a decade ago.

Banquo Gordon Just to nit pick… Han did not shoot first. To have shot first implies there was a second shot. Gredo never had a chance. There was only one shot fired.

Marguerite Reed Frankly, I’d look forward to a discussoin about just what “danger” in fiction means….

Barth Anderson They’ve buggered off. They’ve scampered.

Oh, he has no idea what he has wrought… Before this was over I’d called in Mike Williamson and Tom Kratman.

Marguerite Reed I know. But that doesn’ tmean that others can’t weigh in on that particular questoin, which I posted over at my other FB account (she said helpfully).

Banquo Gordon You have a second FB page (he said expectantly)?

Brad Torgersen Administrative note: uh oh, Wiscon has been invoked. Marguerite, you can happily self-censor yourself until the cows come home, shutting up any time someone “not in your demographic” tells you to, and you can pat yourself on the back all you want. Just please understand that Wiscon is a warped bubble at the fringes of . . . well, *everything*, and that just because Wiscon (or someone at Wiscon) says a thing, this thing need not be universally true in all ways nor in all contexts. Like I’ve said over on my wall, I think it’s time for *all* demographics to be as noisy, loud, and outspoken as they want. And if someone tells me to shut up and listen, I can usually bank on the fact that this person would go into a state of apoplexy if I were to tell them the same thing. Ergo, sauce for the goose . . .

And I finally show up. I’d been busy dealing with my EVIL MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX job.

Larry Correia Wow. Reading this thread I see a lot of bloviating academia-speak mixed in with some “look I took Logic 101”.

The line about how it is time for Brad’s demographic to shut up is rather hilarious. 🙂

Larry Correia You guys want examples of bias in sci-fi and the nerf wrapping of the genre? I’m a NYT bestselling, award winning novelist. Yet, anytime I have any political opinion at all that dissents from the accepted group think narrative I immediately get threats of boycott. Every. Single. Time.

Or I’m told that I’m not a “real” writer, and whatever the criteria are to be a “real” writer, apparently being conservative is mutually exclusive to it.

Marguerite Reed Well, tellign you you’re nt a real writer is wrong.

Marguerite Reed I can get crabby on your behalf with that.

Larry Correia Any political post I make (and I know Brad has seen this as well) is immediately followed by comments about how I should keep my opinion to myself, with threats about how I’m turning off potential readers… Interestingly enough, you don’t see that on the flip side.

Larry Correia Also, there are a whole lot of conservative leaning writers, however the vast majority of the ones I know keep their opinions to themselves because the publishing industry is overwhelmingly liberal, and they don’t wish to sabotage their careers.

Larry Correia Everybody in publishing knows this. It is a not very well kept dirty secret. That’s why Baen is such an oddity in that our publisher simply doesn’t care, and will publish anybody as long as we can sell books, from militant libertarians to a card carrying communist.

We’re an oddity. An anomoly. Everybody knows this.

In fact, if you are an out of the closet conservative, and you try to get published somewhere else, you very well may be rejected,not for the quality of your work, but because of your personal beliefs.

Marguerite Reed I’ve heard that.

Wait… So everybody has heard that Baen is the only sci-fi publishing house that actively does not care what its author’s personal views are… but this is all in conservative’s imagination?

Larry Correia I know of one case in particular where an author friend of mine listened to a conversation between three Manhattan large house editors talking about a particular manuscript which had been submitted to them. All three agreed that it was brilliant, and would probably sell like hot cakes. But all three rejected it because the author was an out of the closet, out spoken, politically active conservative. One of the editors even went so far to suggest that the writer should try *gasp* Baen.

Larry Correia There are many authors who have spent their careers collecting awards because they are brilliant authors, but the minute they come out of the closet and let their true feelings be known, then they no longer are “real” authors, and no more awards for them.
Love Card or hate him, (I personally don’t know the guy, and am only a fan of one of his books) he’s one of the most important sci-fi writers of our time, and just because he came out against gay marriage doesn’t automatically invalidate his writing ability… But what awards has he won since?
Oh, and Dan Simmons. Who I think is probably the most talented single author alive won every single award you can win, up until the point several years ago where he wrote an essay about how maybe, just maybe, militant Islam wants to kill you. No more awards for you.
You invoke Wiscon, so you only have to look as far as Moon. And I love when liberals eat their own. The minute you break from the accepted collective groupthink in fandom then you get the Fredo in the boat treatment. Dissent will not be tolerated.

Larry Correia So spare me the “well you white men just need to shut up now” crap, since:
1. This isn’t about race. (see all those vowels in my last name?)
2. It isn’t about sex. (ask female libertarian or conservative authors how they are treated)
It isn’t about class or patrimony or any of the other buzzwords you want to throw out there. It is about one particular strain of political thought absolutely owning the publishing industry and the circle jerk that is the literary awards system, and them systematically crushing any opposing viewpoint.

Barth Anderson Nice job writing Brad’s article for him, Larry! What you’re saying is FAR more interesting and real than whether Han Solo shot first or second or whether writers should be “sensitive” or “aware.” I said in an aside to Marguerite that Brad’s piece was ultimately about conservative writers and Card, but no one would really say it out loud. So good for you. Seriously.

See here, Brad isn’t a *real* author.

I’d love an Actual Example of what you’re talking about because I’m on the other side of the fence. I didn’t know this was a thing concervative writers were all hepped up about and I want to learn and know what you’re talking about. Name a title that got “nerf wrapped” and who did the wrapping. I don’t mean a call for boycott, I mean, sort of like the example of Star Wars of Huck Finn, an example of a writer getting pressured by an editor or reviewer to culturally sensitize their writing. Because if all you’re talking about is mean liberals readers having hissy-spats on your blogs and Facebook pages,all I can say is good for you. You have engaged the debate and that’s what it’s all about, whether you’re a righty writer or a lefty like me.

But I do care about censorship and strongarming of writers in the publishing industry. And I want to know names and what you are REALLY talking about. Message me on the side if you don’t want to go naked in public.

I’ll mention the why in thread later, but note, demand the undeliverable proof. Also tweak the argument to your specific demands. You’ll note above I talked about two seperate issues in keeping conservative writers quiet, but he dismisses one, and picks the other which he knows I won’t reveal. Clever liberal.

Martin Grover I can personally and truthfully attest that Larry Correia holds no political opinions that even remotely clash with the larger literary groupthink. He is mild mannered and entirely sensitive, Profoundly so.

Martin is one of my left leaning fans. I’ve got no problem with him, or people like him, because he is smart, and has no problem debating his positions and respecting opinions. I only take issue with the bullies and the squashers.

Larry Correia Barth… I don’t know you and you want me to give you the names of publishers, editors, and authors who are unprofessionally biased, in the industry I work in, which I make my living at… and you want me to give you their names? In print… and just trust somebody who is bashing one of my friends on the internet not to pass that on, scouts honor… HA! 😀 That’s priceless.

Or even better, you want me to sell out my friends, say who has complained about their editors/agents and political nerfing, and then totally trust that you won’t rat them out? (and I know of one case where this sort of thing did get back, won’t name editor or author, but this dude got burned and I will name the house, Tor)

Since I am a professional in a field and don’t feel like screwing myself over, how about you go over to a forum like Baen’s Bar and ask the posters there for examples? Or better yet, talk to some people at Cons.

Larry Correia And Brad doesn’t need me to write anything for him. If you haven’t noticed Brad’s one of the best short fiction writers in sci-fi today. When you get nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell award in the same year then you can talk shit. Until then, “maybe your demographic should just be quiet”.

Lori Selke Oh, but Larry, the Secret Masters of Liberal Fandom have vowed to fuck you over just for denouncing us even if you won’t name names. You should know that, since you seem to be up on all of our conspiratorial antics.

And now is where we take our jaunt into Crazy Town.

Barth Anderson Larry, as we say on the internet, pics or it didn’t happen.

See, I already explained why I can’t sell out friends and get them in trouble for complaining about the people who sign their checks. As a student of the liberal arguing method, he will now live and die on this point.

Larry Correia Lori, oh, don’t you worry about that. You must not be reading your SMoF memos because you guys already despise me. 🙂

When I got nominated for the Campbell award the literati had a complete come apart, up to and including “if Larry Correia wins the Campbell it will ruin writing forever” and then, interestingly enough, I started getting smeared everywhere. About what? Not my writing, but rather, my politics. (see, I owned a machinegun store before I ever became a writer so I’ve always been out of the closet). Then I had people voting against me who’d never even read a single one of my eligable works, simply because I was a right winger.

Larry Correia Go onto Audible. Go onto Amazon. I’ve got thousands and thousands of reviews. Every one of my books is in the 4.5 range out of 5. Then go look at the 1 stars. Every single one feels the need to mention my politics… Funny how that works.

Lori Selke Well then what are you worried about, Larry? You contradict yourself. It’s cute.

Lori Selke P.S. That’s SMo*L*F, if you please.

Larry Correia Sorry Barth, I know how spiteful, antagonistic, petty, and vengeful publishing is. I’m not giving you shit.

Where do I contradict myself, Lori? Please do fill me in.

Lori Selke “I can’t name names because I’ll be punished in the industry! You all already hate me so it doesn’t matter!” Very consistent, Larry. Like pudding.

Lori Selke I’m’a echo Barth. Pics or it didn’t happen.

Now they are on the same page. That’s okay. Even with two of them I’m still in the higher weight class. 🙂

Larry Correia Oh, I’m fine. I’m publsihed with Baen (which even the thread originator has admitted has the rep of not caring about its author’s politics).

However, you want me to name conservative authors, who have suffered because of their life choices, who have chosen to stay in the closet about their beliefs, and you want me to publically out them, so it will damage their careers? And if I don’t out them and screw over their careers, then it isn’t really a problem. Wow… Doesn’t that sound familiar.

Lori Selke So tell all your cronies to sign with Baen too and all will be well. Otherwise, you’re right. It does sound familiar. A lot like a certain laundry list.

Marguerite Reed Wow.

Larry Correia That’s one publishing house out of many. One. And the only reason it is well known in this respect is because it is literally the only one that DOES NOT CARE. There is literally no other place that John Ringo or Tom Kratman (regardless of how many millions of books they sell) would get picked up by. Why? Because they’ve got strong opinions that go against the accepted groupthink.

Meanwhile if you are Paolo Bagaculupi (or however you spell it) or China Mievelle, then you can say whatever political thing you want. If John Scalzi approves then there is no problem. The the minute Brad Torgerson says anything that goes against the narrative, SMOF rips him apart. I watched Brad get ripped apart as being a racist (on a topic that had nothing to do with race) simply because that’s what you call a conservative when you start losing an argument to them. (and that’s especially ironic since Brad’s been married to a black woman his entire adult life)

Marguerite Reed ~shrug~

Yes. Because nothing says that you are a profound liberal master of apologetics and debate like shrug.

Lori Selke I weep for the wounds of your brethren, Larry.

Oh, it is on now bitch.

Larry Correia This isn’t just publishing, this is the entire entertainment industry. Yesterday one of the editors of Mother Jones libeled openly conservative and outspoken Adam Baldwin (Chuck, Firefly) as being a tax evader. Only she screwed up, and it was STEPHEN Baldwin, no relation. But the really interesting part of this was how she phrased it. She didn’t call him a celebrity, she called him a pseudo-celebrity. Just like being a conservative author, if you disagree with the narrative then you aren’t a *real* anything.

On that note the line to see him at DragonCon was like a thousand people wrong, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say he still qualifies as a celebrity.

Larry Correia Lori, weep for free speech and critical thinking in America.

Larry Correia So, you champions of free speech are all about it, as long as it is the correct kind of speech.

And now I sound the Horn of Gondor!

Larry Correia I don’t know if Sarah A. Hoyt can post here, but I’ll bring in some other novelists who’ve seen the screwings over and the public lynchings.

Larry Correia Michael Z. Williamson John Ringo Tom Kratman

Lori Selke Oh honey, I weep for critical thinking every single day. Believe me.

Lori Selke And as soon as I see some from you, I will weep for it too.

Lori Selke But at least I got you to name names so that people can judge for themselves how horribly persecuted these authors are. Thank you.

Now at this point, you must understand a certain phenomena of internet arguing. I’ve got a ton of fans. They are incredibly hard core. They see this unfolding and they can read it, but they can’t comment. So there is another thread running parrallel to this one over on my page. Of course, my fans (being awesome) start googling this crazy Lori chick. She’s a “freelance” editor who charges people $1 to give them 20 word stories, and her only credits on Amazon are, and I’m not making this up Lesbian Erotica and Dirty Dyke Erotica anthologies.

Keeping in mind of course that me and Brad aren’t *real* authors.

Larry Correia Uh huh. Hit and run. Yeah, you’ve sure got a lot of expertise on the subject of the publishing industry to share.

Meanwhile, one side of the political spectrum gets squashed, the other side cheers because they are championing the *correct* type of speech. And you can predict how most literary award ballots will go entirely on the names of the contenders and their internet reps, rather than the quality of the works, and there’s no issue at all.

Larry Correia Oh, you think that’s all of them? America is split into thirds, conservative, middle, and liberal, yet the vast majority of writers, actors, and musicians who share their opinions publically just all happen to come from the same end of the spectrum… Why, that’s not suspicious at all!

And don’t worry Lori, I don’t need your tears. Because the most widely read thing you will ever have written will be when I quote you on my blog. 🙂

No. Seriously. I don’t think she realizes how many people read this thing. Congrats, Lori. What you wrote in this FB post has just been read by more people today than all of your Dirty Dyke Erotica anthologies combined.

That’s really got to suck.

Lori Selke Larry, I love your delusional paradise. It’s pretty. But trying to hurt my fee-fees by appealing to your published authority is pretty fucking laughable considering what I actually really do do for a living. Ta ta.

Larry Correia Oh, like this? 😀http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Lovers-Succubi-ebook/dp/B0087QH2MS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363121468&sr=8-1&keywords=lori+selke

Lori Selke Nope, that’s for fun, babe. Try again.

That’s just for fun… Which is why it was the first thing that showed up on Amazon. 🙂

Larry Correia Wow. You sure showed me! Yeah, what you do sure is impressive. You are obviously an expert on the publishing industry. http://www.amazon.com/Tough-Girls-Down-Dirty-Erotica/dp/1892723123/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1363121468&sr=8-6&keywords=lori+selke

Lori Selke Thanks for the free promotion, tho…

Larry Correia Well, Dirty Dyke Erotica is where the money is.

Lori Selke Whee! Wrong again. Also your google-fu sucks.

Larry Correia That one got 5 whole reviews.

Lori Selke And a Lambda Literary Award nomination, until they found out about my politics and blacklisted me for being too politically outspoken. That must be it.

I actually did have to look up the Lambda award because I’d never heard of it. It is a Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual literature award. She was nominated for it ten years ago and lost. And this is in no way insulting the Lambda awards or people who create gay fiction, more power to you.

But Lori is a doofus, so she’s going down. 🙂

Larry Correia Google fu. Nope. Just plugging your expert writer name into Amazon. Google my name and I’m the first 18 pages. 🙂 And you’re talking crap about me?

Lori Selke Also, that was more than ten years ago. Like I said, your google fu sucks.

Larry Correia Or your writing career sucks. 🙂

Oh snap!

Lori Selke You’re doing a fine job talking crap about yourself.

Lori Selke P.S. not all publishing expertise is writing (ask Patrick Hayden), and not all writing is fiction. Done now,.

Larry Correia Oh, I don’t even do my own research. My fans do it for me. I bet you are cleaning up on that writing 20 word stories for a $1 gig. 🙂

Lori Selke P.P.S. at no point did I actually claim any expertise. You’re the one resorting to the appeal to authority. Just sayin’. I just said you can’t hurt my fee-fees. And you can’t. You can just keep posting links to my stuff. Thanks again!

Yep. She took Logic 101 in college. However there is appeal to authority and fallacious appeal to authority. If somebody actually does have specialized knowledge that others do not, then they have an advantage. Or did they change Logic 101 since then and now it is “all opinions are equal regardless of your ignorance as long as they are based on feelings.”

Larry Correia I thought you were done now? I can’t miss you if you won’t leave.

Yes. I did claim expertise, because I have expertise on the subject. I’m glad to keep posting links to your stuff, because I’m sure my fans reading this blood letting will just flock to Dirty Dyke Erotica. :p

Josh Garner I love it when people who know nothing about a subject matter tell people who have a great deal of experience in that subject matter that they’re wrong. Eventually the ignorant just end up whining and name calling – and then just disappear.

Larry does have expertise in the matter of publishing and I’m willing to take what he says at face value because I have watched what happens when Brad or Larry or any number of other authors express their conservative values – people like Lori suddenly appear and attempt to “shame” them. Free speech and the ability to tell a good story is what this argument is about. You should be able to tell a good story where the character is flawed and the world is flawed – it’s okay to gray things out a little. Everything in sci-fi doesn’t have to be black and white… The sad part is publishing companies seem to be missing out on selling to an audience because they feel the need to express their political belief through what they publish.

Brad Torgersen Well said, Josh. 🙂

Josh Garner Marguerite – I have come late to the party. I’m trying to figure out if you think written sci-fi is toothless or isn’t toothless. And if you believe that it is the responsibility of an author to be culturally sensitive. You also seem to equate making money with being toothless – is that right?

Mike SixEight I think Marguerite and Lori just want some publicity. The best way to get free publicity in the modern era is to pick a fight with an established (musician/porgrammer/author/artist/economist) and then others come in to watch the show and share or re-tweet the argument. That said, sound like both of them are full of the intolerance that I’ve come to expect from those that describe themselves as “Liberal”, “Intellectual” or “Leftist”.

Mike SixEight Alternately, neither wanted free publicity, but aren’t smart enough to realize when they’re punching above their weight.

Barth Anderson I’m sure Brad’s great. GReat dad and must have writing chops (haven’t read his fiction). But the reason Brad’s article is badly written is that it soaks up several computer screens of wordage without say anything except to resurrect a SIXTEEN year old argument about Star Wars. I asked for an example of what Brad described — of writers being asked to be culturally sensitive in their books — but he hasn’t responded. I asked Larry — and…sniff…he yelled at me! I mean, what the fuck? We’re all in this industry and we all want to be published and NONE of us wants to be censored. I don’t want you to be censored, Brad or Larry, because I LIKE reading shit that pisses me off. And I WANT the unmitigated joy of stomping on your arguments my own damn self, as a reader and fellow writer.

My hunch is you’re not talking about censorship or sanitizing. Not really. You’re talking about writers who were called out by their editors for racist, homophobic or simply slanderous language that got couched and retold as Mean Librul Editor was Mean To Me. Don’t go stomping around and saying I’m wrongwrongdarnitSMASHBARTHwrong. You started this, Brad. Put on your Big Writer Pants and back up what you wrote.

Restate to strawman. Ridicule. Not a real writer. Dismiss because they sound angry… Did he miss any?

Marguerite Reed Wait, are we talking about the Superman comics thing?

Josh Garner Barth — Do you just not think people are being asked to be culturally sensitive? Do you think authors should be culturally sensitive? I’m really just trying to get a read on the argument here, because as of right now all I see is people demanding proof because they seem to have gotten defensive about something…

Marguerite Reed AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh my sweet baby curlyhaired Christ in a pram–I want publicity! This is how I go about getting attention! Oh Mike SixEght I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To be fair, I do not think Marguerite was looking for publicity. Like I said, she seems opinionated but okay.

Barth Anderson Jesus how much more clear can I be, Josh? Brad and Larry. Not offering an example of what they’re talking about. I want one. ONE example. That’s ALL.

Demand the unsatisfiable.

Larry Correia I’ve given several, which you’ve dismissed for whatever reason, and I also explained repeatedly why I’m not outing writers who’ve had issues with the people who sign their checks.

But that’s okay, whatever I say is anecdote, unless it is quoted in something reliable like Mother Jones or John Scalzi’s blog and then it will become evidence. 🙂

Marguerite Reed Josh Garner, I like your questoins. I’m afraid they might be buried here, though, Cna you repost it on my wall?

Larry Correia And Barth, you’ve never seen me yell. I’ve debated senators and argued stuff on national news programs. If you think this is yelling then you must live a very quiet life.

I don’t think I ever mentioned censorship or sanatizing, but rather wholesale squashing, not buying manuscripts they otherwise would have, and SMOF going out of their way to sabotage, bully, or threaten any authors who venture outside of the accepted group think. I hope that helps clear that up for you.

Why is it that I always get accused of being angry? First off, I’m really not. If I was angry, you’d know it as soon as your house blew up. Second, even if somebody is angry, that in no way invalidates what they are saying. But hey, in a world based on feelings, whatever.

Josh Garner Why do you need an example? You are arguing and getting defensive about an Op/Ed piece that Brad wrote where he says that the industry has some PC issues that arguably are making the industry boring… And that sci-fi, publishing industry, and entertainment in general is leans left. Do you really need an example to know this true.

Marguerite Reed He needs an example because the one given–that of Huckleberry Finn–isn’t SF.

Barth Anderson I’m not defensive in the least. I came here to hear what Brad meant.

Marguerite Reed That’s all. I don’t think he doesn’t believe Brad or Larry. I don’t think he’s challenging them. I think he just wants an example.

Larry Correia “”You’re talking about writers who were called out by their editors for racist, homophobic or simply slanderous language that got couched and retold as Mean Librul Editor was Mean To Me.” Interesting… I missed this from Barth before. I never mentioned racism or homophobia, so why would you insinuate that if there is a problem with a conservative author then it must be from racism or homophobia? Not that I’m shocked mind you, since this is what conservative authors get every time they speak in public.

Barth Anderson Larry, on the internet, no one can hear you yell.

Larry Correia Oh, believe me. You’d know. 🙂

Barth Anderson Because you haven’t offered an example yet. You’re just trumpting and typing and banging on your keyboard, as faras I can tell. I’m filling in the gaps where your argument fails, Larry.

Barth Anderson Don’t out anyone. Don’t name names. Just give me the details of how it went down and what the issue was regarding these writers you’re talking about.

Larry Correia No, Barth. You are not. You have declared that the one thing I specifically refuse to give you is the crux of the entire matter, and have declared that to be your win condition. I have explained specifically why I will not name individuals, because it isn’t my place to damage their careers or their relationships with their editors.

Larry Correia Simulpost.

Everitt Mickey what argument? So far all I see is commentary.

Josh Garner Barth — do you know Larry’s background. Do you know how he got published? I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. But I might be able to give you an example of an author being asked to be culturally sensitive… Frank Miller — Holy Terror and DC Comics

So you want examples, and now I can do it without providing names? (whoops, he made a mistake and allowed a tiny crack in his unachievable goals).

Larry Correia Okay, see above with the 3 editors for one. See Card, Moon, and Simmons. See any post anywhere on the internet by a conservative. See how conservative writers are ridiculed whenever possible, even in snide and underhanded way. A recent article about whether urban fantasay is liberal or not brought up me, and how surprising that I had “strong female characters and people of color in positions of importance”… because the default setting of the discussion is that people on the right are defacto racist/sexist.

Will type more, but FB loves to eat my bigger posts.

Larry Correia Author I know who writes YA, asked to make his characters non-religious, because “everybody knows religious people are stupid bigots and nobody likes them”.

Everitt Mickey my two cents . Indie Publishing is going to change a lot of that kinda thing.

Larry Correia Another author, writing an urban fantasy, told that militant Islamist bad guys not acceptable, encouraged to change them to white racist tea party members. (that one is particularly hilarious considering it was the Tea Party guys standing up for civil liberties against drone strikes last week) 😀

Larry Correia A few years ago a novella nominated for a Nebula and a Hugo (because is was brilliant) was actively campaigned against by SMOFers like whatserface above becasue it featured religion in a prominent role, but it didn’t deride or insult religion, and that was simply unnacceptable in *real* sci-fi.

Kate Paulk I have heard an editor say how disappointed she was that she had to drop a friend from college because she found out that friend was conservative. Response from all in the vicinity: sympathy and how terrible it was that her former friend should turn out to be like that. I kept my mouth shut because at the time I still harbored faint hopes of being acceptable to the mainstream SF publishing industry.

Larry Correia Just for kicks, go through the books nominated for Hugos and see how many are message fic leaning left, either about global warming, big evil corporations/capitalism, racist/sexist outrageousness, or whatever the liberal cause de jour is. Then count up the ones right leaning message fic, where the antagonist is socialism or something of that nature.

Larry Correia Ask Tom Kratman about his reviews of Caliphate. 😀

Larry Correia Kate Paulk ‘s story is common, and doesn’t even fall into Barth’s criteria, but every single conservative/libertarian writer out there can give you several stories like that.

Josh Garner Barth– Has Larry satisfied your need for examples?

Of course not, and everyone knows it. Because he didn’t want examples because he’s already made up his mind. Don’t worry, he’ll justify them below. Also, that’s tip of the iceberg stuff, because I don’t want to give too many specifics that could be figured out. I’ve seen what happens to good authors when somebody over them gets their righteous political indignation on. How dare you tell on my unprofessionalism!

Cenate Pruitt Holy nuts, way to take over Marguerite’s facebook and turn it into your own little conservative pity party, Larry.

And now a subspecies of liberal internet argument shows up. The Poo Flinging Monkey. PFMs are very difficult to deal with, since they don’t actually have an argument to debate.

Cenate Pruitt But I guess that’s how conservatism works, right? If someone has a dissenting viewpoint, occupy their territory and claim it as your own, because those poor ignorant savages just don’t know what they’ve got.

Yes, because you know how those right wingers are with Occupying Stuff… Hey… Wait a minute…

Cenate Pruitt (p.s. in my fantasy liberal utopia, salty conservative sadtears are a source of limitless clean energy.)

Cenate Pruitt (where is my book deal)

Cenate Pruitt But anyway, back to you being incredibly rude, I just wanted to let you know you’re incredibly rude. Just so we’re clear, okay?

Here, let me break this down for you. Not just this thread, but any thread where you argue with liberals.

Liberal 1: Attack, ATTACK! Attack, attack, attack! ATTACK!

Liberal 2: ATTACK! ATTACK!

Conservative: Defend.

Liberal 1: So rude!

Liberal 2: Yes, very rude.

Larry Correia I do believe she started it, thought Brad was full of it, and then asked for examples. Provided. She didn’t think there was any bias, and now several of us are demonstrating that is incorrect.

Or are you just going to do another hit and run, like whatserface? If you don’t know much about the target, ridicule and attack. Claim your moral superiority and call it a day?

As for my rudeness, oh well. I guess that is what happens after years of being called a racist, sexist, wymyn hating, child killer, corporate shill of the military industrial complex. So put your big girl panties on and deal with it. 🙂

Cenate Pruitt (p.s. anyone who nonironically uses the phrase “political correctness” needs to be sent to a reeducation camp.)

I’m going out on a limb and guessing he doesn’t realize the last US president to put people in camps was liberal icon, FDR, but hey, whatever.

Cenate Pruitt (p.p.s. claiming moral superiority on the internet is something most of us got over in 1997)

Cenate Pruitt (or did this turn into usenet when i wasn’t looking)

Cenate Pruitt (where’s my .sig file and email spamtrap? and cane and matlock reruns?)

Josh Garner Also love it when people get offended for other people. I’m pretty sure Marguerite can handle herself.

See what I mean. A dancing monkey, with lots of poo getting tossed. But as Howard says, Not my Circus, Not my Monkies.

Larry Correia “(p.s. in my fantasy liberal utopia, salty conservative sadtears are a source of limitless clean energy.)” you should suggest that to Paulo Bacigalupi. Bet he wins another Hugo. 😀

No. Seriously. Bacigalupi is a communist who thinks mankind is a scourge on mother earth. So it is sadly ironic that his politics are far less controversial than mine in SMOFdom. Man, I wish that this thread had happened before my Sad Puppies campaign.

Cenate Pruitt I’m not even offended, broheim. It’s just that WEH WEH HOW DARE LIBBURULS BE INTOLERANT OF MY INTOLERANCE is like the Bat-Signal for me.

Cenate Pruitt But by all means, continue to sing me the song of the oppressed middle class white hetero male. Key of b flat.

Speaking of the bat signal…

Michael Z. Williamson Larry’s Hispanic. I’m an immigrant. But I guess if you’re looking for white people to hate you’ll always find them. Thanks for playing.

Michael Z. Williamson See, I’ve read a lot of left SF and liked it–Eric Flint is a friend of mine. I’ve written in Misty Lackey’s universe. I like Moon. I like Pohl. I like Mack Reynolds. That’s because I’m tolerant. They tell a good story, so I read them.

I read them for their story content. Obviously, everyone here is just as tolerant of right oriented fiction, because hate is not a liberal value.

Dave Van Domelen Of course, so much of my SF reading is Baen (hi, guys) or TwenCen authors I’ve been following for decades that I really don’t see the 21C pussyfooting trend that the original blogger is complaining about.

Dave Van Domelen (Left, right or center, Baen authors seem far less averse to the Asshole Protagonist idea, much less Asshole Supporting Characters.)

Cenate Pruitt Oh, excuse me – wasn’t aware being a white immigrant means you aren’t white. (and Hispanic does not preclude being white)

Anyway, if you’re up for more conservative persecution fantasies, I hear “Red Dawn” is on Starz.

Fascinating… He doesn’t know a thing about me. Yet already I’m a “white hispanic”. Sort of like how the New York Times used that term like once or twice in history, until the George Zimmerman knee-jerk accusations of racism shooting, when that became a legitimate term for the left.

Personally, I think the whole damn thing is stupid. I’m an American. Period. Though my HR people were always happy that I was legally Latino because it got the stupid EEOC off of our backs.

Barth Anderson Wow. Actual examples. Thanks, Larry. Now we have something to actually talk about.

I’m not interested in talking about ridicule aimed at any writer for their politics by fans, reviewers, etc.

Yep, because when the left organizes to crush an artist of an opposing viewpoint’s career, that’s free speech, but the second people on the right complain about a left wing artist’s politics, then I’m certain Barth wouldn’t be screaming about McCarthyism. 🙂

I don’t care who they are, Orson Scott Card or you or me, writers get shit. That’s the nature of the business. You get shit from readers, reviewers, your old teachers, even other writers <g>. That’s how it goes. If you want to get bent out of shape about bad reviews because you’re conservative or liberal and not the precious snowflaake mommy said you were, go home and watch tv. Right? Agreed? This isn’t a business for the thin-skinned.

So all that’s off the table. It’s just lame whining when *I* do it and it’s lame whining if conservatives do it. In your better moments I bet you agree with me, Larry.

Earlier I was full of rage… Now I’m whining… Interesting that.

So let’s take the example of the writer being asked to change militant Islamic villains to Tea Partiers. That’s a drastically huge change to a story, and I’m guessing it wasn’t an editor asking it of their own writer, or they wouldn’t have bought the manuscript to begin with, especially if that editor was of the “culturally sensitive” type.

But whatever. I’ll take it at face value. You say the editor is sanitizing or being over sensitive and villifying conservatives if I get you. But my take is that 90% of the time, what gets called “cultural sensitivity” or “political correctness” is actually someone trying to uproot really stupid cliches. Ex: Is this editor more concerned with being nice to Muslims or challenging the writer to go deeper and come up with something less ridiculously tired and overused? I mean, come on, militant Muslims? Back to the Future had Palestinians trying to blow up Doc Brown’s DeLorean in 19fucking85. So I’m not convinced that’s about sanitizing a manuscript for cultural sensitivity so much as saving the writer from his own bad choice and bettering a cliche-ridden story.

Making the villain a Tea Party activist? Yeah that rings as villifying conservatives. But it depends what the manuscript was about. Is the hero a Eisenhower conservative who wants his party back from the extremists? If it’s replacing one easy target with another, I say the problem is an unimaginative editor, not “cultural sensitivity.”

I’m not trying to spin, honest.

BWA HA HA HA! HAH! SNOrT!

My problem with the whole argument of political correctness, whether it’s conservatives who hold it up as a straw man to defend the shitty cliches they want to hold on to or liberals who want to replace one shitty cliche with another, it’s a dead-end street. Writers need to break out of their own predilection for cliche and NEED an editor to do that.

That’s different than censoring or leaning on a writer to change the political leaning of their story.

Interesting… Notice that he demanded examples, over and over, thinking that I wouldn’t give them. Then when provided, he quicky dismissed them as “oh, that’s not what happened at all, it was this totally innocuous thing instead!” Uh huh… Even though I’m the one telling him about the situations, his interpretation is the correct one. Man, this guy is wasted on Facebook. He really should be working for Eric Holder drafting memos on Fast & Furious.

Cenate Pruitt (also, I’m assuming you mean to imply that I hate white men. Being one myself, I find that hard to swallow.)

Michael Z. Williamson I’ve had both ends. I had a publisher tell me they didn’t want to mention me being an immigrant in my bio, in case it offended people with “nationalist sensitivities.” At the same time, I don’t think most of my readers would have cared.

And yes, I’ve also been told stories I’ve written are too uncomfortable to be published.

Oh, thanks for bringing up skin color again. What does it matter, exactly? I grew up in a different culture, with different slang, different mores and different sociology. Not a lot different–most of the language is the same, but Brits are not Canadians are not Americans are not Aussies, any more than Turks, Persians and Arabs are the same. But, hey, we look alike, so we must be, right?

You’re the one bringing it up, not us.

Bingo. Notice when race started coming into play here. The right wingers say we get insinuations of racism slandered against us, the liberals say oh no you don’t!, and then go about bringing race and priviledge into the discussion.

Dave Van Domelen Barth: Also, how many Baen series have a villainous scummy husband and wife political team that’s thinly veiled Clintons? Or heroic scientists who are conservatives and snark about how liberal all their colleagues are? Political hackery is always more visible when it’s not aligned with your own worldview. 😉

Michael Z. Williamson http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/politics-Reparations.html I’ll just leave this here. You may wish to call the bomb squad.

Michael Z. Williamson Hmm…I haven’t read any Baen books with a thinly veiled Clinton. Nor any heroic right wing scientists. I may be reading the wrong authors. Can you tell me where E Moon or E Flint did that?

Cenate Pruitt OH BOY A WHITE MAN WITH OPINIONS ABOUT REPARATIONS that sounds absolutely scintillating. i’m sure you also have a fascinating position on abortion

Why yes, I do, as do you, as should any human being capable of critical thinking skills. Just because women are the ones that carry the fetus, doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue which has repurcusions for all of our society. But I must remember, I’m talking to a PFM.

Cenate Pruitt (the common thread here being that these both involve things that have absolutely sod all to do with you)

Fascinating… This mindset blows me away. So… Because I have a penis, I am not allowed to have an opinion on abortion, and because I’m not quite brown enough, I’m not allowed to have an opinion on racism, and though I grew up dirt poor, bettered myself, and now the democrats consider me rich, I am not allowed to comment on priviledge… However, liberals everywhere can tell me what to eat, what kind of healthcare to have, how many rounds I can have in my gun, what I can do with my land, or if I can drink a big soda.

But why respond to a PFM? If you want to have a lot of fun, go back and read his posts like he has Tourettes.

Dave Van Domelen Michael: Not so much Moon or Flint (who, as has been noted here, is one of the lefties in the Baen Baern). But Ringo goes to that well an awful lot. It’s practically his go-to protagonist, the good ol’ boy physicist. There’s a Clinton pair in the Honorverse (slimy Manticorans in the High Ridge faction, IIRC), but I think it was from one of the Worlds Of Honor books. The President who presides over the plague years in The Last Centurion is Hillary. I’m pretty sure I’ve read at least one other (a Grantville story, maybe?) but they haven’t done it since 2008 that I’ve noticed.

Marguerite Reed Although Ringo has a charming sense of humor about it….

See, I knew I liked her for a reason.

Josh Garner Cenate– We are all the hero of our own story — to quote a a writing trope. Why do you feel the need to marginalize the issues, hardships, and problems that anyone has. If Larryor any of the authors he talked about had to deal with people being douches — that sucks. I feel bad for them. People shouldn’t have to put up with crap whether its racism or cancer or not having a job or food on the table — it all sucks. Show some empathy and quite trying to metaphorically pull it out of your pants to show how much your problems are bigger than another persons.

Dave Van Domelen Yeah, I met Ringo at a ‘con a while back and discussed some of this stuff with him. He’s pretty cool about it.

Barth Anderson A writing troupe?

Michael Z. Williamson So, here’s the problem: When certain liberals have no logical argument, they resort to the race card–specifically, ridiculing the heritage of an opponent, who might happen to have white skin.

We call this “Racism.”

They then usually try to dodge return fire under the aegis of being white themselves, again, assuming that skin color matters. So, it’s okay for them to be outraged on behalf of those other demographics. They’re special.

The thing is, if the charge is accurate–some publishers and a section of the market–are prejudiced against conservatives, then the charge is accurate. Playing a race card doesn’t change that fact.

It’s an attempt to trump by someone else’s victimhood. “It doesn’t matter what happens to you, someone else had it worse.”

The problem is, one side of my ancestors raped, pillaged and stole the country from the other side. And they all happened to be white. I’ve managed to get over this.

But per my Second Law, attempting to play that card means you have no argument. You’re acknowledging you have no logical response to the charge, so you’re attempting to wave a false flag.

No.

As to some other comment, a friend of mine happens to be on Ms Clinton’s personal security detail. He’s much more conservative than anarcho-libertarian me, and says she’s very professional to work with and no trouble for him.

However, I’m glad you take the subject of political stereotypes seriously. I’m sure you’ve complained multiple times about the caricatures of Bush, Romney and Reagan.

Josh Garner Sorry Barth — I’m not the best copy editor.

Brad Torgersen Barth: to address your specific request for an example I’d have to reference an internal scuffle going on inside SFWA right now. But Scott M. Roberts also references a public example which he understands, without necessarily agreeing with. I myself would point to the savaging I saw L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright endure on her own blog a couple of years back, or the serial savagings endured by her husband John C. Wright on his blog; both of them TOR authors. And all for “sensitivity” issues revolving around gender, race, and sexuality; wherein the often-anonymous flying monkeys of the internet, acting as enforcers of propriety, chose to unleash their toddler-like fury at people who deserved none of the invective. We might also discuss Elizabeth Moon getting savaged and her character impugned? For daring to speak what most Americans simply think every day? I could go on. The list practically writes itself.

Barth Anderson You see the difference between a publisher censoring a writer (Twain) and readers being mean to a writer on a blog, right?

Why yes, we all do, and have pointed it out, but both are symptoms of the same problem. A problem which you A. Either refuse to believe in. B. Actually are in favor of, but can’t come out and say that you are happy one side of a political debate is squashed.

Barth Anderson One has a direct impact on the process of creating books and the other is business as usual.

Marguerite Reed I’m thinking it might be time to shut this down, as much as I’ve enjoyed it. (and gotten Free Publicity!)

Brad Torgersen Barth: in the ghetto of science fiction, the line between the editors, writers, and fans gets heavily blurred. Such that we often have fans, writers, and editors all yelling at each other in political furballs not unlike this one we’re observing now. To my mind it’s more or less the same issue: sensitivity from thee, not from me. People who demand “sensitivity” yet who are prepared to impugn a person’s character, call them names, harrass and belittle and villify them, threaten to damage professional relationships for the sake of political retribution, et cetera.

Cenate Pruitt Yes, tell me all about how racist I am. Please.

Cenate Pruitt OH WAIT I’M PLAYING BY YOUR LAWS NOW

Cenate Pruitt seriously – do you have any idea how awesomely pretentious you sound?

Cenate Pruitt (p.s. nice humblebrag re: I TOTALLY KNOW PEOPLE WHO KNOW HILLARY CLINTON)

Seriously. Tourettes. Read it out loud and shout ever third word. Read it and enjoy. You can thank me later. 🙂

Marguerite Reed I’m racist. I’ll own it.

Cenate Pruitt Although I have to admit, this conversation IS making me hate all white people.

James Cochrane Of course, Ringo’s good ‘ol boy physicist is based on a real person… Doc Travis Shane Taylor, Baen author, scientist, and star of Rocket City Rednecks… Actually, MOST of his characters are based on people he’s known in real life, and having met some of them, they can be real characters 🙂

Barth Anderson Brad Torgersen A writer has to have their own predilection for cliche challenged without it being chalked up to politics. And if a writer can’t maintain their own voice and beliefs in the face of criticism, even if it’s intense and public, they better grab the remote and catch up on True Blood.

Marguerite Reed But part of ackowledging that one is racist is then acknowleding that it is incumbent upon me, myself–not my black friends or my Sioux friends or my Hispanic friends or my Asian friends–to work on that. To recognize that yes, privilege is a thing. And to check my assumptions all the damn time. Sometimes I fuck up. Sometimes I learn stuff. And sometimes I realize that it is so not about me.

Marguerite Reed Carry on.

Josh Garner Barth– I think Brad would totally agree with your last point. The point I believe Brad is making is those challenges are hurting the genre. Maybe self publishing will help change things though…

Brad Torgersen Marguerite: the advantage of being married to a non-white woman for the last 20 years is that I’ve learned that not every POC demands that you hurl yourself on the sword of your own privilege, lest you be found guilty of “ist” and “ism.” If my wife was a grudge-carrier who wanted to inflict her racial hurts on me, we’d not be together. Thankfully she doesn’t expect me to “solve” her racial hurts by trying to own the bad shit other white people have done to her in her 50 years on this earth. Nor does she expect me to own the bad shit men have done to her. Because I am not responsible for these people merely because I am white, and male. Oh, to be sure, she’s got plenty of anger about sexism and racism because it’s still present in our society. But she does not leverage these things against well-meaning men or whites, demanding that anyone claim the Original Sins of sexism and racism. Thus I reject the entire notion of default racism, sexism, and privilege, as defined in the modern post-modern context that you might find prevalent at Wiscon, or around the coffee table at the faculty lounge of your average university humanities dept.

Marguerite Reed I ask this because I am curious, per our agreement: have you been to WisCon?

Like they would let Chief Warrant Officer Brad Torgersen, Warmongering Racist Hatey-Hate-Monger through the doors of Wiscon.This is the same place the banned liberal Elizibeth Moon because she made them “feel unsafe” because she wrote an essay pointing out that maybe, just maybe, militant Islam wants to kill people.

Jamie McAfee I’ve heard more racial slurs tossed around in bars in the Midwest (IA) than I ever did in the South. I dunno how “Wisconson” is supposed to help your case.

Brad Torgersen No, I’ve not attended Wiscon. Its reputation travels to my ears via several former attendees both male and female who said that the balkanization (apartheid) of the “safe spaces” and the eviction of Elizabeth Moon soured the experience. I am sure for a specific kind of author or editor with a specific political frame of reference, Wiscon is wonderful. But from what I can gather, Wiscon is often operating at the “bleeding edge” of gender, sexual, and racial politics; where reality is not necessarily inclined to agree, nor go.

Larry Correia Barth, in the examples I have given, (where I know the specifics and you are guessing at them) no, they were political changes. When I got to NYC for BEA or on book tour, and I have dinner with or work with or hang out with people from various publishing entities and sales forces, it is an overwhelmingly liberal group. (shocking, I know, for an industry based out of Manhattan).

How about this, don’t take my word for a liberal bias in the publishing industry. Go to some major conventions and have political conversations with editors and authors. It seems like everybody posting in this thread who actually does this stuff for a living is agreeing that yes, there is a deep, and obvious bias. While those who are liberal are insisting that this is merely a figment of the conservative imagination.

As for Cenate, I’m reading a whole bunch of gibberish one liners. Please, kid, grown ups are talking about serious stuff. And the term “White Hispanic” didn’t exist until the NYT needed something to call George Zimmerman. 🙂

Brad Torgersen Marguerite: if I may go even further, any POC who *does* demand that you “own” racism as a default state, simply because of the color of your skin, it’s not you with the racism issue . . . it’s your well-meaning accuser. No person should be expected to “own” anything as broad as racism simply because one person or even a cluster of people insist that it be so. You are essentially being asked to prostrate yourself before someone else’s emotional baggage, which is codependent and unhealthy in my opinion. Unless you personally have deliberately and directly used racial slurs, slights, or have tried to damage someone physically or professionally because of a racial grudge, you are not responsible. I say again, you are not responsible. The “original sin” of racism, per Critical Race Theory, is a fraudulent shell game. Don’t play it. Even if the people on the other side of the table insist that you’re a bad person for not playing.

Jamie McAfee I don’t know anything about the U of W (I thought you meant the state), but if you think we are living in an age where the trend is toward radical gender, sexual, or racial politics, University or no, you are pretty myopic, dawg. (Elizabeth Moon thing is meh.)

Meh. I don’t much care about this conversation except to say that the article in the OP is really silly. Fiction is not what it’s about. It’s how its about what its about. The idea that political correctness (anybody who uses that term unironically kinda wearing a dunce cap) would prevent morally complex fiction is dumb.

It just is. If the claims in the article are true, it means that a lot of sci fi writers are kinda derpy.

Dave Van Domelen Most creative fields are slanted towards liberalism, for various reasons…some specific to the field, some more general. It’s hard to explain it without sounding like you’re putting down one side or the other, though, and it’s further complicated by the fact that we’ve got several non-orthogonal axes involved when we talk about simplifications like “left/right”. Especially since two people can call themselves conservatives and violently disagree on almost everything…the meaning of the term changed significantly in living memory. Even identifying with something more specific like “libertarianism” can be misleading (there’s a comic floating around online that catalogs dozens of varieties).

That said, utopian-style SF is very strongly correlated with most of the views typically branded liberal. Powerful but benevolent government with a socialist bent, elimination or at least ameliorization of most of the dreaded -isms, rationality triumphing over superstition, etc. Meanwhile, MilSF of the sort that Baen has long been associated with angles more towards what I think of as “military libertarianism,” where rugged individualism combined with respect for chains of command tend to triumph, and there’s at least a little contempt for utopian types and whiny civilians. 😉

Jamie McAfee Unless you mean that straight up hero fantasy sci fi is less complex. In which case. . . you are reading silly genre fiction. If it’s trying to appeal to, like, a modern diverse audience. Gah.

This crap is absurd. I quit.

No he doesn’t. 🙂

Larry Correia Silly genre fiction? Wow. We got us a member of the Literati Elite! (or I think that’s your point, because I really couldn’t diagram that last sentence)

Cenate Pruitt Grown ups are talking about serious stuff – like Star Wars!

This is the reason nobody under 40 reads sci fi anymore.

Everitt Mickey Damn…and here I am being sixty three and still reading Science Fiction. Guess you’re wrong huh?

Dave Van Domelen (BTW, Cenate’s the social sciences prof here, I’m a doughy ol’ boy physicist from Wisconsin.)

Larry Correia Holy shit, he’s a professor!?!

Seriously. For real. And not only that, I had to click on his FB profile, and he’s got an inspiration quote there about how college students need to be willing to riot and fight for what they believe in, and he’s chiding me for being rude. 😀 No, seriously, you can’t make this up.

Jamie McAfee To be fair, you couldn’t actually diagram it as it’s a sentence fragment, although comprehension is a concern. I said “unless.”

Some genre fiction is morally complex, even unsettling. Some is “follow the hero doing stuff.” If “political correctness” has affected the latter because it means that contemporary standards of “the hero” have changed, then who gives a shit. That’s what I mean.

Jamie McAfee Everitt is not great at comprehension either, as Cenate said the opposite of how Everitt read the sentence.

I like how when a liberal says something so stupid that it is hard to follow, they insult everyone who doesn’t understand for their reading comprehension… Because you know, I’ve got 10,000 people reading this right now because I’m so very bad at stringing all them big words together!

Jamie McAfee Seriously. Who gives a shit? If your militaristic fantasy crap is less macho or racist than it used to be, then I don’t give a shit. (Not one.) Softer more liberal heroes are no more or less cliched than more macho ones. No shits to give. Morally complex, good writing that is some kind of speculative fiction or other is not impeded by “political correctness.”

Larry Correia Wow. Insulting reading comprehension now? 😀 You’re on a roll. And now insinuate racism in 3…2…1…

Larry Correia Drat! Just missed it! 😀

Seriously. He’d been posting rapid fire on the liberal doom cycle, and I could just feel the insinuation of racism coming fast. I started typing and hit enter like one second after his post. And sure enough, we’re “less racist” than before! HA!

So close! 😀

Larry Correia As for Cenate, (seriously? he’s a professor?) Maybe nobody under 40 reads sci-fi anymore because it has become pretentious douchebaggery heavy handed message fic like SMOF demands? Sort of like Brad’s original post?

Except for us low brow pulp types obviously, because demographically, I’ve sold a butt load of books to people under 40. Go figure.

I’ve actually posted about this before on this blog. I don’t know how many hundreds of people I’ve talked to who love my books but who hate reading in general, and asked why, it is usually because they got turned off and bored by heavy handed message fic that the SMOF keep showering praise and awards on. A great big chunk of sci-fi over the last decade has turned into a circle jerk of like minded people giving each other awards and telling teach other how awesome they are, while sales shrink because the books are no longer FUN.

Everitt Mickey ah…I showed up late for the party. Apparently Jaimie is pissing in cornflakes?

Marguerite Reed Hmm. I *do* like this: “Wiscon is often operating at the “bleeding edge” of gender, sexual, and racial politics.”

Marguerite Reed As a woman, I’m frequently there anyway.

I’m shocked.

Cenate Pruitt But by all means, continue your entitled-yet-simultaneously-put-upon schtick.

(And I didn’t invent the concept of “white Hispanic” – it’s been a US Census category for a good thirty years now..)

Uh, actually no… On the US census it is “non-hispanic whites”. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/why-did-new-york-times-call-george-zimmerman-white-hispanic/2012/03/28/gIQAW6fngS_blog.html Or just more proof that liberals really only care about race when they are using it to push their narrative, and the second you are no longer of use they discard you.

Everitt Mickey wish I could stay and play but I got work to do. I might note that of all the publishers the one that is LEAST PC is doing fairly well. Whom that might be I’ll leave as a problem for the student.

And then holy shit, here comes Tom Kratman. (an author and man who I’ve got a lot of personal respect for) I was sparring. Tom dropped artillery.

Tom Kratman The Left’s 20 Rules of Racism:

1. If you believe that general intelligence exists, is heritable and at all testable for, you’re a racist.

2. If you point out that liberal philosophies and programs intended to have a good impact have had a disproportionately bad impact on the ethnicities targeted by liberals, you’re a racist.

3. If you notice that other cultures have some problems, you’re a racist.

4. If you notice your own culture has had some successes, you’re a racist.

5. If you try to identify subcultural problems, you’re a racist. If the problems existed or got worse under liberalism, see item 2, above.

6. If you’re mainstream American culture, and don’t hate that culture, you’re a racist.

7. If you’re capable of noting unpleasant facts about subcultures and discussing them without your brain fogging, you’re a racist.

8. If you won’t kowtow and grovel as soon as someone accuses you of racism for one of the reasons above or below, you’re a hopeless racist.

9. If you do not believe that mankind is a tabula rasa for liberals to make whatever they think would be good to make of man, this week, you’re a racist.

10. If you don’t take personal responsibility for all the evils of slavery, you’re a racist. This is true even if you only arrived from Poland last week.

11. If you’re white, you’re a racist.

12. If you’re white and just arrived from Poland last week and don’t accept that you’re a racist, you’re a racist.

13. If you try to interject logical thought into a discussion of culture, you’re a racist.

14. If you refuse to admit culture is a racial matter, and a liberal wants to conflate the two, you’re a racist.

15. If you believe that race and culture are indistinguishable and a liberal decides that you shouldn’t conflate the two, you’re a racist.

16. If you believe that black or Hispanic girls who are paid by liberal inspired programs from the age of 13 to have babies will have babies, you’re a racist.

17. If you believe that _any_ girls of whatever color who are paid to have babies will then have babies but then, insensitively, observe that a smaller percentage of white girls do, certainly because they haven’t been targeted for as much “help” from liberals, you’re a racist.

18. If it doesn’t bother you that the truth offends liberals, you’re a racist.

19. If your name is Tom Kratman and you write and in your writing your heroes and heroines tend to be from minorities while your villains are white liberals, you’re still a racist.

20. If you read The Bell Curve, you’re a racist. On the other hand, if you didn’t read it but wrote a scathing review on Amazon anyway you might not be a racist provided you take personal responsibility for 300 years of slavery even if you just arrived from Poland last week.

Brad Torgersen Cenate: if this is the attitude and the language you bring into the classroom with you . . . well, nobody makes you take a huggability test when you join the academic ranks.

Tom Kratman The Right’s Twenty Rules of Racism:

1. Anyone responsible for three hundred years of slavery would have to be a lot older than you and me.

2. There has to be some genetics in “racism’s” DNA, some DNA in its gene pool, or it just isn’t racism.

3. Racism could be eliminated in the United States if we could just eliminate the white liberals who so plainly depend on it so much and do so much to keep it going.

4. Reality isn’t racist: The reality is that there are pond-scummy gallows bait in every group. Some of those will be more of a problem to their own group than to you (see Rule 14, below). Some will be more of a problem to you precisely because you’re not a member of their group. It is wise, not racist, to avoid the latter. In Boston, this may be referred to as the “Evelyn Wagler-George Pratt Rule,” and that’s not code. Odd exception to half of Rule 4: Jesse Jackson would much rather be followed by a white on the streets of DC, at night, than a black.

5. There have been two instances in recent history where the concept of “honorary white” held sway. One was in apartheid South Africa where, for example, Japanese were considered “honorary white.” The other was when, in relation to the Trayvon Martin shooting, the American mainstream media made Hispanic George Zimmerman an “honorary white.” This is not entirely coincidence since (see Rule 18) the very liberal American media is as racist in their way as ever the Afrikaner Broederbond was in its.

6. Nobody really thinks whites are as evil as portrayed by white liberals and black demagogues. If they really thought so, they’d be too afraid to ever leave the house, since a) there are a lot more whites, b) those whites are much better armed, c) they’re more likely to be veterans of the Army’s and Marine Corps’ ground gaining combat arms, and d) they have an historically demonstrated cultural aptitude for mass, organized violence.

7. People who insist you’re speaking in code insist on it because they believe it’s true. They believe it’s true because they really do speak in code and can’t imagine anyone who does not speak in code. It’s not racist to think those people are idiots, nor to note that they’re mostly white. (Exception to rule: When conservatives talk about guns and zombies? Especially in terms of using the former to kill the latter? Yeah; “zombie” is code for “liberals of any color.” See Rule 6, above.)

8. It’s not racist to note that white liberalism managed to do in about thirty years something that three hundred years of slavery could not, seriously damage the black family, generally though not universally, and ruin it completely over wide swaths.

9. Speaking of slavery, the bulk of slave raiding and trading in Africa was black, usually Islamic black (see Rule 16, below), on black. The Arabic word for black and slave is the same, “Abd.” And the first registered slave owner in Virginia was black. Pointing this out to liberals, white and black, is always fun.

10. It’s not racist to wish that our first black president had been Thomas Sowell.

11. The “Some of my best friends” defense against a charge of racism is no defense…unless it happens to be true. Sometimes it’s best expressed to a white liberal as, “You don’t have so much as a day in uniform, do you, dipshit?”

12. The system of education that white liberals have inflicted on inner city blacks is a crime against humanity. No amount of money that they toss at it helps to overcome the elimination of discipline liberalism has caused. It’s neither racist to note this…nor wrong.

13. The various college and university minority “studies” programs, because they give a useless pseudo-education, and at very high cost in both money and time, are racist in their effects.

14. Most black crime is black on black crime. It is racist in its effects to deprive the black community of the social good that comes from executing black criminals that prey on other blacks.

15. It takes a white liberal idiot (Lord, forgive us our redundancies) not to understand the difference between casual sex with a member of another race and marrying and investing one’s entire reproductive effort in a member of another race. See, e.g., http://www.tomkratman.com/yoli.html. Dipshits.

16. Islam is not a race. Detesting Islam is not racist. There is nothing in Islam which genetically compels either slightly tanned Palestinians or totally white English reverts to pray toward Mecca five times daily, to self-detonate in crowded squares and movie theaters, to find offense in just about everything, nor even to clitorectomize their women. Flash alert: Lysenko was wrong. Dipshits.

17. When a liberal accuses you of racism, rejoice; it means the dipshit knows he or she is losing.

18. The worst racists are liberals, mostly white ones, who assume that blacks and hispanics are so inferior that only affirmative action in perpetuity would give them a remotely fair chance. (That this also keeps a lot of liberal white social workers and bureaucrats employed is, of course, merely incidental. Ahem. Dipshits.)

19. There was a conservative argument for a kind of affirmative action. Unfortunately, all the money’s already been spent on employing white liberal social workers and bureaucrats, and we’re broke now, so that ship has sailed. Again, blame dipshit white liberals.

20. Screaming “Racism! Raaaacissssm!” on the part of a white liberal, when the matter in question has no DNA in its gene pool, no genetics in its DNA (see Rule 2, above), is the surest proof that said white liberal is genetically defective. And a dipshit. And it’s not racist to point this out.

Marguerite Reed Oh my god.

Indeed. But almost as good a comment as Shrug.

Cenate Pruitt This pretty much is at a point that reminds me of the post-election lament from the right about the “coalition” of voters who reelected Obama – young people, women, gays and lesbians, racial and ethnic minorities, the poor… At that point it ceases to be a coalition and is actually, you know, the majority of the population.

But keep on keepin on, fellers.

Cenate Pruitt … Holy Christ.

I’m out. That’s how you want to be, sci-fi writer guys, I got absolutely nothing on that. Wow.

PFM Out!

Jamie McAfee The point is not that there is anything wrong with pulp fiction. (I’m more of a horror film person than a sci-fi novel person, myself, but to each his own.) The point is that of pulp fiction is escapist fare that adapts to changing social norms. It’s generally didactic and not very interesting whenever there is a “moral,” and its rarely morally complex or interesting. If it has become more “politically correct,” who cares? It used to be one set of not very interesting norms, and now its another.

“Insinuate” racism? I didn’t insinuate shit. I straightforwardly said that there is racism in some pulp sci-fi. It’s something that other sci-fi has often commented upon, since, like, the 50s.

The insecurity is strong with this one.

Yes. I’m so very insecure that I go out of my way to pick fights and have debates about things I believe in strongly with complete strangers in front of thousands of witness.

But hey, insecure is a step up from “raging” or “whining” 😀

Brad Torgersen LTC Kratman in the center square: because fuck you, that’s why! 😀

Tom Kratman And I’m from Boston, too, if you’ve seen that one.

Brad Torgersen (chuckle)

Jamie McAfee “This pretty much is at a point that reminds me of the post-election lament from the right about the “coalition” of voters who reelected Obama – young people, women, gays and lesbians, racial and ethnic minorities, the poor… At that point it ceases to be a coalition and is actually, you know, the majority of the population.”

That’s kinda the thing. IF you are attempting “pulp fiction for a general audience” you are going to be imagining this. Also, you know, women (who overlap those other groups). So the generic “hero standards” and “morality buttons” have changed. This seems like nothing to really worry over. It’s kinda interesting though. Lamenting the inability of serious, morally complex wiring because generic pulp writing must change with the times is silly.

And that’s what happens when you look at something simple, like telling an entertaining story, and filter it through the lens of PC correctness and Liberal cause de’jour message fictioning. Oh, the demographics have changed to this group of put upon victims! Hurry and write more stories about dying polar bears and evil corporations so we can shower you with rewards!

Meanwhile, guys like me just tell entertaining stories, and sell tons of books. Go figure.

Larry Correia It wasn’t just that you insinuated racism, Jamie, it was that I was able to predict your post within one second of you insinuating it! 😀

Larry Correia Aw man, Cenate’s out! Where will we go now for our random bits of crazed non sequiter poo flinging?

I still can’t believe he’s supposed to be an educator. That’s just sad and pathetic.

Jamie McAfee Since the post about the topic we are talking about, I’m proud of your reading comprehension, except that you don’t know what “insinuate” means.

Heh… Aw man, a liberal said I read good and stuff!

Tom Kratman Education, Larry, over wide swaths, has ceased to be about teaching people to think, and more about brainwashing.

Tom Kratman Oh, and hello, Marguerite, you incredible bundle of left wing cuteness. 😉

Brad Torgersen Correct thinking has replaced critical thinking. Another reason my wife and I privately school.

Larry Correia Yes, Jamie. I did very poorly in English. I got an accounting degree, and still managed to become a bestselling novelist… Man, that’s got to suck for you guys. 🙂

Tom, flagging you in this thread was like calling in a carpet bombing. 🙂 On a related note, if you didn’t read through the hundreds of posts of BS, I was trying to get authors to comment on the liberal bias in teh publishing industry.

Tom Kratman Mark Steyn said it spendidly, as he usually does: “I hate to bring up other “mid-century notions” but intellectual diversity on the left is increasingly indistinguishable from Tupperware night with the Stepford Wives. ”

Tom Kratman Problem is, Larry, I detest them as much as they detest me. The only part of the industry I know is Baen and Baen will publish any political viewpoint.

Tom Kratman I will note that no one has ever called for China Mieville to be put to death. Me, on the other hand…

Brad Torgersen LTC Kratman: the human daisy cutter of the SF literature community.

Larry Correia 2012 was my record year for death threats. Mostly because of my big gun control article. Getting death threats from the “anti-violence” people is pretty hilarious. 🙂

Brad Torgersen Larry: what the eff, you got DEATH THREATS for that article?!?

Larry Correia Dude, I got a ton. It got read a million times in a month. And I posted it in the latter half of December and it still broke prior year records.

But, as Barth pointed out above, systematic slandering and intimidation projects against outspoken right wingers totally doesn’t count.

Tom Kratman I like to post this one whenever the subject of the liblepers’ control of the culture comes up, even impliedly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHVo0hJhnK4 Their day is coming. “Ah, ca ira…aristocrats to the lampposts!”

Brad Torgersen I find it more than a little ironic that anyone who professes to adhere to a paradigm of “anti violence” would issue a death threat over an opinion piece. Wow. Just, wow. Well, as has been said on this thread before: sensitivity from thee, but not from me. I guess that’s the operative principle at work.

You get used to it. 🙂

Banquo Gordon @ Tom Kratman: You forgot/missed a few rules. If you are a person of color, it is not possible for you to be racist. Contrarily, The biggest racists are the non-whites who’s personal wealth and power are based in the continuation of the idea that racism exists. I leave it to the reader to decipher which rule belongs in which category.

Larry Correia The death threats are usually more funny than anything. (I hate guns! I’m going to come murder you guy with all the guns!) The ones that really annoy me are the morons who threaten boycots. (like they are readers anyway) Now obviously, for me, that doe…See More

Some of these got cut off, because this was right before the thread got deleted. But you guys were here for that. I usually just delete the death threats (I try to share the hate mail with you guys though).

Of course, when I disagree, I’m ranting, full of rage, whining, or blah blah blah. The people calling for Tom Kratman to be murdered are just exercising their free speech rights.

Tom Kratman In re Caliphate, or A Desert Called Peace, which is also on my giveaway list, the hilarious thing is, Larry, that the idjit leftists don’t get the jokes, that America is an evil fascist genocidal close cognate to Nazi Germany in the former, while in th…See More

Barth Anderson No, it doesn’t count as censorship. If you can’t tell the difference between bullying and censorship, you’re an idiot, Larry.

If you’re so dead set against intimidation on political grounds, then stop doing it to Marguerite. This is called bullying, right here.It’s not a discussion or even an argument. Hope you’re teaching your kids to stand up to shitheads like you. You’re an AWESOME example.

Larry Correia Well, Barth. I believe I’ve mentioned examples of both official industry censorship, and organized bullying against authors, including slandering them, accusing them of racism, spreading rumors about them, and trying to damage their careers and sales. …See More

Interesting… How many times did we clarify the difference between the two? So even though I know the difference, I’m an idiot, because… well… I disagreed with a liberal.

Also, at this point Marguerite posted and said that she wasn’t being bullied… Of course, she quickly deleted it a moment later, but I copied, pasted, and quoted her below. I should have realized, disagreeing with a liberal on any subject is obviously bullying. Standing up for yourself is bullying.

Attack. Defend. How rude!

Larry Correia “Huh, am I being bullied?” Why yes, Marguerite. They’re trying to play the victim card on you, that way they can be all righteous and the big mean conservatives are bullies who can safely be ignored. 🙂

Never forget, the greatest, most sacred title you can ever hold on the left is victim.

Tom Kratman And we’re racists, too, Larry. Don’t forget that we’re raciiisssttttsss!!! RAACCCIIISSSTTTSSS!!!

Larry Correia I know. Mike pointed out that I’m considered a latino, but the barely literate college professor then said I could be a “white hispanic”. 🙂

And that quote I have above from Marguerite was here a minute ago, and now isn’t showing up. So maybe she has decided to go with playing the victim card. Darn mean right wing authors, coming into a thread where they were getting insulted and disagreeing with the group think!

Marguerite Reed Ok, we’re done

And thus the thread was deleted.

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this little look at arguing with liberals on the internet. For fun, just watch for the patterns in your own arguments. I really should come up with a Bingo card for this.