Come listen to us blather about the Hugos on Superversive SF at 3:00 pm EST.
(Typed by Jagi for John who is currently actually busy writing a novel.
Sarah Hoyt Reads the Riot Act to Mary Robinette Kowal, with amusing gifs.
Mrs Kowal apparently thought it expedient (for she did not think it true) falsely to accuse Mrs Hoyt of being a racist on the grounds that Mrs Hoyt used the word ChiComs to refer to Chinese Communists.
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/08/28/fauxtrage/
The absurd lie was followed by an insincere yet smarmy nonapology and a restatement in stronger terms of the exploded, untenable and absurd position, which is commonly known as doubling down. SJWs always lie, and they always double down.
How is it that these mackerels have gained hegemony over our cultural institutions, down to and including such trivial corners of life as the Hugo Awards?
These are the same people who did not comprehend that obscure nuance of the English language known as a “nickname” was when used in my Hugo-nominated story One Bright Star to Guide Them. Instead it was generally agreed by the consensus that I had forgotten the name of my own character, on the grounds that she was a woman, and therefore hated by the author. I wish I were kidding. These people are deranged. It is not due to a physical damage to the brain, but to spiritual. Pride and ire darken the intellect.
I promised myself that after I heard two hundred people make this comment, I would publish it. Unfortunately, I lost count after twenty, because I am innumerate.
So I have no idea how many times I have heard remarks like this, from Joe Doakes over at Vox Populi:
In my youth, Hugo and Nebula on the cover meant “Good.” Since about 1990, it’s meant “Politically Correct.” But the point of reading SF/F is to escape the relentless political correctness of modern American life so I quit reading it.
He goes on to say
I’ve been digging back through the last couple of decades of Hugo and Nebual winners, trying to find something worth reading to change my mind. “Among Others” won both in 2012 and the library lends Kindle books free, so why not? The heroine is a SF/F reader herself so every page lists SF/F titles she’s read, which is fun because I’ve read most of them and found a few others to try.
But get this . . . the SF/F books listed in the story are our kind of books, written long ago and mostly by White men exploring fascinating intellectual concepts.
For crying out loud, even the Characters in modern politically correct SF/F hate modern politically correct SF/F.
Let me ask my readers to take the Joe Doakes challenge. Look at the first twenty years of the Hugos, and in your mind assess the worth of the books. Weigh whether or not they are imaginative, well crafted, and form the backbone of any well read SF reader’s library.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Some posts about the recent Hugo self-immolation by the clique of self-congratulation:
If there are any honest columns, or even a column not choked to the brim with lies, from the viewpoint of our dishonorable and lying-ass attackers, I would surely link to it.
There are none. Even columnists who perhaps imagine themselves to be neutral or balanced blithely fall into the orchestrated falsehoods, and do not admit what this struggle has always been about:
We are attempting to pry the control of the Hugos out of the hand of a clique or Inner Ring run by Patrick Nielsen Hayden for the benefit of his abortive antichristian ideology and the fiscal benefit (which, at one time there was to be had for publishing Hugo Award winning works), and return control to the fans.
We wanted it to stop being the Tor Award for Political Correctness and to return to being the Hugo Award.
Since I am a Tor author who was benefited by this arrangement, no unseemly fiscal motive can be attributed to me: I was acting against my own financial interests, and still am. I love science fiction more than I love Tor Books, which is saying a lot. It grieves me that the greatest publisher in the field would be so desperately and forcefully committed to the corruption of the field, and riding the decline into the abyss of irrelevance.
Our motives are precisely what we said, both seriously and in jest.
Seriously, we thought and said that limiting the award to the radical-feminist Intersection-Theory Critical-Theory homonormative crap that the Inner Ring likes damages the brand and threatens to turn science fiction into one more postmodern wasteland of dreary garbage, neither edifying nor entertaining.
When is the last time an award winning science fiction tale or related work had even an iota of real science in it? THE MARTIAN by Weir was crammed with diamond hard science. It won nothing.
When is the last time an award winning science fiction tale had profound literary merit, seeped in the traditions of Western epic and romance from the classical period to now? My one THE GOLDEN AGE was both imaginative and rooted in the classics. It won nothing.
When is the last time an award winning science fiction tale was fun? Read HARD MAGIC by Larry Correia. It won nothing.
In jest, we said that the leading cause of sadness syndrome in cute furry puppies was the predominance of brain-meltingly absurd uberleftist ideological agitprop being rocketed to the top of the most prestigious awards in the field, and we asked for the sake of the puppies to grant awards based on merit.
This is not about conservative versus liberal.
The Morlocks are not liberals, except in the sense that they use the liberal vocabulary to express their illiberal ideas. And, of the four founding members of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors who decided to stand up to the Inner Ringwraiths, I am the only social and political conservative properly so called.
This is not about white males versus minorities.
Again, of the founding four, I am the only white male. (For those of you racists who insist we call carry an Ahnenpass, the others are Female, Hispanic, American Indian).
This is not about fun adventure fiction versus highbrow literary fiction.
I write highbrow literary fiction more filled with allusion and philosophical depth than anything the Morlocks recommend. Each time they claim to be what I am, an refined aesthete of exquisite literary accomplishment, another imp in hell laughs in the delight and the Empire of Lies grows another inch. Unlike the poseurs and pretend intellectuals, however, I can also read, admire and applaud wrecked but well meant pulp fiction and lowbrow fun. Because I am human and I like humans, whereas the Morlocks regard humans as food animals.
This is not about returning to the past of John W. Campbell versus the wondrous new future promised by Michael Moorcock and the New Wave, or whatever. This is not about rebels versus reactionaries.
Good fiction is timeless, and politically correct excremental sludge the Morlocks favor is never good fiction, it is merely propaganda in the service of a faction with no taste for science fiction and no taste for fiction and no taste. Indeed, if anything, the New Wave mavins, still trapped in the mindset of Woodstock, are the reactionaries. They have not noticed that, ever since STAR WARS hit the silver screen, and HALO hit the computer screen, the genre has changed forever.
We said this over and over again. We all said it. Everything we did was aboveboard, and in the open, and honest. And the Morlocks vomited up so many lies in a blitzkrieg of Alinskyite shitstormtrooper tactics, that many a disinterested passerby, not even aware that there was another side to the argument, is and remains deceived.
The passersby think that we boasted about logrolling, votebuying, and ballotbox stuffing, and that our motive was the creation of the Fourth Reich: that was the narrative, and the Morlocks will die before they admit otherwise, because to admit otherwise is tantamount to admitting our charges of corruption are correct.
So, no, there is not a single column, perhaps not even a single paragraph, of honest reporting from the other side. For a time, I thought that perhaps Mike Glyer of File 770 might prove to be a man of such character as to be able to look at both sides of the issue. He is not.
For an hour, I thought perhaps George RR Martin, a man with whom I have worked on two projects, or more, might prove to be an honest broker above the fray, and able to reconcile the factions, able to have a civil discussion. He did not. He surrendered entirely to malice, and claims I and mine must be excluded from fandom, because we were never fans to begin with. The man with more Hugos than Heinlein claims the system is not corrupt.
There is some freak at the Guardian whose name I forget who is the first to earn the name Morlock from me. He is brain damaged, but not due to physical damage to his nerve cells, but due to the spiritual damage ongoing devotion darkness, madness and lies eventually creates. I mention him only to mock him, but I cannot recall his name. Walters? Walter? Something like that.
One inaccuracy in the Lew Rockwell article: I was up for six, not seven, nominations, and after one of stories ever was correctly disqualified this meant I had five nominations, not six. Read the remainder of this entry »
I have been wondered whether there were any men on the Left who saw what the Left has become, and who, like Reagan, realized the that the real Left really left long ago, leaving only shrieking Eloi and troglodyte Morlocks in their wake to inherit the ruins.
I was delighted by, and here reprint in full, this comment from a reader over on VOx Day’s blogsite:
Yep, I was a committed leftist myself, back when the left was about Martin Luther King Jr. style “race blindness” anti-racism, free speech, and concern for the working class. Today, class is irrelevant to the left, they eagerly promote a private grade school Harvard Law grad named Obama over any working class O’Malley; any “affirmative action” is just political nepotism dressed up in base race grievance mongering. The idea that a working class white might not be as “privileged” as a middle-upper-class black is completely lost on them, or rather, they cynically exploit outdated race grievances to oppress the working class. My great-grandfather was a fiery union organizer who’d never dream of voting Republican. My grandfather followed him until the 1970’s, when the left decided it was more important to socially engineer society — with a focus on sexual deviancy — than to protect the economic interests of the working class. A “Reagan democrat.” I naively thought there might be something to what my liberal professors were talking about until I entered the working world, which the left assiduously isolates itself from. Pretty much all of my family has followed suit.
So, congrats, left. You’ve alienated working-class Midwestern families — literally “born and bred” Democrats — who were the strongest supporters of what you originally stood for: race-blindness, free speech, and a voice for the working class. You traded that for race wars based on extremely flimsy pretexts, undermining what Dr. King fought for, championing obvious cynical hucksters like Al Sharpton. You ceded any moral authority you might have had against the old “family values” Protestant mainline by your totalitarian support of family perversion. And you eagerly undermine the American working class by importing millions of low-skilled workers — illegally. Enjoy your little media cliques and “no awards” parties. I think you’re about to find out that there’s actually a lot of people living in “flyover country.”
I’m definitely in for a Worldcon membership this year. I was never much of a scifi fan (more Tolkien, Lewis and Lovecraft), but “A Canticle for Leibowitz” is on my reading list — although one wonders if it still qualifies as “science fiction” and not “magical realism.” I will try to read everything nominated, but given the obvious attempts at social ostracism, the nature of the Hugos has been made clear, and I will entrust my voting choices to our dark lord. You have only yourselves to blame, SJWs. You created the puppies, and we’ve tasted blood.
Mr. Rothman and I had lunch at WorldCon. Here is his report of the outcome, from the point of view of his children:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204934540299315
And another:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/24/the-hugo-awards-why-the-waronnerds-is-a-war-on-art/
It disturbs me that the lies of the Morlocks are so widespread and so pervasive that even sympathetic onlookers absorb them without even noticing they do so. (This is sort of like how a conservative starts using “he and she” without noticing that this use of the pronoun buys into the logically absurd notion that thought is controlled by imaginary connotations of power relations hidden in vocabulary.) In this case, the writer quotes Mr George RR Martin objecting to conservative adventure fiction, without questioning the dishonest assumption that the Sad Puppies are conservative adventure fiction writers.
Meaning no disrespect to my fellow Evil Legion of Evil Author Legioneers, I am the only conservative in the group.
Here is another falsehood from Mr. Martin:
Aug. 24th, 2015 02:16 am (local)Every word you say proves that you are not a fan.A fan is not just someone who reads SF and fantasy. A fan is a member of a community called “fandom” whose roots go back to the 1930s.
Fans are tolerant, friendly, good humored, warm, welcoming. They love worldcon, they respect and value the Hugos, they honor fannish tradition.
You are your fellow Pups seem to have nothing but contempt for all that. Instead of joining the community, you do all you can to destroy it.
Edited at 2015-08-24 02:18 am (local)
I will leave to other pens than mine to describe how warm and welcoming WorldCon fandom was to me. Perhaps Irene Gallo or Mr. Moshe Feder can explain why my religion makes me a writer with whom they cannot tolerate to be associated, or automatically makes my works so wretched that their appearance on a ballot cannot possibly be the honest opinion of honest fans of SFF?
The pathetic lie here is Mr. Martin in his portrayal of me and mine as interlopers or outsiders. I was in an anthology edited by him ten years ago. My story appears just before his in another anthology, called FEDERATIONS. We have been at cons together and appeared on panels together. My first published short story was in Isaac Asimov years before that.
I have been reading in this genre since I picked up HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL as a child, and DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH as a younger child. The first story I ever completed writing was a childish homage to Keith Laumer’s DINOSAUR BEACH called AGENT OF NEXX. This was at age nine.
Who is the interloper, then? Whose work is in keeping with the traditions of the earlier generations of science fiction? I write so precisely in the make and mold of writers as difference as Jack Vance and A.E. van Vogt and William Hope Hodgson that my work appears as authorized sequels or in homage volumes to them, including one you yourself edited.
Indeed, if anything, a retelling of the War of the Roses set in Middle Earth with a grindingly nihilistic viewpoint is, if anything, more foreign to the mainstream of science fiction tradition than anything written by me, is it not?
You have been in the field longer than I. But Jules Verne was here before you, and I of his Church and his school of writing.
I have been in science fiction my whole life, Mr. Martin. I have never been anywhere else.
I am not going anywhere else.
If you cannot tolerate to be in the same field as a Roman Catholic because of your bigotry against me, it is you who must go elsewhere, not I.
This is my home. I am staying.
I am getting back to my next novel, which stars a boy expelled from school trying to be a knight in modern day rural North Carolina, and his dog that can talk. Obviously this is serious business, so I have little more to say on the whole Hugo debacle. But I have come across this gem:
Read the remainder of this entry »
The Hugo Award voters paid me the signal honor of burning down two or perhaps three whole categories of awards merely to prevent me from being awarded the spaceship which the breakdown of the votes shows I was due.
I am humbled by the laud shown my work: it is not everyone who can point to the smoking wreckage of a great city whose fanes and temple, colonnades and palaces, baths and coliseums and alabaster towers the burghers burnt with their own hands to prevent falling into his.
Even stranger to behold the beast-yowling burghers dancing with odd jerks of the elbows and knees around the bonfires of their own homes where all their best beloved scrolls and trophies burn, as if some signal victory is won, while the putrid smoke climbs up forever.
Nevertheless, I take no joy and proffer no vaunt. I am no barbarian, but a Christian conqueror, and I pity even my foes. Therefore let us take a moment of solemn silence to doff our helms and lower our eyes for the dissolution of a once great institution.
This is what the Hugos once stood for:
That same year, the winner for Best Dramatic Presentation was 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [Paramount] Screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick; Directed by Stanley Kubrick; based on the story “The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke.
And, likewise, that same year, a Special Award was given to Neil Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, and Michael Collins – for The Best Moon Landing Ever.
That Special Award, to my knowledge, has never been granted again, because we are the generation that had the moon and lost it.
So for such works the Hugos once stood. For what do they stand now?
The nihilists voted for nothing. No one is surprised.
Read the remainder of this entry »
As regular readers of this column know, there was a Hugo Award ceremony this weekend. Speaking personally, let me say that I had a lovely time visiting with friends and meeting fans.
I was asked beforehand more than once if I thought there would be any unpleasantness or insults from the few but vocal pests in jest I call Morlocks who have been steadily infiltrating and corrupting the science fiction community in general, and the Hugo Award process in particular, over the last twenty years.
I answered in the negative. The Morlocks are a cowardly lot, and would not dare say to my face the foolish lies they say behind my back on the internet. Besides, like me, they came to have a good time and to celebrate our mutual love of science fiction, and applaud in the fashion of good sports what we each severally take to be the best the genre offers. I thought there would be no incident.
I am sad to report that I was mistaken. The Archmorlock himself displayed his courage against the short and girlish figure of my meek and gentle wife.
At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extend to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.
Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.
Read the remainder of this entry »
There are times when a man grows breathless at the sheer dizzying artistry of a genius of poetry.
This is from a commenter named Steve over at the Vox Day website:
If we were to erect a monument to the spirit of our age, it wouldn’t be something sublime like the Eiffel Tower, St. Peter’s Basilica or the Empire State Building. No grandiose frescos would decorate it. No wondrous ostentations in gold leaf and lapis lazuli would adorn it. No clean-limbed marble statuary would guard it.
No, it’d be a squat, ugly thing, like a paleolithic fertility fetish or a Morlock or typical WorldCon polyamory enthusiast. It would be sexless, androgynous and gendernonconforming all at the same time, and rendered in drab wattle and daub. Its most striking feature would be a great big mealy mouth, from which would drip liquid bromides and taurine fecal matter. Hordes of hooting crypto-humanoids in their mobility scooters would gather under this toxic shower to pray for equality and more all-you-can-eat buffets.
I am so putting that Morlock statue in my next book, somehow. Damn that is a fine bit of imagery.
So, on Tuesday, I was woken up again by the Cherubim saying gruffly: “Mom, Mom. Go to store. Buy some milk!” (Teenage boys. Lots of milk use here.)
And this time, thanks to you, I was able to get up and buy milk and a number of other things that we needed.
In fact, thanks to the astonishing generosity of John’s wonderful, wonderful readers we were able to pay all our bills in August. And with the help of two gracious and amazing friends, we have our mortgage for September covered.
The manna in the desert was not more miraculous. ;-)
God bless you guys!
(And prayers for a peaceful, harmonious Hugos weekend are most welcome!)
I just got an email from an SJW theologian telling me that it is impossible to hate a sin while loving a sinner whose sins are corrupting, lobotomizing, torturing, and killing him. His logic seemed to be that it is hypocrisy to love someone and yet to hate what hurts him.
Of course, being self-lobotomized with modern education and an industrial sized sense of his own self righteousness, the SJW theologian believes that the word ‘sin’ is another word for ‘fun’ — in which case, he thinks I am advocating loving the funster while hating his fun which would be a paradox.
I hate my sins because they hurt me and damn me and darken my intellect. I love myself just fine, perhaps too much. I do not see how it is hypocritical to treat others with the same standard with which I regard myself. Indeed, to a non-SJW, treating others as you treat yourself is not hypocrisy, but the very opposite.
I hate lies, and there is no time to battle them. I wrote another chapter of my juvenile today, and I want to get it finished as quickly as time allows. Hence, like Vox Day, I have no time to waste writing letters to idiot SJW theologians, or to the lying vermin at NPR.
For I see the following at the Vox Day website:
A Latino, an Indian, and a White man
Walk into a room. How does NPR describe them? As three white men. Because badthink:
The prestigious Hugo Awards, which honor science fiction and fantasy writing, will be held Saturday. Lately, they have been given to more and more women and writers of color as the world of sci-fi opens up — and that’s prompted a backlash from a group of mostly white male writers who call themselves the “Sad Puppies.”
Listen to the rest of it here if you like, I’m not going to bother.
What a boatload of maroons.
More lies.
The Morlocks seem not to realize that everyone not of their particular camp is repelled rather than attracted to stupid lies. Intelligent people are repelled because of the stupidity and honest people are repelled because of the dishonesty.
Of course, I may be too optimistic. For what if this behavior is purposeful, not the product of incompetence? It takes a particularly neurotic, morbid, and cynical sort of self-hatred to voice a lie one knows has no chance to be believed, but to utter it anyway, knowing your fellow neurotics will be attracted to the siren song of morbid cynicism. If they are doing such a thing on purpose, one wonders at the psychology.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/sad-puppies-2015-hugo-awards-20150814
I am on chapter one of my next novel, which I hope to finish rapidly. I have not the time to fisk the article line by line.
I invite the readers to list the half-truths and full out lies involved here.
I will mention only one:
The sociopolitical conservatism of the Puppies’ leaders and their highest-profile nominees is not inherently a problem; Orson Scott Card is merely one name in a long line of right-wingers who have written phenomenal speculative fiction and been honored at the Hugos accordingly. But John C. Wright and Theodore Beale go well beyond the pale when it comes to their views on women, people of color, and homosexuals. That’s the point. In championing Wright and Beale, the Puppies are taking the Hugo Awards out of the realm of literary appreciation and into the new culture war that has arisen in the age of #GamerGate.
Note the gratuitous and pointless insertion of a reference to Gamergate. As far as I know, the only gamer who has ever read my SF space opera was Daddy Warpig. To him I give thanks and praise: he apparently by himself, merely by liking my space stories, can overturn all of human history.
FEAR HIM!! FEAR THE ALMIGHTY PATERNAL SWINE OF BATTLES!!
I am sorry now that I am not a pagan, for otherwise I would erect a suitable shrine to Daddy Warpig, a stepped pyramid rising from the steaming jungles of Mexico, adorned with larger-than-life marble statues of raging boars coated with hammered gold, on which to sacrifice captive foes, and offer their still beating hearts to his glory!
Hm. On second thought, paganism is over-rated. But I like and note that fact that Gamergate has the same enemies I do, merely because we do not share the philosophy of self-loathing and hellish hatred of love, life, and truth known as Political Correctness.
As for the sentence quoted in the hit piece, let me say a word or three:
I have no views on People of Color and have never written a single word on the topic. Baptism is not a racial characteristic but a spiritual one. Sainthood is not an inherited characteristic.
My views on woman are those of a dyed-in-the-wool romantic of the chivalrous Christian school, who adores both Saint Mary and Saint Mary Magdalen as saints. I also have a healthy fascination with the character of Nausicaa from Miyazaki’s VALLEY OF THE WIND (see below) and an unhealthy fascination for the character of the Catwoman. And this is being condemned, why, again exactly? Because I respect both saints and sinners of the fair sex, both princesses and cat-burglars? Why is having contempt for woman a sign of Political Correctness, again, exactly, please?
My views, to the best of my knowledge, and have no point of overlap with the dour cynicism of my publisher and friend Theodore Beale, so the sentence as it stands is meaningless. It is like saying, “The views of the Easter Bunny and Count Dracula on avoiding the drinking human blood during Lent go beyond the pale.” But there is no view the Bunny and the Count share on this point.
My views on homosexuals are the views of the Roman Catholic Church, which is to say, the views of Western Civilization since the time of Constantine onward. Those views are ones of love and respect, more respect indeed by far than felt by those who would encourage the sexual desecration of the human person. Why is pitiless contempt for those suffering sexual aberration a sign of Political Correctness, again, exactly, please?
The phrase ‘beyond the pale’ refers to the boundary between civilization and barbarism. Originally, this was said to be the Wall of Hadrian, which held the Picts back from the civilization of Roman Britain.
Which of the two of us, me (the champion of civilization, Christ and Rome) or Mr. Miles Schneiderman (a pathological liar and libeler, champion of ignorance, barbarism, confusion, untruths, and hate-mongering) is beyond the pale?
Read the remainder of this entry »
Reviewer praise for SOMEWHITHER:
Perhaps my only criticism of this book is that these two characters are reminiscent of each other with the bravado and inventive cursing. At first another aspect of this book was putting me off regarding an extended sequence involving escape. Later I realized how necessary this sequence of this book was to the plot involving a Calvinistic world that is a deterministic nightmare.
Again I am amazed by how inventive he is with plot ideas. There are several here where a competent author could take just one of them to make a good book.
As a lover of SF and Fantasy, along with being both a geek and a Catholic, there are not many books that bring satisfaction on the geeky Catholic level. There are tons of geeky references in the book and I think I caught on to most of them, but doubt I caught them all. This was part of the playfulness of the book. …
… I enjoyed this book immensely and like every start in a new series eagerly await the next book.
Still I feel kind of like I had shoplifted this book since the Kindle price was only $4.99. Just doesn’t seem right considering how much enjoyment I got.
My comment: I am happy to be “shoplifting” under such circumstances: I get paid more than twice my cut of the take had the reader bought this book in hardback.
