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For Your Reading Pleasure

Posted August 26, 2015 By John C Wright

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 »

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Voice of the People

Posted August 25, 2015 By John C Wright

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.

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Mr Smith Goes to WorldCon

Posted August 25, 2015 By John C Wright

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:

grrm

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.

 

 

 

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Now for a word from Hitler

Posted August 24, 2015 By John C Wright

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:
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  • wlinden posted on August 25, 2015
    Don't those Belgium people joojooflop know any other srizonified words?
  • DGDDavidson posted on August 24, 2015
    *Tsk.* Who chooses a novel character for his waifu, anyway? Does this guy have a really bad internet connection and…
  • Flikery posted on August 24, 2015
    It is indeed a juvenile he is working on, and Somewhither is already released for your reading pleasure! http://www.amazon.com/Somewhither-Unwithering-John-C-Wright-ebook/dp/B010XWRSVS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1440461051&sr=8-1&keywords=somewhither
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In Memoriam

Posted August 24, 2015 By John C Wright

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:

  • “Allamagoosa” by Eric Frank Russell [Astounding May 1955; Sci Fiction, scifi.com 2004-09-15]
  • “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke [Infinity Nov 1955]
  • “Or All the Seas with Oysters” by Avram Davidson [Galaxy May 1958]
  • “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes [F&SF Apr 1959]
  • “The Long Afternoon of Earth” aka “Hothouse” by Brian W. Aldiss [F&SF Feb,Apr,Jul,Sep,Dec 1961]
  • “The Dragon Masters” by Jack Vance [Galaxy Aug 1962]
  • “No Truce with Kings” by Poul Anderson [F&SF Jun 1963] tied with (2) “Savage Pellucidar” by Edgar Rice Burroughs [Amazing Nov 1963] tied with (3) “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny [F&SF Nov 1963]
  • “Soldier, Ask Not” by Gordon R. Dickson [Galaxy Oct 1964]
  • “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison [Galaxy Dec 1965]
  • “Neutron Star” by Larry Niven [If Oct 1966]
  • “Light of Other Days” by Bob Shaw [Analog Aug 1966]
  • “The Last Castle” by Jack Vance [Galaxy Apr 1966]
  • “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison [If Mar 1967] tied with (2) “The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven [Dangerous Visions, 1967]
  • “Nightwings” by Robert Silverberg [Galaxy Sep 1968]
  • “Dragonrider” by Anne McCaffrey [Analog Dec 1967,Jan 1968]
  • “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World” by Harlan Ellison [Galaxy Jun 1968] tied with (2) “All the Myriad Ways” by Larry Niven [Galaxy Oct 1968]

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.

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Smeagol Nielson Hayden

Posted August 23, 2015 By John C Wright

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.

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Time and Lies Wait for no Man

Posted August 19, 2015 By John C Wright

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.

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Keep Recruiting

Posted August 17, 2015 By John C Wright

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?

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It is Done! Hugo Voted!

Posted July 22, 2015 By John C Wright

I sat down and cast my Hugo ballots tonight, just an hour ago, online. Naturally, I voted for myself wherever possible.

Sorry, Col Kratman, but I thought you were not interested in the award anyway.

And I voted for my editor Vox Day, who as far as I am concerned, is the best editor I have ever worked with. Although my several other editors, including George RR Martin (who has forgotten he and I worked together to our mutual satisfaction) were kind enough, and professional and thorough, and I am grateful to them, none of the others made specific suggestions that specifically improved my work, or discussed my works with me, other than the very minimum.

With Larry Correia off the list, I voted for Jim Butcher’s SKIN GAME in the number one spot for best novel.

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From the Pen of Larry Correia

Posted July 21, 2015 By John C Wright

A public service announcement (http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/07/20/sad-puppies-update-dont-forget-to-vote/)

For once I agree with GRRM. Everybody should vote. The deadline is coming up fast.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/20/george-rr-martin-hugo-awards-vote-game-of-thrones-science-fiction?CMP=share_btn_fb

Since we wrote a novella worth of giant blog posts back and forth, GRRM knows damned good and well the Sad Puppies campaign wasn’t motivated by racism or sexism, but that doesn’t stop him from casually tossing the “neo-nazi” accusation out there… but you should believe him when he says there was like totally never any political bias in the system.

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The Three Laws of Morlocktics

Posted June 22, 2015 By John C Wright

Below is a comment I simply had to share:

39. Jack Aubrey

They are as predictable as Asimov’s robots, whose three laws were programmed into them.

1. An SJW may not tell the Truth or, through inaction, allow the Truth to be told.

2. An SJW must obey orders given it by the Hive Mind, and double down except where doing so would conflict with the First Law.

3. An SJW must protect its own existence by projecting its behavior on the Enemy and acting accordingly, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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Moshe Feder Speaks for Himself

Posted June 20, 2015 By John C Wright

Tor Books editor Moshe Feder is my wife’s editor. Hence, her customers, her readers, the people who are delighted with her novels, are his customers as well, the people who pay him to do his job so that he can make a living.

He has decided publicly to rebuff those customers Mr Feder calls our customers unhappy with the recent unprofessional antics at Tor Books by the charming epithet “idiots”:

As you may have heard, certain scoundrels have declared a boycott of Tor, starting today, to protest the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack. In response, some of our friends have declared today “Buy A Tor Book Day.”

I wouldn’t have the temerity to ask you to buy a book just because some idiots have declared war on us. But if there _is_ a Tor Book you’ve been meaning to get anyway, buying it today would be a a gesture I’d appreciate.

[As always here on Facebook, I’m speaking for myself and not the company.]

Ah… Well, thank you for your help mollifying our customers, Mr Feder. I am sure that being told they are idiots will make them eager to spend their hard earned book-buying dollars the product you and I are working together to produce for them.

The honorable and upright man being referred to so colorfully as a scoundrel is, of course, Mr Peter Grant. Mr Grant expresses a strong doubts about Mr Feder’s veracity:

Read his first sentence.

Now, read it again.

It’s a lie. It’s a bare-faced, out-and-out falsehood. He’s lying in public, and he appears to believe he’ll be allowed to get away with it.

The boycott of Tor has nothing whatsoever to do with “the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack”. It has everything to do with some Tor employees (including Mr. Feder) deliberately, repeatedly and publicly lying about the ‘Puppies’ campaigns, those behind them, and anything and anyone else they regard as ideologically impure and/or unfit to associate with SF/F fandom as approved by them. I’ve already described in detail Ms. Gallo’s contribution, which sparked the boycott. Mr. Feder’s latest lie merely confirms and reinforces her mendacity (and my position).

He states that he’s speaking for himself and not the company . . . but I haven’t seen Tor repudiate any of his earlier lies, some of them issued on company time using company equipment, so I’ll give this latest assurance the same credibility I’ve given his earlier ones.

My comment:

Since I have a conflict of interest, I must remain neutral. Loyalty to my publisher demands I not take sides. Loyalty to my beloved customers demands I not take sides.

Mr Feder has taken sides. Loyalty to his political correctness outweighs, for him, loyalty to publisher. And he just called you, my dear readers and customers, idiots and scoundrels.

This has nothing to do with the Sad Puppies. We are only here for the Hugo Awards.

This particular fight is between, on the one hand, those at Tor Books who think political correctness outweighs all professional and personal loyalties, all standards of decency, all need to be truthful, and who damn their own customers; and, on the other, those who are thankful to the customers and who think the purpose of a business is business.

One side consists of those calling for the resignations that any professional worthy of the name would long ago have proffered for the damage they have done to the company name and public goodwill.

The other side consists of people at Tor who regard Tor as an instrument of social engineering, an arm of the Democrat Party’s press department, or a weapon in the war for social justice.

Without expressing any personal opinion, I can say that there is an easy compromise which our free and robust capitalistic system allows: we can all wish the best to Miss Gallo and Mr Feder when they day comes when they decide to take their interests and obsessions elsewhere, and leave the company in the hands of those of us who merely want to write, publish, and read science fiction told from any and every point of view, political or otherwise, provided the story is well crafted.

If you are a customer and have an opinion, please make your voice heard.

tom.dohertyATtor.com
andrew.weberATmacmillan.com
rhonda.brownATmacmillan.com

Substitute the at sign where I have written AT.

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Libertarian SF versus Establishment SF

Posted June 19, 2015 By John C Wright

The science fiction stories promoted by the establishment authors, libraries, schools and lit-critics has become so dreary, smug, self-righteous and politically correct as to be unreadable, save by those seeking a political commentary, not a space princess.

If the establishment were content to kept its moist hands to itself, and write books to its taste to please its own narrow niche audience, all would be well and good.

But the nature of dreary smug self-righteousness, the very definition, is a desire to improve the lives of others by vexing and browbeating them, and then shedding crocodile tears at any sign of opposition or demand for civility, as if such demands were cruel and heartless.

Such is the absurd situation in which science fiction finds itself today. The dreary and self-righteous nags and scolds will not let us be, and scream bloody murder if we, the normal and sane science fiction fans, the one who have been here since the genre was invented, want to give the normal science fiction awards to the normal writers based on merit, not on political correctness. That is something they cannot stand.

They seek to impose a tyranny of drear. Wrongfans, beware!

To paraphrase the great George Orwell, imagine a fat lady wagging her finger in a human face…. forever!

Mr Allan Davis Jr at the Lew Rockwell site describes the upcoming boycott of Tor Books in admirable brevity and precision:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/06/allan-davis/the-sci-fi-establishment/

I have been a science fiction fan from day one.

I can say that, with all honesty and a straight face.  My mother loves to tell the story of how she watched an episode of Star Trek while in the hospital in labor, and asked my father to buy a television set so she could watch more.

I’ve also been a reader of science fiction for as long as I can remember, since she loaned me her copy of Dune when I was eight years old.  My tastes in science fiction have always leaned towards the “hard”–Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Robert L. Forward, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, to offer up a few examples.  It’s getting harder and harder to find stuff by those authors, for the unfortunate reason that many of them aren’t around anymore.

…

For their part, Tor Books seems content to continue to ignore this dissatisfied segment of science fiction fandom.  And, in fact, Tor employees are content to insult them.

Irene Gallo, the Creative Director at Tor Books and an Associate Publisher at Tor.com, wrote

There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.

In Ms. Gallo’s defense, these remarks were posted on her personal Facebook page.  On the other hand, they were in a thread announcing an upcoming Tor release.

…

Writer Peter Grant was infuriated.

…

He called for a deadline of June 15th, but was convinced to extend that deadline to Friday, June 19th.  If he has not heard any acceptable response from either Tor or Macmillan by then, he will call for a general boycott of Tor.

…

Vox Day called for a letter writing campaign, not only to Tor, but to Macmillan, their parent company.

Since many of those emails were copied to Vox and to Peter Grant, they were definitely sent.  To date, Tor has not responded to the emails or made any acknowledgement of the situation.

…

L. Jagi Lamplighter requested that science fiction fans take pictures of their Tor books and email them to her, “not to shame Tor, but to help readers let Tor know they are real people.”  

I have always preferred Robert Heinlein to Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Forward to Samuel Delaney, and, more recently, John C. Wright to John Scalzi and “A Throne of Bones” to “Game of Thrones.”  Somehow, those preferences in science fiction and fantasy apparently make me something other than a “science fiction fan”–at least in the eyes of the current science fiction establishment.  And, in the opinion of some, they make me a pariah, a “heretic against the true church of science fiction.”

At least, now I know I’m not the only one.

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Beale v Sandifer

Posted June 11, 2015 By John C Wright

Here is a transcript of am unexpectedly polite mutual interview between my publisher Mr Beale, whom the Elves name Vox Day, and the orcs of the Dull-Eyed Land call Morgothrond the Voxinator, and a satanist named Mr Sandifer.

They each agreed to discuss one book the other finds terrible. I am curious whether anyone aside from myself agrees the debate has a clear winner, and who that was.

I note particularly each instance where Mr Sandifer will read directly from the text of ‘One Bright Star to Guide Them’ and then offer an interpretation directly and diametrically opposed to what the text says.

Again, I noted when Mr Sandifer’s criticism applied to plot elements, characterization, or craft (nearly none) as opposed to his personal allergic reaction to Christianity, which is nowhere explicitly advocated, or even mentioned, in the tale (nearly the whole).

He particularly dwells for an undue time on a monologue by the villain Richard, under the claim that real occultists do not actually perform the make believe rituals made up for my make believe story. Since the monologue is merely elements taken from Shaw and Nietzsche thrown together with the sacraments of the modern Democrat Party, namely, aborticide and fornication, I suspect Mr Sandifer’s offense comes mainly from the clarity of the looking glass: He is Richard.

I note also that he lambasts the tale for its Christian apologetic message, apparently without knowing that this story, in its first and short form, was written by an atheist. I penned it about the same time as LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS, and it has the same theme; I did not erenow think the theme was hidden or indirect. Indeed, I recall fretting over how unsubtle I was.

But each reader reads a different tale, and the wise writer knows least of all men what his story means. Readers see the face of the story; writers see the mask from the concave side, and sees the joints and wires which makes the lips and eyelids of the mask to move.

Below are the opening remarks, enough to give the alert reader a taste of the difference in the mental caliber of the two men.

The full transcript is here: http://www.philipsandifer.com/2015/06/the-vox-day-interview-transcript.html

The original audio is here: http://pexlives.libsyn.com/pex-lives-and-eruditorum-press-presents-the-vox-day-interview

Read the remainder of this entry »

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Irene Gallo

Posted June 8, 2015 By John C Wright

Irene Gallo is the adroit, talented and able director of the Art Department at Tor Books. In many places and at many times, I have praised and thanked Irene Gallo for her wonderful work on the cover art for my books.

I thought she and I were members of the same team, partners in a joint endeavor to bring you high quality science fiction. I have always treated her with courtesy, and, indeed, loyalty. I would have expected the same in return.

She has decided to join other top brass at Tor Books in describing me and Kevin J Anderson, a small and a large Tor author currently up for Hugo Awards thanks to the effort of the Sad Puppies, in the following terms:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jTqQDGd5pyM/VXMZNP9TFxI/AAAAAAAABSg/O6897FvCNw0/s1600/Tor_FB_Gallo.jpg

I am not making this up. The original link is here

https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts/10152728739637461?hc_location=ufi

And the link to the archived page is

https://archive.is/3Mtt1

I had no idea she had this opinion of me, or so much contempt for the books she adorned so skillfully.

My father in law, may he rest in peace, was a Jew serving in the US Military during World War Two in the European Theater. In fact, he won a Purple Heart medal for wounds to his hands he received while liberating a Nazi death camp. His unit was standing about idly, troopers on one side of the wall, ragged prisoners on the other, waiting for the carpenter to arrive with tools to tear down the planks, but in a fury of impatience he did it with his bare hands, like a superman. He turned down the award, thinking others whose wounds were from the enemy deserved it, not he. That is the kind of man he was, an odd mixture of towering ego and meek humility.

Irene Gallo should have been penning me polite notes of congratulation on receiving an historically unprecedented number of  awards for the prestigious Hugo Award, and rejoicing that any victory for me or for Mr Anderson (who would be receiving his first ever Hugo for his life’s work producing over 50 bestsellers) would reflect well on our main publisher whom we both loyally serve, Tor Books.

Instead, Irene Gallo just said I was a member of the barbaric and racist National Socialist totalitarian political movement that my family fought, suffered, and shed blood to expunge from the earth.

What is the honorable thing for me to do, dearest readers?

I am not asking what is in my short term fiscal interest, which is not my sole, nor even my primary, motive.

More to the point, what is the honorable thing for you to do?

* * *

Allow me to forestall any uninformed comments asking me to merely get over my emotional reaction or hurt feelings.

There is no emotive reaction. There are no hurt feelings. I have little or no concern with feelings.

The question here is not Irene Gallo as a private person uttering these libels. The question here is why she is repeating the libels issued by Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Moshe Feder, who are likewise highly ranked editors within the corporation.

This implies, but does not prove, that we are not dealing with private opinion but the official stance of the corporation. I have asked my editor to have Tor Books rebuke this libel. Time will tell.

Hence, to continue to deal with this corporation in a loyal, professional and businesslike way, when I am being treated unprofessionally by libels which hurt our mutual sales and demean both my good name and the good will of the company’s patrons, this becomes a matter of honor, that is, a matter related to the logic of dignity, due worth, and mutual respect.

We are not dealing with a mob. We are not dealing with a stranger.

We are dealing with the person who (very ably) designs my book covers, that is, a partner.

She and I make the book together and present them to the reader. It is a team effort. Well, one member of the team is cheering for the rival team.

Let no one pretend emotion is involved. This is a matter of principle. I trusted, and I was betrayed. It is rational for me to trust again? Or should I ask my readers and patron to boycott my work, and the work of other able authors (including Gene Wolfe) whom I greatly admire?

I ask because I am not certain, and I would like my readers to help me with this question.

But it is no help to answer another question, an emotional question, where I have no confusion and need no advice. How to deal with any alleged hurt feelings is a question I did not ask.

***

UPDATE: Well, that was quick.

Irene Gallo has posted again:

About my Sad/Rabid Puppies comments: They were solely mine. This is my personal page; I do not speak on behalf of Tor Books or Tor.com. I realize I painted too broad a brush and hurt some individuals, some of whom are published by Tor Books and some of whom are Hugo Award winners. I apologize to anyone hurt by my comments.

Since she did not insult me by name, she need not apologize to me by name. The modern fashion is to assume one knows facts not in evidence, and to pretend one knows the inner hearts of others, and judge accordingly. The judgment is always condemnatory. The modern fashion is to reject apologies if they seem insincere.

I am not a modern man. The insult was pro forma, ergo a pro forma apology is sufficient. I do not care about her emotions any more than I care about mine. I do not care about sincerity.

My personal honor is satisfied.

I do not need any further words from her, nor does she owe me anything more. I look forward to working with whomever Mr Doherty hires to replace her.

The honor of my readers, who were also equally insulted, however, is theirs to look to.

I have heard that some of my readers are stacking up all their Tor books, photographing them, and sending them to the Tor and Macmillan management with a politely worded note mentioning how welcome the lady’s resignation will be when it comes.

I, for one, will regret the event, since a woman of such superlative skill will be hard to replace, but I am confident that Mr Doherty will not insist on keeping her at her tasks in the face of her own shame and regret.

How could she, in good conscience, design a book cover for authors she has so bitterly, absurdly and erratically libeled, and proffer it to book buyers for whom she equally has shone such scorn and mind-destroying hate? It would be cruel of him to insist on her continuing to labor under such adverse and unhappy conditions.

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