I swore to myself—again—that I was I was going to stay away from this ruckus after my first two essays (one long, one short) but some of the posts put up on my web site have worn down that resolve.
A friend of mine once said “ignorance can be fixed; stupid is forever.” I suspect he’s right, but I will sally forth once again in the hopes that some of these seemingly-stupid statements and arguments are really just the product of ignorance.
Let me start with this statement, from a recent poster named James May (and don’t complain, dammit; once you post on MY web site, you’re fair game):
“The social justice warrior argument is not specious but right on point. When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege and others saying straight out they won’t review white men then that represents a sea-change, and a very new one, only 3 years old or so. That sort of thing is not occasional but obsessive and daily and it is not the usual right vs. left, although it is often couched in those terms. That is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than the months back it deserves.”
I have two points to make about this, one of which is:
Who the hell are you talking about outside of your right-wing echo chamber where idiot acronyms like “SJW” mean something?
But I’ll get back to that. My first point—picture me spluttering my coffee all over the place when I read it—has to do with this statement:
“When you have SF authors writing posts about white privilege… that represents a sea-change… This is why people make the mistake of stretching this conflict years and even decades back rather than months it deserves.”
Excuse me? SF authors have been writing about racism—AKA “white privilege”—for decades. And they came very late to the party. Eighty-eight years before the first Hugo award was handed out, a lowly be-damned politician had this to say on the subject of white privilege:
“It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
The politician’s name was Abraham Lincoln and he said the above in the course of his second inaugural address as PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
But according to James May, outraged as he is by “social justice warriors”—once known as the entire Union army led by a fellow named Ulysses S. Grant—this is all the product of a very recent ruckus caused by whoever his contemporary “social justice warriors” consist of.
The truth is this, as uncomfortable as it may be for some people to hear it: Science fiction can claim credit for a lot of things, but one thing it cannot claim credit for is its track record on issues of racism and sexism. Our genre, at least until very recent times, has been in the rearguard, not the vanguard, of the fight for social justice.
For decades it was all but impossible to get science fiction publishers to put people of color on the covers of science fiction novels. I can remember sitting in Andre Norton’s living room a few years before she died listening to her excoriate SF publishers for their cowardice on the subject.
For decades women were either entirely absent from SF stories or, if they did appear, usually appeared as one-dimensional characters. And for a number of SF authors—I will name names, and we can start with Keith Laumer—a female character was doing well if she achieved one-dimensionality. The women in his stories generally amounted to nothing more than walking and occasionally talking pin-up girls. (And if you’re wondering as to my expertise on the subject, I’m the one who edited Baen Books’ multi-volume reissue of the writings of Keith Laumer.)
Nor does SF’s none-too-glorious track record when it comes to social justice begin and end with issues of race and gender. There’s a reason the hero of my first published novel, Mother of Demons, is a Jew. It’s because when I was a teenager I was disturbed—well, no, I was actually pretty damn pissed—that there seemed to be no Jews in the worlds of the future depicted in science fiction.
“What?” I can remember demanding to myself. “Did Hitler somehow win World War II after all?” And I made a solemn vow in the way that fourteen-year-old boys will that if I ever wrote a science fiction novel I would damn well make my hero a Jew. Truth be told, I didn’t really expect I’d ever make good on the promise. But I didn’t forget it, and when the time came—rather to my surprise—I did.
I am a gentile, by the way. You don’t have to be a Jew yourself to be displeased by science fiction’s tacit accommodation to anti-Semitism even in the years after the Holocaust.
And puh-leese don’t anyone bother putting up outraged posts pointing to exceptions to the rule.
Yes, I know there were exceptions to the rule. There are always exceptions to any rule. But that doesn’t change the rule itself—and there’s a reason the word is “rule.”
Let me quote from Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language:
Rule (n): a principle or regulation governing conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, etc.
Rule (v): to exercise dominating power or influence; predominate.
So spare me your whining about the exceptions. They didn’t RULE. The rule was that, until shamefully recently, the track record of science fiction when it came to social justice stank to high heaven. A genre that claimed to be in advance of society was actually trailing far behind, on issues of race, gender, or anything that involved “social justice.”
All right, enough on that. Now I want to get to my next point, which is this:
I am sick and tired of listening to people whine about “social justice warriors”—or “SJWs,” as they usually call them. I am sick and tired of them for two reasons.
First of all, I am a social justice warrior. Not an “SJW,” not a figment of the fevered imaginations of right-wingers, but the real deal. As a teenager, I was active in the civil rights movement; as a young man, in the anti-Vietnam war movement. By the time I was in my early twenties I was a socialist—which I am to this day—and I spent the next quarter of a century as a full-time political activist in one or another socialist organization. Among my other accomplishments—or damn fool tilting at windmills, take your pick—I ran for city council in Birmingham, Alabama in 1979 on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. (No, I didn’t win. But I did get 800 votes, which I thought was pretty damn good given the key words Birmingham, Alabama and 1979.)
During that time I devoted most of my energy to political struggles in the industrial trade unions, and I did so all over the country: in Los Angeles, California—and not La-La-Land but the docks in San Pedro, steel mills in the City of Commerce and teamster halls in several places; Detroit, Michigan, where I worked in GM’s forge in Hamtramck; Morgantown, WV; Birmingham, Alabama; Cleveland, Ohio, and eventually in Chicago, where I live to this day. At one time or another, I have been a longshoreman, a truck driver, a steelworker, an autoworker, an oil refinery worker, a meatpacker, a machinist and even for a few months a genu-ine glass blower.
I fought corporate bosses at all times and on some occasions, union bosses—including some fairly hair-raising experiences dealing with goons from the national leadership of the Teamsters union, during the early 70s when I was a participant in the fight for democracy in that union.
I fought for a just distribution of wealth and—more importantly—a reorganization of the way wealth is produced in the first place. I fought for civil rights and women’s rights, and the first rally I ever attended supporting the nascent movement for gay and lesbian rights was held in a black church in Detroit, Michigan back in 1977. And, throughout, I fought against the imperialist tendencies of the American political establishment in foreign affairs.
If you don’t like it, screw you. I don’t care what you think.
Listening to you anti-SJW types whine about your persecution just makes me laugh.
Persecution? Because you didn’t get nominated for a Hugo award?
Boy, are you a bunch of pikers. I have had three murder attempts made on me because of my political beliefs and activities. I can’t remember any longer how many times I’ve been threatened with murder. I have been badly beaten by a mob of KKK-organized right-wing thugs in broad daylight on a public street and the man I was with was crippled for life. (That happened just outside of Birmingham, Alabama in June of 1979. Did the police ever investigate? Be serious. Of course not.)
I have been physically assaulted because of my political beliefs on perhaps a dozen occasions. Being fair about it, while most of those assaults were carried out by right-wingers, some of them—perhaps a third—were carried out by Stalinists (usually Maoists of one variety or another). I have no idea how many times I’ve been threatened with physical assault. I lost track decades ago.
I have been arrested by the police on several occasions, usually for exercising my First Amendment rights. No charges were ever filed, mind you, since they were so bogus no prosecutor would have taken them up. But this is a typical form of police harassment. They can legally hold you in jail for 24 hours without pressing charges, and if you don’t want to miss a day’s work you have to post bail—and if you don’t just happen to have several thousand dollars handy you have to pay a bail bondsman a percentage which you’ll never get back.
Since I was in my early twenties I’ve known that most careers were closed to me because of my political beliefs and activity. Those include any career in the military, any career in government above the level of a postal clerk, any managerial career in any major corporation—the list goes on and on.
But you know what? I never once pissed and moaned and groaned about it. I took it for granted because I knew from the outset that if you set yourself in really sharp opposition to the powers-that-be—I’m talking about the real Powers-That-Be, not bullshit “social justice warriors”—you are bound to pay a price for it. That’s been true in every society back to the Stone Age. I know it—and every real fighter for social justice knows it.
So shut up. Listening to you right-wingers piss and moan about being victimized because you don’t get nominated for Hugo awards is tiresome. You are the biggest wusses who ever walked the face of the earth.
Point two. There’s a reason you never actually name these fearsome “SJWs” you constantly carp about. That’s because if you did, you’d immediately become a laughingstock.
Here’s the truth. Yes, there are people in the world who are insufferably holier-than-thou when it comes to right conduct and righteous thinking. Yes, there are people in the world who will shriek at anyone whom they believe to have engaged in any sort of transgression of proper social norms—and they invariably have the longest and most tender toes in the world. It seems no one can help but step on them, no matter what you say or do.
To which the proper response is simple. You ignore themand go on your way. And you can do this because outside of a few departments in some universities they don’t amount to a hill of beans. They may make a lot of noise—if you insist on staying in their vicinity, at least—but they have no power worth worrying about.
That’s why whenever I get into an argument with one of you anti-SJW types, I always say:
NAME NAMES, goddamit. Either name names or shut up.
And…you never name names. Not because you can’t, but because if you did it would immediately be obvious that these fearsome and ferocious and tyrannical Social Justice Warriors are actually a small bunch of noisy twits who have no real influence over anybody or anything.
You want to know why Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen and many other authors they like don’t get nominated for Hugo awards or win them? It’s as simple as it gets, and it’s the same reason I never get nominated and Mercedes Lackey never gets nominated and Michael Stackpole never gets nominated. It’s because the subjects that interest us and the way we write about them aren’t either the subjects or the style of writing that most of the people who vote for Hugos either like or think is worthy of getting a Hugo award.
Period. There’s nothing more to be said.
Those people have every right to their opinion—just as I have the right to shrug my shoulders and get about my business because, push comes to shove, I don’t care what they think. Or at least, I don’t care enough to change what I write about and how I write.
I will close with a third point, tangentially related to the first two, which is this:
While I think the Sad Puppies began this exercise in hyper-ventilation with their screeching about “SJWs”, they are not the only ones who have been guilty of it.
It is now time for me to state a truth which, while it may surprise or disturb or distress or just plain annoy some people, still needs to be said:
What is at stake here is not the fate of western civilization—or even the fate of science fiction. The forces of Mordor are not lining up to conquer Middle-earth and we do not face the prospect of eternal rule by Sauron.
It’s a fricking brawl over an award that the vast majority of the human race has never heard of and could care less about.
I know Brad Torgersen. He’s not only a friend of mine, he’s one of the people who helps me maintain this web site—and his last contribution a few days ago was to clean up and improve the formatting of an essay I wrote which, among other things, criticized him.
As the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, he is…
Well, sadly lacking in the necessary qualities. Just for starters, his wife Annie is not only African-American but about as far removed as it gets from shy and demure and she’d skin him alive if he made any moves in that direction. Whenever the three of us get together to argue politics, she’s way more likely to be on my side than his.
I don’t really know Larry Correia. I’ve met him only once, at an SF convention, in the course of which we had a political argument that lasted for perhaps an hour. Gee, what a shocker: conservative libertarian Mormon disagrees with commie atheist. Stop the presses!
For the record, however, our dispute was friendly and cordial and he struck me as a pretty nice guy. I have been told as much by a number of people who know him far better than I do whose opinions I generally trust.
So he also seems like a pretty unlikely candidate for the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.
Then there’s Theodore Beale, aka “Vox Day.” Now we come to a far more suitable candidate, Great-Dictator-Reborn-wise. He shares Hitler’s general attitudes on race, certainly, although I don’t know where he stands on the subject of Jews. And he’s even to the right of Hitler on the subject of women. Far to the right, in fact. Hitler thought women should stick to their proper roles in child-rearing, managing households and church activity—“Kinder, K?che, Kirche”—but he wasn’t actually opposed to women learning how to read and write and he didn’t support honor killings.
But there are two great differences between Beale and Hitler that make it impossible for Beale to play that role either.
To start with, whatever his other depravities, Hitler wasn’t a petty chiseler. Whereas Beale is nothing but a petty chiseler. He chisels when it comes to his opinions, always trying to play peekaboo and slime around defending what he obviously believes. And he’s trying to win Hugo awards by petty chiseling.
But it’s his other characteristic that really disqualifies him for the role of Great Villain in this morality play.
In a nutshell—and completely unlike Adolf Hitler—Theodore Beale is a fucking clown with delusions of grandeur. This is a man—say better, pipsqueak—who rails to the heavens about the decline—nay, the imminent doom!—of western civilization due to the savageries of sub-human races and (most of all) the pernicious—nay, Satan-inspired!—willfulness of uppity women, and likes to portray himself as the reincarnation of the feared Crusaders of yore, all the way down to wielding a flaming sword.
And… the best thing he can figure out to do with his time, money and energy is to hijack a few Hugo awards. That’ll show the sub-human-loving treacherous bitches!
The world trembles and shakes, just like it does in the imagination of a mouse whenever that mouse imagines itself to be an elephant. Except no mouse who ever lived was this stupid.
On the flip side of the equation, I also know John Scalzi. I first met him online a few years ago, as another participant in a group organized by Charlie Stross to combat the tendencies of most publishers at the time to follow the lead of the music industry—specifically, the Pied Piper known as Digital Rights Management (DRM)—when it came to so-called “piracy.” Cory Doctorow was another member of the group.
Ironically, in light of their later stereotyping by some people in “the Baen crowd,” all of the participants in that group were admirers of Baen Books’ policy on electronic publishing. As was…
(roll of drums)’
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the Tor editor who seems to serve the anti-SJW crowd as Chief Dastardly Villain Number One, except when John Scalzi does. I’ve only met Patrick once, at a Tor party at a convention (don’t remember which one, but it was probably one of the World Fantasy cons), and what he wanted to talk about was his support for Baen’s policy. “The only publisher who really knows what they’re doing when it comes to electronic publishing,” was the way he put it.
I can’t say I’m exactly friends with John Scalzi, since we’ve only met a few times and then briefly. But we’re certainly on friendly terms and I have to say that the depiction of him by the anti-SJWers is every bit as laughable as the depiction of Brad Torgersen or Larry Correia as the second coming of Attila the Hun.
Lessee… a middle-aged white guy who writes military SF about old white guys and riffs on Star Trek is… a social justice warrior literary author.
Gee, who knew?
By the way, many readers have told me that—as is true with me—they assumed that Scalzi was a right-winger because—as is true with me—he likes to write military SF. Some of them—as is true with me—even manage to read several novels by him without being disabused of the notion. Proving once again that the novel someone reads is not necessarily the same novel the author wrote.
The point I’m trying to get at here is that everyone in this ruckus needs to be careful lest you fall into Theodore Beale’s rabbit hole and start having delusions about both friends and enemies.
I think one side in this dispute is wrong—that’s the side championed by Brad and Larry. I think that, not because I think the Hugo awards don’t have a lot of problems—I do, and I explained those at length in my first essay—but because their analysis of the problem is so wrong as to be downright wrong-headed. But I don’t think they pose a mortal threat to social justice, western civilization, science fiction or even the Hugo awards themselves.
Why did they launch this brawl and keep pursuing it? Well, I’ve always been a devotee of Napoleon’s dictum: “Never ascribe to malevolence what can be adequately explained by incompetence.” I don’t think there was anything involved except that, driven by the modern American right’s culture of victimization—they are always being persecuted; there’s a war on white men, a war on Christmas (no, worse! a war on Christians themselves!), blah blah blah—they jumped to the conclusion that the reason authors they like weren’t getting Hugo awards or even nominations was because of a Great Leftwing Conspiracy against the righteous led by unnamed Social Justice Warriors—presumably being shuttled around the country in their nefarious plots in black helicopters—and off they went.
If they’d simply said: “We think the Hugos have gotten too skewed against popular authors in favor of literary authors,” there’d have still been a pretty ferocious argument but it never would have reached this level of vituperation.
But simply stating a problem wasn’t good enough for them. No, following the standard modern right-wing playbook, SOMEBODY MUST BE TO BLAME.
Enter… the wicked SJWs! (Whoever the hell they are. They’re to blame, dammit.)
I think the same mindset explains Larry Correia’s otherwise incomprehensible initial championing of Vox Day. I don’t think Larry thought much about it, frankly, or took the time to find out who “Vox Day” really was. I think he just figured if liberals don’t like him, he must be okay, following the same rightwing trope that led American right-wingers to initially champion Phil Robertson and Cliven Bundy until they were shocked to discover that they were actually vicious racists.
(Gee, who knew? Answer: anybody with a half a brain not blinded by right-wing victimization culture.)
Then—as predictably as the sunrise—the Sad Puppies’ campaign of blame and character assassination triggered off a response that often got just as savage as their own campaign. Sometimes, in fact, exceeded it in savagery. I think the other side in the dispute—insofar as it consists of one “side” at all—is mostly right on the substance of the dispute but is sometimes way off base in the way they characterize their opponents. Characterizing either Brad Torgersen or Larry Correia as a racist, a misogynist or a homophobe—as a number of their opponents have done—is just slimy and disgusting.
(Yes, I know about Brad’s recent stupid and mildly-homophobic wisecrack about Scalzi, which John responded to perfectly. Sorry, folks, that constitutes residual prejudice, not “homophobia.” Get a grip. Just as every nitwit who shrieks on a web site somewhere about the omnipresence of male chauvinism is not a fearsome Social Justice Warrior, every middle-aged white guy who makes a stupid remark about who is and who isn’t gay is not the Waffen SS.)
To put it more briefly—not my strong suit, I admit; why do you think I write novels?—I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and stop hyper-ventilating.
I’m not attending the Worldcon this year. That’s not due to this controversy, it was a decision I made more than a year ago when I looked at my travel schedule for 2015. There was no particular reason for me to attend, it’s an expensive proposition—in time even more than in money—so I’m not.
And I never buy a supporting membership just to vote on the Hugos. Why would I? I’ve never cast a vote on the Hugos, even when I’ve attended the convention itself. Why? First, because I don’t care very much (if at all) who wins. Second, because I’ve rarely read more than one or two of even the nominated novels much less the short fiction so I would feel dishonest casting a vote for “the best” story when I haven’t read most of them.
Nonetheless, I will provide my advice for those who are planning to vote and are not sure how to handle this controversy. My advice is simple: vote the same way you would for any year’s Hugo award. It doesn’t matter who got Story X, Y or Z on the ballot. That has always, being blunt about it, involved a lot of sausage-making behind the scenes. Wherever they came from, these are this year’s nominees. So vote for whichever story you like—or cast a vote for “no award” if you don’t like any of them enough.
I will close by providing links to two essays that I strongly recommend to anyone who has been interested enough in what I have to say to read this far. The first is by Samuel R. Delaney, one of the great figures in our genre, on the issue of racism and science fiction—a subject about which he not only knows far more than people who screech about “SJWs” but has actually thought deeply and very intelligently about, which they have not.
The second is by Michael Stackpole and expresses many of them things I’ve tried to express and often better than I have.
Beautifully stated as usual, Eric. I wish I had all the spare time these folks are wasting on tilting at windmills, I’d have finished my wip by now!
I’m proud to know you, Eric,
That’s the problem. In older times, you’d have been right and the holier than thou tender toes would have been properly ignored. But now with social media they have a big soapbox and it’s hard to ignore them. In addition to that lots of well-meaning people take them seriously. They’re trying to become the conduct and thought police and it’s working. That it why people complain about SJWs. I’m pretty far to the left of center on everything but immigration issues (and I don’t think that hoping laws are enforced is that much of a conservative thing), but I’m still anti-SJW. While being pro-social justice. I really didn’t pay any attention until SJWs started trying to, through social media pressure, force their sensibilities on to comic books and video games. Instead of supporting comics and games that are the type they prefer, they actively campaign to change all games/comics so that nothing offends them. That is the problem.
It’s easy to ignore people you don’t want to hear from. Just don’t bother with social media. Stick to the Civilized Internet (including this part of it).
I’ve really enjoyed your essays about the slate voting, and I have to say this is the best yet. People are all tied up in a knot, and that’s making the situation seem bigger than it really is. From what I’ve read, the slate voting started when either Brad or Larry went to a convention, and overheard a few people saying that they wouldn’t vote for his book because he was a conservative. That one act, and the response to it, precipitated the whole mess.
So, more people voting for the Hugos and reading sci-fi, YAY. Partisanship, name-calling, discrimination, flaming posts, threats, boycotts, grandstanding, BOO.
So, fun fact, Stackpole’s website is flagged by my work firewall as blocked because they think it is a dating site.
I admit I have a love affair with the looks of the TIE Interceptor, but I don’t think it really goes that far.
Thank you!
I do find some of the arguments about SJWs amusing. Most of the people who get branded with that are harmless. Personally, Baen and Tor are my two favorite publishers specifically because they both do the DRM free thing, and the whole thing here seems like you parents fighting…
There are people who are doing bad things on both sides of this debate though that should be taken to task. People making death threats or rape threats on either side of the argument really need to stop. As for naming names, it’s very difficult when people go out of their way to attack anonymously.
One example over in the gaming side of things was when Brad Wardell sued an ex employee, and that ex-employee sued him. There were a group of people who because of that lawsuit and a smear article in Kotaku went to books he had written on Amazon and started trashing him in the reviews with attacks against the book that were clearly irrational if you had read the book. He had some genuine death threats where the police were called and he had to have increased security at his house for awhile. To this day, even though the charges were false and the person suing him had to publicly apologize, there are people who still think he’s a misogynist and attack him on those false charges to this day. No amount of evidence will seem to sway them either.
This is clearly happening on the other side as well to some degree or another. I wish I had a solution to get the jerks out of the discussion, but I don’t know what we can really do. Maybe the best thing we can do is just ignore the trolls and pretend they don’t exist on both sides.
First of all, anyone who has read the book wouldn’t need a reason to thrash it beyond the writing. Brad Wardell is not an author by trade and there’s a reason for that, the book reads like bad fantasy fanfic.
Second, the sexual harassment lawsuit brought a countersuit from Wardell alleging workplace misconduct. The settlement ended both suits and included a public apology. I’m not going to judge Brad Wardell on the basis of winning a settlement but I am going to judge him based on the fact that during the time the lawsuit was going on he publicly admitted (much to the horror of his lawyers, no doubt) to doing the things the woman who sued him claimed he did, he just did not see them as sexual harassment. This includes sending a “sexual purity test” to her work email account.
Settlements are not about justice, they are simply a way for parties to end disputes. Occams razor tells me the most likely scenario is that Wardell, being a multimillionaire, had the resources to fight a court case and the woman suing him didn’t and that’s the basis of the settlement. Not whether or not his actions were in fact right or wrong.
The reviews however weren’t attacking it for being a bad fanfic. They were saying that it was racist/misogynistic/etc, which is not borne out by the text of the book.
Someone being forced to publicly apologize in a lawsuit is virtually unheard of. People who have read the court documents have said that the case was completely laughed out of the court, and had no supporting witnesses. The honest people who have criticized him and been given the documents surrounding it have retracted their criticism. If he had done all of the things that the lawsuit and article alleges, they would have just paid the person off and buried it like most large companies with lots of money whose CEOs do bad things always do.
(Also, Wardell’s lawsuit was the original, and the other person’s lawsuit was actually the counter-suit in this case… Kotaku twisted the timeline to make it look like it was the other way around and Wardell’s lawsuit was punitive for the harassment lawsuit.)
“Someone being forced to publicly apologize in a lawsuit is virtually unheard of. ”
It was a condition of the settlement, and it’s rare but not exactly unheard of. Settlements are never about guilt, just about two parties reaching an agreement. It’s basically a contract, where the parties involve pledge to drop the ongoing court case in return for the other party filling some specified conditions. Here it included a public apology. It could just as well have been a breakdance session at Times Square if that would have satisfied the parties involved.
“The honest people who have criticized him and been given the documents surrounding it have retracted their criticism.”
Well, isn’t that convenient. Who might these honest people be I wonder? Because they certainly didn’t surface while the court case was ongoing and I was following Wardell’s court drama.
“If he had done all of the things that the lawsuit and article alleges, they would have just paid the person off and buried it like most large companies with lots of money whose CEOs do bad things always do.”
That’s just ridiculous. First, Wardell is CEO and owner of the company. He can make Stardock do whatever he likes, good or bad, there is no board that can force him to resign and no one to care about how his image affects the company but him. So if he wants to make a court case into a personal vendetta he can do that, and he can toss millions at his lawyers instead of paying for a settlement. Would it be petty? Yes. But if you’re self-righteous enough it would seem perfectly justified.
Which is my take on what happened. Rich people always have the advantage in the court system, and Wardell has nothing if not money to throw at his problems.
It seems to me that Social Justice Warrior is meant as a term of art and politics, rather than an actual personal description. It is meant to describe a narrative, not a set of bodies, which is why the term is not used to describe real fighters for social justice, such as Ghandi, or Teddy Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King. Or Flint.
The SJW narrative of unequal privilege and unfair treatment may serve a dozen purposes and can be used by anyone, given the proper circumstances. And similar to all such broad stroke descriptions (and countering arguments), accuracy is often a matter of comparison, of slim differences. Compared to much of the world, nearly all Americans come across as SJW and the differences between us seem minor, indeed.
I recall a chance meeting between Eric, myself, and an oddly-dressed German in an outdoor cafe in (I think) Bavaria. After identifying us as Americans, he chatted a bit and, out of the blue, allowed as how it was a shame the US was again doing the bidding of the Jews by fighting in Iraq. Though our opinions about Operation IRAQI FREEDOM were massively different, both Eric and I recoiled from this weird sentiment. I daresay anyone who has traveled extensively overseas has run into similarly strange ideas. An American misogynist in Riyadh can sound like Betty Friedan compared to the locals. If we are smart, such incidents can remind us more of our similarities than our differences.
Thank you. I happen to agree with your interpretation of the meaning and purpose of the term “Social Justice Warrior.” It is not a description of a set of bodies, but an ideology, a nasty one, and one I cannot even contemplate the idea of Eric Flint sharing without having my eyes cross. (that is, I can’t conceive of him sharing in that ideology…I confused *myself* with that sentence, so I can’t imagine it being clear to anyone else what I was trying to say) There is a difference between someone who works for social justice, and a “Social Justice Warrior.” Martin Luther King Jr. was a social justice *worker* who would have been disgusted at the behavior and mindset of the “SJWarriors” so many people (conservative and liberal, and in between) have been victimized by. SJWorkers (like MLK jr.) judge people “by the content of their character” not “the color of their skin” or their gender, or their sexual preferences, or their religion. SJWarriors…can’t see past skin color, gender, religion, and sexual preference. There is no “conservative” or “liberal” “right wing” or “left wing” about it. It’s behaving like adults, with respect for other people, and their differences, versus behaving like children in a schoolyard, shunning the people who are “different” in the wrong way, and who, being “different” don’t apologize for their differences. My mother is, and was, a “Social Justice Worker.” She can’t stand “SJW’s” any more than I can, and considers their ideology to be a poisonous blight on the movement for social justice. Thanks for reading, and for writing your comment. You made my day a little better. ;)
My comment to you appears to be awaiting moderation…essentially, I thanked you for your words. Actually originally I was just going to post “thank you” and leave it at that. Alas I am a wordy, long-winded bibliophile, and I can’t seem to help myself. Anyway, thank you. ;)
Tsk. I’m sorry if I misled anyone, Books. I do not agree that there is some nasty ideology being sold by Social Justice Warriors. Injustice does exist. After all, as we have both noted, many people have fought long and hard make ours a better society. And more power to those advocates of freedom and justice.
My comment was more targeted towards the use of the narrative as a vehicle to justify all sorts of minor tyrannies and prejudices – as well as the often over-the-top reactions to those tyrannies. Heinlein used to refer to “Mrs. Grundy” as the avatar of all those holier-than-thou folks who are ever watchful, lest someone, somewhere is misbehaving, as they see it. Our society does seem to be proliferating Mrs Grundy-types at an accelerating pace. Whether the topic be sexual choices, gender equality, economics, environmental concerns, animal rights, or a dozen other causes, there are countless people out there who apparently consider themselves the arbiters of what is right and proper. And they aren’t shy about condemning out of hand those who disagree with any part of their chosen narrative.
Then comes the inevitable backlash from folks who refuse to be condemned for their disagreement. Such folks especially dislike being categorized as wrong on all topics because of one off-the-reservation opinion. Human nature being what it is, some strike back wildly, without concern for collateral damage. Unexpected (even unintended) alliances are forged, sides chosen, sabers drawn and we get a general melee.
My point, with which I think Eric would agree, is that disagreement is inevitable, viewpoints naturally differ, the opposition is not necessarily evil, and we’d all be better off if we chilled out a little.
Understood. ;)
I believe the point where I became confused was when you wrote this:
“It seems to me that Social Justice Warrior is meant as a term of art and politics, rather than an actual personal description. It is meant to describe a narrative, not a set of bodies, which is why the term is not used to describe real fighters for social justice, such as Ghandi, or Teddy Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King. Or Flint.”
I took this to mean you understood that “SJW” is meant do describe a narrative, aka an “ideology” with which those who use the term vehemently oppose. I wasn’t certain you *supported* this opinion (that the “narrative” is a nasty, speech-suppressing one…as almost perfectly demonstrated with the use of “trigger warnings” [google the term, and you’ll learn how it’s being used to restrict, or attempt to restrict, open and critical education on university campuses] to supress disagreed-with speech) but I felt sure you at least grasped that it existed as an opinion, making “SJW” a term meant to describe persons whose actions and ideas are very different from “real fighters for social justice, such as Gandhi, or Teddy Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King. Or Flint.” as you put it. You have my sincerest apologies if I was incorrect in my understanding. I hope this comment makes some manner of sense, but I cannot be certain, as I’m not feeling very well right now, heh. ;) bear with me in my potentially disjointed ramblings. Thanks for reading! :D
*vehemently disagree, darnit! With which those who use the term vehemently *disagree*…not oppose…my kingdom for an edit button…
Bravo and well put sir! You seem to have a way with words…
Wow! Thank you.
I wanted to add a thank-you for the link to Mr Stackpole’s essay. If you feel as he does, then I feel I must apologize for misinterpreting your feelings towards the Sad Puppy voters. I was especially happy to read his response to a couple of comments written on that article, where he acknowledges that he had less understanding than he thought he did regarding the nature of the Sad Puppies position. I can see his point, even if I may not (entirely) share it. Perhaps reading it stated in a different fashion was all I needed, and I am grateful to you for providing that different wording. ;) I hope this reaches you well. :-)
Bravo, Eric! I don’t know you, but I applaud you. Thank you for your service in the field of Social Justice Warrioring! I’m proudly a Social Justice Warrior, too.
I was led here by rubbernecking at various Hugo fights, and Mr. Flint, the impressive dithyrambic sweep of your scorn has led me to begin purchasing your fiction…and reminded me how much more important reading books is than squabbling about the awards. Thank you.
I apologize for not adding a trigger warning.
“Who the hell are you talking about outside of your right wing echo chamber where idiot acronyms like “SJW†mean something?”
People who refer to themselves — proudly — as Social Justice Warriors. I don’t know if you ever get out of your left wing echo chamber (and I get to call out BOTH sides as a lifelong independent voter), but those people do in fact exist.
As to “white privilege”, none of these people define it the way you just did (brilliantly, I might add). In point of fact, “privilege” isn’t limited to being either “white” or “male”.
Remember those idiots who showed up on the Colbert Report, trying to explain “intersectionalism”? The ones who effectively drove the final nails into the coffin containing any respect anyone had left for the Occupy movement?
Yeah. THOSE are who’s being referred to. Don’t forget that the term “ivory tower” is both the proto-term for “echo chamber” and generally associated with the extreme left of academic conceptualizing for a reason.
My point wasn’t that people like that don’t exist. I know perfectly well they exist. I’ve met several and one a few occasions (God knows why; either excessive pugnacity or masochism on my part) I’ve taken the time to argue with them.
My point was that, outside of a few small areas — the main one being SOME departments in SOME universities (and not all that many in either) — they have no power worth talking about. Do they make a lot of noise? Yeah — but only if you stay in their vicinity, and that vicinity is usually a virtual one.
In the year 2015, is it really necessary to remind everyone that any accurate map of the internet would have the warning THERE BE TROLLS plastered everywhere?
Yes, there be trolls. Some of those trolls are holier-than-thou self-appointed political correctness police. Or, I should say, wannabe police.
What I am disputing is the notion, advanced by the Sad Puppies, that such trolls have historically (or at least in recent years) dominating the voting for the Hugo awards. My answer to that charge is short: baloney.
If you want a longer answer, to go George R.R. Martin’s web site — specifically, his “Not A Blog” — and scroll down a ways to find a long essay he wrote perhaps two or three weeks ago in which he analyzed the voting for the past several Worldcons and showed in precise detail that it was absurd to characterize the voting the way the Sad Puppies were doing.
I hope no one is so far gone into Bubbleland that they think George said that because he’s a literary auteur himself and is resentful because he can’t sell. He’s right, that’s all — and I say that as an author who has never been nominated for a Hugo, a Nebula, or a World Fantasy Award. Hell, I’ve never been nominated for the Sidewise Award, devoted specifically to alternate history, and I’m one of the two or three most prominent practitioners of that sub-genre in the whole damn English-speaking world.
So it goes. I cry all the way to the bank. But what I DON’T do is throw around accusations that I’m being discriminated against because some people don’t like my politics. (And plenty of people don’t.) That’s got nothing to do with anything.
“where idiot acronyms like “SJW†mean something?”
“My point wasn’t that people like that don’t exist.”
Well, here we have a shifting of view from absolutist to moderate. It’s the former which always sets my red flags off. This is actually why I support the Sad Puppies, Eric — because I was seeing enough red flags being waved against them to qualify as a matador parade. Your opening post here only reinforced that image for me.
And yes, I have seen red-flagging from Puppies, too — quantifiably, a lot LESS of it, and usually about specific claims. Specifics can be checked and, quite often, either verified or denied, whereas generic wide-ranging smears rarely can. In other words, I can fact-check most of the Puppy claims, but not the anti-Puppy claims.
On what basis, other than a pure belief system which requires no merits, should I castigate them and not their opposition?
“What I am disputing is the notion, advanced by the Sad Puppies, that such trolls have historically (or at least in recent years) dominating the voting for the Hugo awards. My answer to that charge is short: baloney.”
Aaaand, barring the advancement of supporting data, both their claims and yours amount to belief systems. Your only advantage here is that THEY have to prove their points, you don’t have to prove a negative.
Which brings us to addressing their points — which you effectively evade by calling it all “baloney”. That puts you, in my book, on the side of the Creationists who scoffed at the results of the classic “Monkey Trial”. Re-asserting a belief doesn’t discount any actual evidence presented by one’s opposition.
Why am I having to explain this to a brilliant sci-fi author whose work I deeply respect and enjoy? They say one should never meet their heroes… -:/
“If you want a longer answer, to go George R.R. Martin’s web site — specifically, his “Not A Blog†— and scroll down a ways to find a long essay he wrote perhaps two or three weeks ago in which he analyzed the voting for the past several Worldcons and showed in precise detail that it was absurd to characterize the voting the way the Sad Puppies were doing.”
Did that, and I did not find his assertions to be supported by his data. I DID find myself taken aback by his ready dismissal of Larry Correia’s claims to have been maligned during his first WorldCon, with GRRM comparing that directly to his own experience of merely being ignored. The two experiences, assuming both are true, are utterly incomparable, but it was clear GRRM wanted to brush aside points which were inconvenient to his own position on the subject.
I don’t believe GRRM is in any way an “SJW”, nor you, nor a great many people who believe the Puppies are wrong in their assertions. But when it comes to those who make defamatory claims about how terrible they are as human beings? Well, your side of this discussion has “rabid” types of its own, and they wear those three letters like a badge of honor.
And that’s why YOU may have no political axes to grind with the Puppies, but plenty of their opposition talks about nothing BUT that. Hell, right now on Torgersen’s blog, there’s an anti-Puppy who’s about 60 posts into telling them off, and he’s talked about NOTHING but politics and social justice.
So yeah, I get your take on it, and I can even respect that you might only have shallow-dived this issue and come away with various impressions. Me… well, I analyze for a living, I look for solutions to problems.
Scoffing at the Puppies is the opposite of a solution.
I did not *see* a solution to the problem proffered in this long-winded rant … in fact, I didn’t really see the *problem* defined in any way other than that some people took Larry C. at his word when he said he had fun at his first Worldcon (only later backtracking into how badly he was treated and how bad it made him feel).
” “social justice warriorsâ€â€”once known as the entire Union army”
Wow. And here I thought you were familiar with military history… or even just basic history on the Civil War. Hell, even at the time Grant was leading it, most of the Army’s membership would have slugged anyone in the chops for saying they were in it for “social justice”.
I have a lot of respect for your “Ring of Fire” series, which is exceptionally well-researched. But that toss-off of yours is what I’d expect from someone who was doodling during their history classes.
Somebody ought to read their Catton, again. Soldierly motivation in the North might have started off in a very mixed fashion, but the Union Army eventually developed a crusading spirit. By 1864, Union camps were full of revivalism, camp preachers, and lengthy discussions about the nature of the war and their place within it. Though love of the black man was not much in evidence, nonetheless, the Union soldiers definitely saw themselves as instruments of a better future, one without slavery. They certainly didn’t call their cause social justice. But the veterans, those who stuck through Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, and the Wilderness knew for whom they fought:
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Aaaand the Battle Hymn of the Republic well-predates any such sentiments regarding slavery… because the original reason for the war was to preserve the Union itself against people who had fired the first shots at Sumter. Such was also the message of the Hymn.
As to “revivalism, camp preachers, and lengthy discussions about the nature of the war and their place within it”, all of that existed virtually from the beginning — and more of it had to do with denouncing the evils of alcohol (the early Temperance Movement) than of slavery.
For the last decade in particular, we have heard historians of color declare longly and loudly that nothing about the War revolved around freeing the slaves, that any such sentiments were propagandist in nature, and meant only to distract a war-weary public by re-branding the conflict in a new light. Cynics abound who will merrily tell all and sundry that the rupturing of human bondage was a mere by-product of a Lincoln cagier than he was compassionate.
One could readily make the same argument regarding the Hymn, as it was published expressly “by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments”.
http://www.loc.gov/resource/amss.cw100430.0
The reality is that anti-slavery sentiment within the ranks DID grow to unprecedented levels between 1863-1865 — and yet, remained less important to the average Unionist than simply putting down “the scurrilous insurrection”. The surge of patriotic fervor which filled Union recruiting halls between 1861-1863 trickled off as one general after another fumbled their way through defeat after defeat and promises of “Onward to Richmond” grew no closer to becoming truth. Where was the urge to free one’s fellow man from chains, in the Draft Riots?
History is rarely as cut-and-dried as many often like to make it, especially not when one is trying to make an ideological statement which historical facts simply do not support.
I would commend to you Russell Weigley’s “A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861 – 1865” as well as his “American Way of War”. Essentially there was a seismic shift to anti-slavery. It was Lincoln’s perception of this that led him to do what he wished to do at first…the Emancipation Proclamation.
Yes, there was, and it was directly attributable (as I’ve noted) to the fact that the war was going horribly for the North and becoming increasingly unpopular. This has been the academic consensus for decades now; the war was re-branded in order to give people a different reason (other than “Preserve the Union”) for supporting it.
Here’s an interesting bit on that subject: Grant’s assault at Cold Harbor went so horrifically bad and inflicted so many Union casualties that Lincoln ordered that its results be kept from the press until after the mid-term Congressional elections. It was believed that such a blow could throw Congress to the Democrats, who wanted to sue for peace.
All of which is a far cry from asserting that the Union Army of 1864/1865 considered itself to genuinely be crusading for “social justice”. I’m pretty darn sure that’s not what was going through the minds of anyone who marched with Sherman to the Sea, either.
This post makes me think of the theme song from (the Hugo-nominated) The Lego Movie: Everything is awesome!
Well said, sir! I’d love to see what Brad and Larry say in response….
“The rule was that, until shamefully recently, the track record of science fiction when it came to social justice stank to high heaven.” – Which is kind of the bizarro-world version of the Puppies’ point. Sci-Fi used to be at least a little bit backwards on these issues. And darn it, they preferred it that way!
Eric, thank you, thank you, and thank you. i was pleased to read this from you.
i don’t know if you’ll remember, we met at a WFC in Ohio. we spoke for a good half hour on various union activities, as my own union was, at the time, in a huge fight with the same hotel holding the WFC.
Good on you to blinding yourself to the harassment, slander, and death threats that have been slung from people on your side to people who dared to disagree with them or even having been voted for by the wrong people.
It’s always the people who mock the idea of “SJWs” that best embody everything the term stands for—right up to the belief that everyone who doesn’t think exactly like you is an enemy that needs to be “killed”.
He didn’t blind himself to it. In fact, he talked about it, at length in the very document you’re commenting on.
This is part of a larger issue I see in this (and similar) arguments. It’s this tendency to box everything in two camps. “Either you’re with me or you’re against me.” doesn’t work here. Eric actually made a pretty big point of defending Brad (who he calls a personal friend). But if you take an us vs them mindset, it’s easy to fall into the trap of having whatever work you’re reading colored by that viewpoint.
I strongly suggest that you go back and read the entire document to see the points he made.
so your solution to “harassment, slander, and death threats” (for which we have to take your word) is to level “harassment, slander, and death threats”? Oh yeah … bring gamergate on board, that’s what *that* is all about. And Larry C *gleefully* did so.
I might beg to differ with the usage of the epithet “right-winger”, “right-wing” used as an adjective, and the phrase “right-wing victimization culture” – but only because I self-identify as a social and political conservative. Putting it that way makes me feel like a part of my identity is reduced to a phrase, and I get lumped together with several people who are, according to the excellent case made against them in this essay and its predecessors, profoundly mistaken.
In the interests of full disclosure,
Disclosure #1: I haven’t read much more about the central dispute than Mr. Flint’s essays on this site, and I’ve pretty much formed my view of the dispute from them.
Disclosure #2: I once had drunk a large glass of the conservative victimization Kool-Aid down in one great big gulp. I’m not sure how much of it is still percolating around my brain.
Disclosure #3: I don’t identify with – or identify against – the Rabid Puppies, the Sad Puppies, or the Social Justice Warriors.
I use the term “right wing” because I simply refuse to call modern so-called conservatives “conservatives.” They are nothing of the sort. Genuine conservatives do exist. My friend and frequent co-author David Drake is one of them. Most of the time, so is David Weber. (Sadly, he does sometimes lapse into modern American right-think, which David Drake never goes.)
But what passes for “conservatism” in America today is a mishmash of the worst features of libertarianism combined with religious zealotry. And if those two would seem incompatable, welcome to the real world where a “conservative” will be “libertarian” when it comes to the right to make money unimpeded by such nuisances as unions, labor laws, environmental protections and then turn right around and become a complete authoritarian on a host of other issues like women’s reproductive rights, immigration, and practically anything that injvolves the behavior of the police or the military.
Gah. The ghosts of such genuine conservative thinkers and leaders of the past like Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli — not to mention Dwight Eisenhower — must be spinning in their graves to hear the nonsense being prattled by modern American “conservatives.”
And that’s why I use the term “right wing” instead.
Have you ever read The American Conservative, Eric? Pat Buchanan founded it to oppose the invasion of Iraq. There’s at least one piece in every issue that makes me want to throw it against the wall, and Rod Dreher’s blog on the website can go overboard about Christian victimization, but this Trotskyist still find it the most intellectually stimulating serial publication I read.
If by women’s reproductive rights you mean the right to murder the unborn at any point prior to birth, then I am indeed opposed to it. And I am perfectly willing to put it back to state legislatures to decide democratically if we want to murder a million unborn babies a year. Because I do remember the “bad old days” of the 60’s and the backroom abortionists and I have discovered to my chagrin that the cure is worse than the disease.
And I have an issue with the Supreme Court deciding that the Constitution granted the right to abortion.
As far as that goes, the only way I see the “United States” surviving as an entity is to go back to being THESE United States, because the various regions are becoming too different from each other to have a true national identity.
300,00, if you only count Planned Parenthood, to be fair. Either way, it’s just a statistic, right? One death, a tragedy, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths, a statistic…right? Because being unable to speak, hear, see, or communicate in any way, is what determines whether you are, or are not, human and therefore worthy of the right to not have your life forcibly taken from you. Oh, and the question of whether you, an utterly helpless child, were forced, without your consent or knowledge, to be utterly dependent on your continued physical connection to another human being, who may, or may not have participated in the initiation of that connection, for your short term survival over a period of nine months. Because if you can’t speak for yourself, hear for yourself, or feed yourself, and your organs are in the process of completing themselves, and as such you must rely, through no fault of your own, on a short-term connection to a person who, in the vast majority of cases, participated in the process of making you reliant on that connection, then you are not “really” human, and suggesting otherwise is tantamount to suggesting that the person upon whom your survival depends for nine months is herself, less of a person. Because logic. Until artificial wombs exist, any suggestion that a baby (fetus is just Latin for baby. It really is that simple.) still in the womb is actually a human being, however helpless, will be interpreted by certain individuals as nothing more than a horrific attempt to strip the individuals to whom those wombs are connected of *their* rights in favor of the “rights” of a helpless deaf-mute whose helplessness they almost certainly participated in causing. Complex? Well, if you consider the answer to the question “can a human, possessed of all the naturals rights of a human, and all the attributes -whatever they may be- that make a human *human*…ever *lose* -apart from death- that humanity, and therefore those rights?” a complex one, then sure, it’s complex. On the other hand, if you think a simple “No” would suffice in answer to that question, that no injury, no act, no circumstance of any kind can or could *ever* strip a human being of his or her humanity and therefore his or her natural rights…then no, it’s not a complex topic. Also not a happy one, but simplicity does not imply felicity…or pleasantness, to use a less lyrical term. Right. Now that I’ve pissed of a whole bunch of people, possibly including Mr Flint…I will end this long comment. (wasn’t aiming to piss anyone off, or be a boor…I just know it’s a touchy topic.) I hope everyone who reads this reads it thoroughly, and does a bit of deep breathing before replying. Hope springeth eternal. ;)
sorry, that was supposed to be “300,000”. ahem.
Eric, this is awesome–well-written enough that I will be buying one of your novels. Is 1632 a good one to start with? (I know it’s the start of the sequence.)
Greg, yes. 1632 is where I started, after my brother highly recommended it. I’d had it sitting on my shelf for a while but hadn’t gotten around to reading it. When I did, I wondered why I had waited so long.
It depends on what you like, Greg. I write a wider range of stuff than most authors. 1632 is certainly my most popular novel and the one I’m best known for. And it has the advantage, if you like it, of introducing you to a series which by now has more than a dozen novels and close to a dozen anthologies of short fiction in print.
If you prefer classic science fiction, though, I’d recommend either THE COURSE OF EMPIRE (co-authored with K.D. Wentworth) or BOUNDARY (co-authored with Ryk Spoor.) If you prefer fantasy, there’s either the sprawling Heirs of Alexandria series I’l doing with Mercedes Lackey and Dave Freer which starts with THE SHADOW OF THE LION. Or you can read my comic fantasy novels THE PHILOSOPHICAL STRANGLER and FORWARD THE MAGE.
Or Mother of Demons, which is my fave Flint “pure SF” novel. Not that there’s any Flint work I don’t like!
MOTHER OF DEMONS is David Weber’s favorite novel of mine also. In some ways, I think it may be my best book — or at least the most wide-ranging one. It suffers from some newbie awkwardness when it comes to the prose, mind you, especially an excessive use of inner thoughts. That’s a very common fault in new writers, though, so I don’t really feel that badly about it.
But whatever its weaknesses, the novel does capture my basic view of human history, which is positive and even heroic. To a very real degree, everything I’ve written since is in one way or another an expansion or explication of the points I tried to make in MOTHER OF DEMONS.
I’m very pleased that the novel has never gone out of print, despite being published almost twenty years ago — something which is rarely true of first novels. In fact, Baen Books just reissued it in a special hardbound leather edition.
I feel the need to add a strong warning here. If you read 1632, you may be hooked for life. You may shake in anticipation of the next release in the series. You may suffer withdrawal despite a huge universe to draw from.
In short, if you think Eric Flint’s non-fiction is great, you’ll love 1632.
While I love the 163x series, my personal favorite is the Heirs of Alexandria series. Which also reinforces your point about giving away the first hit, I read TSotL for free on the Library, and I now own all the books!
Ah, man, I envy your ignorance. I completely understand why you want to embrace the label of “social justice warrior”, and there was a time when I did, too. Like you, I’m a socialist. I grew up in a family that got death threats from the Klan. For decades, I wrote stories that I hoped did something to confront racism and sexism. One of them got me a death threat mailed anonymously from Texas.
And then, in 2009, Racefail happened, and I got my first death threat from an “anti-racist”. And I had to begin researching the popularity of identitarianism among liberals who had gone to expensive private schools. I learned about Derrick Bell’s Critical Race Theory and how his student, Kimberle Crenshaw, introduced “intersectionality” into feminism to let liberals discuss race and gender at the same time without having to confront capitalism. Later, identitarians realized they couldn’t ignore class entirely, so they began to speak of “classism” as a way to treat class as a social identity rather than an economic one.
Ah, well. The subject’s huge and messy. For now, let’s leave it at this: Before Puppygate, SJWs attacked people on the right and on the left. Their tactics have included mobbing and doxxing and all the things they accuse others of doing—this becomes especially obvious if you dip deeply into Gamergate, but it began much earlier. I first noticed it in 2008, when a woman going by the name of Zathlazip made fun of people at Wiscon; in return, she was doxxed and terrorized, even having someone leaving a threatening message in her office.
I’m not sure I recommend that you study this, because it’s depressing as can be. For now, I’ll just say that when you think there are two sides, don’t feel you have to accept one as right and one as wrong.
If you do want to study all this, I recommend starting with a short essay by a black socialist, Adolph Reed Jr., who the SJWs tend to ignore because it’s much easier for them to dismiss white men and conservatives. Just google “The limits of anti-racism by Adolph Reed Jr.” Good luck.
P.S. I agree with most, and maybe all, of what you say about the far right folks who took a term that had a well-defined meaning for several years and have begun to use it as an insult for anyone who’s on their left.
Weird. My long comment went into moderation; the PS is visible. Ah, well, Strange are the ways of the internet.
Glad to see the comment’s out of moderation. Any idea what spam filter I tripped?
Just to clarify: I think Vox Day is a grandstander, at best. As to whether he is a chiseler, that is unknown. However, Mr. Flint, perhaps you should apply some of the research you’ve done into the the Ring of Fire series and find out what Vox Day actually said on the subject of attacking women who receive an education. It’s not what you’ve been told.
I mean, you rehabilitated Oliver “To Hell or Connaught” Cromwell.
Good lord. Reading his stuff would only prove to one that Beale is *worse* than one has been led to believe. He is truly and epically awful person.
I _have researched what “Vox Day” says and he says exactly what I accuse him of saying. He then spends a lot of time sliming and oozing around, trying to claim that he didn’t “really” say what he’s accused of saying.
Yes. He. Did. All his protests do is add the label “fucking liar” to the rest of the ones you can apply to him and which I have — he’s a racist and a misogynist. Not to mention a religious fanatic and an egomaniac.
Period.
So, I did a little hunting, and apparently I was working off of incomplete information.
The only post I’d seen referenced was the one where he took to task PZ Myers for calling the Taliban irrational, by basically being a troll.
I did not know of the one he posted to the Alpha game forum a year later.
Yeah, that one was indefensible.
I like Lincolns speeches, and his 2nd inaugural is one of the better ones out there, but in you haste to prove you point, you skipped over the most salient point of that excerpt: “but let us judge not, that we be not judged.”
“You ignore them and go on your way.”
So, when self described Social Justice Warrior Arthur Chu called Brad a Racist and his wife and daughter shields, he would have been better off walking away without saying anything? When all those websites started running stories about the Misogynistic, Women Hating white men who only nominated white men, Brad and Larry were supposed to ignore that and walk away?
Would you have walked away and ignored them if you were in their shoes? Did you tell Brad he was wrong to even reply?
When I was younger, I was idealistic, as many in youth are. I protested, I marched. Never was arrested though, I must have been doing something wrong. Got a job that required i joined a Union. Left that job when the local boss said I needed to make a bigger contribution to the “Flower Fund”. He tried strongarming me, I broke his arms, and I left. Not my proudest moment, I admit, but I find myself regretting that less as time goes on.
So, I went back to school, got a bit older, got a full time job, started raising a family. And as things have settled down somewhat, I found I was getting restless, and I decided I was going to get involved again. There’s a lot wrong in the world, but if I can fix a small part of it in my corner, mores the better for everyone, yes?
Justice: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.
Justice: the administration of law; especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity.
Justice: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
Justice: conformity to truth, fact, or reason
The Justice in “SJW” is lacking in a great many self proclaimed “Social Justice Warriors” these days. I know they are not impartial. Or objective. I realized that at the last meeting I was at, when the small business owner who came out to talk was making the argument that if he paid his workers $15.oo an hour he’d go out of business, and everyone he employed would then be out of a job. And everyone else around me didn’t care about that. They only cared about the fact that the wages he was currently paying were to low, and if he wasn’t going to fix it, then they would, no matter what he said or believed. Because Social Justice demanded it. And that really bothered me. I left that meeting with a sense of unease. And then a couple of days later I was in front of a courthouse, jury duty, and there was a statue of Lady Justice there, and it hit me.
I realized Lady Justice was blind.
And I thought “Why does she hide her eyes from all the wrongness going on about her? If she could see what was wrong with the world, she could fix it.” Then I went in and waited my turn, and listening to the Voir dire proceedings, I realized I was wrong about Justice. She doesn’t wear the blindfold because shes feel like it, or because she was ignorant, or because she making a fashion or political statement.
Justice wears the blindfold because she has to. Because she knows she is supposed to be objective, impartial. Justice is supposed to be meted out without fear, without bias, regardless of wealth or power. And if she takes that blindfold off, she loses that impartiality, that objectivity. It’s replaced by her own biases and beliefs, and you cannot have Justice meted out that way. Social or otherwise.
Bosses have been singing that tune about how if we pay you a penny more, we’ll go out of business since the days when labor got a dollar for a 12-hour day. It was horseshit then and it’s horseshit now. All the actual empirical research shows that when two U.S. states have different minimum wages, there is not a huge capital flight to the state with the lower wage (granted, this is partly because many of those who can flee have already fled to China). Instead, the Henry Ford effect kicks in: higher wages mean a more flourishing local economy and more demand for local products and services, a rising tide that really does lift all boats.
Speaking strictly as a lifelong , avid reader of science fiction, fantasy, and most of their offshoots such as urban fantasy , and alternate history, I will now tell you how important the skin color, gender, or award winning status is to me.
Oops… sorry folks…I ran out of fucks to give.
How Embarrassing!
I care only that the story is interesting, and entertaining, TO ME>
Period.
I don’t care about whether or not a bunch of stuffy old farts think it qualifies as literature , or not.
I just want to read a good story.
Does that make me shallow? Then, so be it.
“SJW” is a term which refers to radical feminism and the recent “intersectional” “white privilege” wars in SFF and nothing else. It has nothing to do with a larger concept of racial privilege but refers specifically to its ideological promotion by feminist icons of the ’70s such as Robin Morgan, Charlotte Bunch, Audre Lorde and later Peggy McIntosh and now today. The first person to promote it widely in SFF was Mary Ann Mohanraj on John Scalzi’s site where she quoted Audre Lorde, and later Scalzi wrote a white privilege article himself. He later promoted “intersectionality” and linked us to a PDF which quoted Audre Lorde.
The sarcastic term “SJW” applied to radical intersectional feminism and it’s power/privilege theory has nothing to do with a single other thing, certainly not Lincoln, union organizing or Jim Crow. I have never seen a radical feminist discuss white privilege in such contexts since the movement itself is post-Civil Rights era with its most important works beginning in book form in 1970. I learned that from reading the people promoting it then and today. It didn’t just pop out of my head but from gender studies text books and SFF’s feminists. Don’t kill the messenger or historians. Documenting what these people say has nothing to do with right wingers, especially since I am not one. It is not I inappropriately using the term, but you. You’ve stretched it where I didn’t put it.
You’re not the only one to have ever gone outside. I don’t recall seeing you when I ate tear gas a dozen times in the streets on “Angry Friday” Jan. 28, 2011 – the first day of the occupation of Tahrir Square – nor you being there on Feb. 11 when the crowd let out a roar when it was announced Mubarak had stepped down. Death, arrests and assaults were common. So what? I don’t use it as a club to establish my bona fides. An idea is either a good one or isn’t. Whether I ever got punched is beside the point and sounds more like pointless bragging than anything else.
I think you’re confusing the issue by talking about ‘radical intersectional’ feminists. Usually the term ‘radical’ refers to a branch of feminism that is very much opposed by the ‘intersectional’ feminists.
The main points of contention are transgenderism and sex work. Radical feminists are strongly opposed to prostitution and pornography, and they are skeptical about whether trans-women should be categorised as women in all cases. Intersectional feminists are pro-sex work and believe that anyone who self-identifies as a woman is a woman.
If you’re using radical as a general term, it may be better to say something like ‘dogmatic’?
Please do your homework. You are plain wrong. “Radical” is a term gender feminists applied to themselves in the very beginning, not outsiders. Intersectionalism was there from the very beginning in that group, just not with that name; it just didn’t express itself as it’s own separate movement by the people most affected til a couple of decades later.
Thank you for your struggle, comrade. I wish I could give any contribution to social justice, but I am completely useless at it. I know: I’ve tried. I can fetch and carry, and I can fill envelopes, but that’s the limit of my usefulness. So – thank you.
Eric, wow. Just wow. Fantastic article. It inspires me to know there are decent human beings out there with the balls to fight the good fight, and who care enough to take the time to truly think and act on the issues of the day, instead of just parroting memes and the party line.
Now, let me honor your awesomeness by buying more of your books! :)
Color me inspired.
James May,
You spout nonsense. SJW is a label from 2009 and to drag up examples from the 70:s, when the word did not exist at all, is just a way to embarass yourself.
The word started as a pejorative and the only people who use it to identify themselves do it on the same premiss as those who want to reclaim words such as “nigger” in the hope to make them harmless.
It is a word created as a strawman argument, create a common enemy and to demonize others. Nothing more.
It’s being used to make fun of feminists who launch petitions to ban ads with a woman in a bikini and ask an audience to use “feminist jazz hands” instead of clapping to prevent PTSD. It has nothing to do with hate speech itself but it is certainly aimed at people who use hate speech and call themselves “anti-racists.” Saying that’s not so doesn’t make it so. So it was used in 2009 – so what? The point is no one’s using it on union organizers or Vietnam War protesters. Those are legitimate gripes. Calling Age of Ultron oppressive to women is a joke and deserves to be mocked. Tying it into racial slurs is hysterical.
You keep missing the point. Yes, I know such people exist. You think I didn’t run into them in the course of thirty-some-odd years of political struggle? I ran into plenty, albeit almost never in the socialist movement itself.
My point is that THEY DON’T AMOUNT TO SQUAT. My point is that the charge that they somehow determine the outcome of Hugo award voting is blithering nonsense.
THEY DON’T AMOUNT TO SQUAT. Stop pretending they do.
I don’t have to pretend anything. It’s not my imagination this crusading feminist movement exists nor that it’s baked into core SFF at every level as the new go-to ideological orthodoxy. In fact they do amount to squat. This is a very specific ideology that speaks a very specific faux-academic language and has very specific goals and issues. It is radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist to its core and its central bogey man is the straight white man.
As an example, just the 5 ideologically same-page winners of the Nebulas last year alone outnumber the entire imaginary racially and sexually supremacist culture supposedly bound by a similar opposite number ideology from Burroughs in 1912 to Niven/Pournelle in 1974. There is no semantic or thematic ideology that binds Burroughs, Heinlein, Van Vogt, Asimov, Herbert, Zelazny and Niven into such a club. That is a matter of record, as is the non-fiction writings of those 5 2014 Nebula winners.
100% of the most important Hugo winners last year were all supporters of this cult. How do I know that? It’s easy. Their obsession with whites, men and heterosexuals together with equally odd phrases like “white privilege,” “white savior,” cis normative,” “neurotypical,” “rape culture” and much more mark their lingo as much as “gracias” marks Spanish. They stand out like a sore thumb and don’t even try and hide this stuff; quite the contrary. If you’re not reading their non-fiction comments it has nothing to do with people who are. This stuff is a simple matter of record.
“Hard as it to believe, somewhere right now, a white, straight male is explaining to a woman or POC (person of color) what they =really= meant.” – Steven Gould, science fiction (SF) author and president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA)
“I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.” – John Scalzi, SF author, winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, five time nominated, three time winner of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award nominee and president of the SFWA
“SFF is, alas, dominated by white westerners” – Aliette de Bodard, science fiction and fantasy (SFF) author , five-time nominated, two-time winner of the Nebula Award and two-time nominee for the Hugo Award, SFWA member
I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.” – Kate Elliot, Nebula-nominated SFF author and SFWA member
“sounds like something a straight white cis dude does, secure that his position and privilege will always be there.” – Veronica Schanoes, Nebula nominated SFF author and SFWA member
“The law is made by rich, selfish, shitty people – mostly white, mostly men – with cockroaches for hearts. Fuck their ‘rule of law.'” – Saladin Ahmed, Hugo and Nebula Award nominated SFF author and SFWA member
“Sunil Patel@ghostwritingcow It is no coincidence that my book review column features no white male authors. They can have EVERYWHERE ELSE.”
Multiply those quotes by one or even five thousand, realize they’re obsessive and daily and then tell me who and what they vote for. People are being blinded by how new this movement is and how much they have only flexed their muscles in the last couple of years.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it oppressive, but that movie had some very troubling additions (not talking about black widow). But the fact that Hawkeye had a secret family, including a “barefoot and pregnant” wife that no one knew about. (yes, I know the secrecy, but it was handled hamfistedly in the movie). After the conflict Stark says that maybe Hawkeye has it right and he should Pepper, the leader of the most powerful corporation in the world, on a farm and remove her from society “to keep her safe.”
There was a lot of people who took their disagreement too far, but I disagree with that movie as well, and there are reasons to say it is very troubling from that perspective.
The term, as it’s commonly used today, is thrown at anyone who even hints at disagreeing with any point of a Sadpuppy/Gamergate/redpill/insertgroup here as an exclusionary tactic. It can mean everyone from the “evil” Scalzi to someone who, after reading a piece by JCW or even KJA or Butcher, says they don’t like it personally. And then that same label is used to identify the crazies like RequiresHate.
SJW doesn’t mean a specific viewpoint for most people applying the label it just means “a viewpoint I don’t like.”
One point you might want to be corrected about : LC knew who VD was, and invited both him and Gamergate to the fray. You’re being too generous in suggesting that he didn’t know. It’s kind of you, but sometimes the urge to paint both sides as equally well intentioned goes a bit too far.
VD and the things he says don’t fuss LC, BT, and especially JCW, who’s a kindred spirit to VD. They’re not interested in critiquing him, or in standing up against any sort of real bigotry, except the made up SJW menace. Before all of this mess, the ones defined as SJWs were real members of the genre community who fought to be included.
Sure, Brad will tell us that the SP slate is about “inclusiveness” but that only means something if you buy into his conspiracy theory that there’s been an intentional movement to exclude him, and people like ones on his slate. VD’s slate (which Brad seems to not care about) is designed to piss off SJWs. That was LC’s intent in inviting VD onto the slate for SP2.
You need to be aware that VD was put on the SP slate literally to piss off SJWs. This is a matter of public record. They knew exactly who he was and what he was on about, and laughing all the while, the SP team decided that he’d be the perfect turd in the punchbowl to make thier point. They did this last year, and have been interacting with VD ever since.
There’s a good reason why people have been distancing themselves from LC, BT and JCW – it’s because not only can they stand around shrugging and not thinking that VD is all that bad a fellow, but they literally invite him to participate on a regular basis because they know he upsets SJWs. That’s his utility to them. The horrible things you and I think he says really don’t get noticed or cared about. There’s really nothing VD could say that’d make them want to stop working with him.
They are working with him, thought they try to hide that point by saying that they’re “Not Vox Day”. They don’t just tolerate him, they celebrate him and use him to upset people.
I can only conclude that, deep down, they cheer on what he says. Again, not because they care about the content, but because they care about who it hurts.
Heh, GG didn’t give a damn about the Hugos until very recently. They didn’t care when Vox was part of it, they didn’t care when Breitbart interviewed Larry and made a comparison between the two, and they didn’t care when Daddy Warpig made, what was it, two tweets and a youtube video? No, the ONLY time GG began to care was when Brianna Wu and TNH started their unholy screeching about how GG was behind SP. THEN they took notice. Specifically they went whiskey tango foxtrot, what’s this Hugo shit in my GG cereal. Next year of course, all bets are off.
Does this fuss you, Mr. Jasper?
“I’d say most white men should come with TWs (trigger warnings) for unthinking privileged arrogance, but that’s like saying books need TWs for ‘contains words’.” – Rose Fox, SFF editor, SFWA member and Publisher’s Weekly review editor
You comment as if you actually know Larry and Brad. Somehow you’ve read their minds. Hats off to your amazing talent, you surpass Kreskin! I will simply submit that in SP2 the inclusion of Vox Day was in some regards to piss of some people but mostly the way in which he was treated by SFWA. Which, while as vile as Vox Day may be, was in violation of their own rules. That’s wrong. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things and if you choose the wrong way…regardless of your good intentions…you’re wrong.
Secondly, as detestable as Vox Day is, he writes good stories, and if you are claiming to judge on quality that, and that alone, should be the sole criteria. Which is the reason Larry added him to SP2. To make that very point.
There is also a reason that he wasn’t included in SP3. Which I won’t go into because I know most, but not all, of the facts.
Finally, I like Eric and have worked with him. Unlike those the Sad Puppies call SJW’s he walked the walk at peril to life and limb not just screeched on the internet. I don’t give a rat’s ass about his politics, and even disagree with them, he writes cracking good stories. That’s all. I dislike Scalzi, in many ways his methods of rhetoric remind me of Vox Day…. but he writes very well and I like his work.
And that’s simply how I judge a work. Is it a good story? Did it appeal to me? Beyond that I truly don’t care about who writes what.
“as detestable as Vox Day is, he writes good stories” yeah, and some people like fermented shark and winters in Buffalo.
Not fair to winters in Buffalo! We survive them without any permanent damage!
“Unlike those the Sad Puppies call SJW’s he walked the walk at peril to life and limb not just screeched on the internet.”
Exactly who are you talking about and how do you know that they never been in peril?
In my own case, I decided to look at my own reading habits over the last few years. In truth, while I once devoured a ton of sf/f books, my reading quantity has never really recovered to pre-Clarion levels. (Partly because I’m spending time I used to be reading with writing.)
In taking the puppies’ criticism of who gets nominated in the most charitable light, I realized that I had, indeed, kind of narrowed down the publishers I was reading.
Baen is the easiest to explain: for a long time, Baen e-books were only available through their webscriptions site. Once I got an iPad, I started buying through the iBooks store (for one thing, I was an Apple employee). Then, when Baen started selling through iBooks, I didn’t realize it for some time. By then, I’d gotten out of the habit of looking through Baen’s upcoming catalog. (Which, given that I’m a very minor Baen author, is embarrassing.)
I’m not exactly sure why my percentage of Del Rey and Daw books read have declined over the last 15 years (disproportionate to my reading as a whole).
So, with that in mind, here’s my new goal:
1. Read at least one first novel per quarter from each of the major houses (published in the current year);
2. Read at least two books per quarter from each of the major houses (published in the current year).
3. Read at least one current indie published sf/f book per month, too.
…because if you’re not reading them, you’re not going to be nominating them, either.
Now, granted, this won’t fix any differences in which authors I’d pick vs. which puppy sympathizers would pick, but I was disheartened to realize that my reading had narrowed.
What a generous response to this whole crazy thing. I’m trying to follow your example as well.
It’s rather quite honestly amusing that you’re getting this worked up about what boils down to an argument over who controls the franchise. Because the situation is in many ways a mirror of Grantville in your 1632 universe. Who gets the franchise for the Hugo, the TruFen? Or all SF/F fans? All the rest is sideshow. Very loud sideshow, but sideshow.
Mr.Flint, I think you misparsed what May said. The part he’s decrying as new in the past three years is:
“SF authors writing posts about white privilege and others saying straight out they won’t review white men”
He’s not talking about SF addressing racism etc. in general (we all know that’s old news). Rather, about this new trend of *attacking the messengers* (if they happen to be male or white) regardless of their message.
Terrific essay, Eric. Thank you.
Only on an Eric Flint blog post would I learn about changing motivations of the Union army in 1864.
Thank you sir, for your very well-thought-out blog post. As the daughter of a fire-breathing socialist and union organizer, my hat is off to you.
I chuckled at your follow-up comment lamenting the lapse of “conservative” into “right-wing”. The old “Ah, how I miss my safely dead political adversaries of the past” argument, when coming from anyone, is really too cute by half.
On Vpox Day: in addition to everyone else he hates, he’s got a real mad-on for…traditional Christianity, as a self-proclaimed “Arian” and “Pelagian” combatting the wicked forces of what he calls “churchianity”. Not that I think he’s actually intelligent enough to understand the historical arguments into which he’s injecting himself; he isn’t, but even for conservatives–or “right-wingers” if you must–like myself, he’s a bit off the beaten path.
I suspect he’s one of those people who is convinced he’s more intelligent than everyone else in creation, and to “prove” it, he’s crafted a suigenerous ideology out of scientific racist ideas (opposed in their day by “religious zealots” like William Jennings Bryan), half-baked and half-understood Christian heresies and whatever other bullshit strikes his fancy and fits in the blender. So pretty much the only thing of which Vox Day is typical is… Vox Day.
Eric, this reminded me of reading Feynman talking about the danger of using the names of things in place of understanding the things themselves. I hope people won’t make that mistake with you, as you have not with them–but I fear it’s a rare skill.
In any case, I’m pleased to have been introduced to your work by way of all this, and it has made me look forward to reading your work. Thanks!
So much so that it made me repeat words in that last sentence. Well, it’s definitely getting late in the party.
I don’t disagree with most of what Eric has to say but….
I’ve been either an attending member or supporting member of Worldcons for almost four decades. I’ve read a lot of nominations over the year and frankly, the field has been rather thin the last seven of eight years. I applaud the effort to expand the field beyond White Cis-males writing for White Cis-male audience (Which, btw, is a large part of the SF market). However, the sausage making, as Eric puts it, that HAS been going on forever, needs some spice. Last year the selections of short stories was awful and there were dozens of better works written by a wide range and diversity of authors. However, they didn’t get the buzz on a handful of sites that the majority of the nominees did.
And, Eric, I’ll name a name: Theresa Nielsen Hayden. While not overt like Brad and Larry the posts and comments on Making Light are powerful in influencing Hugo nominators. I don’t think that’s wrong, reviewers have always influenced people. I just wish they’d pick on the merit of the work and not just the political orthodoxy of the writer as it seems to me to be more and more likely. I can’t read their minds, and I might be wrong, but it sure seems to be that way.
Jody, I know perfectly well that peoples’ political views influence the way they look at fiction. Hell, I both benefit and suffer from that all the time. There are plenty of SF readers out there who automatically assume that anyone published by Baen Books, especially if they write military SF, is a right-winger (and probably a pretty rabid one). That both gains me some sales and loses me some sales — just as it does for David Drake, whose actual political views are very different from what many people assume they are.
The same thing happens when it comes to awards. People walk into the process carrying all sorts of biases and prejudices, some of which they either pick up or at least get reinforced by reviews they read or the opinions of other people they talk to.
And it can get fairly extreme, sometimes. The rampant favoritism or disregard of LOCUS magazine toward different authors has been notorious for decades.
So it goes. Nothing prevents anyone else from launching a new F&SF trade magazine in competition to LOCUS and nothing prevents anyone from attending the Worldcon (or just buying a supporting membership) and voting on the Hugos.
To anyone who complains, I say: Welcome to the real world. Complaining that there’s politicking involved with literary awards (or any other kind of awards) is on a par with being shocked — shocked! — to discover there is gambling in Rick’s Casino.
The Hugos have always been skewed, one way or another, and they always will be — just as is true of science fiction itself. If you’re one of those authors who winds up getting the short end of the stick when it comes to awards — perhaps unfairly — the proper response is the one Michael Stackpole advocates. You pull up your big boy pants and go about your business. You don’t throw a hissy fit that you’re being “persecuted.”
Persecution does exist, mind you. Real persecution. But I think we need to save the term for something a bit more serious than whether or not there’s a shiny rocket perched on a shelf in your living room.
“To anyone who complains, I say: Welcome to the real world. Complaining that there’s politicking involved with literary awards (or any other kind of awards) is on a par with being shocked — shocked! — to discover there is gambling in Rick’s Casino.”
And so the Puppies pulled up their “big boy pants”, as you say, and got on with it. As to being persecuted? I’d say getting libeled in mainstream press, on rumor alone, qualifies.
That you don’t consider that a big deal is your prerogative. That they consider it a big deal is theirs.
As Calbeck said, the claims of actual persecution(Beyond those of the generic climate of fear that some claim existed in new to midlist publishing through the 80s and 90s regarding outspoken non-leftist politics if one were to ignore Baen – being both too young and not a writer I cannot comment on the validity of such statements except to note that no empirical evidence discounts such a claim) with SP didn’t start until the media blitz. Are you really going to tell me that the original EW article, quickly followed by a prearranged ‘populist’ dogpile about how bad and wrongthink the Sad Puppies were wasn’t an attempt at persecution and utterly marginalizing the Sad Puppies?
I’ve said it before in your blog and I’ll say it again. The Puppies of both orders picked the perfect name for themselves. Puppies piss and shit all over everything, they never stop whining and yapping, they destroy everything they get their teeth into and plenty of them are too damn dumb not to shit and piss in their own bed. And then lie in it.
And then they are shocked–SHOCKED!–when someone comes along, rubs their noses in it, and smacks them. And they’ll be even more shocked when someone lock them in their crate, or sends them to the pound.
See, one thing Larry (my husband Larry Dixon) and I have learned is that editors don’t appreciate trouble. Trouble doesn’t sell books. In the long run, trouble loses sales, in a business already precarious.
I’m going to predict that someone is going to be crated over this. If they are less lucky…someone’s going to be sent to the pound.
I almost didn’t reply to this (especially because I replied to your response to me in the other thread) but I felt I could at least post a quote that really resonated with my ignorant, incontinent mind, from Brad Torgersen (as an aside: who sends a dog to the pound? seriously, who? and for incontinence? really? unless it’s a no-kill shelter, that’s a pretty shitty thing to do, in my opinion. but I adore dogs, so I may be biased.) to be specific:
” …Sad Puppies 3 is an effort to bring fans (small f) to the table. No matter how much people have bashed it, lied about it, or tried to paint it as something it’s not, Sad Puppies 3 is “open source†and egalitarian. We asked for suggestions in the run-up to the formation of the slate, and we encouraged everyone to buy, read, and participate with an open mind. No expectations. No tests. No rules. We demanded nothing. We threatened nothing.
Certain histrionic people (among SP3’s opponents) have demanded and threatened a great deal.
I am content knowing SP3 never had to badger anybody, to get them to climb aboard. Badgering is for the small tent. SP3 is big tent. We cranked the radio-full blast, put out the ice chests with drinks and food, and said, “Come to the party! Everybody is welcome!†“- Brad Torgersen
How immature is that, Mz. Lackey? SO immature, I know! What a childish idiot, right? Your opponents aren’t straw men (or “puppies”). It helps to know what they really think, and to treat them like you’d like to be treated, if you want to hold a civil discussion about your concerns. But what do I know? I’m an inveterate imbecile, with nothing worthwhile to contribute, apparently. ;)
Insightful and eloquent post, Mr. Flint. Applause.
I’m traveling at the moment and my laptop doesn’t have some of the passwords I need to properly manage this site. So if some of you post something that the program decides I need to moderate or approve — and don’t ask me how it makes these decisions because I can’t see any rhyme or reason to it — I may not be able to do it until I get back home on Monday. Just be patient. I pretty much approve anything since I have a very thick skin and don’t mind being argued with or criticized as long as you don’t get stupid about it and start calling me names.
And then the reason I’ll boot your sorry ass out of here isn’t because I’m offended by the insults — I could care less what a jerk thinks — but because I find that level of stupidity too annoying to tolerate.
I am endeavoring to avoid overly annoying stupidity. ;D Avoiding stupidity *entirely* may be beyond my reach, I fear, but I shall try. *grin*
I wasn’t referring to stupidity in terms of your or anyone else’s opinion. The essence of free speech is that a person has the right to say stupid stuff. As I said before, I don’t object to people disagreeing with me even if I think their opinions are stupid. (Which I think some are, but by no means all.)
What I do object to is someone who prances into MY web site and proceeds to insult me personally — which you’ve never done — as if I’m supposed to put up with it.
Freedom does not consist of the right to come into someone else’s home and behave like a boor.
Thanks for this, Eric. When I first heard about all this mess, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’ve decided to stick with being active with fanzine fans and keep my head down. I’ll pick my battles. Take care. :)
Hi Eric,
To the best of my memory we’ve never met, but you make me think it would be fun to do so. I agree with the vast majority of what you say, especially the part about ignoring the occasional shrill comment. I’ve gotten a few head-scratchers in my history, and main rule is “don’t engage.”
The only thing I’m not as sure about is Beale, who may wield enough power through Gamergate to be a nuisance for years to come. Or maybe that’s just bluster on his part. Time will tell. Publicly demonizing him plays into his hands.
I do think the awards have tended to slant a bit more toward lit-fic in recent years. My hypothesis is that the burgeoning webzine field has changed the pool of readers and writers by providing a previously unknown outlet for lit-fic f/sf. But that’s just a hypothesis and would take more effort to test than I’m willing to divert into it.
Nice post.
Here, here! :)
I will only add that what Mr. Torgersen and his sad and rabid company have done is the equivalent of pissing in everyone else’s cornflakes because they don’t like the breakfast menu.
It is adolescent bullying — no more, no less.
And I suspect that some of these sad and rabid folk will soon have to start writing under new pen names if they expect their work to survive the editorial sniff-test with most of today’s publishers.
In short: Pissing in people’s corn flakes usually ends in your no longer being invited to the breakfast table.
Word. To the wise. (In this case, probably wasted.)
– GC
Doubt it. Baen publishes Tom Kratman, of all people.
This is why I have always felt this whole puppy thing is no big deal. It is time for repercussions. First, yes they stole the nominees but we’ll see how many wins they rack up. Second their little stunt is a one time deal now the fans will join in the nominee process they they will never control it again. Third, not only will they be locked out of the nominee process, they won’t even be published soon. Say goodbye to the puppies, they’re going to disappear.
You do know that a lot of those you wish to destroy are self published?
Even if they weren’t, if the publisher thinks they will sell then they will publish them, apart from perhaps Tor and even their editors have to make a profit for their owners.
It is nice for you and some others to be so open about your hatred for the other. No diversity allowed unless it is of the approved kind.
This is so funny I can’t even…oh my word, I… *collapses into convulsions of hysterical laughter* “stole the nominees” oh SHOOT…so fricking funny. And the part about the “puppies” not qualifying as fans… (implicit in the “now the fans will join in the nominee process” bit) Thanks for the laugh, pal.
;-)
Somewhere in the fifth paragraph, I had to tell my husband, “I’ve just fallen in love with Eric Flint, I hope you don’t mind.”
He didn’t. Hope to meet you next year at MarCon.
Eric, second time commenter :-), I’ve always enjoyed your work (evil, hateful Atheist Commie that you are, LOL), I’m a Life long Christian, so my “echo” of some of your stands comes from my beliefs. I was raised to follow Paul’s writings. “There is no Male, No female, no slave, no free. . . all are children of the one God.” So, I’ve been anti-discrimination for about 60 years. I’ve also experienced discrimination as a white (by a Black Apt. Manager), and handicapped/disabled discrimination. So, I also hate the way the SJ Bullies, have cornered the “Social Justice field.”
The “Hugo Problem” stems from one factor. Most of the Trad. 5 employees, who attend World Con, live/work in NYC. That means they can “talk up” who should win, in _their_ opinions. Sounds a lot like slating, doesn’t it. As you point out, WC’s are not cheap to attend, if you pay your own way. So, there is an inherent prejudice in favor of T5 nominees. Also, the ones to lose the most, if _more_ supporting members join and nominate/vote. (After all, they gain/lose prestige, based on numbers of nominees/winners.)
Nicely put. I hope you don’t mind if I say I wholeheartedly agree with everything you’ve said in this comment. I especially adored (not sarcasm…I really adored it. I may have “squee!’d”) the mention of Paul. Made my night. ;)
I’m not sure who or what “Trad. 5” is, but I will simply point out that ANY gathering that takes place anywhere tends to favor the people who live in the area. I’m sure that this year there will be a disproportionate number of voters who live in or near Spokane. Just like there were a disproportionate number of Chicago-area voters on the Hugo awards at the last Worldcon I attended, which was in 2012 in Chicago. (And why did I attend that one? Because I live in the area.)
Do New Yorkers play a disproportionate role in anything involving publishing? Yup, they sure do — and have for, oh, maybe two centuries or so. As outrages go, this one is about as stale as it gets. This is another illustration of what I find tiresome about the complaints of the Sad Puppies. They point to something that has been a common feature of the worldcons and/or Hugos for decades and insist that it’s a recently-hatched plot to penalize them. No, it isn’t. It’s just the real world, that’s all.
Why don’t leftists realize AH was a leftist statist? The National Socialist party was for:
1. High taxes
2. Big government
3. Universal healthcare , hope you don’t get Dr Mengele
4. Gun control for his enemies.“To conquer a Nation, first disarm it’s Citizensâ€- Adolph Hitler 1933
This is awkward AH said that France would be the first nation flooded with the 3rd world.
Because he wasn’t. Universal health care was a German Empire policy that has persisted to this day. If the NSDAP were against it, they’d look like fools. Do you have a source for that Hitler quotation, by the way? I don’t think so.
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjugated races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjugated races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let’s not have any native militia or native police.”
This is what Snopes found on Hitler and Gun Control. He definitely believed in it.
Thank you for putting it all in real world perspective.