by Eric Flint | May 14, 2015 | Hugo Controversy | 172 comments

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.

http://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html

http://www.michaelstackpole.com/?p=3583

172 Comments

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J Thomas on May 16, 2015 at 8:45 AMFirst off, I used to really like Keith Laumer’s writing. It was not good dating advice. The women in it were mostly aspirations, not exactly characters. It was written for teenage boys in a previous era. He did it well.Back in those days science fiction was particularly marketed for teenage boys. It was not allowed to have any sex. Then later the publishers allowed the area to expand at the margins. We got both pornography and realer women characters. It somewhat merged with the romance genre, and more women started reading and writing it. I like that too.Now we’re getting a lot of controversy I don’t like. You point out that the worst cases on your side are twits who should be ignored. I try to ignore them but they have a tendency to overrun blogs I like. We’ll be discussing something interesting, and then all of a sudden somebody gets accused of having the wrong attitude and the whole conversation gets swamped with accusations and justifications about attitude. It’s annoying. I can go find another blog and it’s likely to happen there too.And there were a couple of big controversies about SFWA. I can ignore SFWA just fine, but I was curious about it, and interested in what was right. SFWA is supposedly helping writes and particularly new writers, which sounds like a good thing except that maybe the proportion of writers to readers is getting too big. Too many people who hope to be professionals, too few of them who can make it, too much heartbreak. But it looked like the controversy was about too wide a range of opinions allowed. Respected older writers who grew up in the old days got heavily criticized for not keeping up with the only acceptable attitudes. There was a picture of a chain mail bikini. Young writers with trigger issues would not feel safe in an organization where such thoughts were allowed. They must be stopped. And those twits won, it looked like they won everything they asked for.Sometimes they get interesting people thrown off blogs I like. I’m not sure it works to just ignore them. It looks to me like they make no difference whatsoever that *matters* in the real world, but every couple of months they annoy me a whole lot.Similarly with the Sad Puppies etc. They annoy me too. I’d prefer to completely ignore them just exactly like I’d want to ignore their opposite numbers, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way.It’s like a breeder reactor. Telling people to ignore it is like extending the damper rods. The more people ignore it the quicker it fizzles. But once it goes critical, ignoring it doesn’t work any longer.The twits on both sides get to feel important when they can get into a great big battle that people can’t ignore. The more people who join sides the more important they feel. Even if the other side is bigger and stronger, that helps them feel it more intensely. I don’t think they’re in it to win, I think they’re in it to see how big a fury they can build up.Meanwhile anybody who wants to actually accomplish something, has to contend with them from both sides.Oh well. I’ve read a couple of your books and liked them. It seemed like they were driven by the economics. You had an economy, and new technology, and people had to make changes to get it all to work together, and the personalities were secondary and mostly kind of simple. I liked it. It isn’t the only thing I like, but you’re very good at doing that one.
- hank on May 18, 2015 at 12:45 PMOr, to use a phrase once popular on the ‘net, back before the endless September, “Don’t feed the Trolls.” ‘Cause that’s all these people are, “by their actions shall ye know them.”
- BigGaySteve on May 30, 2015 at 9:45 PMYou forgot that sci fi went from dangerous visions to safe spaces.
  “If you where an easily triggered special snowflake my love” The hugo award winning tale of a thin skinned leftist dashing from one safe space to the next.
Echo on May 17, 2015 at 12:00 AMThis appears to be getting to you. Shame, really.
Cobbler on May 17, 2015 at 1:53 AMThereâ€™s another change in modern SF. One I havenâ€™t seen mentioned elsewhere.The 1950s was a conservative time. Return Rosie the Riveter to the kitchen where she belongs! Stand against the Commies! Bring back Victorian values! Love HUAC or leave America! It was a world where â€œDo you read that crazy Science Fiction stuff?â€ could be a puzzled but honest question.Today we live in a Science Fiction world. Man has walked on the moon. Satellites map our planet. Orbiting telescopes search the heavens. Discovering extrasolar planets is commonplace. Global communication is readily available. The old fashioned among us carry Star Trek communicators. Modern smart phones talk to satellites and have more functions than a tricorder. We donâ€™t have a computer the size of the moon, plotting to conquer the world. We have computers by the dozens. In our pockets, our cars, our homes, our jobs. Factories full of robots assemble our stuff. Science Fiction and Fantasy is big businessâ€”especially on screen. Reviewers may mention the genera, just as they identify a romantic comedy. But That Crazy Science Fiction Stuff has been domesticated. The very fact that so many more people read SF show this. That orders of magnitude more watch SF & F clinches it.Old SF said â€œWe love our geek ghetto.â€ That gives one relationship to the world.New SF has engulfed the world. That gives a different relationshipâ€”to a different world.The difference is hard to describe to someone who grew up immersed in social media. â€œWhat ghetto? What walls? The information superhighway takes me everywhere!â€ Itâ€™s still a real difference.What does this mean for the Hugos and the Nebulas? I donâ€™t know. Iâ€™ve been trying to wrap my mind around the SF-ication of the world for years. I donâ€™t know.But it means something. And it means something big.When the SF Ghetto becomes the SE Ecumene, thatâ€™s a game changer.
George Phillies on May 17, 2015 at 5:30 AMIs there political factionalization in writing?I am reminded of something that happened a few years ago, roughly 1970. There was a petition signed by SF&F prominent writers for/against the War in Vietnam. It finally appeared in period SF magazines. My vague recollection was that it was set up so the opinions split into matched columns, but this event was a few years ago, so I may misremember. In any event, I was sitting in the MITSFS library reading this thing, and remarked to several of the SMOFs in attendance that the columns were split by style of writing. The fantasy writers were almost all in one column; the writers of hard science fiction were mostly all in the other column. I was politely ridiculed, so I read down the lists, and the other side — this was a polite group of people — agreed that I was largely correct. Of course, there were a few people hard to characterize, e.g., Poul Anderson. However, no statistical analysis was needed, because the division was not quite but pretty much perfect. Readers will note that I did not tell you which group of people was in which column, nor does it matter.I shall confess I rarely have time to read any more. I discovered writing. I have thus missed most of the works being argued about. (8^((
- John Cowan on May 17, 2015 at 1:44 PMHere are the pro- and anti-Vietnam-War statements. I don’t think your generalization really holds up: I note R.A. Lafferty and Thomas Burnett Swan on the pro side, and Isaac Asimov and Chip Delany (then known as an SF writer) on the anti side.
Mike on May 17, 2015 at 3:27 PMHey Eric, this is yet another excellent post on the subject.I just got back from a week in Belfast, which was a little unnerving because everybody seemed so normal and friendly, and yet for decades these same friendly people were blowing each other up. Or at least, some of theme were, anyway. They still have the walls and the barbed wire in place, right next to the Starbucks and the public art.In my experience, when people start making up labels for their opponents, it’s always a sign that they are shifting into dangerous territory. It’s the first step in dehumanizing. And it’s also a lazy way to try to argue a point. Build up a straw army to fight against, toss around a few buzzwords that you know will fire up a mob (“SJW” etc.), and always pretend that the people they are attacking are stupid, evil caricatures instead of individuals.
- James May on May 17, 2015 at 7:23 PMHugo nominated Skiffy and Fanty podcaster Cecily Kane: “The straight white dude perspective is basically the Dunning-Kruger effect apex of all civilization.”John W. Campbell nominee two years running Requires Hate: “Beetori Sritruslow @talkinghive 9h9 hours ago It’s like white men literally don’t understand how anything works.”SFF Convention Guest of Honor and Game Developer Brianna Wu: “Women seeking equality on one side. Vicious sexists on the other. White, cishet men with all the power, smiling as they decide what’s fair”SFF author and blogger Amal El-Mohtar: “White people talking about how inclusive fandom used to be when there were fewer brown people & queers to make them uncomfortable.”2016 WorldCon Guest of Honor Teresa Nielsen-Hayden: “I was being unfair to all the perfectly reasonable straight white guys out there.”Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award-winning SFF author Ken Liu: “‘authentic’ seems often to mean ‘what white people would approve’”WisCon organizer and blogger K. Tempest Bradford: “You know, whiteness is a hell of a drug. It really is.”SFF author Sunny Moraine on diversity: “If your writing is full of white men, itâ€™s shitty writing.”SF blogger, Readercon panelist Natalie Luhrs: “Man, so great seeing all these white dudes talking about how fucking awesome they are for standing up to G—-Gate.”WisCon SF Convention organizer and panelist Jaymee Goh: “Seems lately every week is white stupidity week. And they complain about a month in a year!”*Reviewer at Lightspeed Magazine and writer Sunil Patel: “Curious: how many of you refuse to watch/read something if it’s about Yet Another Straight White Man?”Reply from SFWA member and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Same is true of books. I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.”Second reply from another SFF fan: “I’m taking a yearlong break from books by men, full stop, and dramatically scaling back on stories about them.”Last reply from SFWA member and review editor of SFF at Publisher’s Weekly Rose Fox: “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”
  - Mike on May 17, 2015 at 10:26 PMIf other people walk off a cliff, should you do it too?
  - clif on May 18, 2015 at 1:35 PMhmm … do you have anything to add to the conversation at all James? Basically all you ever do is report the *mean* things people say about you. Kinda tedious and makes me think less of your side that you can’t see your *own* faults.
    - John Cowan on May 18, 2015 at 2:28 PMEric challenged the other side to name names, and James has. I don’ t know anything about most of these people, so the next thing to do is to investigate if they are what Eric predicted they are, people that don’t amount to a hill of beans as far as real power is concerned. I don’t mean the power to make individuals’ lives miserable, everyone has that power.
      - Richard H on May 18, 2015 at 4:52 PMI read that list and it doesn’t seem too shocking: equal proportions “Holy shit, you guys,” and “I’m tired of reading the same old things. I’d like to see something new and different.”I’ve seen a lot of “holy shit, you guys” discussions in communities I’m a part of, and, generally, the people saying it are right.
        
        James May on May 18, 2015 at 5:24 PMFunny how it’s only “holy shit you guys” with one person and group defamation, racism, sex-hatred and genderphobia with another.
    - James May on May 18, 2015 at 5:22 PMIf you have quotes to match no one is stopping you from presenting them. I have looked and they’re not there – not today, and not over 6 decades of SFF dating from 1912. The idea all arguments end in a tie is daffy. Courtrooms don’t reflect any world like that. Present a case if you have it.
Bret Hooper on May 18, 2015 at 4:01 AMMy already high opinion of Eric Flint just went up a few notches.
George Phillies on May 18, 2015 at 11:52 AMMy first reaction to James May’s quotes was ‘this was from theOnion, wasn’t it?” The quotations are just so bizarre. Mind you, I did not claim that there are not equally bizarre quotes from other perspectives.
- James May on May 18, 2015 at 3:11 PMI am making that claim. In terms of sheer numbers of people – where they are placed institutionally in SFF, and ideological cohesiveness – there is virtually no opposite number to those quotes. In fact when it comes to promoting fiction, I have not seen one Tweet where someone is saying “Buy this! They’re white – they’re men! – they’re straight!” I have 500 quotes the other way. Saying that’s because of a demographic majority doesn’t cut it. A demography is not an ideology. CNN news may be white but they don’t report on how many whites won Olympic medals or good places for whites to visit in Europe or have white dating sites. The Root and The Grio does that. In SFF Strange Horizons and its familiars fill that role, have their own identity lists of editors and authors and awards. But the so-called straight white man awards are for all comers. We are being sold a con game by people who are nothing more than naked supremacists. They huddle and segregate and claim it’s from noble reasons. Too many straight white men anywhere – a convention panel, a Table of Contents – and the knives about misogyny, homophobia, racism, exclusion, and marginalization come out. Mr. Flint points out he’s stood up for Jews and others. Well… can he not stand up for himself when the time comes without being accused of overweening feelings of persecution? Can I not? The KKK doesn’t persecute me and I feel the same way about them as I do this feminist cult. It’s hate speech – it’s wrong. End of story.
GrantH on May 18, 2015 at 4:34 PMVery nice article/blog post and an interesting discussion. An observation: as soon as anyone starts using labels instead of names, we are headed down the road to demagoguery, where propaganda determines the truth (and the “truthy-ness”) of data as it becomes information. (Information I define as “data with a context”. E.g. “10 degrees C” is data; information is whether that is hot or cold.) I do think that some people have behave badly in this conflict; some of them may have transgressed laws in addition to the conventions of social discourse. I don’t think that most have done so, but the invocation of tribal identity leads to the internal justification of many acts that would not be justifiable otherwise. I tend to agree (or am willing to politely disagree) with those I see as rational actors, and disagree with the trolls and bomb-throwers. That may well be because I am no longer young. I was once more “active” for the causes I then believed in; that is the freedom of those who have not yet taken on responsibilities and duties, and whose self-identity has not yet matured to the point that they can be separate from their herd without trauma.
As for the works in question; I’m working on reading them. Most so far have not moved me. But I often feel the same lack of engagement when reading works that were shortlisted for the Booker, or the Pulitzer, or some other prize of distinction. As far as that goes, I often wonder about the selection for the Oscars and other “entertainment” awards.
My tastes (I like to think) are my own. For examples, as a general rule, I prefer Elizabeth Moon to GRR Martin, Heinlein to Asimov, Elizabeth Scott to Neil Gaiman, Samuel Delaney to Diana Paxon, Charles DeLint to China MiÃ©ville, Mary Gentle to Guy Gavriel Kay, John Ringo to Spider Robinson, and so on. That is most definitely not to say that the other authors are in any way lesser, or that I do not enjoy their work; I have spent many hours lost in they worlds they created, and I thank all of them for their art.
And now, at least for the moment, I shall stop, as I have lost the thread, but want to post what I have written before it becomes completely overtaken by events.
George Phillies on May 18, 2015 at 6:12 PMJames,Actually someone at Bar.Baen.com, http://bar.baen.com/index.php?t=msg&th=114679&goto=1145983&#msg_1145983 has posted a long list of articles from the perspective of someone on the other side from the people you quote. Most of the quotes — you must follow the links — are quite tame by comparison with most of these.It would be meritorious to repost your hard work to Baen’s Bar on the same thread, but knowing the Bar there would be massive complaints ‘no one could possibly have written that’ if the quotes did not have links to the original places.Mind you, I have never heard of many of the people you quote, but that was also true on the other side. Some time ago I discovered writing, so these days I read very little.
Books first, food later. on May 18, 2015 at 7:30 PMI just wanted to post a little excerpt, and a link (if that’s acceptable?) to a post written by Dave Freer, that I found interesting and thought might be a useful addition to this discourse. The excerpt is mostly for the edification of Mz. Lackey and her ilk. Mr. Freer said it more succinctly than I could:“Itâ€™s been very revealing during the various bursts of rage at the Sad Puppies by traditionally published authors and their publishers. Weâ€™re getting to see that dislike, that disdain, that â€˜second (or possibly far lower) class citizen, should not be allowed to vote, arenâ€™t â€˜Real Fansâ€™, should be put in a dog-pound (weâ€™re not human, and there is no need to treat us as such, apparently. Now I do understand that as far as this monkey is concerned, but most of the pups, their supporters and friends are as human as their detractors.) You get editors like Betsy Wolheim at DAW telling us filthy hoi polloi â€œas an editor, it makes me angry to see a writer as important as GRRM having to spend his valuable time informing ignorant people about the history of worldcon and the history of the Hugos.â€ Thanks Betsy. A good spin attempt to blame us for GRRMâ€™s decisions. Heâ€™s adult, he can decide what he wants to do. We pig-ignorant revolting peasants canâ€™t actually MAKE him do anything. He wasnâ€™t going to write any more if Bush was re-elected IIRC. The tide of BS from this has overflowed my gum boots.I said I needed to change my socks.”The rest is, assuming links are allowed, here:
http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/05/18/who-we-write-and-publish-for/Thanks for reading! Also GrantH, nicely put. I may not know your stance, but I can appreciate a classy, civil statement on a tender topic whether I agree with the [opinions of the] source of the statement or no. 😉
Dex on May 18, 2015 at 11:06 PMYou make some excellent points. I still tend to agree with the Puppies’ premise that a lot of the crappy stuff that has won awards lately, did so for politically-correct reasons. You do make a lot of sense, though, about the degree of hyperventilation on both sides.The advice you give in your penultimate paragraph is absolutely spot on. I finished “Ancillary Sword” a couple weeks ago (been reading a freebie that I scored at the Baen Roadshow at Ravencon, since then). I just started “Ancillary Justice” for the backstory. Library didn’t have a copy of “Justice” available when I reserved the first.I do, in fact, plan to read the entire package (plus check Butcher’s nominee out from the library), before voting. I’ll vote for what I like best. I’m probably NOT going to vote for “Wisdom From My Internet”, because I know for a fact that Mike published it as a joke, then was pleasantly surprised at the royalties.With regard to Ann Leckie’s stuff — lots of complexity and intricate world-building, a tad short on action, and a bit long on emo. And, I wouldn’t live in the same galaxy as the Radchaai, on a bet.
Byron Clark on May 18, 2015 at 11:19 PMMr. Flint,Although I disagree with some of your conclusions I do want to say thank you for your defense of Brad Torgerson. although I don’t know him very well at all, I have observed him to be upright and decent in his dealings with the Puppies brouhaha, he has really stood out above the brawl.James May, thanks for that list of quotes, I knew I wasn’t imagining all of that.Lastly, thanks for all of the books Mr Flint, you have given me hours of enjoyable escape from my life as a “downtrodden member of the proletariat”, and I really appreciate that.
David Lawson on May 19, 2015 at 1:55 AMMr. Flint, I think you are not too far off-base with your assertion regarding the right-wing whining. However, I think you might be overlooking the equally irritating (to me, at least) left-wing whining.I like to say I was raised by wolves, but I was, in fact, raised by Democrats and Socialists. Real Socialists, as I suspect you are, not the current bugbear railed against by the right-wing talking heads. I myself never identified as Socialist, but I did make my way from Democrat to Moderate Democrat to Disillusioned Democrat and now to essentially libertarian. My uncle and mother both identify as Socialist, but I can’t help but think they only do so because they haven’t lived under a Socialist regime. I’m guessing you haven’t either. Neither have I, but I don’t have to have lived under Fascism or Colonialism or Totalitarianism to learn why I wouldn’t want to. There are two ways to motivate people: carrot and stick. Socialism and Communism don’t have any carrots, so they end up being all stick. One need only look at the forced labor camps in the various Socialist regimes to figure that out.I’m an atheist, but I must be a self-hating atheist because I no longer identify myself as such. I’ve since started answering such questions with “non-religious”. Why? Because atheists have turned into dicks. Seriously they are as annoying as any Jehovah’s Witness. How soon until they are pedaling around on bicycles spreading the “good word”?Unlike you, I am more sympathetic to Brad and the Sad Puppies. However, this spat is just another facet of the rampant culture wars. People like to cast this as left versus right, but that doesn’t appeal to a person such as myself, who holds some views that are “lefty” and some that are “righty”. Usually I feel like I have wandered into a poo flinging fight. I’m more concerned with the other axis, state power vs individual liberty. Policies from the left and the right trod upon my civil liberties every day.
Rick Bennett on May 19, 2015 at 9:13 AMJust looked at the pic of the winners of the 2013 Hugo’s. OH MY GOD THE DIVERSITY!white guy white guy white guy white gal white gal white guy white gal white gal white gal…..Hm. Sorry, I honestly didn’t read the entirety of Mr. Flint’s post because, well, I just didn’t and lets leave it at that. However, one of the same themes I picked up from what I did read was along the lines of the Atlantic’s thing of trying to push back and take away diversity. Now, maybe I’m wrong about Mr. Flint , and if so, Okay, I’m wrong. But that same litany has been run over and over and over, it’s a new gamergate (Immediate tarring ala Phil Donahue) that sad puppies be wrong!This, despite a wider array of “diversity” in writers than can be found in that marvelously white photo of the 2013 Hugos.Here’s the thing…I side with the Sad Puppies because I want actual FUN, INTERESTING, THOUGHT PROVOKING, OUT THERE STORIES ABOUT FUTURE TECH AND SCI FI in my Sci-Fi. I don’t give two tinkers damn, a rat’s ass, three shakes of a dog’s leg, or any other useful term, as to what the color, the religion, the race, the sexual preference of the writer or the hero is.I bought a book in the discount bin at a dollar general, it was supposed to be a sword and sorcery epic. What it read like was the adolescent fantasies of a barely out of his teens gay man wanting sex with a fourteen year old god and the loving approval of his father. And it was boring as fuck. If you wanna write message fiction, it had damn well better be INTERESTING fiction that tells a story to keep the reader engaged, and not leave them thinking “that’s two hours I’ll never get back again!”And that, not the twisting that those opposed to the Sad Puppies have said, Is what they have been about from the start.If you aren’t interesting, you don’t sell. If you don’t sell, you DON”T GET PAID!Yes, Sci Fi has had message cloaked in story before, like black and white on star trek. But it made the message part of a fun story. FUN STORY! Message Fic barely dressed enough to be fan fic wannbee stuff does not cut the mustard with people like me that demand quality in the works they spend their money on.I read “if you were a dinosaur” or whatever the hell that was titled..for free on the internet, cause I damn sure wouldn’t have paid real money for that. I’ve read stuff a hundred times better on places like Legion World, which is loaded with fan written stories about their favorite characters fitting into their particular predilections. Good stands out. Trying to make people like drivel and castigating them because they don’t as being racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc…. is total flaming monkey poo!
- Bibliotheca Servare on May 20, 2015 at 4:48 AMI don’t know if I unequivocally agree with everything you’ve written here (I rarely unequivocally agree with everything *anyone* has written, to be fair) but I do have to say I’m leaning towards complete agreement, and if not, I certainly appreciated your input, and style. It was a refreshing, nonjudgmental, condescension-free statement of your stance, and I liked it.;)
Calbeck on May 19, 2015 at 7:59 PMSo far as I can tell, summing this entire mess up:– One group of Hugo voters believes — openly — that there are too many white male authors getting awards and that therefore they should have less consideration than non-white/male authors in order to promote diversity. It is alleged that they have been rigging the votes by conducting whisper-campaigns for and against various authors on this basis.– One group of Hugo voters believes that this is an exclusionary mentality unfit for SF/F awards. It is alleged they have been rigging the votes by conducting open and public promotions of various authors whom they believe are cut from Hugo cloth.– Neither group is actually “rigging” anything, as both have operated within the rules of the Hugo awards systems.So it boils down to this: either the Hugos are a prestigious award worthy of defending against exclusionary practices and insider-campaigning, or they are not.– If they are not, then there is no point in complaining about the Sad or Rabid Puppies.– If they are, then one must concur that both the Puppies and their detractors have a point. Both are complaining about how campaigns, for or against authors and their works, are conducted.All else is thunder and fury, signifying nothing.
- Bibliotheca Servare on May 20, 2015 at 4:49 AMNicely. Freaking. Put.
  I’ll stop with the periods now because I’m giving myself a headache lol. I mean it though, nice summation. 😉
Thomas Monaghan on May 19, 2015 at 8:58 PMIs somebody deleting posts here? My last post is missing.
Rosalind on May 21, 2015 at 4:42 AMI’m getting sick and tired of this “Brad Torgersen can’t be evil, his wife is black” crap coming from people like you. I know you think you’re being the voice of reason here, but reducing a person of color down to a prop whose purpose is to illustrate the character of a white guy (in this case, Brad) is demeaning and ridiculous, not to mention racist and sexist.She isn’t even involved in this mess, and only gets invoked as some kind of pawn on both sides of the argument.Cut it the hell out. Stop using an uninvolved person to prop up your points and make Brad look better. She is a human being and you need to treat her as such, not as a rhetorical tool.
- Bibliotheca Servare on May 21, 2015 at 8:27 AMWay to inaccurately paraphrase Mr Flint’s position on the matter! (Assuming it is he you are responding to) Brava! Encore! Etc. Brads wife is most assuredly not a “prop” as Mr Flint explicitly emphasized. Since when is saying that if a man’s wife found out said man held some vile belief she’d engage in behavior that could arguably be described as domestic abuse (it’s funny because it isn’t funny) merely using her as a rhetorical prop? (Translation: since when is saying Brad’s wife would kick his ass if she found out he was entertaining racist thoughts an example of using her as nothing but a prop?) Mr Flint deliberately emphasized Mrs. Torgersen’s agency and powerful influence in her marriage. He didn’t say “she’s black, so Brad can’t possibly be racist!” he said that she was a strong woman who was not afraid to speak her mind when she disagreed with her husband. The fact that she’s nonwhite was secondary. My (spiritually adopted) sister has adoptive grandparents that are black, with roots that go back to before the civil war, and she happens to be whiter than snow. Nonetheless I’ve seen her both verbally, and once physically, kick a man she was in a relationship with up and down the street like a soccer ball (not literally…she did smack the shit out of him though) when she heard him/them expressing blatantly racist opinions and beliefs. Black or white, a strong (possibly violent :P) woman is a strong woman. Neither of them (Mrs. Torgersen or my sis) is ever reducible to status as a “prop” to “prop up” someone else’s arguments. Mr Flint can defend himself without help, no question, but I can’t seem to help myself when it comes to comments like yours. Rhetorical “tool” indeed. Good day. 😉
- Brad R. Torgersen on May 21, 2015 at 7:27 PMRosalind: how about you settle for, “Brad Torgersen was never evil in the first place” eh?
- BigGaySteve on May 30, 2015 at 9:57 PMThe accusations leveled at Brad Torgersen was that he was racist, as the rabbits just went down the normal disqualify checklist. Him being currently married to a black woman makes that unlikely. That said my pictures of Hispanic ex boy friends are proof that I am post judiced not prejudiced. Several years working in inner city hospitals never once did I meet a black as smart as Seen on TV
  - Yoyo on May 31, 2015 at 2:10 AMwtf? You never met an exceptionally educated black person?
    However all the whites you know are just as smart and informed as George Clooney. Yep not sexist at all.
Brad R. Torgersen on May 21, 2015 at 5:56 PMThe following is general commentary, not directed at Eric Flint per se. But at the body of the thread and all the comments as a whole.The thing about self-identifying progressives in 21st century America is that they don’t realize when they’ve won. Especially in the field of SF/F publishing. You cannot fight against The Man when you are The Man. In SF/F publishing, progressives make up the vast bulk of editors, authors, artists, and publishers. Oh, they will quibble about differences between them — in fine detail — but taken as a whole picture, the field of SF/F is a thoroughly progressive playhouse. Trying to explain to a progressive the existence of progressive prejudice (against conservatives, especially in a media entertainment arena) is like trying to explain to a trout that water is wet. The trout simply gapes at you goggle-eyed and exclaims, “But sir, that is the very nature of the universe!”Someone up-thread pulled a quote from my blog, and I want to re-emphasize a portion of it.Sad Puppies 3 was “open source” and demanded nothing, threatened nothing, nor did it badger anyone. I state again: we were open source, we demanded nothing, we threatened nothing, nor did we badger anyone.The opponents of Sad Puppies 3 — some of whom I would be tempted to call puppy-kickers — have threatened, demanded, and badgered a great deal. This wasn’t a life-or-death bloodsport until the progressive guardians of the field decided that Sad Puppies 3 was justification for open war. They happily became (and in most instances, remain) puppy-kickers. And they are proud of themselves for it, too.I guess inviting more people to the table is the most horrible thing in the SF/F world?Because that’s what happened: Sad Puppies 3 invited more people to the table, not less. We wanted to make the tent bigger.The puppy-kickers have busied themselves trying to find ways to evict people from the tent. For ideological infractions. For taste infractions. For insufficient “fan cred” as defined by the denizens of Worldcon — some of whom are obsessed with keeping Fandom a capital-f affair, for capital-f people only.Sad Puppies 3 wanted to push back against blind spots, and get recognition for new and established authors alike.The puppy-kickers used that as an excuse to scream “NO AWARD!”, while at the same time threatening careers, using lies and character assassination against myself and Larry Correia in particular, and to also try to cajole deserving people to withdraw from the ballot.Remind me, again, who “loves” Science Fiction & Fantasy? Who pissed in the cornflakes, to borrow one user’s analogy?Sad Puppies 3 never said the Hugo award should go to only the works or people we like, or to only the works or people who flatter our ideologies. We merely wanted a share of the pie for works and people who’d otherwise struggle to get that share.The puppy-kickers have absolutely stated — over and over again — that the Hugo award should go to only the works and the people whom the puppy-kickers deem worthy — for all definitions of “worthy” which include, “Must almost always be left-leaning in ideology, and satisfy our stuffy criteria where taste is concerned.” Moreover, the puppy-kickers have stated that the “wrong” voters should be kept out of the process, and that the “wrong” fans are not welcome to participate.Got it? The puppy-kickers have been screaming GO AWAY at the top of their digital lungs.And yet the puppy-kickers pretend to claim the mantle of “inclusiveness”? How does that work? You’re “inclusive” by erecting walls, calling people names, and sticking your nose in the air?
- Books first, food later. on May 21, 2015 at 11:10 PMI just got a warm fuzzy feeling after reading this. Also, “puppy kickers” made me cringe, then giggle a little. How apropos, we want to alleviate “puppy-related-sadness” and they want to send puppies “to the pound” (I quoth) because they are messy. Puppy kickers indeed. 😉
- Mike on May 27, 2015 at 1:39 AMSad Puppies 3 never said the Hugo award should go to only the works or people we like, or to only the works or people who flatter our ideologies. We merely wanted a share of the pie for works and people whoâ€™d otherwise struggle to get that share.By that standard, then, didn’t you end up with a problem when your entire slate got all the nominations in several categories, thereby excluding all nominees except the ones you selected?
  - Bibliotheca Servare on May 27, 2015 at 5:40 AMIt’s called “voting”. I don’t give a damn if the allegation that ” no one has ever organized a ‘bloc’ vote like this before!! Oh mercy me, I think I’m sufferin from the vapors!” are true are not (they aren’t. they really, really aren’t. I’m not talking about SJWs, or anything recent. I’m saying, the Hugo’s exist. They are voted on, and people have ALWAYS organized to support their favorite book, political candidate, or any other thing subject to a vote, by persuading others that their candidate, book, etc is worthy of their vote. It’s not a theory, or a hypothesis, it’s the way the democratic process works. The puppy kickers are delightfully ignorant of this fact, it often seems, to my unending irritation.) either way, I am sick and tired of people (like Kevin Standlee, for example, though at least he’s been relatively civil in his criticisms) moaning and groaning about how “the puppies were too successful! It’s not faaaair!!! “It’s just plain RUDE!” etc. It is not up to the “puppies” (either one, but especially the “sad”) to prove they are innocent of the ‘crime’ of voting too similarly, thereby wickedly conspiring to elevate the books etc they voted for over more “deserving” or equally “deserving” books etc that garnered fewer votes, thereby somehow “pissing in everyone’s cornflakes” and acting like rude guests at a “potluck” (Standlee’s analogy). It’s up to the accusers to prove their accusations, even if this isn’t a court of law, which it isn’t. They can make all the unfounded, rude, distasteful, occasionaly disturbingly violence tinged (the “pound” or “put the puppies down”) accusations they like, and as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of slander and libel, or serious threats rather than spinelessly veiled allusions to executing innocent animals, they will face (rightfully, in a free society) no real consequences or repercussions for their odious dedication to unmannerly behavior and speech. As I said in parenthesis, that is only proper and just, as we live in a -mostly- free society, and thankfully our freedoms of speech have not yet been stripped from us in the name of making others feel “safe” from “triggering” forms of speech, or from “hate speech”. At least not outside college and university campuses, that is. (Look up “trigger warning” on google, and then append various school names to those two words. It’ll turn your stomach) Nonetheless, it is meaningless, and childish, for the puppy kickers to tout all these accusations (like that the “puppy” voters didn’t read before voting, or they didn’t look over “Locus” before deciding what they wanted to nominate, and posting their preferences on their blog pages, “intentionally” failing to add an extra name or two to the lists I’m each category in order to prevent a straight “party line” vote, etc etc etc) without presenting a shred of real substantive evidence. Larry failing to write what he felt was obvious (read before voting, don’t vote without reading) and posting it after he was told that if he didn’t use small words to explain such things to his readership he was obviously ‘cheating’ is not “substantive” meaningful evidence of any kind of impropriety. That claim is especially laughable when considered alongside the fact that Brad *did* put that in his post, very explicitly. (Not because he has less confidence in his readership’s intelligence than Larry, but because he is an unfailingly decent, upstanding gentleman, with all the OCD tendencies possessed by most of the very best officers in the military, and cannot leave one detail, however minor, unattended to…or that’s the impression -the OCD bit, not the upstanding etc. That’s based on evidence- I’ve gotten from reading his work, and blog posts, etc. Like I said, it makes one laugh, no? The only vaguely meaningful claim that the puppy kickers can make against Larry or Brad, or Sarah, or Kate, or Dave (I have trouble writing “Mr Freer”… I always get this image of him laughing at me in incredulous amusement), or any of the others that are and have been involved in the ” sad puppy” (the campaign to alleviate and prevent puppy-related sadness, more accurately) campaign is that they were too successful. Which is simultaneously really fricking funny, and, because I have an irritatingly thin skin, infuriating. Not only were the “rabid puppies” more successful than the “sad puppies” at nominating their “slate” which kind of blows the whole “why did they not suggest more or less than five in each category, if they aren’t evil misogynistic dogs that hate everyone who disagrees with them and need to be put down?” argument out of the water, but even if SP3 (“Sad Puppies” 3) had been as successful as it’s purported to have been, it would still be a hysterically laughable claim, because it demands the belief that success in an endeavor necessarily implies that one has “cheated” to succeed, especially if that success is undesirable to the person making this laughable accusation. It means that any success, no matter in what, is automatically subject to suspicion, because only cheaters can “win” so thoroughly. Or at least, it suggests that success is evidence of possible wrongdoing. Either of these suggestions is undeniably hilarity inducing and ridiculous, no? If you think otherwise, well, I guess I’m not trying to convince you, because you are already firmly entrenched. I’m talking to the folks who’ll look at that statement and decide “No, that’s too silly. There has to be more substance to the outrage than that!” and research for themselves. I am confident that they will discover that I am not exaggerating the embarrassingly silly lack of substance to the puppy kicker’s outrage, and will be persuaded that the “sad puppies” are not as wickedly ignorant, or stupidly rude, as the loud chorus of Trufans (not in quotes because it’s an actual term they use to refer to themselves) has been insisting they are. Wow…this ended up being a lot longer than I planned. Pardon any errors, as touchscreen keypads don’t play well with my fingers. Also pardon me for any offense I may have offered…this started out as a reply to you, then blossomed into a sort of rambling, rant-like essay on the subject. My sincere apologies. Be well. 😉
    - Bibliotheca Servare on May 27, 2015 at 5:41 AMWow…that IS long. Ahem… That was supposed to be a smiley at the end. 😉 There. ‘Twas bugging me.
    - Mike on May 27, 2015 at 11:17 AMSo if “No Award” wins, then “it’s called voting” too, right?
      - Bibliotheca Servare on May 27, 2015 at 1:02 PMYep! Asinine voting is still voting, I’m happy to say. Yes, I am aware “asinine” is just my opinion of that voting method. I’m okay with that. ;-P
  - Yoyo on May 31, 2015 at 2:13 AMExactly poor puppies its only about justice in gamer reviews, whoops that’s Gamergate, its only because those uppity women have ALL the power in sf publishing,
    - Bibliotheca Servare on May 31, 2015 at 4:25 AMIs it fun attacking straw people and straw arguments? I suppose it must be, because you certainly seem to enjoy it, or at least you are demonstrably willing to devote significant amoints of your time to manufacturing straw mockups of those that disagree with you, simply for the purpose of knocking those straw misrepresentations down. Or maybe you simply don’t realize [that] you aren’t actually criticizing real people, or real arguments, and you think you actually have a valid point…no, no one is that clueless…I hope.PS: in case you were confuzzled, (confused) The Campaign to Prevent Puppy Related Sadness does not have any problem with women in publishing *in any capacity* as writers, editors, publishers, or anything else. In fact, many of the participants are female, and several of the “leaders” (such as exist) are women…in the publishing industry. Funny, that. ;-D Hence, straw arguments, and straw people were all you were “snarkily” mocking with your “withering” sarcasm.
      😉
Tom Kratman on May 21, 2015 at 6:21 PMI, on the other hand, just want “aces and eights.”
George Phillies on May 23, 2015 at 11:06 AMWhy Awards are Becoming Impractical
Someone actually has to have read everything. Every one does not need to have read everything, but each work needs at least a few Hugo supporter readers. On the bright side, you can now distract both sides with a vigorous argument about a novel and author that no one else knows. On the other bright side, Hal Clement once remarked to me that he had retired, and now he really wanted to find an SF novel a day to read. Thanks to technology, it is now possible for that wish to be satisfied, even if Hal Clement must do his sampling from the next plane of existence.So here is a list of novels (>100,000 words, arbitrary cutoff), excluding material with substantial adult content, published in the last month (4/24-5/23) via Smashwords. There appears to be a Bova novel in the middle. To reproduce this list for a year, you would need to multiply its length by about 12. Yes, a good review zine is needed. Having said that:Price of Life by David CranePack Ahorra al Comprar 2 (NÂº 063): Atrae el dinero con la ley de la atracciÃ³n & El Misterio de los Creadores de Sombras by Nuevos Autores
The Madness Engine by Paul B. Spence
Pathspace by Matthew Kennedy
Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep by Affront Publishing
Wanted Rescuers by Terry Compton
…Saves Nine by Les Lynam
The New Earth Star by Fred Taikowski
Blue Plague: The Fall (Blue Plague Book 1) by Thomas A. Watson
Oracle’s Child: Anchorage Book 5 by Sandra C. Stixrude
Dreams from the Sky by Frank Valchiria
Seven of I: The Keeper of the Words by Valerie Ryan
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 by Edward W. Robertson
Relapse by Edward W. Robertson
Captives by Edward W. Robertson
Cut Off by Edward W. Robertson
The Book of Lapism, Deluxe Edition by Phil Geusz
Reapers by Edward W. Robertson
Gamers and Gods III: ALEXANOR by Matthew Kennedy
To Save The Sun by Ben Bova & A.J. Austin
Void All the Way Down by Stephen Hunt
Sci-Fi Value Pack by Robert P. Hansen
The Colonies of Earth Collection by Philip R Benge
Skyeater (In A Universe Without Stars Book 1) by J Alex McCarthy
The Fifth House by Andy Goldman
Los rostros del pasado by Rodolfo MartÃnez & Felicidad MartÃnez
Genesis, Guardian of Gatling by Archer Swift
Trees For the Forest by Denise Siegel
Sasha: The ROE Chronicles Book 1 by Sean M. Campbell
Citadel: Omnibus by Kevin Tumlinson
Pride x Familiar ReVamp by Albert Ruckholdt
CyberGun by Matthew Zee-Miller
999 Years After Armageddon: The End of the Millennium by Ray Ruppert
Far From The Sea We Know by Frank M Sheldon
Book 8 – Time’s Curse by Marius A Smith
Book 7 – From the Depths of Time, Part Two by Marius A Smith
Book 6 – From the Depths of Time, Part One by Marius A Smith
Days of Iron (Book 1) by Russell Proctor
Gamers and Gods: AES by Matthew Kennedy
Wild Child, Books 1, 2 & 3 – The Trilogy by Mike Wells
Heart Behind The Mask by N. “Karmakat” Franzetti
Orion Rising by J L Pawley
Warday by Whitley Strieber
Empire Ascensions by Joshua Done
The Ishim Underground by Carrie Bailey
AntiHelix by John Guy Collick
Beyond the Gates by Catherine Wells
Two Worlds by Michael Adams
Iron Warrior by Jay Noel
The Valadin Codices – Volume 1 by Wayne Farrugia
No Time for Rules by Fleur / Lloyd Lind / Hopkins
Series: Tales of Lentari, Book 4 Â· Legends of Lentari.
Bakkian Chronicles Omnibus by Jeffrey M. Poole
LIFE (Citizens of Logan Pond Book 1) by Rebecca Belliston
Emissaries by Graham Storrs
Psych Investigation Episodes: Foxes by Kevin Weinberg
Wild Child, Book 3 – The Patriarch by Mike Wells
The Rising Trilogy Complete Box Set by Amy Miles
A Plea In The Darkness by Robert Holt
Allie’s War Season Four: Books 7-8 by JC Andrijeski
Time Travels to San Francisco by Lisa Mason
The Hunters Call (Patrick Pierce #2) by William Scottand that is one month.
luagha on May 30, 2015 at 8:01 PM“Itâ€™s because the subjects that interest us and the way we write about them arenâ€™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.”This can’t be true, because if it were true, there would not have been poorly sourced articles in various major news media accusing the Puppies of being racists/misogynists/etc.If it were true, the Hugo voters would simply have voted and that would have been the end of it. So that can’t be true.
- Yoyo on May 31, 2015 at 2:17 AMcome off the grass! Yes its all an EEEVIL plot to stop poorly written SciFi getting a particular award and nothing to do with hitching your way on to a very aggressive and lying vox day. Who surprise surprise stands to benefit from puppies “naievity”.
Carbonel on May 30, 2015 at 8:34 PMHeh: A progressive tries to explain to a bunch of conservatives and libertarians that a left-wing lock on publishing houses never hurt HIM and thinks it’s going to convince anyone but other progressives. That’s cute.Mr. Flint’s accurate critique of Mr. Beale (“Vox Day”) as a fellow who “…chisels when it comes to his opinions, always trying to play peekaboo” is spot on. It takes time and effort to separate the wheat from the chaff and for some reason Mr. Beale doesn’t seem to give %$# about making it easier to show whether or not the folks who get the happy feelz saying horrible things about him are mistaken. I do not understand people who get off on conflict. I really don’t.Even so: Since you don’t know the man (like Mr. Torgerson, Mr. Scalzi, or Mr. Correia) AT ALL, why are you so certain that the gossip and stories you’ve heard about complete with selected quotes accurately describe his character? I only know one person in this bro-ha-ha who actually knows the man, rather than the Internet Persona, and he seems to think Mr. Beale is fairly decent. You’ve read for yourself cut quotes and disingenuous writings about Torgerson that you know are false. Wicked false. A little skepticism would seem to be in order.Nonetheless it galls me to have to defend Mr. Beale (as I had to stand up and announce to a bunch of librarians that “I have not read it, but it’s by O’Reilly, so of course it’s sucky conservative crap” is unprofessional, and despite my sharing your opinions about the man, that this book is, in fact, liberal pap.) but I have been spending more time than I want to at his blog (I refuse to mess about with twitter. Everyone is a twit there, even people I admire) and as far as I can tell, Mr. Beale IS NOT “opposed to women learning how to read and write” nor does he “support honor killings.” That one is pure bogus, but it does have a nice long ‘net gossip tail.Beale does, however, appear to believe some very, very nutty things about the biology and anthropology of race, which, if he were a socialist would be horrible, because the State which runs our lives for us, would have to use that bogus “science” to organize who got what jobs, or teach or write, or make art. But then, Mr. Flint, you’re down with socialism: Does that mean that the associated terror, brainwashing, death, imprisonment, torture, lobotomies, rapes, forced sterilizations, the literal mountains of skulls created by socialist regimes, much of which is still happening (Google “Ladies in White”) because of folks who’ve taken your nutty beliefs and run with them, disqualify you for fair or decent treatment in the SF community?I am grateful to Beale, as I am to you, because I love, love, the Hundred Year’s War alt history, just as I love Jerry Pournelle and John Wright’s work. And thanks to Castallia I get both, in spades. That’s what he’s “doing” (though I myself, don’t expect it to “save civilization,”) and I for one, am 100% behind anyone who wants to publish more great SF. Shoot, that’s what the sad puppies campaign is all about.Save arguing about whose beliefs are more stupid for discussions over a drink or political rallies–not as the starting point for gatekeeping fandom and scifi.
- Bibliotheca Servare on May 31, 2015 at 9:47 AMI must say, that was fairly nicely put. Just…well said. 😉
Ronzoni on May 31, 2015 at 9:58 AM” Excuse me? SF authors have been writing about racismâ€”AKA â€œwhite privilegeâ€â€”for decades.”This is exactly the parting of ways. “White privilege” is a new concept. It is not at all what used to be called “racism.” This is your problem. One is a racist if he believes in the superiority of one race or that any particular race should, by right, rule over others. One is guilty of white privilege for simply consuming oxygen in a body containing some quantity of European DNA. Sort of like original sin.Back in the 80s the idea started going around that all whites were racist and only whites could be racist. That of course was so absurd that a new term of slander had to be invented. Thus we have “white privilege” of which all Caucasians are clearly guilty. Apparently, this form of original sin can never be fully expunged, but some forgiveness is available to those who grovel in an assumed guilt.Lincoln and his armies were not fighting white privilege. To the extent they had any goal beyond the forcible preservation of the Union, they were fighting a clearly unjust and odious racist culture.
Mark Citadel on May 31, 2015 at 4:56 PMYou strike me as beyond pathetic. Your attacks on Vox are as poorly-thought out as Scalzi’s. To read your sniveling little screed was painful, leading me to believe your actual writing isn’t any better. “Vox is Hitler!” for crying out loud, really?It’s fortunate that people like Vox have moved beyond mere Conservatism which would no doubt bow before your BS and apologize, something you don’t deserve. Codreanu had the right idea about Occidentals who essentially performed the actions of traitors.
- John Cowan on June 4, 2015 at 11:58 AMJust for the benefit of people who don’t know: you are citing the man whose adherents, when they got into power in Romania, hung Jewish corpses in Romanian butcher shops, and locked Jews in freight trains which wandered randomly around the countryside until the occupants were dead of suffocation and thirst. Even high-ranking Nazis fully aware of the Final Solution found their procedures horrifying in the extreme, and that’s saying quite a bit.
  - Mark Citadel on August 9, 2015 at 1:29 PMOh, look, another junior history major!Well, if you had any grasp of the facts you wouldn’t have embarrassed yourself. The story about the slaughterhouse was dismissed as a fabrication even by the COMMUNIST regime which took power after the war, due to lack of evidence and testimony from its own Jewish employees who said it never happened.
    The Legion were in power from September 6 1940 to January 23rd 1941. During this time it is estimated that less than 125 Jews died during spontaneous riots. The participation in Hitler’s Final Solution only occurred AFTER the Legionary State was overthrown and Ion Antonescu solidified total control over the country. During this time, the Legionaries themselves were in a concentration camp, Buchenwald.Next time, get your education from somewhere other than a cereal box.
JIm Richardson on May 31, 2015 at 5:24 PM“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 todayâ€™s publishers.”But of course, there’s no political gatekeeping or blacklisting going on. Perish the thought
DeepThought61 on June 2, 2015 at 1:45 AMEric great satire piece! No way you could espouse being inclusive at the same time wishing ill upon your opponents. You are too logical for that!There is no way you would state these publishers are going to stop publishing these writers when many are self published. You can’t be that lazy to even have googled them right?There is no way….Yes turns out Eric can. Someone please proofread his blogs before he posts. Stop this man from being a buffoon.
C Stuart Hardwick on June 17, 2015 at 1:12 PMYet another insightful take, but it all comes down to what I’ve been saying since the beginning (to Brad, among others). I’ve yet to meet a writer I didn’t like, and I’ve met writers with political views all over the map. Arguing is great, healthy, and helpful. Calling names (and making up acronyms for those names) far less so. We are all still in the same industry, and those political points that cannot win the day in a respectful debate are probably more productively saved for contemplation and rumination through fictional conflict, rather than real.
joyce on July 27, 2015 at 6:49 AMGreat Article. Thanks for the info. Does anyone know where I can find a blank “2012 NJ CN 10517, [05-07-2012]” to fill out?

← Older Comments

Stoney Compton on May 14, 2015 at 2:38 PMBeautifully 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!
Shawna on May 14, 2015 at 2:41 PMI’m proud to know you, Eric,
kevin on May 14, 2015 at 2:49 PMThat’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.
- John Cowan on May 14, 2015 at 4:09 PMIt’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).
Colin Kuskie on May 14, 2015 at 2:58 PMI’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.
Dan_reads_books on May 14, 2015 at 3:08 PMSo, 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.
Laura Resnick on May 14, 2015 at 3:08 PMThank you!
Kazriko on May 14, 2015 at 3:17 PMI 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.
- Kalle on May 15, 2015 at 3:34 AMFirst 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.
  - Kazriko on May 15, 2015 at 4:09 PMThe 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.
    - Kazriko on May 15, 2015 at 4:10 PM(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.)
    - Kalle on May 20, 2015 at 6:55 PM“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.
Mike Spehar on May 14, 2015 at 3:25 PMIt 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.
- Books first, food later. on May 14, 2015 at 5:20 PMThank 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. 😉
- Books first, food later. on May 14, 2015 at 6:10 PMMy 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. 😉
  - Mike Spehar on May 17, 2015 at 2:50 PMTsk. 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.
    - Books first, food later. on May 17, 2015 at 11:14 PMUnderstood. ;)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! 😀
      - Books first, food later. on May 17, 2015 at 11:16 PM*vehemently disagree, darnit! With which those who use the term vehemently *disagree*…not oppose…my kingdom for an edit button…
Brian who should be working on May 14, 2015 at 3:39 PMBravo and well put sir! You seem to have a way with words…
Ellen Datlow on May 14, 2015 at 5:21 PMWow! Thank you.
Books first, food later. on May 14, 2015 at 6:07 PMI 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. 🙂
Jennifer Foehner Wells on May 14, 2015 at 6:46 PMBravo, 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.
jayn on May 14, 2015 at 8:53 PMI 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.
James May on May 14, 2015 at 8:57 PMI apologize for not adding a trigger warning.
Calbeck on May 14, 2015 at 9:13 PM“Who the hell are you talking about outside of your right wing echo chamber where idiot acronyms like â€œSJWâ€ 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.
- Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 9:47 AMMy 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.
  - Calbeck on May 15, 2015 at 2:40 PM“where idiot acronyms like â€œSJWâ€ mean something?”
    “My point wasnâ€™t that people like that donâ€™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. Martinâ€™s web site â€” specifically, his â€œNot A Blogâ€ â€” 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.
    - clif on May 18, 2015 at 1:41 PMI 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).
Calbeck on May 14, 2015 at 9:20 PM” â€œsocial 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.
- Mike Spehar on May 15, 2015 at 1:10 AMSomebody 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.
  - Calbeck on May 15, 2015 at 3:22 AMAaaand 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.cw100430.0The 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.
    - Quilly Mammoth on May 15, 2015 at 11:25 AMI 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.
      - Calbeck on May 15, 2015 at 2:49 PMYes, 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.
Mad Professah on May 14, 2015 at 9:37 PMThis 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….
Jonathan Laden on May 14, 2015 at 9:53 PM“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!
george on May 14, 2015 at 10:18 PMEric, 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.
slime on May 14, 2015 at 10:34 PMGood 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 forâ€”right up to the belief that everyone who doesn’t think exactly like you is an enemy that needs to be “killed”.
- Jason on May 15, 2015 at 1:33 PMHe 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.
- clif on May 18, 2015 at 1:46 PMso 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.
Terranovan on May 14, 2015 at 10:35 PMI 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.
- Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 10:00 AMI 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.
  - cka2nd on May 16, 2015 at 3:03 PMHave 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.
  - Tim McDonald on May 30, 2015 at 9:06 AMIf 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.
    - Books first, food later. on June 5, 2015 at 5:01 AM300,00, 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. 😉
      - Books first, food later. on June 5, 2015 at 5:02 AMsorry, that was supposed to be “300,000”. ahem.
Greg on May 14, 2015 at 11:41 PMEric, 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.)
- BW on May 15, 2015 at 9:38 AMGreg, 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.
  - Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 10:06 AMIt 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.
    - John Cowan on May 15, 2015 at 11:52 AMOr Mother of Demons, which is my fave Flint “pure SF” novel. Not that there’s any Flint work I don’t like!
      - Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 12:03 PMMOTHER 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.
        
        Kate Fall on May 15, 2015 at 9:49 PMI 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.
    - Tim McDonald on May 30, 2015 at 9:23 AMWhile 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!
Will Shetterly on May 14, 2015 at 11:43 PMAh, 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 doingâ€”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.
Will Shetterly on May 14, 2015 at 11:58 PMP.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.
Will Shetterly on May 14, 2015 at 11:59 PMWeird. My long comment went into moderation; the PS is visible. Ah, well, Strange are the ways of the internet.
- Will Shetterly on May 15, 2015 at 12:57 PMGlad to see the comment’s out of moderation. Any idea what spam filter I tripped?
Tom on May 15, 2015 at 12:41 AMJust 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.
- Randy on May 15, 2015 at 1:20 AMGood 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.
- Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 10:10 AMI _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.
  - Tom on May 16, 2015 at 10:41 AMSo, 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.
Andrew on May 15, 2015 at 12:43 AMI 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 fairJustice: conformity to truth, fact, or reasonThe 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.
- John Cowan on May 15, 2015 at 11:59 AMBosses 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.
balddudesrock on May 15, 2015 at 3:18 AMSpeaking 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.
James May on May 15, 2015 at 5:04 AM“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.
- Pluviann on May 15, 2015 at 8:51 AMI 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’?
  - James May on May 16, 2015 at 2:21 PMPlease 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.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on May 15, 2015 at 5:28 AMThank 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.
Hugh B. Long on May 15, 2015 at 7:21 AMEric, 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.
Hampus Eckerman on May 15, 2015 at 7:55 AMJames 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.
- James May on May 15, 2015 at 9:33 AMIt’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.
  - Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 10:14 AMYou 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.
    - James May on May 16, 2015 at 2:26 PMI 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 memberI’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.
  - Jason on May 15, 2015 at 2:40 PMI 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.”
Josh Jasper on May 15, 2015 at 8:51 AMOne 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.
- ravenshrike on May 15, 2015 at 9:45 AMHeh, 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.
- James May on May 15, 2015 at 11:15 AMDoes 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
- Quilly Mammoth on May 15, 2015 at 11:44 AMYou 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.
  - J. Coelacanth on May 15, 2015 at 2:22 PM“as detestable as Vox Day is, he writes good stories” yeah, and some people like fermented shark and winters in Buffalo.
    - Kate Fall on May 15, 2015 at 9:54 PMNot fair to winters in Buffalo! We survive them without any permanent damage!
  - Hampus Eckerman on May 16, 2015 at 12:15 AM“Unlike those the Sad Puppies call SJWâ€™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?
Deirdre Saoirse Moen on May 15, 2015 at 9:15 AMIn 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.â€¦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.
- James Bell on May 15, 2015 at 10:05 PMWhat a generous response to this whole crazy thing. I’m trying to follow your example as well.
ravenshrike on May 15, 2015 at 10:07 AMIt’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.
Reziac on May 15, 2015 at 10:27 AMMr.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 wonâ€™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.
Nancy Kress on May 15, 2015 at 10:33 AMTerrific essay, Eric. Thank you.
Patrice Sarath on May 15, 2015 at 11:01 AMOnly 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.
AJNolte on May 15, 2015 at 11:15 AMI 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.
Will on May 15, 2015 at 11:19 AMEric, 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!
Will on May 15, 2015 at 11:21 AMSo much so that it made me repeat words in that last sentence. Well, it’s definitely getting late in the party.
Quilly Mammoth on May 15, 2015 at 12:02 PMI 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.
- Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 12:27 PMJody, 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.
  - Calbeck on May 15, 2015 at 2:57 PM“To anyone who complains, I say: Welcome to the real world. Complaining that thereâ€™s politicking involved with literary awards (or any other kind of awards) is on a par with being shocked â€” shocked! â€” to discover there is gambling in Rickâ€™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.
  - ravenshrike on May 15, 2015 at 3:31 PMAs 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?
  - Mercedes Lackey on May 15, 2015 at 9:00 PMI’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.
    - Books first, food later. on May 16, 2015 at 5:11 AMI 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 itâ€™s not, Sad Puppies 3 is â€œopen sourceâ€ 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 SP3â€™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, â€œCome to the party! Everybody is welcome!â€ “- Brad TorgersenHow 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. 😉
George R.R. Martin on May 15, 2015 at 1:37 PMInsightful and eloquent post, Mr. Flint. Applause.
Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 2:25 PMI’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.
- Eric Flint on May 15, 2015 at 2:28 PMAnd 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.
  - Books first, food later. on May 16, 2015 at 5:14 AMI am endeavoring to avoid overly annoying stupidity. ;D Avoiding stupidity *entirely* may be beyond my reach, I fear, but I shall try. *grin*
    - Eric Flint on May 16, 2015 at 8:57 AMI 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.
Teresa Cochran on May 15, 2015 at 3:39 PMThanks 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. 🙂
Richard A. Lovett on May 15, 2015 at 5:59 PMHi 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.
GC on May 15, 2015 at 6:05 PMHere, 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
- Tom on May 15, 2015 at 11:44 PMDoubt it. Baen publishes Tom Kratman, of all people.
- Blackadder on May 31, 2015 at 11:02 AMThis 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.
  - Seymour on May 31, 2015 at 2:02 PMYou 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.
  - Books first, food later. on May 31, 2015 at 10:01 PMThis 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.
    😉
Michelle Hartz on May 15, 2015 at 6:27 PMSomewhere 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.
Walter Daniels on May 15, 2015 at 8:30 PMEric, 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.)
- Books first, food later. on May 16, 2015 at 5:18 AMNicely 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. 😉
- Eric Flint on May 16, 2015 at 8:49 AMI’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.
  - BigGaySteve on May 30, 2015 at 9:41 PMWhy 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.â€œTo conquer a Nation, first disarm itâ€™s Citizensâ€- Adolph Hitler 1933
    This is awkward AH said that France would be the first nation flooded with the 3rd world.
    - John Cowan on June 4, 2015 at 11:48 AMBecause 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.
      - Brad Handley on December 26, 2019 at 3:18 PM“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 letâ€™s not have any native militia or native police.”This is what Snopes found on Hitler and Gun Control. He definitely believed in it.
Robin Pen on May 16, 2015 at 12:31 AMThank you for putting it all in real world perspective.

And Again on the Hugo Awards

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Eric Flint

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