…has apparently become community organized:
I’ve said for a long time that the awards are biased against authors because of their personal beliefs. Authors can either cheer lead for left wing causes, or they can keep their mouth shut. Open disagreement is not tolerated and will result in being sabotaged and slandered. Message or identity politics has become far more important than entertainment or quality. I was attacked for saying this. I knew that when an admitted right winger got in they would be maligned and politicked against, not for the quality of their art but rather for their unacceptable beliefs.
This is one of (though not the only one) reasons that I don’t read as much SF as I did when I was younger. The best way to fight this nonsense, of course, is to buy Larry’s books
[Monday-morning update]
The mission of SFWA was to act as a professional organization, to enhance the prestige of writers in our genre, to deter fraud, and to give mutual aid and support to our professional dreams.
It was out of loyalty to this mission that I so eagerly joined SFWA immediately upon my first professional sales, and the reason why I was so proud to associate with the luminaries and bold trailblazers in a genre I thought we all loved.
When SFWA first departed from that mission, I continued for a time to hope the change was not permanent. Recent events have made it clear that there is not reasonable basis for that hope.
Instead of enhancing the prestige of the genre, the leadership seems bent on holding us up to the jeers of all fair-minded men by behaving as gossips, whiners, and petty totalitarians, and by supporting a political agenda irrelevant to science fiction.
Instead of men who treat each other with professionalism and respect, I find a mob of perpetually outraged gray-haired juveniles.
Instead of receiving aid to my writing career, I find organized attempts to harass my readers and hurt my sales figures.
Instead of finding an organization for the mutual support of Science Fiction writers, I find an organization for the support of Political Correctness.
Instead of friends, I find ideologues bent on jihad against all who do not meekly conform to their Orwellian and hellish philosophy.
Politics trumps Science Fiction in the modern SFWA.
Sounds like it’s time for an alternate organization.
[Update a while later]
[Bumped]
More thoughts from Glenn Reynolds, over at USA Today.
As a recovering SF writer, I can tell you it is filled with leftists. There is an obsession to be “literary” rather than telling a good story. You can imagine all the baggage that accompanies that word, literary. Several suitcases full of Post Modern, Frankfurt School, Queer Theory, Feminism, etc, etc.
There are still visionaries, but I think they are all British.
I like to call them liternazis.
The best thing about the internet is that it removes power from these people and democratizes publishing. The postmodern thought police will have a much harder time controlling artistic expression going forward. The literary center is no longer NY. It is in the cloud.
I wonder if English departments are still teaching students to go through established publishers or if they now teach classes on blogging, formatting ebooks, marketing, website design, publishing finance, and how to find a good editor?
Liternazis?
For accuracy, you’re probably referring the period before the Nazis rampaged through Europe and committed genocide in death camps, right? You’re referring to the earlier period where they just smashed your windows, took your books, and burned them. I’m sure whatever the SF publishers and fans are doing is quite similar.
There should be some corollary to Godwin’s Law for people who use Nazi as the second half of a pejorative portmanteau.
No, there shouldn’t. You just want to make up rules to prevent people from calling out bad behavior. This is just a fan based community, think how bad the academics are that produce these people.
I agree. The more accurate term would be crypto fascists.
I don’t understand what the complaint is. People who own publishing companies aren’t stopping other people from starting publishing companies. Fans who don’t want to read certain kinds of stories aren’t stopping other people from writing or reading those stories. The latest complaints appears to be something about the Hugo awards but if Vox Day is on the ballot, I don’t see how you can argue that access to the ballot is somehow limited (and since the Hugo system is inherently, um, I don’t know if rigged is exactly the right word – maybe “skewed” is accurate, who cares about the Hugos. Pay attention to the Prometheus awards if you like awards.) None of this seems like Kristallnacht .
Do you just not like it when people have different political opinions from you? Ha ha ha!
“aren’t stopping other people from”
There is an effort underway to purge the scifi community of anyone not a progressive. Progs are trying to prevent awards being given to non-progs. Progs are trying to prevent books from being published and sold by authors that don’t follow their crackerjack box philosophy. Progs are trying to excommunicate people from trade shows and society at large. So, there are literal efforts being made to stop other people.
“Do you just not like it when people have different political opinions from you? Ha ha ha!”
You understand how that sounds considering the context of the topic of conversation?
Bob was apparently born without a sense of irony.
“Progs are trying to prevent books from being published and sold […]”
Wodun, do you have any examples, so I can understand how Nazi-like this alleged prevention is? I really don’t understand.
“Progs are trying to excommunicate people from trade shows and society at large. “
Well, I don’t know what you mean by “society at large”. If Vox Day wants to go to the grocery store, I doubt anyone would recognize him or care about what he writes on his blog. If someone who runs a tradeshow doesn’t want him there, well, it is a private tradeshow, right? If attendees at the tradeshow treaten to boycott the tradeshow, again, that’s their right. Again, maybe I just don’t understand the situation, but so far it sounds like the sort of thing that libertarians approve of. Everyone has rights, no one’s rights are being stepped on, people are freely associating, etc. They might not be my values (since I like diversity) but then again, I’m not a libertarian. 🙂 Why are libertarians upset?
I don’t think libertarians are upset. Larry himself seems amused, and enjoying showing off the idiocy and hypocrisy of the pathetic attempts to punish him (and Vox, and others) for doubleungoodthink.
If I recall correctly, Vox Day writes approvingly about raping women. I mean, real women, not characters in stories. Being against rape is not exactly “doubleungoodthink”, and it isn’t a leftwing vs rightwing issue. if I am recalling correctly about Vox Day, then I wouldn’t be surprised if other writers and readers don’t feel comfortable (or even physically safe) being around him.
I am recalling correctly about Vox Day, then I wouldn’t be surprised if other writers and readers don’t feel comfortable (or even physically safe) being around him.
Really? They’d feel “unsafe” around someone who believes in traditional marriage? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have to worry about being raped unless they were married to him.
And what kind of “phobe” does that make them?
“There is an effort underway to purge the scifi community of anyone not a progressive. ”
That doesn’t sound correct. I bet if Vernor Vinge starts pontificating at a convention, all those progressives trip over themselves to get close so they can hang on his every word.
“Wodun, do you have any examples, so I can understand how Nazi-like this alleged prevention is? ”
I don’t know how you couldn’t describe what is going on other than an effort to blackball authors and fans who do not enthusiastically adopt progressive ideology. There are a lot of high profile examples lately but I don’t have any links handy. Google SWFA controversy but be sure to read the root texts and more than just the progressive popular media POV.
Look at the controversy surrounding Orson Scott Card for another example.
“If attendees at the tradeshow treaten to boycott the tradeshow, again, that’s their right.”
I am not saying people don’t have rights. I am saying we need to look at the reasoning behind the exercise of those rights. Sure the KKK has the right to preach hatred but that doesn’t mean it is right for them to do so if you catch my drift.
“Everyone has rights, no one’s rights are being stepped on”
Actually, some people’s rights are being stepped on. I assume you don’t know much about what has been going on and not many people do considering how obscure this type of nerdery is but if you truly do value diversity, then you will be appalled by the actions of your fellow travelers.
“If I recall correctly, Vox Day writes approvingly about raping women.”
I haven’t read his work but I will point out that novels typically have people doing bad things and that these invented characters are not manifestations of the author’s persona. Holding author’s accountable for the actions of their characters has long been feared by writers. By that line of thinking, Spielberg endorsed the Holocaust by making Schindler’s List.
I much prefer a world where artists are free to express themselves and create works that make us feel good, uncomfortable, scared, disgusted, or any other emotion humans are capable of. A terrible world is one were progressives dictate what can and can’t be included in works of art because only works that support progressive ideology should be produced.
Yeah, I saw something awhile back about the Science Fiction Writers Association newsletter having some sexist descriptions of “lady editors” who looked sexy in bathing suits. I agree that editing skills can make anyone sexier, but the argument surrounding those comments seemed odd to me: people kept arguing about sexism and censorship and so forth, but I thought the key point was that you don’t talk about how your colleagues look in bathing suits in a professional trade journal.They were talking about bathing suits instead of insurance or contract law. Well, I’m not in the SFWA, so I couldn’t get too excited about it, but it seemed silly.
And all this definitely didn’t seem worthy of a comparison to the Nazis who Neal Stephenson so memorably described as “the living avatars of Satan, who publicly acknowledge being just as bad and vicious as they really are.”
Wodun, regarding Vox Day, I’m not talking about fictional rape or fictional characters. I agree with you about fiction: an author’sl voice in a work of fiction, let alone the voices of fictional characters, needn’t be representative of the artist’s own opinions. I’m talking about the opinions VD shares in his blog about real life matters. I don’t want to read his stuff, but if you google his name and “rape”, I imagine you’ll see what he thinks.
I have read Vox Day in the past – I just don’t want to REread a lot of his stuff, looking for a good example for people reading these comments. So, the following might not be the best example – again, you can google “rape” and “vox day” to see some of his other opinions.
Vox Day: “I would go so far to argue that if you are being introduced to a woman you find attractive, she will be more attracted to you if you slap her in the face without warning and walk away without explanation than if you smile and tell her that you are very pleased to meet her. Now this, being a mere hypothesis, can be argued. And tested, if you’re feeling especially scientific this weekend.”’
I absolutely support Vox Day’s 1st Amendment right to say and write such things. But it isn’t surprising to me that people don’t want to be in the same room with him. Again, I really don’t think this is a progressive vs right wing sort of issue.
(You might be tempted to justify Vox Day’s observation. If so, here’s the context: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2011/09/killer-game.html I understand you can justify and explain what he wrote: at best, it was a Swiftian Modest Proposal, he was kidding, etc, etc. That’s fine. But it still isn’t surprising a lot of people don’t feel comfortable being in the same room as him, regardless of their political beliefs.)
If I recall correctly, Vox Day writes approvingly about raping women. I mean, real women, not characters in stories. Being against rape is not exactly “doubleungoodthink”, and it isn’t a leftwing vs rightwing issue. if I am recalling correctly about Vox Day, then I wouldn’t be surprised if other writers and readers don’t feel comfortable (or even physically safe) being around him.
I don’t want to read his stuff, but if you google his name and “rape”, I imagine you’ll see what he thinks.
I’ll take you at your word that you “don’t want to read his stuff” but that would seem to render your ability to “recall” that which you have eschewed reading somewhat problematical. Failing to have any basis for “recall,” you seem pefectly content to instead pass along all the politically correct slanders from the progressive rumor mill. Nice job of sliming Mr. Day while claiming ignorance of all the other little leftwing internet root weevils busily doing the same.
Not previously having heard of Mr. Day, I actually did “google his name and ‘rape'” to see what I got. It was the article at this URL – http://www.wnd.com/2005/12/33737/ – (WordPress decided my version with a link was “too spammy.” I really hate artificial intelligence that’s really artificial mental retardation).
It is, as they might say in Middle Earth, not an awful lot of butter considering the amount of bread he scrapes it over, but it is not an endoresement of rape. It starts with a few shots at the squishiness of the concept of “date rape” and the attitudes of modern progressivism toward the agency of women and then goes on to examine quite a variety of other societies’ attitudes toward rape, ancient as well as modern. Sort of a survey article intended to demonstrate, among other things, the serious lack of universality of the modern Western Left’s notions about rape in the world at large.
More basically, it’s just another in an endless set of screeds by committed Christians and Jews one can easily find questioning the basis of any atheist/progressive attempt to construct any kind of morality sans deity. In this case, he’s beating up the secularists of the world for having, in his view, no real philosophical basis for objecting to rape.
I see a lot of this sort of thing from religious conservatives on a lot of specific topics – e.g., murder, theft, etc. As a libertarian-ish conservative atheist, I get a bit weary of this special pleading for the legitimizing moral magic of made-up deities. I left Libertarianism, per se, half a lifetime ago, but one thing I kept was a conviction that, starting from the axiom of individual self-ownership, it was entirely possible to construct a very robust morality with zero reference to giant bearded men floating in the sky.
Leftists would appear to have a rougher time with such a project as they reject any general principle of non-coercion and some of them even believe property to be theft – including even the ownership of oneself, presumably.
So, no, Mr. Day does not “write approvingly about raping women.” He simply finds a lot of what the modern Left has to say on the subject murky and nonsensical. I don’t entirely disagree.
The claim that Mr. Day approves of rape is a typical example of a dirt-common lefty rhetorical device in which any failure to minutely endorse the latest lefty talking points about some alleged evil is equivalent to endorsing and celebrating said evil. I oppose socialized medicine, therefore I’m in favor of denying care to the poor and dancing a merry jig as they lay dying in agony in the street. I favor the 2nd Amendment, therefore I also favor using 1st-graders for target practice. It’s an old wheeze, but then that’s true of pretty much everything about leftism. Not a lot of originality, there, just a lot of malignant zeal.
Apparently the Malignant Zealots Brigade is now marching, with pitchforks and torches, on the SFWA and, as always, death to the deviationists is the agenda. Duly noted. One more minor skirmish in the Left’s Long March Through the Institutions.
I haven’t read anything by Mr. Day, either fiction or non-fiction, but the descriptions below regarding the topic of rape sounds very much like the kind of thing that Camille Paglia has been writing for the last 20 years; she stirs up controversy, but nobody would make the mistake of claiming Ms. Paglia to “support rape.” Also check out the “Rape” chapter of Steven Pinker’s marvelous The Blank Slate; same comment applies.
In other words, just because somebody commenting on the Internet labels someone a “rape supporter” does not absolve you of the need to exercise critical thinking (I’m talking to Bob-1 here).
Dick, as I noted above, I didn’t mean to imply that I’ve never read Vox Day.
See
voxday.blogspot.com/2009/08/there-is-no-marital-rape.html
and
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/02/mailvox-which-is-worse-work-or-rape.html
It shouldn’t be any surprise that those sentiments are offensive to many people, and once again, I don’t see how this is a left vs right issue.
Cuthulu, see my 7:18am comment — I quote Vox Day directly, I didn’t rely on second hand descriptions. If you think my 7:18am comment shows a lack of critical thinking, please tell me why.
I don’t agree that the SWFA writers were sexist. It is hard to get there when you read the actual work in question. But what progs consider sexist is ever changing and filled with double standards. No one should be penalized for not being in lock step with prog’s views on gender and what can be said about genders.
Diversity means tolerance of people who think differently than you do, even if you disagree with them.
They got all butthurt and claimed the editors supported rape culture, hated women, and all kind of nasty things not backed up by the actual writing.
Sorry you don’t like the term liternazi but it is very fitting. I have no doubt these people would be cheering by the trains as people who’s only crimes are philosophical disagreements with progressives are sent to the camps. Right now, they are just trying to destroy people’s lives and excommunicate people from society.
Don’t forget bob-1, these people are trained and inculcated in our academic institutions. They are taught to act this way. Just imagine the discrimination students face who are not progressive and who are on the bottom rungs of the progressive ladder of gender and race hierarchy.
Bob-1 said, quoting Vox Day: “I would go so far to argue that if you are being introduced to a woman you find attractive, she will be more attracted to you if you slap her in the face without warning and walk away without explanation than if you smile and tell her that you are very pleased to meet her. Now this, being a mere hypothesis, can be argued. And tested, if you’re feeling especially scientific this weekend.”’
What in this is, to quote Bob-1 again, “Vox Day writes approvingly about raping women. I mean, real women, not characters in stories.” ? Sounds to me like he’s either (a) being ironic and/or hyperbolic about the PUA culture, (what better “neg” than a slap, amirite?), (b) deliberately acting like a jerk to make a point, perhaps with the male SF fan culture (which is pretty, shall we say, insensitive toward women), or (c) maybe, just maybe, deliberately acting like a jerk because he’s a jerk. But I don’t see how a sentient being can go from the quoted statement above to “Vox Day supports rape.”
Re: Bob-1 April 27, 2014 at 11:10 am
First, a hat tip to Rand for getting my 9:27AM post past his digital Cerberus. Thanks, and I hope I never have to pester you in like fashion again. I have this theory that every software product starts out as a bodily organ and ends up as a tumor. WordPress seems to be making the transition. But I digress.
I am coming more and more to believe that leftwing politics are an idicator of certain kinds of personaity disorders and perceptual deficits – brain damage, if you will. The example you cite in support of Mr. Day’s alleged awfulness is one of those arguments that has the form “Okay, let’s start with something we both agree is awful. Now I’m going to show you how something you think is neato-peachy-keen is even worse.”
The agreed-upon awfulness, in this case, is a complete lack of societal restraint upon male impulses, where they exist, to rape. The thing the lefties imagine to be unalloyedly neato-peachy-keen is the mass entry of women into the general workforce. Again, this is not an endorsement of rape, it’s a jaundiced look at the social impacts of normative female employment outside the home. Mr. Day is simply pointing out that every modern industrial nation – including, as of late, the former major exception, the United States – is well along the path to demographic suicide because of birth rates well below the minimum level needed to maintain the population.
That this is true, by the way, is not arguable. Japan, Russia and every Eastern and Western European country are all in demographic freefall. Since Obama took office, the same is beginning to be true here as well. The Left not only ignores and denies that this is any kind of problem, they’re mostly still stuck on stupid with 1950’s-vintage concerns about “overpopulation” and other fictional beasts.
Mr. Day blames the mass entry of women into the labor force and their consequent abandonment of the traditional stay-at-home-mom gender role for this on-going demographic collapse. Maybe he’s right, maybe not. Leftist brains, being unable to grasp anything that contradicts their dogmatic beliefs, are incapable of entertaining even the hypothetical possibility that anything they like can be the cause of subsidiary social problems, so, being, in essence, literally blind to the second half of Mr. Day’s argument, all they are able to comprehend is that Mr. Day speaks “approvingly” of rape. No he doesn’t. It’s just that those suffering self-induced Marxist dyslexia can’t tell the difference.
Cthulhu said: ” But I don’t see how a sentient being can go from the quoted statement above to “Vox Day supports rape.”
I was giving an example of Vox Day being offensive. I picked an example that you wouldn’t get by simply googling his name and “rape”. To read what Vox Day has to say regarding rape, follow the links I provided. And the links I provided are hardly exhaustive – you can google for more.
And as I said, you can certainly explain away what Vox Day said by putting it in a larger context, viewing it as A Modest Proposal, and so forth, but that ignores how offensive people find him, regardless of his politics and regardless of their politics.
OK. Fine.
They find him offensive.
I ask again, what kind of “phobe” are they, and why is that OK, but not to be a “homophobe”?
Dick, Vox Day’s argument regarding women working and rape is preposterous.
First and foremost, the argument purports to examine the effect on society of having vast numbers of women (or parents) work, but ignores the effect on society of having vast numbers of women (or people) raped. I think vast amounts of rape would be vastly more damaging than widespread work. Talk to some rape victims if you disagree.
Second, we don’t need a certain birthrate to maintain our society. Even if we need a growing population, as opposed to a static or falling one, we can get it through immigration. Every generation of immigrants has produced Americans whose philosophical ancestors were the Founding Fathers and I don’t see that changing.
So Bob-1 tells me to look at a specific comment to see why Mr. Day supports rape; I do so then eviscerate Bob-1’s comments; then Bob-1 says these are not the comments I’m looking for, I need to search the Interwebs for more. This is charitably called “moving the goalposts.” So I will now uncharitably tell Bob-1 to fuck off.
Re: Bob-1 April 27, 2014 at 7:18 am
Sorry Bob, it seems Marxist dyslexia has struck again. For the benefit of those similarly afflicted, I’ll try to explain what Mr. Day was all about here.
1) There are a significant number of women who are sexually attracted to men who rape other women.
Do you disagree as to the factual nature of this statement? I sure don’t. It’s well-known that every serial rapist/killer in U.S. custody has his coterie of would-be groupies who fawn over him like he’s some rock star. I know this makes lefty heads explode, but, hey, a lot of women are serously twisted sisters – deal with it. Mr. Day perfroms the arguably useful service, here, of informing us that this less-than-admirable female tendency exists other places than just the evil ‘ole U.S. of A. – i.e., Japan. Didn’t know that, but can’t say I’m surprised. Lotta serious weirditude in Japan.
2) There is a much larger number of women who find forms of abuse less drastic than rape or murder sexually stimulating.
I’ll ask again; do you disagree as to the factual nature of this statement? If so, why? The proclivity of quite a sizable percentage of the female population to find “bad boys” attractive is well-known. One could also cite the robust sales – mostly to women – of ’50 Shades of Grey.’ Mr. Day simply speculates that one might attract more female interest by slapping chance-met females than by politely chatting them up. Note that Mr. Day specifically abjures any personal interest in conducting experimental trials of the sort he describes.
In both the extreme cases he initially cites and the less extreme cases about which he speculates, Mr. Day annoys the left because he is, in effect, declaring that women, like men, have dysfunctional urges and drives that should be socially discouraged. This makes the feminist left especially crazy as they recognize no part of female psychology as being malignant or dysfunctional. Quite to the contrary, the feminist left has been engaged in a long-running project to make (lefty) female attitudes and behaviors mandatorily normative for everyone in our society. Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers have both written extensively about the feminist-instigated War on Men/Boys that is under way, mainly in educational institutions which now often resemble Marxist-Leninist-Feminist re-education camps.
So once again, no, Mr. Day is not endorsing rape, or even slapping, of women. He’s just making yet another factual point the left doesn’t wish to acknowledge, so they react with libels and slanders instead of refutation.
Bob, you do need to maintain the birthrate, otherwise you end up being a different population. For example, the left utterly fails at reproduction, so we’re entirely replacing them with good conservative Catholics with native American blood. The leftists won’t be missed. We might write some folk songs about them when they’re gone, but frankly, people who are too dumb to figure out how to make babies were probably challenged at figuring out how to put gas in their car, so technological changes doomed them to extinction anyway. Just remember that under DNC mandated rules, they only count as two thirds of a person when it comes to Congressional apportionment.
Given that you’re a Democrat, a proud member of the party of Jefferson Davis, have you thought about restarting the massive importation of Africans? That might stave off Democratic decline for two or three more decades, and until then you get free labor. 🙂
My comments would be more coherent if orange kitty and black kitty would stay off my keyboard and mouse in their excitement over canned food.
Hi Rand,
I missed your question when you asked it earlier. Sorry – I try to answer any question you ask me directly. I think my quote about slapping women he just met serves as one answer. (It does’t matter whether he was serious – talking about slapping women he just met was a bizarre hypothetical that would be a fear trigger for many people. ) My guess: VD’s views of traditional marriage are completely irrelevant to the people who are either offended by him or even scared of him. In general, I think the arguments about VD have very little to do with the arguments that make up the substance of leftwing vs rightwing political debate.
Re: Bob-1 April 27, 2014 at 6:24 pm
No Bob, Mr. Day’s thesis is not preposterous. A society that doesn’t adequately reproduce itself disappears. As Mark Steyn says, the future belongs to those who show up for it. Most advanced industrial countries have reproduction rates averaging about 1.3. It requires a rate of 2.1 just to maintain a static population. In Europe, Russia and Japan, every new generation will be roughly 2/3 as numerous as the previous one. Extrapolate that out and the smaller European countries disappear in less than a century. The bigger ones might take a century and a half to fall below the minimum population needed to maintain some semblance of their cultures. As these cultures all feature definitions of citizenship based on blood and soil, seeking salvation through immigration is excluded by their national DNA, you might say. In these countries, foreigners will always be foreigners, even if they were born “in-country.” Europeans will not cease being national chauvinists until the last one is dead. Just when that will be depends upon whether you think the legacy populations of Europe will simply fade into history as they diminish in numbers, or whether their seething and resentful Muslim immigrant neighbors take a hand in hastening the process once they are numerous enough to give it a good go. Personally, I think the latter is the likelier bet.
As to the United States, it’s true that, as used to be said about homosexuals, we can recruit. We can also reproduce. During optimistic, confident times, that is what Amrica has done. The ham-fisted idiocy of the Obama presidency has caused a growing number of Americans to fear that the dismal economic record he has racked up is “the new normal” and that no more good times are in the offing. I don’t believe this, but it will take a change of administrations – at least – to demonstrate otherwise. In the meantime, American birthrates are now appreciably below replacement level too.
Mr. Day counterposes a behavior he sees as leading to inevitable extinction with an alternative behavior that he sees merely leading to mass unpleasantness. Mr. Day doesn’t say so in his piece, but I’ll go ahead and do it for him. The experiment has already been done and, whaddayaknow, rampant rape in a society does not, in fact, cause it to go extinct, though I agree with you that it would hardly be a good place to live. I speak, of course, about the Islamic world. Rape and murder, even of one’s own children is endemic in the benighted lands ruled by the star and crescent. And yet, these godawful pestholes remain as they have for centuries. In the West, we have seen many examples of sexually coercive minorities pursue their depredations under cover of religion: old-school Mormons, innumerable cults like those of Jim Jones and David Koresh, and the numerous cases of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church all come to mind. In the Islamic world, though, the religion didn’t need to be infiltrated by perverts, it was founded by one and his heirs and assigns have seen to it that what he wrought, no man has, as of yet, put asunder.
I’ll just throw two personal opinions in:
The US and eventually the world’s population probably can safely fall in the long term, as automation and other forms of high technology reduces the need for many kinds of labor.
On the other hand, I’m personally for high population growth in the long term, because human minds will continue to be a fantastic source of wonder and delight, and high technology will make it possible to support it vast human populations on Earth as well as elsewhere.
I wonder if English departments are still teaching students to go through established publishers
Good God, man. Better dead than self-published. One would never be able to show one’s face at a Bloomsbury party again.
Long before they were smashing windows, the socialists were instilling an intellectual environment were windows could be smashed, because science and socialism and human progress, and all that. Modern progressive are in lock step with the Nazi Party line accept for genetics, with they largely reject except when it comes to abortion rates.
Depends. The big name schools, especially in the Ivy League, have the luxury to live in the past. However the rest of the higher education system is too busy moving into the future, including teaching students to succeed in a digital world.
There are still visionaries, but I think they are all British.
Are you sure? I stopped reading British SF some years ago because all the writers I found in the book stores seemed to be Trots and Commies.
I’ve enjoyed Peter F Hamilton’s really long books.
Hamilton is one of the very few non-socialist British SF writer.
Jon,
There’s an indie for that, which is why there’s starting to be a VOCAL opposition — which is sending the ones my friend Kate Paulk calls “The Glittery Hoo Has of feminism” over the edge of insanity, which frankly was always within easy swimming distance since they’re mostly literary academic.
Yep, spent years fighting against people trying to push me to write “literary” which, yes, I can but is not what I LIKE to do or want to do. Am now happily Baen and indie published and have stopped losing sleep — and hair.
Also, I came home from a con to find the editor of a micro press tried to shove me back in line by saying she had to hear my opinion on these “controversies” because as an editor she didn’t want to work with someone who would be “difficult” or “hard to work with” (I didn’t know those meant “non leftist.”) This was a blatant attempt to pull me in since I’ve been quiet lately, being mid-novel. My answer was that it’s okay, I won’t work with anyone that requires me to be in the political closet… What I SHOULD have said was “Honey child, what do you mean I should shut up because otherwise your micro press won’t buy me. The list of people who won’t buy me, sweetling, starts with TOR. And they would never buy me even when I was quiet because I didn’t VOCALLY ENDORSE the party line. This attitude I’m wearing? You bought it, I paid for it, and that’s all you’re going to get from now on.”
I don’t follow the Hugos at all, leave alone choose my reading by them.
Most of the authors I read now tend to lean to the right: Pournelle, Niven, Heinlein, Moon, and Weber, for instance, although the Moon books I read are fantasy. Never read Correia. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of MilSciFi (but not the current book).
If you’ve never read any of Vinge’s stuff I’d recommend him. Also I found The Expanse books great, a little corporate-evil stuff but not enough to keep me from being completely hooked. And they’re coming to the SyFy channel with purportedly a significant budget.
The hero better be a woman, or it will never make it to SyFy.
I always liked Keith Laumer’s Bolo series. The adventures of the Dinochrome brigade would make a great TV series, especially as the military is rapidly catching up with his predictions for military technology future.
Please consider the omissions of Vinge and Laumer to be oversights. Also please add Saberhagen’s Berserker series.
Currently I’m finishing the first Foundation book by Asimov. Not sure what I want next. I’ve been thinking of re-reading the first Bolo collection by Laumer, if I can find it in Kindle format.
To ask a somewhat on-topic question, is Heinlein’s Friday available in an ebook format that can be read with an Android app?
I didn’t know there was an ebook format that couldn’t be read on an Android app.
Moon is considerably Left of Center.
Heinlein was an active Democrat during much his life.
Re: Moon. Really? Not that I would stop reading her because of that, but considering that 1) She was from Texas, 2) She is an ex-Marine Lt., and 3) the controversy over her remarks on Islam and 9/11 I am surprised by your information.
Ghod, if that’s the current state of SF fandom, I’m really glad I GAFIAted decades ago and never looked back…
I take it you have missed the Grand Tour series by Ben Bova. Its as good as anything Robert Heinlein wrote and provides one road map of billionaires and for-profits developing the Solar System while overcoming the government regulators. 🙂
Wow, interesting discussion from Bob above. First he chides Wodun, then demands Wodun provide examples of progs attacking writers, and then bob goes on a rant about how Vox Day supports rape in his writings while saying he doesn’t actually read Vox Day. When Bob’s called on his nonsense, he then counter by linking to Vox Day, which provides a quote such as this: “The fact that women may wish to work and are very capable of working no more implies that they should always be encouraged to do so anymore than the fact that men may wish to rape and are very capable of raping means that they should always be encouraged to do so.”
If you actually read Vox Day, you see a comment about society suggesting that men should not be encouraged to rape. I’m thinking bob didn’t actually read Vox Day, but rather read google searches of Vox Day and Rape. Perhaps bob should actually read the person and not the prog critics trying to trash someone’s career because they disagree with him. But hey, nice of Bob not to just stick with the topic, but actually provide himself as evidence supporting the original post.
I was reading Vox Day regularly during the SFWA dustup, and he was largely correct about what was going on, as oppsed to John Scalzi (“McRapey”) and the mindless harpies who only contributed feminist rage and more squee to the genre. Steven Gould is little better, dragging science fiction (which used to make you have to think) down to young-adult romance levels.
This is for Rand:
I think it is important to read Vox Day’s actual words, in context, on his blog. When I suggested that someone google Vox Day’s name and keywords like rape, I did so knowing that Vox Day’s blog entries would be the first hits. I was sloppy above, incorrectly implying that I’d never read Vox Day, and failing to provide links or good examples, but I tried to correct it.
Yeah, we did that. The problem is that, no matter how you pare the cheese, there is no way anyone neither a knave nor a fool can get “Vox Day speaks approvingly of rape” out of any of that. Hyperventilating over someone’s argumentative hypotheticals is not only not a refutation, it isn’t even a comprehension – something that needs to occur first and which lefties seem unreasonably unable to do. I’m sorry if positing the slapping of women to make a point causes your mind to flake out and curl up around the edges. To the extent it does, it is merely additional evidence that the left feminists, however refractory they may be finding the rest of us knuckle-dragging male types, have at least succeeded in feminizing all the lefty men. “But… but… slapping women!” looks a lot like a gibbering attack of the “vapors” from where I stand.
Re: Bob-1 April 27, 2014 at 10:10 pm
It does’t matter whether he was serious – talking about slapping women he just met was a bizarre hypothetical that would be a fear trigger for many people.
Lefties seem to suffer from a lot of “fear triggers” in my experience. I attribute it to the psychological phenomenon of projection – ascribing one’s own inner mental life to others. Reading lefty tweets and blog posts, one could certainly be pardoned for supposing normative lefties spend much of their free time wishing fervently for the deaths of anyone who has excited their political ire. Thinking the reverse must be true, they are convinced that everyone who isn’t one of their own must be plotting to kill them – after all, it’s what they would be doing! Chill out, dude! All we want to do is kill you at the ballot box so you’ll lack the means to inflct your harebrained Bizarro World ideas on the rest of us.
I think the arguments about VD have very little to do with the arguments that make up the substance of leftwing vs rightwing political debate.
You think that only because your defective mental wiring makes you read a pefectly straightforward English sentence or paragraph and then conclude that the author is not only in favor of raping and/or slapping women, but might actually do it if he got loose in public. What you miss is that the author is, instead, directly addressing issues that are definitely of substance in the “leftwing vs. rightwing political debate.” You don’t see this because you have a self-inflicted inability to actually comprehend the substance of non-lefty arguments. You see the word “rape” or the phrase “slapping women” and you’re like… Squirrel! You need to work on your reading comprehension and dial down the Pavlovian overadrenalation.
I’m always amused by the clueless twits on MSNBC trying to parse the latest statement by some right-wing personage for hidden “code words” and “dog whistles” that only fellow perfidious right-wingers are supposed to be able to understand. Given how single words and short phrases, regardless of context, seem to put you and yours into a swivet of intellect-free agitation, I now have a better appreciation for what the MSNBC goofballs are always on about.
Re: Bob-1 April 27, 2014 at 10:18 pm
The US and eventually the world’s population probably can safely fall in the long term, as automation and other forms of high technology reduces the need for many kinds of labor.
I don’t agree. The late Milton Friedman, I think it was, once demonstated that no single person in the world knows how to make a pencil. And yet pencils, nonetheless, get made. He was pointing to the roles a division-of-labor economy and many forms of specialized expertise play in making even quite mundane objects available in an advanced industrial society like our own.
The problem is, there’s getting to be more of that specialized expertise required every year and the number of specialties is also increasing. It’s not the only reason the U.S. has been the world’s leading industrial power for the past century or more, but our large population makes it a lot easier to assure that all the relevant specialized expertise needed for some endeavour is available from people who share a common language and cutural background with you.
That’s why it’s important the population of the U.S. continue to grow. We need more brains all the time and not everyone is equally able to supply them. I think we need to at least double the U.S. population by century’s end. But, Emma Lazarus’s poem to the contrary notwithstanding, we need a lot less “wretched refuse” these days than we do educated – or at least educable – immigrants.
I agree with you that there are what I like to call “Attitudinal Americans” born all over the world who merely need to get here to fit right in. Elon Musk is a particularly stark recent example. We need to aggressively seek such people out and aid them in coming here. This may shock you, coming from an axiomatically racist white right-winger, but I don’t really care what color any of them are either. But we’re going to need two to three million more of them every year.
That’s one of the reasons the racial politics of the left have been so destructive to this country. The left has done a superlative job in convincing native blacks that all the whites seretly want to kill or enslave them and that, in any event, they have no stake in the future of America. Other minorities have been less thoroughly indoctrinated, but still pack at least some of this same baggage. If no one who isn’t white thinks they have any consequential role to play in the future of America, then when minorities become the majority – which the Left likes to gleefully predict will happen by 2040 or 2050 – then we’re all in a lot of trouble.
I earned a technical degree from a community college recently and got a little taste of what one particular dystopian future may hold. The racialist Left likes to prate a lot about so-called “white privilege.” As a white-haired white man among people mostly 1/3 my age and various shades of brown, I quickly found out that “white privilege” meant I was privileged to field endless questions from classmates who seemed to take it for granted that an old white guy would have to be the one who really understood all this stuff and knew what was going on ’cause, hell, I was one of those old white guys who know how to, you know, do shit! It’s not very politically correct of them, I suppose, but a lot of minorities seem to have in the back of their minds the notion that, even if they screw things up, there will always be white people around to deal with the world if it goes really pear-shaped. This does not bode well for the future of the Republic. And it’s entirely the fault of you and people like you. You need to cut the crap.
On the other hand, I’m personally for high population growth in the long term, because human minds will continue to be a fantastic source of wonder and delight, and high technology will make it possible to support it vast human populations on Earth as well as elsewhere.
Me too. And I hope it works out. But everything the Left stands for is destructive of these ends. Ideas have consequences. Your ideas have had 100 million corpses as consequences these last 100 years. There won’t be any future if you and yours are not defeated and cast into the dustbin of history.
“There won’t be any future if you and yours are not defeated and cast into the dustbin of history.”
Except 200 years down the road, complete insanity will be -re-invented with clever pseudo-scientific polish. And the party of “new” will re-embrace it. Again. As progress. Again.
When Aesop would recognize the ideology.
The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance. It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that if one gives the Left an inch, they will take Crimea. Nothing for it but to keep calling them out, even if that’s all one can do at a given point.
I think I’ve mentioned here before that I got banned for a month from a Star Trek board for using the word “co-ed” in a thread title about a co-ed who was accidentally shot through the head by a policeman who was responding to a reported home invasion.
The threads first comment was that “co-ed” was a sexist term, and then three more idiots piled on because a feminist had expressed outrage, like the call of a hyena summoning the pack. The leftist males are at this point so beaten down that they didn’t even think before venting their outrage in a show of group solidarity (and stupidity). They all demanded that I use a different term. I asked why anyone would use “female undergraduate college student” when there’s a beautiful word with only four letters (co-ed) that conveys the same meaning – and saves a whole lot of space, and pointed out that it’s still freely used in the headlines at CNN, the LA Times, and the New York Times, which certainly aren’t bastions of right-wing male hegemony. I even wrote about the word’s etymology, because some of the commenters didn’t even know the word, as a noun, meant a female undergraduate.
That made them really angry, and I was banned. Leftist group think is strong in scifi. What Bob saw in his googles (and then did) is the same, people seeing a word and turning off their brain’s powers of reason and intellect and substituting mindless outrage.
If it was important to read Vox Day’s words on his blog in context, then why was your own summation of those words so objectively false?
There is no question that Vox Day enjoys being a s**t stirrer but what always puzzles me is: if he is so offensive, why is it necessary to misrepresent his actual words so often?
The reality is that today the PC crowd has to find ways to reconfirm to each other of their own moral worth by constructing a list of Emmanuel Goldstein’s to hate, and make sure that they all join the torch and pitchforks mob in a timely manner to chase those Emmanuel Goldstein’s.
I don’t think I did misrepresent him, but I knew that others would disagree, so I supplied the links and suggested that people read Vox Day’s own words in their original context.
You don’t think this is an example of advocating rape, right?
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2009/08/there-is-no-marital-rape.html
Well, lots of people read Vox Day and felt he was advocating rape. Lots of people disagree. I read the comment about being scientific (go out and slap women,), quoted above, not in the link, as advocacy, although I can see how people would disagree.
Seems to me this state of affairs isn’t unusual – look at the Mann suit for another example of people reading the same words but coming to different conclusions.
No, I don’t. What Mr. Day supports here is simply one of the basic asssumptions of long-standing Anglo-American marriage law up until perhaps a generation or so ago. He finds the concept of marital rape repugnant and injurious, in his view, to the institution of marriage itself. I don’t agree with him on this point, but you still have to torture logic, and the plain text of the blog post, to get “advocates rape” out of it. He plainly acknowledges that use of force to procure sex within marriage is a sign of severe pathology in the relationship. To the extent he “advocates” anything, here, it is the prompt and final dissolution of such marriages. This is, so far as I know, entirely in accord with the current thinking of social workers and women’s shelter directors, neither of which groups are exactly hotbeds of right-wing political thought.
And yet his post attracted multiple outraged reponses, most of which jumped, completely without basis in the text, to the conclusion he was “advocating” that women must remain in abusive marriages and take whatever comes. There’s that Lefty reading comprehension – or, more accurately, incomprehension, thing again. Mr. Day wants abusive marriages promptly destroyed so they don’t pollute the institution. It is his bilious lefty detractors who seem stuck on the idea of women having to stay in dysfunctional mariages. Maybe this is because many do, in fact, put up with the otherwise intolerable because they fear leaving the bad relationship more than they fear their partner. I would argue that this seemingly common tendency is not a mark of vibrant female mental health. For the Left to acknowledge this as well, however, would be to acknowledge that female, as well as male, psychology has pathological dark corners and, as I have noted previously, this is a departure from received feminist wisdom that is simply beyond the pale.
“Seems to me this state of affairs isn’t unusual – look at the Mann suit for another example of people reading the same words but coming to different conclusions.”
The Mann suit isn’t about the offensiveness of the words but rather a person’s right to say them under the first amendment. Just like the debate that started this post isn’t about the person’s political beliefs but rather the right for people to have beliefs other than progressive ideology and be allowed to exist in society personally and professionally.
Larry Correia’s Internet Arguing Check List. #1 Skim until Offended.
Bob-1 went from, “This isn’t happening” to, “I like that this is happening.”
Sort of like the Obama administration’s persecution of Tea Party and other conservative groups and individuals.
” attribute it to the psychological phenomenon of projection – ascribing one’s own inner mental life to others.”
No. Completely wrong in my case. I’m not a would-be aggressor or a victim (I’ve had a great life so far), but a woman I loved when I was younger was raped. The rapist is now dead, but the consequences of his act are never going to completely go away for my ex-girlfriend. When people talk about “fear triggers”, have a little compassion, or at least, don’t assume the worst and start speculating about “projection”.
Progressive totalitarian pogroms are a trigger for me because of the horrors they inflicted on the planet last century. Progressives should be more sensitive and less tyrannical so they don’t set off these triggers with their micro and macro aggressions. And they should stop with the appropriation.
This comment needs a like button.
Sarah, my apologies for the lack of a “Like” button. I’ll try to rectify when I update the template. Thanks for weighing in.
Yaaay, I got a like.
Alright. So you have PTSD instead. My point remains that you are unable to deal rationally with a rationally stated argument that “pushes your buttons.” Got it. At least you kind of admit you’ve got a problem. Still in denial about the aggression thing, though. You have repeatedly, in this thread, defamed someone whose only objectively verifiable sin seems to be not sharing your wretched politics. It’s a long way from shooting said peron or bashing his head in, but it is aggression because it is obviously done out of malice and it was initiated without cause. And you have persisted in this behavior despte many people here calling you on it repeatedly. That leftism, once adopted as a personal world-view, seems to induce in its adherents/sufferers a personality change analogous to that of a rabies infection is widely observed and remarked upon by non-lefties everywhere. That you are unable to perceive the essentially crazed nature of your own behavior is simply one more index of the severity of your affliction.
“Alright. So you have PTSD instead. ”
I think you misread his post. He is saying his ex has ptsd and that means that he should be allowed to mis-characterize an author’s statements and work in order to excommunicate them from society. It is a strange appeal to authority where the authority is several degrees removed from the person claiming to be the authority.
Bob-1 is trying to defend his frivolous use of the word trigger by tying it to something serious but unrelated.
The thing progressive warriors forget is that their language can be used against them because they are often hypocrites who hold others to the pc standards but never themselves.
No, I was not making an argument from authority. I said , of Vox, that “talking about slapping women he just met was a bizarre hypothetical that would be a fear trigger for many people.”
Dick took what I said and nonsensically suggested that I was projecting my own violent tendencies. In fact, I was thinking of my ex-gf, and I’m pretty sure that Vox’s suggestion to go “scientifically” *test* his theory regarding slapping women would be very upsetting to her, if she were to read it. If that strikes you as a bogus thing to say in this discussion, then I have nothing more to say.
“Vox’s suggestion to go “scientifically” *test* his theory regarding slapping women would be very upsetting to her’
You and I both know he was not telling men to go out and slap women to get dates. You tend to be rather dishonest in your arguments which is why I don’t think you are being honest about your use of the word trigger.
Should we look on people who have been raped with compassion in a discussion about rape? Sure but that does not mean that discussions about rape are banned or that only progressives are allowed to talk about the issue. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about relationships between men and women because progressives twist everything into patriarchal hegemony of cisnormative support of rape culture and slut shaming.
Possibly. I read it as a declaration of – call it sympathetic PTSD, perhaps – with respect to a significant other. I was willing to cut him at least that much slack because I’m not personally familiar with his personal history, traumatic or otherwise. If he’s actually just posturing and waving his significant other’s experience in the air like a bloody shirt to make cheap rhetorical points, that would be something else entirely, but I have no basis to assume such a thing to be true. That would be analogous to one of the innumerable instances in which white progressives scruple to instruct actual black people as to what they should regard as racist language or behavior. That’s an instance of what Ayn Rand used to call “stolen value” – the appropriation of someone else’s accomplishments – or, in this case, traumas – to advance oneself or a cause of one’s own.
Mr. Eagelson:
Did you catch my post on another thread about the yippy little dog in my neighborhood? I know the setup to my post was TLDR (too-long didn’t read), but this current thread illustrates my point.
The Lefties don’t bear hate towards you, Libertarians, Conservatives, the Koch Brothers or anyone else. They have simply been set out in the yard, attached to a tether, alone for 10 minutes for “business reasons” (as in “businesses #1 and 2”), and they need to make themselves heard (at 5:30 AM).
“Yip, yip . . . yip, yowoooo!”
That they yip and howl at all hours is obvious. That they also bear metric shitloads of ill-will strikes me as equally obvious, as is their likelihood of sinking their tiny canines into my flesh if I should be so incautious as to get any extremities within reach.
I’m just curious: does anyone here think it should be inoffensive to state that there is no such thing as marital rape?
Also: does anyone here believe that there is no such thing as marital rape?
That depends on your view of the covenant of marriage. I do believe that it’s possible to rape one’s wife (that is to force her to engage in coitus when she doesn’t want to), but I guess my offense filters aren’t as finely tuned as a leftist’s. And I’m also amused by how the Left is so eager to be trolled by Vox, to no doubt his unending amusement.
It’s hate speech to accuse Islamists or Jihadists of holding those views.
You mean, Whoopi Goldberg’s position?
So you got clobbered here and now you want to ask for information? Change the subject? Take another tack? Pretend to look like a concerned investigator thirsty for knowledge?
Dolt.
Bob, your question would come with a little more seriousness if you were the type that could unequivocally condemn the atrocities committed against women regularly in the muslim world.
But you’re not. You want to bray loudly about “marital rape” in the western world, while at the same time spouting islam-is-peace gray-water when the situation suits you.
Dolt indeed.
If Rand indicates an interest in hosting a conversation about Islam, I would be happy to talk about Islam. For what it is worth, I think this answer, which I’m guessing is pretty moderate, is quite horrible: http://www.onislam.net/english/ask-about-islam/society-and-family/status-of-women/168818-marital-rape-within-islamic-marriage.html
Using physical force or imminent threats against your spouse to any purpose is a good way to end up spending the night in jail. Thems the rules.
Pretty obviously no one can decide what someone else will or will not be offended by. I’m offended by practically everything you, dn-guy and Jim have to say, for example. What I am not is rendered unable to intelligently engage any of you on any matter that particularly rouses my ire. You don’t seem to enjoy any similar faculty. Once somebody pushes any of your numerous and seemingly serially-increasing number of lefty buttons, you go into full-on, mouth-foaming attack mode and Katie bar the door. When anyone calls you on this, you respond with something along the lines of, “But… but… Outrage! Your adrenal glands and reptile brain are fully engaged; your frontal cortex, not so much.
As for your second question, no, I don’t agree with Mr. Day on the matter of the existence of marital rape. This concept is an innovation related to marriage law that I find, on the whole, meritorious. I’m of the opinion that, where provable, marital rape should be grounds for instant dissolution of the marriage. In that sense I’m in agreement with Mr. Day that things which superficially resemble mariages, but aren’t should be put down ASAP by force of law.
None of this, however, justifies your thoroughly baseless assertion that Mr. Day “advocates rape.”
Whether or not Mr. Day is offensive is irrelevant. Offensiveness is a subjective reaction. On the Left, putative offensiveness has come to be the all-purpose excuse for avoiding debate.
I haven’t read Vox Day since he wrote editorials for WorldNetDaily (which I also haven’t read in a long time). “The Condottieri of Capitalism” should go down as one of his classics (and should offer another reason for leftists to have a beef with him). His thesis: CEOs are not capitalists, they are mercenaries hired by capitalists, “with no more loyalty to their shareholding employers than had Francesco Sforza to the Visconti of Milan.”
http://www.wnd.com/2003/05/18739/
I think founder/CEOs (ex: T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor) are an exception to this rule. And even among the true mercenaries some are more mercenary than others. But it’s a significant problem that corporations haven’t figured out how to tie CEO compensation to the true health of the company. Leftists don’t see the loyalty problem – they see only high compensation packages which they want to bring down.
” Every generation of immigrants has produced Americans whose philosophical ancestors were the Founding Fathers and I don’t see that changing. ”
Except that we now have one political party that enshrines deconstruction and postmodernism with the explicit goal of degrading the philosophy of the founding fathers and replacing it with a totalitarian progressive ideology that pits races, classes, genders, and ages against each other. We see efforts from the left to de-legitimize the philosophy that led to the creation of this country and to prevent immigrants from adopting it.
“I try to answer any question you ask me directly.”
You didn’t answer Rand’s question at all.
“OK. Fine.
They find him offensive.
I ask again, what kind of “phobe” are they, and why is that OK, but not to be a “homophobe”?”
This is nothing new. Back in 1971 (when slide rules ruled the Earth), Donald A. Wollheim pointed out that Analog stories didn’t win that many awards even despite its large circulation.