Shout it from the rooftops

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I could be in a better mood today, I could.

I’m not. To begin with my husband has shared his cold caught at comicon. This (probably) combined with working at the other house with paint fumes and such has caused my arms to erupt in an attack of eczema like none in years – for those who don’t know what that looks like, it looks like I have third degree burns all over my arms.

This morning over breakfast, I opened a medieval mystery which I bought because it was only 99c and to which the author (of a long running, traditionally published series) has thought it fit to append a ten page foreword going on and on and on about how there was “progressive” thought in the middle ages. (And she clearly thought “progressive” was an undiluted good thing, the exegesis towards which all our thought and feeling should trend.)

In itemizing the “blind spots” of our time, she mentions the McCarthy campaign as hunting “heretics” (Or, you know, as Heinlein said, enemy agents in war time.) However there is no mention of the climate in our campuses, academia or literary houses, not to mention art and social life, where the expression of less than enthusiasm for “progressive” politics gets you called names and accused of horrible crimes.

I decided when it came to blind spots the author needs to remove the beam from her own eye, before she starts talking. Also she needs to consider the wisdom of such a blind-side lecture on her ideas of history (no, really, she goes into a long ramble on homosexuality in the middle ages which might or might not be germane to the book, since I haven’t got to the book yet. Also, as someone who has read about the same topic, her view of it is a little limited. “Medieval” and “Europe” are very broad brushes and treatment of minorities – sexual or other – varied greatly depending on where you were and when.)

So, I’m not in a good mood.

At various points on this blog, I’ve mentioned whisper campaigns about conservative or even non-openly-leftist authors which once upon a time impaired their careers. More lately I mentioned the horrible things said about the Sad Puppy supporter and nominees, the accusations of “racism, sexism, homophobia” emanating from the anti-puppy side, first enshrined in the Entertainment Weekly article which got gutted when they realized they were treading thin legal waters, and then blithely repeated by everyone on that side without paying any attention to rebuttals.

I also mentioned there had been threats – by two well known authors (no, I’m not naming them, but commenters can) – one of which told Brad he’d never win a Hugo ever ever ever, and the other who went on at length on another colleague’s blog post about how everyone involved in this “will soon be looking for work.” I.e. “you join that side, you’ll never work in this town again.”

File 770 not only sent someone over to ask about examples of these threats (look, the commenters can provide them if they wish, but I’m not responding to “let’s you and him fight” strategies) but apparently the commenters went on about my “paranoia” in claiming these threats.

This was particularly funny considering how I ended that post – by reminding them they can no longer hold us back. Should they prevail on my publisher to stop publishing me, my income will probably go UP, judging by my first foray into indie, with an admittedly odd book. AND if I choose to go traditional, in this day and age it’s not precisely hard to start anew as a completely different author and create a background on line so they never know. Look at the exploits of Requires Hate and the fact they had no clue who she really was, or all her sock puppets.

I wasn’t being paranoid. I was laughing at their threats, because in fact they control nothing.

However, let’s be clear: mud sticks. Get something associated with unspeakable sins like “racism, sexism, homophobia” and the idiots will go on repeating it forever, no matter how often it’s disproved. This is how they came up with the notion that Brad Torgersen is in an interracial marriage to disguise his racism, or that Sad Puppies is about pushing women and minorities from the ballot, even though the suggested authors include both women and minorities. And I’m not sure what has been said about me. Echoes have reached back, such as a gay friend emailing me (joking. He’s not stupid, and he was mildly upset on my behalf) saying he’d just found out I wanted to fry all gay people in oil and that he needed a safe room just to email me from. Then there was the German Fraulein who has repeatedly called me a Fascist (you know, those authoritarian libertari—wait, what?) and her friends who declared Kate and I the world’s worst person (we’re one in spirit apparently) as well as calling me in various twitter storms a “white supremacist” (which if you’ve met me is really funny.) A friend told me last week that he defended me on a TOR editor’s thread. I don’t even know what they were saying about me there. I make it a point of not following all the crazy around, so I have some mental space to write from.

However, enough people have told me about attacks, that I know my name as such is tainted with the publishing establishment (not that I care much, mind) and that some of it might leak to the reading public (which is why G-d gave us pennames.)

This, however, including my blithe decision to change names if needed, gets called paranoia in a professional field that seems increasingly less professional and more devoted to hunting down and punishing wrong think.

And once this has been repeated enough, the feeble of mind will believe it because “everybody knows.”

This feebleness of mind was in stunning display recently in the Facebook page of one Irene Gallo, Creative Director at TOR. (I hope that’s an art-related thing. Or do they think authors need help being creative?)

Note that those statements are so wrong they’re not even in the same universe we inhabit. Note also that when she talks about “bad to reprehensible” stories pushed into the ballot by the Sad Puppies, she’s talking about one of her house’s own authors, a multiple bestseller, and also of John C. Wright who works for her house as well.

Note also that when one of my fans jumped in and tried to correct the misconceptions, she responded with daft cat pictures.

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Note that confronted with the total bankruptcy of their beliefs, and their massive “so wrong it’s not even just wrong” prejudices, they choose to wonder how many fedoras their questioner has. Because you know, fedoras are the hat of evil, or something.

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Note that this is an “argument” by SUPPOSED adults, with years of experience in the field.

This is the level of reasoning in the publishing houses that aren’t Baen, and the reason why it’s so easy to besmirch someone’s character and it used to be easy to make sure someone who was less than VOCALLY enthusiastic about your rightthink ideas would never work in publishing again.

Fortunately those days are past, and the Irene Gallos of the world, with their easy-bake-oven brains can no longer control who makes a living in this field.

And fortunately we now have proof that the whispers in the dark went on. In the age of the internet, what used to be whispered in the dark is now shouted from the rooftops.

And what I want you to consider is what her shout from the rooftops betrays.

Let’s say that her diatribe said instead, referring to the puppy-kickers “they’re socialists, communists, Marxist academicians who pushed bad to reprehensible works onto the ballot.”

Can you imagine that said, aloud? I can’t. Look, my field has a “young communists club” that writers advertise themselves as belonging to. Supporting the philosophy that killed 100 million around the world is a-okay in the field. And those things are not insults, but reasons to promote an author.  The sentence above wouldn’t even make any sense to most people who work in publishing houses.

Meanwhile anyone who opposes them gets called a neo Nazi (yeah, you know, the libertarian branch of the neo-Nazis), tarred with racist-sexist-homophobic, no matter how ridiculous the idea is and writers such as Jim Butcher and Kevin J. Anderson get called “bad to reprehensible.” When in fact all it means is “these writers DARE not push OUR political agenda.” All it means is “badthink, badthink, badthink.”

This is what is being shouted from the rooftops. THIS is the political climate in my field.

Paranoid? Oh, h*ll no. I was ready to walk away four years ago and never look back. No paranoia when you can be free of the whole mess at any minute.

Thanks to indie and Baen I don’t need to. And if those fail, there will be other works and other names.  They can’t stop us.

But beyond all that, it’s not paranoid to point out that in this field, in this time, in this place, anyone to the right of Lenin gets called names and treated as a pariah.

And that’s on display right there. The feeble of mind don’t understand the difference between “disagrees with me” and “is evil.” And they feel free to display their ignorance and their blinkered prejudice because everyone they know, all the “right thinkers” in their field approve of those same blinkered prejudices.

There was no medieval village so insular as the publishing establishment in NYC who thinks that the rules of their village and tribe are laws of nature.

Thank heavens the control exerted by those feeble of mind people over our careers is less and less with each passing day.

Paranoid? Bah. Angry as h*ll and not taking it sitting down anymore. Because we don’t need to.

Vive la revolution. Ça ira.

503 thoughts on “Shout it from the rooftops”

  1. Pingback: Nocturnal Lives » Interrupting my vacation and not happy about it.

  2. I had a feeling you’d already posted something on this, but I had too many thoughts for just a comment, hence: http://tlknighton.com/?p=7174

    Frankly, I’m doing everything I can to make sure Tor knows what she said, who she’s talking about (including Tor authors), and hope for a change that they do something about it.

        2. Shucks, T.L. — we’re all going to die. The trick is to do it for a good reason, to a good effect, and with style.

          Holding your breath until TOR decides to stop being disrespectful of their clientele* is none of the above.

          *Clientele, for the purpose of this remark, refers to their potential customers, authors who are considering offering their works to TOR, agents considering submitting clients to TOR, people considering working for TOR and people considering investments in TOR or its ownership’s stock offerings. The term should not be considered limited to only people as I expect many among TOR’s clientele might be goldfish or operational equivalents thereof.

              1. There is precedent for not dying, admittedly rather rare and unusual circumstances, but then Tom no doubt considers himself a rather rare and unusual specimen.

                    1. Speaking of which, I wonder if VD has finished swapping the winter curtains out for sheers and put the summer slip-covers on the furniture in the SJWs’ minds yet.

          2. How did that go?

            “I wanna leave this world the same way I came in it. Kicking and screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.”

            …well, not really. Dying in my sleep of a ripe old age after a life long and well lived, with my marbles intact would be good, after being able to coo at the greatgrandkids.

            Given my luck though…

            1. My second born is getting married. It’s *weird*. And then I’m figuring that I’ve gotten over the weirdness and I’ve even said a few things about children and how I’m in favor of them…

              Then maybe yesterday or the day before I suddenly realized… grandkids. Now I am *totally* freaked out.

              1. Bah, don’t think of them as grandkids– they’re “Kids 2: the pass-them-back-to-their-parents-for-changing.”

                1. They’re “Kids 2: Budget for air travel and grandma duty.”

                  What actually freaked me out was the realization of relationship. Son-in-law? That was freaky. Parents of son-in-law? That’s sort of freaky. You get a relationship with these strange new people and no idea what they’ll think of you or how it will go.

                  But grandchild? It’s probably a few years off in any case, and like all of life is no guarantee, but I suddenly realized… *biological part of myself alive* relationship. OMG.

                  1. Oh, my, what a nice lady. My mother’s synonym for “grandchildren” was “revenge.”

            3. I’m thinking maybe something like that couple that just welcomed their 100th (((great)great)grand)kid to the family, myself. (and may they meet many more, to the point that they greatly confuse their grandkid’s grandkids)

              A death where folks go “… you know, I’m going to miss her, but I’m not sad.”

            4. It’s “naked, screaming, and covered in someone else’s blood.” The naked is important.

              1. I just want to take an escort with me, I don’t care if I’m still clothed.

                Wait… that didn’t really come out right.

            5. i am going to live forever…………………………………… or die trying

          3. Live fast, Die young, Leave a beautiful corpse. (someone else’s, preferably)

            1. Live hard, die harder and leave as little of a corpse as possible, was the version I always liked.

        3. Good on not holding your breath. Blue only works for cartoon characters or if your paycheck is signed by James Cameron.

            1. What point? That Huns will squabble over anything, take any idea and turn it inside out, upside down and try to develop a device to implement it?

    2. After the last few years, I don’t usually consider the words ‘hope’ and ‘change’ in a positive light. I suspect Tor will consider them as their new meaning, corrupt and obfuscate.

    3. This is what – at least twice now that people high up the TOR chain have smeared their own authors and works?

    4. Make sure your letters go to Macmillian as well. Tor might ignore your letters or treat them as badges of honor. Tor’s bossess might not.

  3. Or, as somebody else said. . .

    “. . .you can’t stop the Signal”.

    So. . . let them think we’re bad guys: we’re Big Damn Heroes. . .

      2. eh. cliche. establishment. everyone’s the bad guy nowadays.

        let’s just remind them that Good Is Not Nice.

        1. “Of course he’s good! But he’s not safe.” Mr. Beaver describing Aslan in _Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_

    2. Them: “She’s a paranoid, neo-Nazi, fascist, white supremacist, racist, misogynist, homophobe!!”

      Us: “Yeah, well she’s OUR paranoid, neo-Nazi, fascist, white supremacist, racist, misogynist, homophobe who also happens to be a beautiful but evil space princess.”

      1. Sometimes I like reading dictionaries.

        paranoid = person who believes in preparing for enemy action.
        neo-Nazi = person with whom I politically disagree
        fascist = see neo-Nazi
        white supremacist = person who does not believe in discriminating against European-Americans
        misogynist = person who does not believe in discriminating against males
        homophobe = person who associates with people who disapprove of homosexuality

  4. Because you know, fedoras are the hat of evil, or something.

    Ah, the good old reliable argumentum ad petasum. Seen that one before, I have. (Suggesting the fallacist is being antisemitic in attacking my garb seems to confuse them. 😈)

    This is not to be confused with the argumentum per petasum, arguing by talking through one’s hat.

    1. It would appear that our opposition is talking through an entirely different orifice.

              1. Along with most of the rest of humanity. Then again, we’re not quite doughnuts. Nostrils complicate matters a little.

      1. Check Know Your Meme to be certain, but I think they’re trying to call us atheistic manchildren who need to get out of our parents’ basement. Or, people not cool enough to be hipsters.

            1. Since men experience scalpular exposure due to hair thinning as they age, a good hat is a necessary defense against carcinoma of the cranium while women enjoy their follicle privilege.

              Clearly anybody denouncing the wearing of hats wants men to get brain cancer and die. It is TIME to END the War On Men. Why can’t we all just get along.

                1. In the words (paraphrased) of the current occuppant of the White House, “We could all get along if you would just STFU.”

          2. There was exactly one human being who could pull off a Trilby – Frank Sinatra. Any one else looks a bit silly in one.

            We determined this with a poll, so it must be accurate.

            1. Most people can pull off a trilby.

              It’s leaving it on that creates the problems.

          2. I’d have said that was impossible, but i have witnessed this truth with mine own eyes.

            Just remember, hippy punching is never wrong.

          3. No, they are not.

            Hipsters don’t come with a standard, mass produced idiotic ideology. Hipsters are just kids who haven’t found their way yet. Yeah, they’re dumb and their music sucks, and their jeans are *too* skinny (especially on the fat ones), but eventually they’ll grow out of it and not be hipsters anymore.

            Hippies OTOH are leftist f*k holes regardless of whether htey’re wearing frayed bell bottoms, polyester leisure suits, or Brooks Brothers.

            2. Well, depends on definition. I’ve been called a hippie for listening (and playing) old Yes, Genesis, ELP (though prog-rock is only one of my many musical loves, if a particularly persistent one) and am notorious for not wearing ties — but otherwise have a lifestyle that some might call ‘neo-Victorian’.
              Let’s just say: not everybody who enjoys some parts of hippie culture is a hippie. Ann Coulter (!) is a huge Deadhead, just to give you an idea 🙂

            3. Nah, Hippies can grow up but don’t want people to remember that they *were* Hippies. [Evil Grin]

              1. Jeff Barnes: We’re staging a revolution here.
                John Casey: I want in!
                Lester Patel: How do we know we can trust you, son? That you’re not some kind of spy for the Man.
                John Casey: Because the only thing I hate more than hippie neo-liberal fascist anarchists, are the hypocrite fat-cat suits they eventually become!

                1. Darn, I miss that show. I mean, Adam Baldwin is awesome in anything they toss him into, and Yvonne Strahovski, yum.

                  1. I am haunted by the question of how good could it have been, had the network fully given its support. The constant renewal by the half season severely limited their ability to develop story-lines.

                    1. Good point. The story arcs sometime seemed to be rather abrupt in their starting and ending. I hadn’t mentally drawn the connection with the renewal/order size for the show until now.

            4. Careful Billie boy, This is one old hippie who was never a leftist – anarchist maybe at times, and an NRA member from way back. Also pilot, flight instructor, diving safety officer, marine biologist and fishery gear designer, big wave surfer, intercontinental sailor, boat designer, parent, grandparent etc.
              So watch your asshole generalizations please. A lot of us hippies figured out the government’s number a long time ago. And I’ll wear bell bottoms if I chose, along with a fedora.

            1. See post above. The classic hippie invented the hot tub and was no smellier than the average commenter on this blog. Maybe there’s an new variety that smells, but mostly I think they’re just democrats.

      2. I need to watch some old Remington Steele episodes if they’re on Netflix. Stephanie Zimbalist was seriously cute in her fedora.

      3. Fedoras are usually, nowadays, attributed to poorly socialized neckbeards (exactly what it sounds like, resulting in a scruffy and sleazy look that they mistake for “cool”) who wear them in an attempt to look good, but in practice makes them look like complete dorks because they don’t wear it with an outfit that actually would be complemented by the hat. They appeal, consciously or not, to the “cool” of 1930’s film gangsters, film noir detectives, or Indiana Jones, missing the fact that the characters were cool because of who they were, not what was atop their head.

        The irony of its use in this specific context, however, is that it’s more often associated with feminist males who are pretty pro-SJW, and would otherwise be on the side of the “rightthink” crowd at Tor.

        (Also, most of what’s called fedoras are actually trilbies. Totally different beast, different brim widths and crowns.)

          1. True. “Totally different” was perhaps hyperbole. The fedora/trilby thing is yet another (albeit minor) entry on my incredibly long list of Inigo Monotya moments (“You keep using that word…”), which occasionally leads me into excess.

        2. Yes. But, I wouldn’t consider what the hipsters and “meninists” types stereotypically wear as “fedoras”. The nearly nonexistent brim negates the whole point of wearing a hat for protection from rain, sun, and snow.

          I wear a hat with a fairly wide brim because I don’t like raindrops on my bare scalp, sun in my eyes, or rain down my collar. It’s a fedora because I’m not Amish, I don’t sing in a barbershop quartet, I’m not a cowboy, I look silly in a sombrero, and pith helmets are absurdly impractical, except in the desert. That somewhat limit he available options…

          1. That *thing* the hipsters and “Men’s Rights Activists” wear that they glommed on from old Sinatra pictures is *not* a proper fedora..

          2. I don’t actually consider them fedoras, either, but I’m not the arbiter of all things sartorial*, and “fedora” is what others call them.

            * Which is probably just as well, because I don’t worry too much about fashion on myself so long as I don’t look like a hobo. 😛

          3. Yes. But, I wouldn’t consider what the hipsters and “meninists” types stereotypically wear as “fedoras”. The nearly nonexistent brim negates the whole point of wearing a hat for protection from rain, sun, and snow.

            The style of hat is from the right era, but it’s the girl version.

            I believe in the late 50s or so it did get used more by men– going off of the patterns I’ve seen, and the style of hats for big hair meaning that they were way too big– and I wouldn’t want to insult the gentlemen I see at the commissary who as best I can tell were active duty in the 60s on their herringbone “fedora” (trilbie style things, I think there may be some crossover with Scottish suit-hats)– but… they aren’t a fedora. Even if they’re called a fedora, and I know what they’re talking about…..

            1. Ah-ha! Found the ones that look a lot like the “fedora”– it’s a twill walking hat. (Which appears to cover as much ground as “cowboy hat” in the US, in spite of the more limited material indicated by the name.)

            2. Actually, “Bear” Bryant used to wear some sort of herringbone hat (fedora, trilby? not sure); maybe they’re UA alumni. 😉

            3. No other chapeau has inspired such fine songs as the fedora.

              Astaire sang of putting on his top hat but he danced in his tails.

              1. Bob Fosse, creator of pole dancing, also tipped his fedora:

                Note Sally Bowles’ twirl at about 2’30”

        3. After forty years of wearing and keeping track of a crash helmet, I have no desire to do the same for a hat. Though I keep a cheap ball cap in every vehicle in case I get caught out in the rain; rain on my glasses is bothersome.

          If I ever become follicularly challenged, I might try a pith helmet as a fashion statement, though…

          1. My father wore a billed hat for probably more than 60 years. He never went without one when he left the house, unless it was to something that required a suit. Your mention of “keeping track” made me think, “How did he keep track of his hats all the time?” Then I remembered: When he died, there were something like 40 hats stacked in a plastic bag on top of the wardrobe in the utility room.

            He just always had a spare.

            1. I almost always have a hat on, there is no problem with keeping track of them. The only time I take it off when I am out of my house is either when I go to church, in which case I through it in the drivers seat as I get out, or when I sit down to a table to eat, in which case I hang it on the chair or my knee, and put it back on when I am done eating. I have never lost a hat.

              1. I’ve lost two hats. One to an industrial leaf shredder, and one to the wind, which blew it into a field just as the neighbor spread liquid manure. I did not go say good-by.

      4. *shrug* I wear Akubras and Tillies. Unless I’m wearing the one with the ANZAC badge, no one really says much beyond 1) “Aren’t you hot under that thing?” (fur-felt in mid-summer) or 2) “Neat hat.”

      5. Re: fedoras. I think it means you like the 1950s and haven’t progressed beyond that decade. Leftists hate the 1950s.

        2. Nope, the Lefties hate a Fictional 1950’s. IE What they imagine the 1950’s were like. [Evil Grin]

        3. Hmmmm. Maybe we should all show up and protest at Tor’s offices – dressed in 1940s and 50s clothes. The Ghosts of the Golden Age, if you will.

  5. For some time now I have been resisting the urge* to gather up the various Mercedes Lackey (to pick a name at complete random) books sitting in my “to be read” pile and send her a note:

    Dear Ms Lackey,

    I have come to the conclusion that I am not the type person for whom you are writing and that you would probably be uncomfortable knowing a person with my libertarian views was reading your novels. Therefore, in appreciation of your enlightened morality and ethics, I understand how you must be offended at taking my money, especially for books I am no longer much interested in reading.

    If you will provide an address for shipping I will be happy to return all editions of your books which I have bought but not yet read, in exchange for your refund of my purchase price, discounted an amount you consider appropriate considering your publisher’s fees. I suggest the cost of shipping be evenly split between us.

    I am sure that you will readily find other readers more to your liking and recommend you use these returned books as promotional give-aways.

    I appreciate your concern that only the right people read your works and apologise for my intrusion by erroneously buying your books.

    Yours respectfully,
    RES

    *fighting the urge is not difficult as I am certain she won’t send me a cent.

    1. Just ask for a return address. Tell her you don’t want your money back – they’re not worth the time and effort….

      1. Could someone please link to her comments on Flint’s blog, for Jordan? I have to go and don’t have time to look them up to link.

        1. That’s the reason and no, I’ve not saved a link. I have saved no links to 9/11 Truther sites, young earth, flat earth, or contra-earth sites. For a variety of reasons I do not find Flint’s blogs generally worth my time, and only go there when advised of an especially messy train wreck.

    3. I know there’s a lot of respect among this group for her writing skills, but I have to admit that back in the late 80’s or early 90’s, we started calling her “Mercedes Lacking” shortly before we quit reading her works because PC nonsense. *shrug*

        1. Here is Lackey’s farewell to Baen’s Bar back in 200? Subject: Goodbye to the Bar

          Dear friends;

          First, you are still my First Readers, but I will no longer be
          participating in any forums on Baen’s Bar. This is why:

          I see no reason in helping to promote a company that is doing nothing to
          help me. I still haven’t been paid for a book I turned in two and half
          months ago (MUSIC TO MY SORROW), it took three months to get paid for the
          last two books I turned in, several of my books have been allowed to
          go out
          of print, and the only reason for this that I can see is that I don’t suck
          up to John Ringo and his little band of dysfunctional brothers and their
          neocon agenda.

          After all, how would YOU like it if your boss said, “Well, everyone who
          voted for Bush gets their paycheck on payday, but you three who voted for
          Kerry will get your paychecks when I feel like it. Oh, and I’m hiring
          about thirty new people who are also Bush supporters and paying them right
          now.”

          Jim did not actually SAY he wasn’t going to pay us until he felt like it.

          However, that said, he HAS been paying Ringo and all the unpublished
          jerkoffs with right-wing agendas that he has been buying books from as if
          they were diamonds—-and meanwhile, we have been waiting two, three, and
          even four months, with agents nagging virtually every day, to be paid for
          books FINISHED AND TURNED IN, books which WILL turn a profit and not turn
          into a loss. I think the implications are pretty clear. MAD MAUDLIN is
          now out of print (despite being on the best-seller lists and getting the
          attention of at least one movie company), and there are apparently no
          plans
          for another printing, even though the pb is not scheduled until March
          (making it a 2 year wait for the pb version). Roughly half of my Baen
          books are listed as out of print, in fact, with no reprints scheduled.

          You do the math.

          And now I find that people with moderate leanings (never mind
          liberals) are
          being driven out by the neocons. Fine. I have no interest in burning the
          place and salting the ground. It’s Jim’s toy, he can let them break it if
          he wants to.

          My personal feeling is that this pattern of behavior is going to put Baen
          into bankruptcy; it almost did so once, and since he’s basically
          burned his
          bridges with his big names except for Weber and Drake, I don’t think
          he has
          enough solid sellers to bail him out a second time. Neocons make a lot of
          sound and fury, but they don’t buy sf or fantasy books (if they did, 1942
          would have been a best-seller). People who know absolutely nothing about
          the current Bar-politics or the situation with being paid are coming to
          Larry (because he’s done Baen books and covers in the past) and asking “Is
          Jim Baen OUT OF HIS MIND??? because of the increasingly poor quality
          of the
          books he is publishing (and we won’t even get into the BimboBarbie
          covers).

          Rosemary and I have consulted with our mutual agent on this, and we
          will be
          finishing out the current contracts and not writing any more, and I am
          powerfully tempted to turn in STONED SOULS just as it is, as bad as it is,
          knowing it won’t see publication before the company goes under.

          You may feel free to disseminate my dissatisfaction as publicly as you
          like, and the causes. What’s he going to do, take the dashes out of my
          Social Security Number?

          Meanwhile, you may all come play with us in a fun, lighthearted, and very
          supportive environment, http://www.luna-books.com in the Community
          section. Harlequin is a company that understands that politics should not
          be used to run your company.

          Misty
          — End forwarded message —

            1. From what I’ve heard, Baen had a cash flow problem at that time and plenty of the authors weren’t getting paid on time. Apparently, she was thinking that Jim Baen was deliberately not paying her. From what Eric Flint said, neither her or Jim Baen handled the situation correctly but she went public. Jim Baen never went public about his side after she left the Bar (or before she did).

              1. I heard that some even explained to her what they knew at the time, encouraged her to calm down, and she still went and “Nuked her bridges from orbit”.

              2. Two months!?

                I sold a book to Que and another to Wiley in the dot.com era and it took four months to get the first advance check and most of a year before the first royalty check.

                1. From what Eric Flint said she was not thinking clearly.

              3. Baen had a cash flow problem circa 2000 – 2002?

                Geeze, what might have been happening in the economy that could have caused such a thing? Was there a major stock market bubble or a shut-down of NY City that dried up credit in that period?

                1. I think it may also have been part of the aftermath of the fiasco that was the Gingrich and Forschten novel 1945, where Baen’s distributor essentially forced publication of 10 times as many copies as Jim Baen thought would sell.

          2. Yes, going to Harlequin seems like an excellent plan, after all they treat their authors sooo well.

            By the way, wasn’t it much more recently than 2000 that she not only cowrote books with Eric Flint and Dave Freer (both of whom she recently insulted over the Hugo/Sad Puppy debate) that were… published by Baen? As well she wrote several stories in Flint’s Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette anthologies, and I don’t believe Flint came out with the first novel, that the shared universe anthologies were later based on, until… 2000.

            She seems to believe herself some kind of special, so that she can insult co-writers and editors at will, while at the same time claiming that any ‘puppies’ that make waves and cause trouble will never be published again, because editors and publishers don’t appreciate trouble.

            She also made the ridiculous statement that trouble doesn’t sell, so any puppies will be dropped, which is not only refuted by the current kerfluffle, but throughout history, as any half competent newsman knows, ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’ because trouble and controversy are best-sellers.

            1. Baen continued and continues to publish her stuff. Jim was known to offer contract to people he personally disliked when they needed money because he knew they’d sell, and they were in need of the money themselves. Sure sign of evilness … helping those you dislike because you can.
              and yeah, have a “Conservative” talk like that at Tor or the other places and see how many of their works get published afterward.

            2. So does the same with some of her fans. Go back to the early aughts and see her rants about the psychos who believe the “Guardians” from her Diana Tregarde and why she wouldn’t write more. Also, there is her complaints about security and her safety at DragonCon. She’s had a bad case of special snowflake syndrome for a long time I suspect.

              I liked the Diana Tregarde books. She said they didn’t sell but I think the issue was she was a decade ahead of her time with them. She could probably restart now and sell a mint but I doubt I’d buy them. It’s a case of sometimes an author should shut up more as to not alienate fans. Interestingly Asimov did something similar with respect to my interest in his books with he later in life memoirs which basically told a bunch of “let me tell a story about me and Heinlein/Sturgeon/my own son to prove what losers they are and how marvelous and wonderful I am”.

              Usually the author doesn’t ruin the book for me despite how they are but sometimes a person just can’t shut up for their own good and the bad taste spills onto the books.

              1. Herbn, that wasn’t just DragonCon; she acquired a fan with stalker characteristics and pretty much dropped out of the convention scene altogether. I have some personal knowledge and it wasn’t just hype.

      2. She also did quite a bit of filk with Leslie Fish and Heather Alexander… but I agree, message overwhelmed her writing.

    4. I never got into her. I didn’t like her work. Indeed, I couldn’t stand her collaborations with authors I did like.

      1. Her work, the very first stuff, came at a time when I needed a role-model like Talia and Tarma and Kethry. By the late 1990s, I read her books but they didn’t make the same impression as the first ones did. All else aside, I really admire her and Larry’s world-building and how their magic system functions. *shrug* Different people, different times, different tastes.

          2. I don’t think she was involved with Thieves World; you may be confusing it with a very similar series MZB put out called Merovingen Nights that she and Leslie Fish were involved in.

        2. I enjoyed the first trilogy of hers (forget which it was, but I wiki-ed her to be reasonably confident of starting at her beginning), although the warnings of later problems were (in retrospect) apparent — alienated adolescent seeks haven, finds my little pony, those who mistreated her are forced to acknowledge her worth, wash, rinse, repeat. But the characters were vivid enough and the world-building of sufficient interest to make it reasonably enjoyable. Had I discovered this as a 14-year-old girl it would probably have been catnip, or at the very least a perfect anti-acne treatment.

          So I bought the net trilogy, and it too was enjoyable, so I logged on to Amazon and ordered the rest of her available output.

          A mistake I have learned from. The rest will probably prove readable but I kind of bogged down on the most recent I tried (her version of Red Sonja and Belit, I guess it might be deemed), with the third book (short-story collection) sitting forlornly on the bedside reading table, forever being passed over for some less repellent author.

          Because there comes a time when you can no longer separate the art from the artist, y’know? Much as I adore Bull Durham I can no longer separate Sarandon and Robbins from the characters they played. The suspenders for my disbelief have lost all elasticity.

          Where Lackey originally worked lightly, with a tack hammer, in her later works she hammers with a 9-lb sledge and (I expect) moves up to a 20-pounder in the ones I’ve yet to read. Gawds, I look at that box of her novels in my 2BRed stack and just …

          There is a aspect to it like not unlike p*rn: even when it is well-crafted you despise yourself for enjoying it.

      2. Her name I remembered well after twenty pages of the first book I came across. I certainly never bought another.
        No idea what it was.

  6. Just remember this the next time the Usual Suspects wag their fingers and warn Baen that they have to muzzle their writers for the views they express in public.

  7. Damn.

    I also note it’s not the first time that people at Tor have smeared their own authors and works related to this whole kerfuffle.

    On a related note – apparently large parts of that thread are gone now? (Haven’t bothered to hunt it down) but one of the screenshots had Butcher telling people to knock off the personal insults.

    I mostly agree. Mostly from pragmatism.

    Let’s face it, men and women, wether “socially conditioned” or hardwired, tend to find different things angering, insulting, etc. You can call it sexist/whatever, but its true. So when levying insults, to be effective, they WILL tend to be personal, and directed towards what the insulter thinks is insulting and that their target will find insulting. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes not.

    Let’s also face that from a game theory perspective, an attack deserves, hell, requires, a counterattack.

    The problem is that this unprofessional Gallo person will likely find insults directed towards her personal habits and predilections as a mark of honor and badge of victimhood.

    In short, they’re not effective, and thus completely irrelevant to justice or righteous outrage.

    Boycotting, at least everything that isn’t Wright, Wolfe, and Flynn (and maybe a couple others) will likely be a far more effective approach, especially combined with contacting TOR and asking them “WTF?”

    2. Telling the big lie, making accusations bordering on or venturing well into slander then when challenged delete the post and deny ever having said any such thing is a classic progressive tactic. Our folks have learned that screen caps are our friend.
      Of course the current dufus in charge is noted for something very similar. Make a statement, totally contradict himself days or weeks later, when presented with video evidence of the initial statement his minions carefully explain that you simply don’t understand the true meaning of his words.
      The lib/prog crowd just delete and deny.

    4. From what I’ve gathered, Tor is like the Holy Roman Empire of SF&F publishing: a loosely aligned collection of fiefdoms, each of them ruled by a different editor who doesn’t really answer to anyone and thus treats everyone in their own domain according to their whims and fancies.

    5. > gone now

      …unless they’ve been snapshot by archive.org or still exist in a search engine cache.

      A little editing here, a little there, and a year from now the puppy kickers will be veritable models of calm and reason, and the puppies will be crazies who torture small animals.

      Anything that can be changed cannot be trusted.

      I learned that one very thoroughly a couple of decades ago, when an office enemy had root access to the corporate mail server.

    6. I don’t surf the Net much, and this is just about the only site I read that sometimes covers fan affairs, and I have to say I am a bit astonished. TOR books blackguarding their own writers? So far as I know they overlooked me — I think — so it can’t just be politics. I haven’t been thought a liberal since my undergraduate days, and that’s hardly a secret (although not many seem to notice the difference between us old conservatives and the neo conservatives, but that is another story).

      But surely Tom Doherty is not part of this? I sat next to him at dinner about a ,month ago and we remain friends as we have been for decades. Tom was VP of Sales at Simon & Schuster when Mote was first published and was very mush a valued part of the team that made it a best seller, and it was his idea to have me do the massively illustrated novella that was the first book in the Janissaries series when he was later at Ace. Great heavens. I don’t know much about this issue, but I certainly don’t understand any notion of blackguarding him!

      I dunno know about puppies; there have been slate movements and campaigns over Hugos for as long as I’ve been in this business, and in the 70’s I concluded it was better to spend time promoting book sales than campaigning for awards; but I can hardly disparage those who made a different choice. \

      And some people like my collaborator Larry Niven are good enough to ignore it all and still win awards (although our books sell better than his or mine, and I’ll take some promotion credit for that).

      But surely we have not got to the point of publishers blackguarding their own authors?

      1. I think Tom Doherty is caught in the middle in a fight he can only lose.

        You’ve seen the puppy side of the tiff, here’s what Doherty’s hearing from the other side: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/tor-tom-doherty-irene-gallo-sad-puppies/? (HT: Instapundit)

        I doubt Doherty is interested in either side of this kerfuffle but just wants to sell enjoyable reading. Some of his employees have apparently forgotten that their jobs do not entitle them to free license to spew.

        This just in: the Internet is full of people too bloody eager to join sides and egg others on to burning down their barns because of a few rats.

      2. To the best of my knowledge, nobody thinks Mr. Doherty is involved in the “blackballing”.

        At the “worst” people were wondering how much Mr. Doherty was in charge of Tor Books.

        Personally, I believe that he’s now aware of the problem and will be taking “behind the scenes” actions to deal with the problem.

        1. There at least one idiot employee who is flinging calumnies and slanders at some authors, not caring if they are published by her employer or not.

      3. Thanks for the reply Jerry – your books, along with Drakes, and specifically recognizing the Nika revolt in the very first Falkenberg story I read back in the 80’s did a lot to undo a hatred of “boring” history I got from the school system, even by (then ) middle school.

        I don’t think “TOR” is doing this, in that Tom is doing it, and it’s a guided conspiracy. That said, we’ve had several editors at TOR actively badmouth all of the books on the sad/rabid puppy slate – which includes author John C Wright and a Tor-published book – and campaign to have them no-awarded. Then this from Gallo…. calling fans and authors unrepentant neo-nazis and racists, and their works repugnant, all while promoting an upcoming book. Never mind we aren’t all white (though with Lithuanian parents on both sides I certainly am – and just as certainly have reasons to hate socialism of both nationalist and internationalist stripes….), or that some have actively fought white supremacists/etc., or that some are in interracial marriages, or…

        You get the picture.

        Her stunning lack of professionalism and regard for facts certainly make it fair to wonder how an author of the “wrong” politics at Tor can entrust her to give their current and future work her best efforts and not otherwise sabotage them, given the obvious contempt for them and the truth she holds. Given how Eich, a CEO, was hounded out for – in years past – privately giving to a political campaign and despite no evidence that he ever personally discriminated in his hiring or employment practices, it’s certainly fair to ask why she is still working there if she cannot fairly represent th works of her employer?

        So no – I don’t think Tom is guiding it, or that it’s a conspiracy, but a “pro-spiracy” of like-minded people all having the same attitudes…. and truth be damned.

      4. I’ve been told Tom is not very well physically and is not as in control as he used to be. I sell it for the price I bought it — this is friend of a friend word. “Rings” right, because I always liked Tom and don’t see him running this crazy a rig.

      5. As you say I’ve seen no mention of Dr. Pournelle by name in the Hugo kerfuffle. I am reminded of this old mention of Jerry’s books on Tor.Com proper. Never let it be said the writings are so tepid as to avoid controversy. FREX

        But let’s return to the case of the ladies. Whatever else we may say, we’ve at least moved on from the 1970s military SF of Jerry Pournelle and David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, where the only role for a woman was in the rear echelons as support staff, or an unrecognised irregular.

        Liz Bourke Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:30pm Military Science Fiction on Tor.com – emphasis added and by no means a personal website for the writer of those words.

        Followed after much much useless prodding -I mentioned somebody has to tell her husband was neither rear echelons nor unrecognized irregualar- by others who folks here might recognize

        @David Drake:

        I respect you immensely, and enjoy your books a hell of lot. However, I feel the subgenre presently under discussion has not moved forward much from where it was in the 1970s.

        I do regret, though, that my use of hyperbole for effect regarding your work from the ’70s and ’80s caused you personal offence. I was hoping to start a conversation about where the genre is now, while acknowledging there should perhaps be room for more than there was then. It is entirely possible I’ve overgeneralised, since it’s been several years since I reread your Hammer’s Slammers books. If that’s the case – and I trust you when you say it is – I apologise.

        What I don’t do is retract my point about the genre as a whole.

        I mention this not to reopen old threads as to the accuracy of the facts asserted but as another example of careless use of language by professional wordsmiths at Tor and on Tor.com about Tor authors.

        Rare arguably but not unheard of.

        1. That’s a simple case of misreading. Women are quite powerful in the Falkenberg novels. They don’t generally carry 120 pounds of armor, equipment, and ammunition though.

          1. That (misreading) is what they do.

            I recall vividly the howling and frothing at the mouth in response to Mr. Niven’s comments about Hispanics and health care some years ago. I wonder if N. K. Jemisin is about to pack up her bile and leave the SFWA because they honored this “horrible bigot” with the Grandmaster?

            (Like T.L., I’m not gonna hold my breath…)

      6. Thank you, Mr. Pournelle. It’s always gratifying to see a Titan of the field weighing in here.

  8. Sarah, Joel, T. L., et al,
    I fear you have mistaken Ms Gallo’s response. She is not illogical, rude, libelous or refusing to argue; she’s creative. I expect when somebody in a TOR editorial meeting makes a suggestion that TOR might want to consider selling some of the types of books that have proven successful for Baen, such as Eric Flint’s Ring cycle, she responds by making duck noises or humming Wagner.

    It is wrong to expect creative people to respond logically or even coherently. That suppresses their creative natures and is oppressive.

    BTW – does anyone know if Ms Gallo’s FB postings are in her capacity as a representative of her employer? Does her profile prominently associate her with them, for example? Does her employer thus endorse her remarks, her insulting responses to potential customers and disparagement of her employer’s products by declaring those authors neo-nazis racists, sexists, etc.?

      1. In looking about for TOR contact information, I notice hers is the first name listed on their Tor.com Staff page, where she is identified as “Associate Publisher of Tor.com, Art Director for Tor Books, catsitter, and dogwalker.”

        Apparently she either is not paid sufficiently for her publishing work to get by without incidental income from animal services or she is simply greedy.

        1. Cue PNH to explain how tor.com is in no way, shape, or form affiliated with Tor Books, and that only an “idiot” would make that assumption (despite them having a) the same name, b) a lot of staff overlap and c) the same corporate parent).

          1. It still seems a funny way to promote your product, telling a significant portion of your (not terribly large) market that they are poopy-heads (I presume that’s what the cat photo was intended to convey) and you despise them.

            Sure, being highly exclusive works for Cartiff, whose keywords are “simplicity and dignity” but he seeks a markedly different clientele.

      2. “Promoting”??? Is that how its done?

        Small wonder so many authors here are uncomfortable with promoting their own work.

        1. Nor is it any wonder that so many are unhappy with the promotion their works get from their traditional publishers.

        3. In all fairness, what are the odds that any of us would by Kameron Hurley’s crap anyways? Her lack of scholarship on “We Have Always Fought” is enough reason to ignore her going forward.

          2. Could you point me to a scholastic criticism of “We Have Always Fought”? I don’t have a high opinion of Hurley’s fiction (though it must be admitted that is not based on a huge personal sampling size) but I’m too out of practice in my history to argue on scholastic grounds.

            1. I’ll see if I can dig any up, but it might be a little while. I didn’t bookmark any of it myself.

              Someone else might have the links handy, however. 🙂

        4. Confucius say he who does not toot own horn, same will not be tooted. I learned that early; I suppose it’s something I should not say, although I can’t think who would be offended. The point is, with few exceptions, those who make a living at this racket spend a fair amount of time promoting their own works.

          You can win a lot of awards with good writing not promoted much — Larry Niven is a great example. He never campaigns for either awards or sales. Yet he gets awards, and pretty good sales; but our collaborations, which I promoted hell out of (sleeping in Grand Central Station benches so I could go on the Long John Knebel sow at midnight; that sort of thing) sell better than his best solo works.

      3. She was promoting a book she worked on.

        Which is exactly what makes her post legally problematic for Tor/Macmillan. While she was posting on her personal account, she was clearly acting in her professional capacity as an agent for Tor/Macmillan at the time.

        Had she made those statements in a post unrelated to her professional capacity, Tor/Macmillan could (rightfully) argue that in her capacity as a private person, her thoughts and utterances are her own affair. Unless there’s a disrepute clause in her contract they care to enforce (which would be entirely at their discretion) that would be an eminently fair cop-out for them.

        Listing her employer in her profile does not magically turn her statements in her personal account into anything the company is responsible for. It’s that she was clearly and publicly acting in her professional capacity as an agent of Tor/Macmillan when she made those utterances that brings her employer directly into it.

        On such distinctions do lawyers get wealthy.

        1. “Listing her employer in her profile does not magically turn her statements in her personal account into anything the company is responsible for.”

          Tell that to Brendon Eich.

          1. There’s a difference between “the company being legally blamed” and “the company taking action because of vocal out-cries”.

            Mozilla wasn’t in legal problem because of Brendon Eich’s actions. Mozilla just caved to “a bunch of loud-mouthed assholes”.

  9. If you people count as the extreme far right, I have to wonder where they would place ISIS.

      1. I seem to remember being called worse than ISIS/ISIL before, although that my have been RP (Although the CHORFS tend to not make a distinction.)

        1. Of course they don’t they can’t seem to imagine anyone not thinking in lockstep.

        2. And yet, we’ve not set anyone on fire, beheaded them or committed any act of violence against anyone. Nor have we threatened it either.

          But yeah, totally worse than ISIS.

          And they wonder why we mock them.

          1. Maybe we should start… a burning here, a beheading there… At least then the CHORFs would understand us! Cuz, ya know, people only misbehave because they’re misunderstood.

              1. Nope. “White male” is sufficient to negate any traits that would otherwise appeal to that crowd. You could be some disease-ridden hobo dying in some back alley and still be “privileged” (read: responsible for all evils in the world) because you’re a white male.

                1. Yeah, well, this whole privilege thing sucks.

                  I mean, I’m struggling to put food on the table, but at least I’m privileged. Compared to the non-white police chief, city manager, etc in my community, at least. /eye roll

              3. “Let them hate us, so long as they fear.”

                Seems to be the only thing they pay attention to.

          2. I think they think believe it is out of envy of their superior charm, elegance, sense of style and superior intellectual and argumentative abilities.

            [insert video from Monty Python & the holy Grail, of the Black Knight insisting that being shut out of the Hugo Awards is merely a flesh wound]
            It could not possibly because they are futilely guarding a gate through which only the lame seek to pass.

        3. The anti-Puppies only scream about how the Sad Puppies are worse than ISIS because they know that the Sad Puppies aren’t worse than ISIS. The Sad Puppies aren’t going to act like ISIS and go rounding them up and throwing them off buildings, so the anti-Puppies feel perfectly safe accusing them of being far worse than ISIS. Typical progressive hyperbole/slander/libel/BS.

    3. Looking at a summary of what they’re all about, they’re looking more like Stalin’s cousins or the Kim psychos than anything on the right– especially the part where the Caliph state is supposed to provide for all Muslims, and the whole “if you disagree we slaughter you as a traitor” thing.

    4. Innocent victims of Western colonialism. (Puppets, really, hardly human — it’s amazing how willing they are to dehumanize them rather than admit their responsibility.

    5. One minor quibble — we need to be calling them DAESH, rather than IS##. DAESH is the Arabic acronym, and puns as a similar word that translates roughly as “Tyrannical bigots”. DAESH, themselves, hate the acronym that they threaten to cut out the tongues of anyone they can catch using it.

  10. Mad Genius has a post about this and an urge to boycott TOR. Frankly, I doubt enough people care (either way) about SP/RP for TOR/Macmillan to even notice they were being boycotted. But TOR should be made aware that one of their employees was bad mouthing their own authors & customers; that is something most companies should not tolerate.

    Oddly enough, this entire affair is making me optimistic about my own meager writing efforts. Theres something about getting really and truly pissed off that just makes the creative juices flow…

    1. Once upon a time whisper campaigns were effective because the whisperers had a lock on the system. These days not so much. The gate still stands, but the walls have fallen down and that galls the gatekeepers no end.
      What they have not yet realized is that now that they are shouting invective from the rooftops, so to speak, there is a real danger that a significant portion of the readers might just take some small notice of the whole sordid situation. Should that come to pass we might expect a few benefits. First off, people in general tend to dislike bullies, and the tactics being used by the literary elite are bullying of the worst sort. Second, readers just might start getting answers to the question of why exactly they haven’t been able to find as many books lately that were worth reading.
      Truthfully, what we are watching is a moribund industry in its final death throes. It’s not pretty, it will get worse, and there will most likely be collateral damage. But still and all it’s inevitable, and a bunch of folks working for dinosaurs like Tor are starting to see their long term options as flipping burgers or standing in a bread line.

      1. And thirdly, people are by nature curious. Shout loudly enough about how the Puppies are ruining science fiction/fantasy, absolutely, positively, RUINING IT! And people will get curious and go pick up a few Puppy stories to see what all the fuss is about.

        1. Hehe, it’s like The Book of Mormon musical. I hear the LDS church has gotten several new converts from that.

      2. They also walk dogs.

        Briefly contemplates how working for TOR might involve duties similar to dog walking.

    2. I a) doubt that TOR would notice a boycott
      b) don’t think it appropriate to boycott authors I respect simply because their publisher is an ass
      c) plan to factor in TOR’s employees’ public positions when making choices about whether or not to try a new author on their imprint

      When a publisher’s representatives publicly make clear their lack of respect for their readership (unless that readership proves its merit by slavishly agreeing with any moronic hate-filled rant of those employees) a book buyer is entirely justified in paying that publisher neither respect nor money.

        1. Not only does he write for TOR, but he praised Irene Gallo in his “don’t boycott TOR” post two months ago. Doesn’t that make her a neo-Nazi-by-association?

            1. It’s funny, y’know — when I was adolescent the phrase was “commie, hippie, pinko, fag” and now it is “racist, misogynistic, and homophobic”.

              I suppose we should give credit for bigger words but the thinking remains remarkably similar. It seems to me that some people have stared too long into the abyss.

    3. Unless, of course, in addition to boycotting Tor, you contact Barnes & Noble and Book-a-Million to ask them to stop carrying Tor as well.

  11. Hey Sarah, since you’re already in a foul mood this shouldn’t make things much worse: According to the NRA, that would include blogs and web forums discussing technical details of common guns and ammunition, the type of info gun owners and ammo reloaders trade all the time.

    US government proposes to shut down all talk of guns on the interwebz.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nra-gun-blogs-videos-web-forums-threatened-by-new-obama-regulation/article/2565762

    “Gunsmiths, manufacturers, reloaders, and do-it-yourselfers could all find themselves muzzled under the rule and unable to distribute or obtain the information they rely on to conduct these activities,” said the NRA in a blog posting.”

    Writing SciFi with guns in it could get legally interesting.

    My take here: http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/06/us-government-proposes-to-shut-down-gun.html

    Shorter me: this is one riot y’all might want to show up for.

    1. That is such a prior restraint infringement of the First Amendment it is unlikely to withstand even the most cursory judicial review. Their hope, with such draconian fines (no doubt accruing interest daily) is clearly to intimidate opposition by making the costs of defending our rights too onerous.

      heck, even if (when) they lose it won’t have cost them anything since the taxpayers will be footing the legal costs.

      1. Following the link to the original source (https://www.nraila.org/articles/20150605/stop-obamas-planned-gag-order-on-firearm-related-speech) it seems they’re considering using ITAR. The agency that regulates ITAR stuff (DDTC) takes the position that posting online isn’t “speech” or “press”. They have a reputation of making it very expensive to fight the legal battle, and dropping cases that are being disputed before any legal precedent can be created.

        The NRA is perhaps the first organization large enough and dedicated enough to fight and win—so the DDTC probably won’t take them on at all.

        1. As I said, look at the PGP precedent. EFF managed to win that one; it pretty much put them on the map.

      2. They already tried something like this by ruling PGP encryption a munition and got spanked, IIRC.

        1. I dunno how spanked they got — isn’t encryption beyond a certain level still classed as a munition? (128bit? I forget)

          1. Seeing as how 1024 and 2048 are pretty much industry standard….

            Of course, they may not care once NSA got backdoors into everything….

            1. In terms of key lengths, you’re talking about different things than Reziak is. For a symmetric-key cipher (like the old DES, 3DES, and the newer AES) you can have a lot fewer bits in your keys and still achieve as high a level of security as a public-key cipher.

              The AES has a key length that runs between 128 and 256 bits and is considered secure from all attacks, even from well-funded groups like governments, at least with a key length of 192 or 256 bits.

              The “NSA back door” thing is probably a reference to the changes the NSA suggested to the DES before it was made standard. After 20 years or, the public cryptography techniques had advanced to the point where it became obvious that the recommended changes had done nothing more than make DES more resistant to a technique known as “differential cryptanalysis.”

              Look, 50 years ago only governments had a lot of code-making and code-breaking expertise. That put the NSA in a weird position for approval of the DES because they were charged both with protecting the secrets of Americans and attempting read secrets that might be encrypted with the same cipher. Since then, other people have gotten into the game, professionals and academics, and techniques for both code-breaking and code-making are discussed openly. That makes the input of the NSA largely irrelevant to more recent standards.

      3. “That is such a prior restraint infringement of the First Amendment it is unlikely to withstand even the most cursory judicial review.”

        I will remind you at this time that the NSA records every single phone call and interwebz packet generated in the USA, Canada and Europe. Also the FBI flies aircraft over American cities which record both video and cell-phone data, giving them a real-time and historical second-by-second record of where every single car and cell-phone in range of the aircraft is. For days or weeks. That shit survived judicial review.

        I think if you want to be free to write stuff, you might want to assume the courts are in on it and start the “peaceful demonstrations” early.

        1. “I will remind you at this time that the NSA records every single phone call and interwebz packet generated in the USA, Canada and Europe.”

          No, they don’t. They recorded – until the courts shut them down, and Congress has now explicitly stripped the NSA of that authorization (the data is now kept with the telecom) – the originating and receiving number of each call as well as the duration. Actually* looking at the call history of a number requires a different, specific warrant.

          The same with the FBI aircraft and Stingray use. They gather – not collect, the two terms have different meanings in the intelligence field – a broad amount of data from many users, but they can only* look at the data for the persons named in the warrants.

          This isn’t new. When the FBI did an old-style wiretap on a mobster, they recorded everything said on that line, even if it was the mobster’s wife talking with their daughter about college. They could only use what was specified in the warrant.

          *Legally. Obviously, people being people, there’s a chance that the data could be looked at by people without authorization, but that’s a chance you run with the phone company employees as well.

          1. And you can believe as much of that as you want.

            Actually I do believe a lot of it, through sheer logistics.

            It reminds me of a big sting operation conducted by the Game Department quite a few years ago. They were attempting to bust a group of guys for poaching, which was remarkably difficult, since the guys were a bunch of lying morons who happened to be about the worlds worst hunters. In over two years of undercover work, the only illegally killed game, was actually shot by the undercover game warden (who of course wasn’t prosecuted, for being the only person to actually commit a crime), the guys of course bragged about everything they got every time their buddy (the undercover officer) wasn’t able to go along, but remarkably never had any proof of success, and were never successful when witnesses were present. But, back to the point, in amongst this huge waste of taxpayers money, they obtained warrants and tapped a guys phone who had sold a couple of those being investigated a dog or two. Everybody who knew this guy (we’ll call him George) simultaneously rolled on the floor laughing, and felt sorry for the poor saps who were detailed to listening to his phone recordings. See, George is what is known as a “talker” (or sometimes, by less polite terms). When you called George (an expensive proposition if it was long distance) you could write off several hours for listening to him, not visiting with him, listening, you might get in a dozen words in those several hours. And if you did manage to tell him you had to hang up, because you couldn’t afford to talk any longer, he was more likely than not to tell you to hang up, and he would call you back, to finish the ‘visit’ on his dime. This was fifteen to twenty years ago, and his wife once told me that their phone bill was usually between four and five hundred dollars a month.
            Now, you can imagine how overworked the officers felt who were tasked with listening to all of his phone conversations (monologues?) in an attempt to unearth something incriminating. Now imagine how much memory would be necessary to simply record and store EVERYBODIES phone calls in the US, much less how much manpower would be necessary to actually listen and sift through them.
            Of course they have the ability, legal or not, to do so to any specific individual, just the sheer volume of data means that even if they desire to do so, it is going to be a very limited number of individuals they are actually going to be able to monitor.

            1. Yeah, if the NSA were actually copying and analyzing every bit of data going over the internet we would have a real global warming problem – from all the wast heat generated by the NSA datacenters (the source for the silicon used in said datacenters is left as an exercise for the reader).

    2. Hmmm.

      Would it be legal to stream, say, Full Metal Jacket over the internet?

      1. It would be up to the Department of Justice. You request, they decide.

        Consider the implications.

    3. “US government proposes to shut down all talk of guns on the interwebz.”

      Can we make shooty noises?

      Pew, pew pew pew. Pew, pew.

    4. Solution: let’s start immediately flooding the internet with as much gun-related information as possible to swamp any and all efforts to control it.

      As someone pointed out upstream, “Can’t stop the signal.”

    5. NRA: “The sky is falling! Send money NOW! Moneymoneymoney! NOW!”

      Same schtick as the televangelists. Something bad is going to happen to you, and only sending them money will stop it.

      1. I think a fair reading of the last 70 years history will reveal that both the NRA and televangelists have not been wrong on a lot of subjects. Something bad did happen. Just slowwwwwly.

        You want to keep your free speech, I suggest you perk up and start paying attention. When somebody like the NRA says the sky is falling, first place I look is up to see if any chunks are coming my way.

      2. As a Life Member of NRA, I think you exaggerate, but I will concede that they sometimes overdo the urgency; on the other hand Second Amendment rights are frequently under attack and countering the attacks costs money, and The NRA is not as wealthy as some think it is.

  12. BTW — it might be useful to develop talking points for rebutting the scurrilous libels aimed at the Puppies voting. For example:

    Puppies voters are not against [social justice, tolerance, low fat frozen yogurt, insert slanderous claim here] — it is just that Puppies voters have reached the conclusion that the Hugo Awards had become insular, pretentious, tendentious and tediously predictable. The Puppy voters think that those qualities are antithetical to what SF/F has always been about: the new, the exciting, the innovative and the excitement of exploring new ways of viewing reality.

    1. RES, more than a few of us have been doing exactly that ad nauseam and what we’ve received in return is the entire Alinsky suite of deny, deflect, misdirect, obfuscate, and so on.
      What you suggest would be appropriate in a fair and open debate, and is still justified when spreading the word to the greater fan community, but for the literary elite anti puppies it’s an exercise in futility and frustration. Nothing we say will ever make the least bit of difference to them.

    2. I have my Notepad file. Basically, it’s just a set of “flip the narrative” canned responses. And every one of their “arguments” is easily flipped.

      No, it is not rational debate. That is not their goal, why should it be mine?

      1. Exactly — the argument is not made to persuade them, it is for the benefit of onlookers. Following them down their rabbit holes is losing, whereas exposing the nonsense of their claims strips them of all credibility.

        Besides, it drives them nuts to pound their little fists and stomp their tiny feet to such little effect.

  13. From the darkest depths of Twitter:

    “Jim Henley ‏@UOJim · 1h1 hour ago
    So the Sad/Rabid Puppies have finally reached the GG-like “Identify the Apparently Vulnerable Woman and Swarm Her” phase.”

    1. LOL — so, holding people accountable for their words and actions is only permitted the nobility.

      1. Well, we’re talking about anti-GG people here. To them a bunch of people telling the truth and asking questions that really need to be asked is a horrific attack and that prominent industry figures who do everything they can to bring attention to themselves are somehow vulnerable and undeserving of the backlash they bring upon themselves through active effort. Anti-GG people are a very strange lot and as a rule not very good at communicating or forming coherent ideas

        1. Honestly, I hope this is heading into the “Gawker must be destroyed” phase of GG (with Tor in Gawker’s place). Now let’s see if Tor is stupid enough to supply us with our own Sam “Bring Back Bullying” Biddle…

        3. I have actually heard someone describing Larry’s ridiculing that ridiculous “end the gender binary default” article as abuse.

          1. For these twits it is microaggression if not full on abuse to take their statements seriously.

            And yes, I realize they also claim it is microaggression if not full on abuse to not take their statements seriously.

            And they wonder that we mock them.

            1. What, the same folks who give us “Women are stronger than men and need safe rooms to hug toys and play with clay if there is a different opinion within a 50 mile radius” are wholly inconsistent in their stances?
              Inconceivable!

          2. Oh yeah, they HATE that article. How dare he be harsh to poor Alex Dally Macfarlane! It’s like Ms. Macfarlane is friends with someone like Requires Hate!

            Oh, wait . . . nevermind.

    2. Who is “Jim Henley” and why should I care what he thinks?

      Of course, you might have meant “Jim Hines” and I don’t care what he thinks. [Evil Grin]

      1. Apparently Jim Henley blogs at Tor.com about comics and superheroes. I had to check because there is an author I know with a very similar name but… not the same guy.

        1. Definitely not somebody to care about his opinion. [Evil Grin]

        2. There’s those three letters again that come up so frequently with Puppykickers, R-O-T, er, TOR.

      2. Well, here he is on File 770:

        “Jim Henley on June 7, 2015 at 4:23 pm said:
        On reflection, I think Talk Like a Radchai Day is better thought about than done. At bottom, on account of this not being the Radch. In practice, it amounts to selective misgendering of

        Cis dudes
        Trans men
        Asexuals

        The first group is the one we most want to convince that misgendering is wrong, and the next two groups get it the other 364 days of the year already. So I’d have to give myself a bunch of What Were You Thinking points if we actually tried to carry it out.”

        Beyond. Parody.

        1. Part of the problem with “Talk like a Radchaii Day” would be that no sane person would want to live in the same GALAXY as whose homicidal tyrants. Visualize an interstellar Soviet Union, only worse.

    3. Odd that the same people who would so quickly sneer at a damsel in distress story would reach so handily for it when it suits them.

      1. It ain’t as if they had any integrity, and their only interest in consistency is consistently subduing any disputing voices.

      2. There’s a reason the Honey Badgers call it “damselling”.

    4. Waitwait, hold on, this can’t be right. Women are as strong as – no wait, STRONGER than men. But somehow she still needs to be shielded from consequences of her own actions? I am shocked.

      1. Do they honestly think the ONLY reason we’re angry is because she’s female and not because she said stupid crap?

        The stupid hurts.

        1. no, no, see it wasn’t stupid crap … because she is a fellow traveler, anything she says is pure and golden, and Must Not Be Questioned, and of course Never, Never, allow facts to be used against such wisdom.

      2. (Yes, this is a late comment – this thread is becoming like a novel, always rereading it and hitting something I didn’t notice before.)

        Calbeck can correct me if I’m wrong – but the gamers originally got annoyed when they found out that a female journalist was giving preference to a game not considered at all good – because she was sleeping with the developer.

        So far as I can tell, they didn’t become enraged until the male bosses of same journalist said “So what?”

        1. From what I read, yeah, it was “Hey, that is not ethical” comments that, as the leftoids are wont to do when they get caught doing unethical things, was responded to by attacking those criticizing as being misogynist, racist etc, etc.

    1. As long as they keep paying her…. it’s not like she has a principle to stand for.

      1. I find it funny how rabidly defensive the furthest leftoids can be in protecting their money making positions and their posessions they think no one needs.

  15. I know three year olds who make more coherent arguments than those put forth by Gallo and Cannon.

    At least the three year olds, “because I said so!” reason is logically followable and honest.

  16. Posted this over on MGC a couple of days ago, seems appropriate.
    How our side responds to an honest question about sad puppies and how the anti puppies can’t even leave that alone.

    Makes me even more appreciative of Baen’s Bar where the moderators essentially simply enforce Jim’s prime directive of “don’t be a butthead.” We did have a rousing discussion over there a week or so ago. Started by a Barfly asking for information on this Sad Puppy thing he’d just heard about. Several of us filled him in on the gist and provided links for where to find the gory details.
    Then a classic Allinsky troll showed up. Accusations, wild statements, constantly moving goal posts, denials of statements he made in earlier posts, demands for detailed documentation to support any casual comment made. You know, the standard script. He finally became so abusive and offensive that he was banned by the moderators. At which point of course he claimed both victory and victimhood over on his own blog.

  17. I expected the fifth paragraph to say ‘because i never got to the story, as i had thrown the book across the room.”

      1. It may still be a good or “interesting” book.

        I enjoye Scalzi’s work up. After I briefly followed him on Twitter I keep his stuff in a brown paper bag so my friends won’t know my hypocrisy.

        1. How do I edit that ^^^ to hide my typos and sentence structures in shame?

          2. You can’t. There’s no editing of posts in WP. All of your typos and sentence structures belong to…well, the intertubes, forever, unless Our Lovely And Terrible Space Princess Hostess chooses to intervene with her Lovely And Terrible Space Blog Comment Editing Powers.

            WP delenda est.

            1. Of course, She’ll carp anybody who talks too loudly about Her typos and misspellings. [Very Big Grin While Flying Away Very Very Fast]

  18. How much of this can be attributed to intellectual deficiencies? Any of it simply masterful use of propaganda and public “discourse” against competition?

    The “end-issue” I see is that the loudest, most pervasive tends to win out. particularly against those employing calm rationality and reason.

    Is there a viable goal being striven for or is it merely the garnering of enjoyment from poking idiots with a stick?

        1. worse, it is an EADS/Airbus product. Don’t care what size it is, they make crap when it comes to commercial aircraft. Proof to the world that just because a group of companies make various well built items, it is no guaranty that they can make a single thing together that is worth a damn.

          1. Also totally fly-by-wire via computer, recently shown to have buggy software involved in a recent crash of their military transport. Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

              1. There are a couple of pilots around here, maybe you could hire a private ride. Although I’m not sure that our local bush pilot would know what to with a runway that big, and concrete to! 😉

                1. I am also a Pilot. Although it’s been a LONG time. Dunno if anyone would be interested in a cross-country from Everett to Chatanooga though.

                  Maybe I should finally start building that RV-7 I’ve always wanted….

          1. Less infamous, because the DC10 stomped its competition, which meant that it was the plane (and its bugs) that most people were familiar with.

            1. and the DC bugs were sensationalized by the press far more.
              Boeing built the 10 for quite some time after buying out Douglas, but it was as the KC-10 tanker/transport. 10s were good planes (The 9 was better and still flies as the Boeing 717 with nicer engines) but everyone only ever remembers the Big Crash and avoiding the plane afterward because of the press stories.

  20. Couple of random thoughts…

    1. Considering that “progressives” seek the return to a feudal society, I accept as a given that there were progressives in medieval times… the nobles and the church.

    2. It’s horrible that you want to boil homosexuals in oil. Aren’t you at all concerned about cooking with trans fats?

    (note to any SJWs who might read this… #2 is a joke. see if your homeroom teacher can explain what that is when you go back to school)

      3. Aren’t the Portuguese partial to olive oil, like the rest of the people in that part of the world? So long as you keep the heat within reason, you don’t have to worry about trans fats when cooking with that…

    2. Re. #2 – Randy, you haven’t been following the news on FaceTwitReddChat. Its csi-fats that are the really, really bad ones. Trans fats just want to be accepted for what they are.

        1. What they were is (was?) a fallacious pseudoconstruct of the paler-complexioned patriarchy, unless the patriarchy is Bernie Sanders.

      3. You are a very bad person and need to clean coffee off my monitor, desk, and the guy in the next cubicle..

      4. *grin* Well played.

        …I had way too much fun with the whole #transracial thing and went from identifying as a Svartalf, to thinking of being a LOIC cannon, to a Galaxy Class starship, to omega particle, destroying the sector.

        Oh and the SJW/CHORFs, since they clearly inhabit a universe separate from ours, I have dubbed it Safe Space (running off the Undine / Species 8472’s Fluidic Space in Star Trek and Star Trek Online.)

    3. Point #2 raises the critical question of what type of batter should be used? Corn meal is traditional for hot dogs, but beer-batter has its fans, too. I think most tempura batters would prove a mite sweet … any panko fans out there?

      1. Excuse me — strike “panko fans”, insert “panko proponents”.

        That is all.

        Gonna go watch Texas Rising for a couple hours. Any of our Texas-based historical sorts watching that and willing to comment on History Channel’s many sins?

        1. The History Channel’s sins are too many to count. Especially when you consider how many shows they put on. [Evil Grin]

        2. I’ve been recording the show remotely (I don’t get the History Channel in HD here), but haven’t watched any episodes yet. Are they as accurate as, say, “Vikings”? If so, then I’ll stop recording them.

          1. All I’ve watched thus far is episode 1, but it seems not too awful. Good acting, nice sets (especially the exteriors) and cinematography (especially the exteriors) and costumery. I don’t know much about Texas history, is why I asked for authoritative reviews. Beloved Spouse has read the Celia Hayes books on the period and detects no unreasonable breaches of fact. the presentation of the Goliad massacre does not present the full horror of that but there are limits to what TV can manage.

            I, too, have had the series recording on auto-pilot and we thought it time to find out what we’re getting.

            Some parts of it, e.g., Emma “Yellow Rose” West are pretty ahistorical, but no more than Sharpe’s adventures.

            2. All right, I’m going to display my woeful lack of edumacation here. I’ve seen the phrase a few hundred times over the years, but never been able to figure out: What, exactly, does “fire for effect” mean, as distinguished from other kinds of firing?

              2. There’s registration fire, which sets up predetermined targeting points; and harrassing and interdicting fire which is shot blindly into an area where the enemy is known or suspected to be operation, and firing for effect, which is precisely aimed at a known target or firing point and expected to do damage and casualties.

                1. However, the term originally started as the command you gave once the fire you used to “get the range” with one or two guns, also called “ranging fire”, was observed to be on target and you could give the range and bearing to the rest of the guns in the battery for them to fire and be reasonably certain of a hit.

    1. Once more shining example of why you should read that contract with any traditional publisher very carefully. Then have a competent contract lawyer read it again. And after all that think long and hard about whether indie isn’t really the better choice.

    2. I… It’s not good, but I don’t think it’s quite that severe, unless there have been some startling legal developments since their Vol. 14 kickstarter ended.

      To the best of my knowledge there’s no problem with publishing the webcomic, the annual volumes of the comic, or the novels. (The novelizations were apparently at some risk earlier due to their publisher going bankrupt, but they got the third one out since then.)

      What they can’t do because of Tor — I think — is republish the first three volumes as a color omnibus, because Tor holds the rights to do that. Because Tor then failed to actually sell it and doesn’t want to do any more color omnibuses, however, this means the Foglios also can’t put together a matching series of omnibuses.

        1. I thought that was from a couple of years ago, so they’d only have a few years to go… Oh, I see, it’s actually dated… Jan 2014.

        2. Ah, yes, I remember that post. The omnibus mentioned is the only actual version at issue. In the time since that post, they have continued publishing the webcomic (ongoing), released the third novelization (last November), and completed the Kickstarter to fund the hardcover and paperback editions of the volume whose pages appeared on the web during 2014.

          It is a problem for them. They would like to be able to publish more three-volume omnibuses, and having the first tangled up with somebody who won’t let it go and won’t continue interferes with that. I’m just saying Tor doesn’t have the entire story tied up or anything.

    3. I’ll just steal my own words from http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/06/is-it-time-to-call-for-boycott-of.html :

      I also read the Girl Genius story this morning, and was forcibly reminded of a tactic used by the record labels: To protect their golden geese, they like to get minor but promising acts under contract — then never do anything to promote them, and sometimes never even recording them (and close examination of the contracts shows that the label doesn’t have to do a damn thing it doesn’t want to, but the band isn’t allowed to release anything without label approval). The purpose of all this is purely to lock up those minor acts so they can’t compete with the label’s established stars.

      1. Software companies do the same thing; Larry Ellison is especially known for this.

      2. Pity no one’s whacked them under ” the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing”.

        1. Possibly a difficult legal case to bring, and publishers’ lawyers are already paid for, the fees chargeable as operating expense win or lose.

          And if they win the only choice is Indy — it is unlikely any other publisher would be eager to work with such proven “difficult” talent.

      3. And this, in turn, is a major reason why I’m anti-copyright law: it’s too often a bludgeon used by publishers to hold artists’ works hostage, unless you can afford a lawyer (which often isn’t even on a budding artist’s radar).

        Indie (in all its forms) is able to help significantly circumvent some of these harms; indeed, these harms are often the result of gatekeepers having the power to determine what gets published. Once the fences are down, a huge amount of power to abuse disappears!

        1. While I would support efforts to make it easier for original creators to call back their own works, in cases such as the Foglios, or Sarah’s own works that she is trying to get the rights returned to her, the protections of copyright law are important, too.

          As it is, you say (and I agree) that it is too easy for publishers to hold artists’ work hostage. Without copyright, a publisher could find a promising book, especially if it looks like a skilled writer who is a clumsy salesman (bad cover, no promotion, etc), slap a professional cover on it, maybe have a ghost writer go over it to make minor changes, or maybe not, and push the heck out of it, taking most of the author’s potential sales, and not having done anything even remotely illegal. Right now, as bad as the contracts are (from what I’ve read here and at MGC), they DO at least have to promise the author something in return.

          1. I have a lot of other reasons to be anti-copyright, and it was a rather long journey for me; thus, I won’t go into those reasons (that, and I don’t want to start an argument).

            Economic incentives aren’t necessarily what you’d expect, though: in the era where Charles Dickens was complaining that he had no American copyright, it wasn’t unusual for American publishers to pay *more* for European works, and even to publish them *before* the would be published in Europe, because they knew that once a book was published, all other American publishers would be able to publish their own editions. Being first publisher has its advantages!

  22. The repeated posting of cat pictures is evidence that Gallo feels cornered. I had a former FB friend (a lefty professor at a school near Notre Dame) who would do the same thing (reply with non sequiturs) whenever I asked for a direct answer to a question. He simply couldn’t give a direct answer, so his only tactic was to (figuratively) yell “squirrel!”

    1. “simply couldn’t give a direct answer”
      I’ve noticed that too. I thought it were just this one individual.

  23. “File 770 not only sent someone over to ask about examples of these threats ….”

    No, I did not do any such thing.

    1. Not in the sense that you ordered it so, but several folks did show up on Sarah’s page saying they came there because of your site posts. And unless my eyes deceive me they were quite obnoxious in their demands for detailed proof. Which they were provided, at which point cue crickets.

      1. Uncle Lar: So your point is that I quoted Sarah A. Hoyt somebody made a comment here? On second thought, you don’t have a point.

        1. Thank you Mr. Glyer for giving me another reason to avoid your site.

      2. No sir, your point was to dispute what Sarah had written. When I pointed out that they had in fact come to her page based on your postings you choose to play Alinsky semantics tricks.
        Are you responsible for what they posted on Sarah’s page, no of course not.
        Were you responsible for them going there in the first place? At least in part.
        I do understand that you are attempting to provide a service, to inform those who would otherwise be unaware of much that happens on the greater web. While in general I think that to be a good thing, you still must admit that some less than savory characters will use your site to seek out victims of their trollish behavior. You did not sent those individuals, but your site surely enabled them to find us. I am not attempting to criticize your operation, merely to point out that its existence guarantees greater visibility and likely visitors we are not all that used to.

        1. ” I am not attempting to criticize your operation,”

          You are kinder than I. I have been to File 770 twice, Mike very obviously cherry picks his quotes, and then gives his own (often very twisted) spin on them. He does provide a link to the site he is quoting from, and I will give him credit for that. However if you follow the links it quickly becomes obvious that he doesn’t expect most to do so. Because he blatantly misinterprets or ‘edits’ quotes to support his biased narrative.

          1. It’s not kindness. I attempt to be polite and respond with facts and not accusations when engaged in a debate. It’s only when my opponent is an obvious troll that the gloves come off.
            I do agree with you, he does cherry pick his quotes. Your observation that he provides links to the source is what causes me even greater concern. Those links provide a one click pathway for an increasing number of jerks to flood what not so long ago was a few nice sedate places where like minded folk could congregate. Lately it feels more like a two fisted game of whack-a-troll.

    2. Mr. Glyer, do you never get tired of covering for assholes? Regular commenters on your site show up all over the place flinging poo, then go back to your site and state that they have done so. One of them was flinging poo on my site recently, I put this welcome post up for them:

      http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2015/02/the-iron-finger-of-deletion.html

      Obviously you would not be fool enough to order these useful idiots to do that kind of thing. Not in easily searchable writing, at any rate. Its more of a dog whistle thing with you people.

          1. There are quite a few people who are only alive because I’m just too damned lazy to bother with the effort of getting away with their murder.

        2. I have a cousin that took a vacation trip to the UK to research her husband’s family genealogy. Discovered that her husband was related to one of the knights that “dealt” with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

            1. She had his name and the specific lineage of the relation. It’s been a number of years, so I don’t remember the name.

  24. Ms. Hoyt, I fear I have a tiny-winey little quibble with your post.

    I have read extensively on the subject of Joe McCarthy, including the work done over at The National Review when the Conservative Right began to try to rehabilitate him. I think that attempt is one of the more quixotic efforts of the political Right, and I really wish they would give it up. From what I have read and watched, McCarthy was an amoral swine, using a legitimate (and very serious) security concern to advance his personal career. So far as I can tell, any damage he did to any actual Soviet spies was purely coincidental. In effect, he was gift to the Political Left; if he had not existed, they would have had to invent him to discredit the anti-communist efforts of the post WWII era.

    It is easy to fall into the pattern of assuming that anything the Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressive left tells you is utter bullshit, but it is sloppy thinking and opens you up to serious error. McCarthy is something we must watch for carefully; opportunistic amoral jackasses who will want to use our legitimate causes to promote themselves, and who will thereby discredit us.

    The Left is wrong about the Hollywood Blacklist; those idiots were a bunch of Stalinst jerks, and many of those who “Named names” and have been damned hereafter had been seriously hurt by their antics. The Left is wrong about the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss; they were all three as guilty as a cat in a goldfish bowl. But the Left does not, so far as I can discover, appear to be wrong about McCarthy being a bully and a swine who attacked indiscriminately, wildly exceeded any authority he might have had, and deserved his fall.

    Where they re wrong is the assertion that because McCarthy FOUND no spies, there WERE no spies. And, let’s face it, if McCarthy did not exist, the archetype of the out-of-control spy hunter making wild and unsubstantiated accusations would be Woodrow Wilson’s AG, Mitchell Palmer, and the left just cannot have that.

    1. Wait, you are saying that a politician was an amoral self promoting bastard?

      And that his overreach in the end allowed his opponents to destroy hism and disregard the extensive factual basis behind his self promotion?

      Astonishing.

      Hang on, I think my tongue is stuck in my cheek.

      1. I just hate watching people I otherwise rather agree with try to rehabilitate the bastard. Maybe somebody will someday come up with documantation that proves that I’m wrong. In fact, I would rather welcome that. I hate that any of the “oh, the anti-communist efforts were all witch hunts” narrative has any basis.

        1. Well, a large part of his bastardization was from his detractors, and the reasons they spent forever pointing to his assholism was to cover the fact he was correct about much he did not really prove fully but ranted on ad nauseam (because, yeah, he was a Grade A Hole). Some of the proof he was right came out of Russia after the Soviet fell out of favor. The leftoids will forever refuse to acknowledge any of those facts … remember they pick and choose what is considered a fact. The rewrites by the leftoids are many. For instance, the Black Listing was done by leftoids. Yes, it was people fingered by Red Scare himself but the list was “enforced” by many who were not smoked out and wanted to cover themselves and those who were like thinkers, but needed to deflect criticism, else they end up on that list (My great uncle was blacklisted). Orson Bean had a nice story about that. It was the conservatives who didn’t shun him, and it was the rather conservative Ed Sullivan who got him back into working.

          1. McCarthy charged that the Federal government was shot through with Societ spies. This was, to a degree, true, in large part because of FDR’s arrogance in thinking he could “manage” Stalin, and was smarter then him. However, everything I have read about McCarthy indicates, to me anyway, that if he actually accused any real spies it wasn’t because he had found any evidence but because he was a shotgun. If you fire a shotgun into a room full of people, some of whom are legitemate targets, you are likely to hit some who deserve it. But it isn’t because your plan was a good one.

            1. Yes, it was often that way, but a large part of the hate and revision was because he was right far more than his methods really should have been, because more of the room had a higher percentage of deserving targets and those missed went into panic mode to keep from being re-targeted.
              I’ve said for years that his biggest crime was not being wrong, it was being an ass and being right too often for their comfort

              1. His biggest crime was getting in the way of serious anti-communist efforts, sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and giving the little pinkos a tool,with which to discredit the serious. Hecause of him it has become the accepted wisdom that anti-cokmunism was, in its entirety, a witch hunt. And the defining characteristic of a,witch hunt is the modern belief that there are, of course, no witches.

                This is bullshit. Soviet intelligence was active right up until it all fell apart. But it is important to the Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressives that the fairy tale of a rwspectable Soviet Union and despicable anti-communists be accepted. Maybe they could have managed that without McCarthy, drat him, but he made it an easier sell.

                1. No argument that he was an A-hole, not sure that much of anybody disagrees with that. But, just because you are an A-hole doesn’t mean you are wrong. Frankly his methods weren’t the greatest, but then I’ve never known of a politician/bureaucrat who did use the greatest methods. The problem was that there were too many Soviet sympathizers (starting with FDR himself) in the government, they were numerous enough to sabotage McCarthy’s already less than perfect actions and methodology. On the other hand, history has proven him right far more than one would expect from his methodology, it is just unpopular history, that has generally been rewritten.

                  I don’t personally think that not having McCarthy would have been one whit better for the anti-communists, after all, how would not having any government figures pointing out Soviet spy’s and sympathizer’s be any better than attempting (and being at least in a large part successful) to discredit the guy who is doing so. After all, there is no need to discredit what no one is willing to say.

              2. Right? McCarthy was a punk grandstander, shotgunning shit in the hope that some of it would stick. “Come to DC at your own expense and submit to hostile interrogation. If you grovel enough, maybe we won’t have you blacklisted.”

                1. Any accuracy on McCarthy’s part owed less to him being right than being in a target rich environment.

        1. I agree that McCarthy did more harm than good, legitimizing the anti-anti-communists and delegitimizing the anti-communists.

          Richard Nixon, OTOH, was an extremely effective prosecutor of investigations into Communist activities, a fact which bears absolutely no correlation, none at all, to the Left’s vicious and unrelenting hatred of the man.

      2. My Aunt cut his (Garrison) hair a few times. Said he could hit the waste basket across the room, with a rolled up sheet of paper every time (He worked while his hair was being cut) and his head stayed steady.

    3. Leave us also keep in mind that a number of those who “named names” were doing so at the orders of the Party, which determined whether their agents idiots were more useful overt than covert.

      1. BTW – I am reliably informed that Ron Radosh’s Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left is a reliable and enjoyable exploration of the blacklist.

        Interested parties might enjoy reading this New Criterion article of his to determine whether the book merits their attention.

          1. 😉
            The only reason I did not provide a personal endorsement is that the I only bought the book a year or two ago and it is still in my reading queue.

            That my reading queue resembles the “Marching Chinese” of legend is undeniable. Friends (assuming anybody would admit to being such) who’ve known me for decades would attest to my frequent declarations that “I don’t want to live forever; I just want to live long enough to get caught up on my reading.”

            1. That’s funny. I never imagined that as a possibility.
              Good thing it doesn’t take as long to read them as it does to write them.

    4. I lived through the McCarthy era, and was very much on the anti-McCarthy side; and remained so when I changed my political position drastically under ti influence of Stefan Possony and Russel Kirk, both of whom became personal mentors.

      It is hard to see his side of things, even to this day; I loathed him and all he stood for.

      But for those who want a fairly good picture as seen from the right. I recommend The Red Hunter by William F. Buckley, a novel; very readable. Long out of print of course.

      1. All I ever read about him was a note from Heinlein saying something about enemy agents and wartime. I haven’t studied the era, and while I have heard he was the best thing their side could hope for, I still think SOMEONE should have been halting the long march. Ah well.

  25. However, let’s be clear: mud sticks. Get something associated with unspeakable sins like “racism, sexism, homophobia” and the idiots will go on repeating it forever, no matter how often it’s disproved.

    Example: history teaching songs.
    Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been “warned” that Johnny Horton recorded KKK songs?
    As best I can tell, someone with a vaguely similar name did something questionable and/or someone heard a song that sounded something like his voice, but heck if I know.

    Hasn’t stopped well-meaning people from warning me away from exposing my children, and if I hadn’t grown up in the household of two record loving Horton fans…..

    1. You can find Johnny Horton “KKK songs” on the internet, often on filesharing sites. Problem is, if you actually do the research, it isn’t actually Johnny Horton singing, in any instance that I have ever found. It is someone under the name of Johnny Reb (which is the title of a song Horton recorded) or David Allan Coe, or someone else I am unfamiliar with, but people attribute it to Johnny Horton.

      2. People associate all sorts of un-PC parodies with “Weird Al” Yankovic, e.g. “Which Backstreet Boy is gay?” for the same reason — the modern version of ‘pseudo-epigraphy’, I suppose 😉

        1. Weird Al’s singing voice is pretty distinctive… I should think it would be difficult to mistake him for any other artist.

          1. True – it simply seems to be people assuming it’s him because he’s so prominent in the field.

            Awww, crap!
            I just realized I forgot to grab a copy of Mad Magazine #533 (Weird Al was the guest editor). I hope it’s still available!

    2. Look at the A-List songwriters who praised Il Duce …

      You’re the top
      You’re the great Houdini
      You’re the top
      You are Mussolini,

      *not actually part of the song’s official lyric.

      Also, not written by Porter but contributed by P. G. Wodehouse for the British production of Anything Goes, in which show the song first appeared. Wodehouse, of course, notoriously collaborated in Nazi radio broadcasts from occupied France.

      Credit where due, department: Pete Seeger did write and perform a song condemning the excesses of Josef Stalin.

      1. If Mussolini was a top, who was his bottom? I usually credit France with such, but they were more Hitler’s than Mussolini’s.

        1. If I remember my history lessons correctly France played bitch to the Axis powers from sometime in 1939 until summer of 1945.

          1. If Mussolini….. is best answered by saying he wasn’t. Arguendo Ethiopia or on a map perhaps the Italian boot trampling the North African coast –

            Fighting in North Africa started with the Italian declaration of war on 10 June 1940……….the German Afrika Korps—commanded by Erwin Rommel—was dispatched to North Africa—during Operation Sonnenblume—to reinforce Italian forces in order to prevent a complete Axis defeat.

            Between North Africa and Greece Mussolini qualifies for a with friends like that who needs enemies award.

      2. Wodehouse was hardly a collaborator. He was extraordinarily politically naïve and the Nazis attempted to capitalize on this, to little effect (his talks were broadcast to the United States and the War Department used them as examples of anti-Nazi propaganda). After the war, there was some agitation to go after him for treason, a la Lord Haw-Haw, but it came to nothing.

        As far as I know, in all of Wodehouse’s novels there is exactly one political reference – the character Roderick Spode in The Code of the Woosters (published in 1938) is an absurd version of Sir Oswald Mosley who heads a Fascist group called the Saviours of Britain, better known as the Black Shorts:

        “By the way, when you say ‘shorts’, you mean ‘shirts,’ of course.”
        “No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.”
        “Footer bags, you mean?”
        “Yes.”
        “How perfectly foul.”
        “Yes.”
        “Bare knees?”
        “Bare knees.”
        “Golly!”

        (Pivotal to the plot is the fact that Spode also has a dark secret: under another name he is a successful designer of ladies’ underwear.)

        Not trenchant political satire, but not exactly pro-Fascist either.

        If Wodehouse wrote the Mussolini lyric, it was because (a) it was topical at the time (the West End production of Anything goes began in 1935 [when Mussolini was still, more or less, perceived as respectable]) and (b) it made a good rhyme.

        1. I should prob’ly make clear: I weren’t pointing the accusatory finger at Wodehouse, I was giving the finger to those who make facile assumptions from insufficient evidence.

  27. On the bright side, Sarah, I found out that one Francisco Botello de Moraes wrote a massive fantasy/Gothic novel in 1734. But in Spanish, about a Spanish subject. (La historia de las cuevas de Salamanca.)

    So I guess leaving town to publish sf/f is kinda a thing. 🙂

      1. Oh, and his author preface to the Salamanca caves book says that he “never wrote as a chore,” that he was pleased to have “enjoyed himself in all the best kingdoms in Europe,” and that most humans were ludicrous. He also has an introductory poem (? not sure what form it is?) from the POV of the witch queen who stars in the book. For his good literary work, she grants him the reward of being to shapeshift to whatever he likes – except in Jubilee years and during Lent. (She also advises him always to mix up his own hot chocolate, because the ready-made kind is cacao without the O.) Yes, he’s freaky.

  28. This behavior by TOR employees depresses me. I remember him as being a better man than this back when I worked for him, he ran Ace SF at Grossett & Dunlap.

    I can’t believe he would tolerate this sort of behavior from his staff towards his own authors. I have to wonder how much he is involved in the day to day operations of the firm anymore. Or if his employees are being honest with him.

  29. And by him I mean Tom Doherty himself, the man who still runs the place, I assume. I remember him with fondness and respect from Ace, where he had to courtesy to invite me in for an interview for promotion even though there was no question I was not ready for the jobs Terri Windling and Susan Allison were doing (and I said as much).

  30. Someone has posted the following at Tor.com in their Nebula thread:

    “I will no longer buy new Tor books so long as Gallo has a job there – I will instead find them as “used” and buy them from places like charity bookstores. This will be a bit of a hassle, but I don’t care. Her despicable attack on the Puppies is beyond the bounds of decency.

    I should point out that I buy a *lot* of books every month.”

    Let’s see how long before Tor deletes it.

      1. Wasn’t me, so I can’t really email to them. Maybe the author did so themselves. I hope.

  31. As previously mentioned, I will no longer purchase any author that has not been accused of racism, sexism, homophobia or neo-Nazi behavior by a reliable fugtard. If they haven’t managed to annoy the CHORFs sufficiently, they are not worth my time.

    1. Damn it! Now I’ll have to worry about near and dear IT workers losing their jobs because they aren’t PC.

      1. This software engineer, under his pen name “Mencius Moldbug”, is one of the central figures in a loose collective that calls itself oxymoronically “the dark Enlightenment”. This movement itself is a predictable consequence of what happens when you accuse everybody who deviates one millimeter from the neo-Marxist party line of ‘racist/sexist/homophobic/.. doubleplusungood crimethink’: disaffected, contrarian thinkers start saying ‘we may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb’.

        Quoting Instapundit: May our elites enjoy the incentive structures they are creating. And choke on them, may I add.

        1. As a child of the seventies I’ve taken to singing, “If I’m gonna do the time might as well do the crime. Yeah, just do it.”

      2. Em, that’s been a worry for many years. There’s a reason Kim no longer gunblogs, after all.

  35. “Paul Weimer Republic ‏@PrinceJvstin · 5h5 hours ago
    Found out in the File 770 comments that Sarah Hoyt added a lecture afterward to the Baen edition of THE PUPPET MASTERS.
    Gods above, Why?!?!”

    It’s called an “afterword”, Mr. Weimer. Lots of classic books have them.

          1. Adding new material, such as a forward or afterward establishes the edition as a new work and allows copyright protection of the published work. The novel remains under original copyright but the publisher’s “value added” serves to protect the entire production.

            Or so I assume. This is an infamous capitalist ploy to encourage new editions of copyrighted works owned by another.

            1. I suspect you know that the major point of many of these second editions is complying with Amazon’s rules while arguably evading Amazon’s power grabs. By making new rules about pricing and price discrimination Amazon may impact any midlist not getting new editions as much as Thor Power Tool in the now distant before Indy past.

              Notice a Red Hat fedora might well be styled with a Gus McCrae BASH.

              I always thought the L1011 was a nice airplane in a market that wanted to buy cattle cars. It showed a lack of foresight and poor planning for an uncertain future to have a high seat mile cost on a nice low density seat in a comfortable airplane when fuel costs became more important

              Seems to me many of the Airbus products have been nice airplanes too. As a small l libertarian I like the Boeing philosophy more than the socialist all is preprogrammed for you side stick controller but I can see an argument. Smiley

              1. As someone who’s heard too many cockpit semi-horror stories about Airbusses (and seen the footage that led to the jokes about the difference between an A-340 and a chainsaw) I’d say Airbus is OK if you don’t mind the captain being a software engineer on the ground in Lyon. Boeing assumes that the pilot may need to do anything at any time because weird stuff can happen. Airbus believes that nothing outside X parameters can happen, so the pilot only needs to be able to maneuver the plane within X parameters.

                1. not to mention they forget to tell the pilot X while the simulators they provided train them it is actually Y, and I was just sorting through Wiki and they have left off it’s forestry methods. You’d think a plane that has flown itself into the trees on a few occasions would have that noted in its accidents of note.

                    1. The 340 was the plane demanding to land while the pilot fought to get it to go around. He was doing a low speed, gear down, low altitude flyby, and the plane said “Okay, we landing” iirc they made a change to allow for easier canceling of the autoland system after that, but they still placed all the blame on the pilot.
                      The other bit I was referring to was the Rudder movement on the passenger planes (after the AA crash into Jamaica Bay) and they managed to slide the fact the rudder moves different when on the ground than in the air past, and AA pointed out that none of their Simulators had that action in them, and hey, it would have been nice if AB had , you know, mentioned that fact to them, it got quietly changed very quickly. iirc the CoPilot’s movements, if the sim matched real life, would not have resulted in the tail falling off the plane. Still more stress than is approved, but not a deadly mistake.

              2. The L1011 had an engine delay issue and production problems that sank Lockheed’s civilian line. From a fueler’s standpoint it was ridiculous in design. It had more tanks than it had gauges so you had to flip back and forth between tanks while filling to ensure you didn’t unbalance the aircraft.
                Between the delays and the hassles to maintain, it didn’t catch on. It was a direct competitor of the DC10 and similarly sized, but they made only 249 planes where as the DC-10/MD-11 has 646 planes made.

                Airbus is great at blaming everyone but themselves for their mistakes.
                I know of an A-319 that every time I saw it land it needed ground maintenance to come out and reboot the plane … it was Buggier than a Beta of Windows 95 and my buddy the maintenance man hated it. I knew folks who worked for United, who refused to fly on the things. That maintenance man also made sure to not fly on one of the things.

  36. “In the future, everybody will be a racist/sexist/homophone/neo-Nazi/… for fifteen minutes” (Andy Warthog)

    Seriously, these autoanilinguist courtiers are tiresome…

      2. Why not, in Red vs. Blue there was a gay robot (or at least one character concluded another one was a gay robot).

        1. I don’t see why there wouldn’t have been gay phones.


          After all, there used to be princess phones.

  37. On buying less from Macmillan not going to do that. Not going to buy more in the future than I have in the past but Air and Darkness from my favorite current writer is available 11/03/2015. Now there’s a Tor author often maligned by folks at, on and around Tor.com Also had books occasionally praised even by Teresa Nielsen Hayden(no hyphen).

    I wonder if starting with the baby boomers and getting more extreme with every succeeding generation language has been used more and more for, you know, emotional impact? That is for emotional loading rather than logical meaning. Like the immature child who doesn’t know what the word means but knows it’s something bad?

  38. Some lols from File 770:

    “Unwin the Goof on June 8, 2015 at 3:35 am said:
    For my sins, I just clicked through and read Sarah Hoyt’s blog post. It’s astonishing. It’s a looking glass world in which everything that the Puppies have themselves done is projected onto this enormous group of unnamed (except for Gallo) people. Until this point I didn’t realise how much they believe that they’re fighting a war; and now I realise that the war will never end, because there is no actual enemy except the one in their minds. I feel sad for all of us.”

    Your sadness is duly noted, Goof.

    1. Self-awareness isn’t these ‘people’s strong suit, is it?

      “There’s only water/In a stranger’s tear
      Looks are deceptive/But distinctions are clear
      A foreign body/And a foreign mind
      Never welcome in the land of the blind
      You may look like we do/Talk like we do
      But you know how it is
      You’re not one of us…”

    2. At least he realizes he’s a goof. Now let’s hope he reflects on what that means about himself.

    3. Not entirely unrelated:
      After Hugo, an Even Worse Country
      By Jay Nordlinger — June 8, 2015

      Life in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez was no picnic, as the strongman dismantled democracy. But it is far worse today, under the successor chavista government.

      Here is Rayma Suprani, a Venezuelan journalist and cartoonist: “It’s hard to believe, but Chávez kept some kind of order, some kind of balance. He had a big mouth, and a volatile personality, but there was less repression than now. Much, much less.” The new leaders “are truly dangerous — much more dangerous than Chávez.”

      Why is that so? Rayma’s answer, in essence, is this: “You know the expression ‘to be more Catholic than the pope’? These guys have to prove they’re more chavista than Chávez.”

      Rayma Suprani is barely able to work today, as Venezuela’s independent media have been shut down or bought out. She has received many death threats. Of course, she’s thinking about leaving the country, but that is not a simple matter. I have an interview with her today on the homepage.

      I said to her, “It must be a strange experience to grow up in a free country, live in a free country, and then see it become unfree.” Yes, she said. “You realize that your country is disappearing around you, and you see how the faces of the people change with fear.”

      Democracy, freedom, and constitutional government cannot be put on autopilot, it seems. They have to be fought for and defended all the time.
      http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/419451/after-hugo-even-worse-country-jay-nordlinger
      [Emphasis added]

    1. King’s X had a decent song that seems to be a prelude about the offense culture. (I love XV).

      1. A couple years before, Robert Hughes published “The Culture of Complaint”, which criticized the whole phenomenon from an old-school liberal perspective. It was quite a revelation to read this at the time (I was in graduate school in Berkeley) *and* to have seen the FUBAR “art” Hughes poked fun at (Mapplethorpe’s bizarre gayBDSM photo/pornography in particular).

        1. Coincidentally, last night’s “The Simpsons” addressed that. As they were visiting Dizzneeland, they saw that “Pirates of the Caribbean” had been made politically correct “because of massive complaints from two people”

  40. Probably, singularly, the best synopsis of the Hugo situation that I’ve read. It is amazing to me that the so-called ‘reasonable’ people who were picking and choosing Hugo winners are so completely pissed off now that someone else is doing it, and how they’ve come apart at the seams so completely afterwards.

    And I am NOT a puppy fan. I think it’s great that a conservative position can make it into fantasy finally, but but I want the whole collage, not just the pictures from the magazines I like.

    One thing we will NOT see as a result of this: a more fair way to pick Hugo winners. Neither side wants that

    1. Actually the other side has made so much noise, even you seem to have missed the fact that people on the suggested puppy list this year are NOT conservatives. They’re mostly people who don’t talk about their politics, but there are some quite liberal folk there. They ARE the collage.

    2. Sarah’s correct.

      Of course, since the Hugos have always been “What the Fans Think are the Best Works”, so how can it be made “more fair” except by bringing in more Fans to nominate and vote for the Hugos”.

      Which of course, is what Sad Puppies is about.

      Getting more Fans involved in choosing the Hugos.

    3. I rather doubt that such a thing as a “a more fair way to pick Hugo winners” can exist, considering how different groups understand “fairness.” [Cue Inigo Montoya sound clip” You keep using that word…]

      If the goal is to develop a more inclusive way, or a way to make the awards more truly representative of fandom (BTW – how do we define a “fan”? Somebody who reads nothing but SF/F? Somebody for whom 50% or more of their reading is SF/F? Somebody who reads nothing but SF/F but only a few books a year? Used to be it was relatively easy: just look at the Analog subscriber list, but now????) then I am confident the leadership and majority of the advocates for ending puppy sadness would be delighted to see that result.

    4. “Neither side wants that.”

      Concern troll is concerned. And ignorant. We’ve played exactly by the rules the SJWs established.

  41. Ha! I typed out a post on this Tor-rible nonsense the other day before work consumed my soul, and lo, now I find everyone has been talking about it and said all the things I needed to say.

    It’s rather nicely efficient to know there are people smarter than me already thinking these things out. *goes back to playing catch-up*

  42. In a reply to her post, at ‹https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts/10152728739637461?comment_id=10152796098467461›, Irene Gallo wrote:

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

    1. Heh. Nailed it* [https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/06/08/trust-and-loathing-cedar-sanderson/#comment-277811].

      Modified limited hangout playbook, Page 3.

      I think Page 4 is “we need to turn the page.”

      I will believe her sincerity only after she directly apologizes to John C. Wright.

      *No bragging rights claimed, as this was about as bold a prediction as “the next Pope will be Catholic” (and admitting I have my doubts about the one subsequent to that.)

  43. “Note that those statements are so wrong they’re not even in the same universe we inhabit.”

    O…M…G!
    I had no idea.

  44. My sister does not have access to WP right now, so I am letting her borrow my account tonight.
    =====
    I (Shay) become involved in SP when my sister (Kat/wyldkat) told me that we, the readers, had a say in the Hugo awards. I have been watching from the side lines as the fur has been flying, dismayed at some of the comments.

    Today she showed me the comment made by Ms. Gallo. What this woman, a creative editor for Tor Books, is b**ching about, hate and prejudice, and narrow-mindedness in what she “sees” in others is EXACTLY what she had done here. A bigot calling someone else a bigot. 😦
    ====
    Kat back, the really sad part is these people do not know who all is watching, and who is forming opinions about Tor Books and the Progressives based on the lies they are spreading.

    1. I think that Gallo assumes that everyone who isn’t whatever-the-heck-she-imagines-a-Neo-Nazi-to-be is on her side. She truly doesn’t grasp how large a percentage of sf fandom she is in danger of alienating.

  45. Pingback: No More Tor - Warden's Keep

  46. Thank you for not stopping four years ago. That would have deprived too many of us enjoyable days losing ourselves in other worlds.

    I see Ms. Gallo has issued a sort-of-apology. And also that Tom Doherty has issued an official statement on Tor com (some of the comments there are interesting in an obviously brainwashed sort of way). For me, it’s too little. I posted on my blog about why I won’t patronize that publisher again unless they take actions. I’ll see what they do in the coming weeks, but simple statement that those are her views and not the company’s won’t cut it.

    1. Kamas, it is inappropriate to blame an employer and fellow employees for the idiotic FB posts of one or more idiots. Likely these are a clique such as forms in any workplace, eating together and bad-mouthing competitors and other staffers. The employer should not fire somebody for “talking outside of class) unless it becomes a pattern of reckless disregard for the company’s welfare.

      John C. Wright has said on his blog that he has worked effectively with Ms Gallo on past projects. There are other editors at TOR who have not disparaged the “puppies” and who should not be smeared with the mud thrown by Ms Gallo and those like her at TOR. It is not their fault they work with a few people so “inside the bubble” that they think it appropriate to mock the “un-cool” kids without concern for repercussions.

      I recommend continuing to buy TOR published authors whom you respect and who seem to respect you. You would be entirely reasonable to avoid TOR published authors who have joined the attacks on those seeking alleviation of puppy sadness. It would also be reasonable to pass over any editors/writers at TOR who have not defended or endorsed the Sad Puppies voters (reach your own conclusions about the Rabid Puppies: VD has been deliberately provocative in ways that justify even reasonable people distancing themselves.)

      TOR/Tom Doherty should be allowed more than one foul ball; wait until you see how the at-bat finishes.

  47. This is more than one foul ball. Most every company I’ve ever heard of has a policy of ‘don’t do/say anything that reflects poorly on the company’. The Nielsen Haydens and Feder have made more than a few nasty comments over the last several months. That Gallo used her personal FB account is irrelevant. She chose to promote a product of her employer in a public way, by taking a shot at a group of people, then backed that up with lies and character assassination. When called on it, she posted cat pictures. Her apology was anything but. That Tor has allowed such actions to continue (apparently unchecked) for months indicates they are either inept or actually support such views. In neither way do I feel the need to support them anymore. TDs official statement was fine, but I’ll need to see actions to believe things are going to change.

    If any of us fans made public statements disparaging our employers products, coworkers/employees we’d be having a real short conversation with someone from HR that amounted to “Nice working with you, good bye”.

    If things change there I’ll think about buying from them again, but not until that happens.

  48. Is there a generally-used term to describe this whole thing, particularly the initial Facebook post? If not, I humbly suggest “Pique de Gallo” or “Gallo’s Whines.”

  49. I have left several comments in this thread, but threaded through the posts. Apologies. I had not known that I could come to the end and simply post.

    Most everything I know about the puppies mess comes from here.

    I don’t do social media, so I know little about the puppies mess, but I assure you, there have been campaigns for awards for many decades. I took part in some of them — unsuccessfully, obviously. I could have continued but in late 1970’s concluded that it was better to promote commercial sales rather than spend time on awards.

    One can win awards without campaigning. Larry Niven has never campaigned in his life, for awards or sales. I do campaign for sales — or used to — and as a result our collaborations outsell his solo works, as a data point. None ever won awards, but all were best sellers.

    As to blackguarding Tor, Tom Doherty has been a good friend since 1972 when he was VP of sales at Simon and Schuster and S&S published Mote In God’s Eye. I cannot imagine Tom taking part in any effort to blackguard a Tor author.

    1. Dr Pournelle,

      As has been mentioned, Tom Doherty posted A Message from Tom Doherty to Our Readers and Authors, pointing out that

      [Irene Gallo] did not make it clear that her comments were hers alone. They do not reflect Tor’s views or mine. She has since clarified that her personal views are just that and apologized to anyone her comments may have hurt or offended.

      Which has settled much of the matter to all but the fuggheads on our side.

      Of course, the comments on Mr Doherty’s post are full of vituperation from the fuggheads on the other side of the controversy, upset that he’s not standing my his employee. This is the Internet, after all; I sometimes wonder whether you’d have championed it so in the ARPANET days had you known about Twitter and blog comments. 😦

      1. Twitter and blog comments? How about imagining such a massive data breach that would enable [someone] to capture the personnel files of all federal government executive branch employees?

        What happens when Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp starts going in and changing logistics orders so that a front-line unit receives a shipment of tampons instead of the ordered ans (supposedly) shipped 9mm ammo? Or when a fighter wing receives spare parts for an artillery unit?

        2. They got the SF-86 clearance forms back to 1985 by one report. I filled in my first one in 1993.

          1. I’ve read that the data is already being offered on the black market. Enjoy being blackmailed by the Chicoms, the Norks, the Persians and a thousand and one other splinter movements.

            You’ve my sincere sympathy.

          2. According to the union, they got socials, veteran status and a bunch of other stuff on everyone who was in the employee system, too– retired, currently working, etc.

            Recently admitted they were in there for at least a year, I heard, so… yeah, lots of time to get LOTS of information.

            If they also got the SF-86 forms, then every military technician is also gotten, and anybody who’s been stationed at a sensitive location…and, oh, gads, that means they’ve also got the data on all the people who failed their security clearance….

            …which makes me wonder if the “data breaches” in several of the military-associated banks were actually a flaw in the banks’ security at all.

        3. and to cap it all — this was discovered when a company was running a demo of their program on the system.

          Impressive demo.

          1. I’d buy what they’re selling…

            unless….

            maybe it’s a long running conspiracy to make their product look invaluable… ?

            😉

  50. I was checking my FB timeline for something I’d said, and I noticed it missing. It looks like Moshe Feder has purged, or privatized any and all of his SP posts. (I knew a few people here are listed as his friends, they could probably tell if they were just made Friends only.)

  51. It’s funny, y’know — when I was adolescent the phrase was “commie, hippie, pinko, fag” and now it is “racist, misogynistic, and homophobic”.

    I suppose we should give credit for bigger words but the thinking remains remarkably similar. It seems to me that some people have stared too long into the abyss.

    No, the thinking isn’t the same. At least not all of it. “hippie” and “fag” were simply lifestyle/worldview/behavior condemnations, and in that sense, more akin to “racist, misogynistic, and homophobic.” “Commie” and “pinko”, those are akin to “Nazi and fascist.” Of course, they are akin both as denigrations/slurs, and as political/totalitarian ideologies, something that can be enjoyable and/or wearying to point out to VileProgs when they toss “fascist” and “Nazi” around while touting their own collectivist, race conscious delusions.

    More importantly, the body count of the commies and pinkos is far, far higher than that of the racists, misogynists and homophobes.

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