Of Pigs, Fights and Life

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is where Sarah slaps herself for forgetting the old injunction about wrestling a pig.  Or, more importantly, about forgetting her own childhood.

I was thinking the other day that the defining characteristic of my childhood was “loneliness” and this is true.  For various reasons, some of them because I caught everything that crossed the village or even entered the county and was therefore quarantined a lot, but also because I was the youngest of a large brood of cousins, and the next youngest was my brother almost 10 years older than I.  I often say I learned to read early in self-defense because it was exasperating to hear my brother and cousin (who was raised with us) argue over books, and I couldn’t join in.  Earlier than that, barely remembered, was the time I tried to talk about this book I’d “read” which I’d totally made up.  I couldn’t figure out how they caught me.  (Let’s say three year olds lack experience of life to make up westerns.)

Part of the problem is that I had the issue of all young kids raised with adults.  I had no clue how to relate to kids my age.  And there was a particular technique that infuriated me: this is where the kids would make oblique remarks and needle and push, until I finally lost and beat them.  … and got punished because I could point at nothing specific.  And even if I had, dad would say that beating was not proper return for teasing.

I grew up physically brave, but all too easy to kill with unkindness.  It was part of the reason (beyond fear to my career, duh.  And no, I don’t want former editors to assure me that no, they don’t discriminate on politics.  If there’s something the puppy fight has shown is that they do, they have, and it’s so ingrained they don’t even notice) I was in the closet so long.  I don’t like fights, and I hate the sort of needling tease the other side is so good at.  The “What?  Why are you looking at me?  I didn’t do anything?” smirk in the face of a village urchin, in other words.

When I entered this fight, I knew it would get bad.  I entered it because I was given no choice.  I have kids.  If I didn’t even have kids, I’d have stayed in the political closet, secure in the belief of “apres moi le deluge.”  But I have kids.  And the insanity of tearing Western civ apart out of some perceived longing for a utopia that doesn’t exist will affect them and any kids they might have.

So I came out of the political closet.  And I knew there would be consequences.  I’d like to claim I’m an innocent and thought the left would fight openly.  I’m not stupid.  Part of what kept me in the closet for years was seeing how they engaged to destroy anyone who disagreed with them.  I knew the whisper campaigns and the “you don’t want to be seen with HER” to the point you knew nothing wrong about the person but you were sure they had committed abominable crimes.  Too abominable to be mentioned.

It didn’t take long, either.  All it took was some intimation I was less than happy with the results of the 12 election (ah — this is where “I told you so” comes in.  I was never crazy for Romney (too statist for my tastes) but the man should run with that slogan.) The insane started pouring in.  The German contingent posited that I came to the states to escape the revolution (at 11.  Which is the age I was at the time.  Shut up.  I’m that precocious.)  Mind you most of the people who did so came from Africa, the alternative being death.  But apparently running in front of Soviet “consultants” and their Cuban shock troops makes you a fascist.  There were others.  There was more.

I knew things were thoroughly out of control when the Passive Voice linked me ON A POST ABOUT EDITING and my colleagues who had heard what a horrible person I was flocked in to blacken my name and talk about how I was a “fascist.”  (Apparently libertarians are the same as fascists.  Who knew?)

Among other things I’ve been called a white supremacist (blink), a fascist (blink), homophobic (blink, blink), racist (blink), a “fan of the Portuguese regime deposed in the seventies” (this by the German wonder who doesn’t get that one can oppose both a regime and its replacement.  Ah, for a mind that simple), atheist (blink, blink, blink), Mormon (blink)…  Well, let’s say and save time that I’ve been called everything but a good person.

It wears on me, not so much because they’re insults, but because they’re crazy insults.  I am aware that at some level, permanently, my name is tainted with a large selection of the public.  This doesn’t worry me perhaps as much as it should, because a) most people don’t play that much on the net, much less in our circles b) there’s always indie.  I can duck out, go fully indie and write historical erotic romances, for all I care.  (No, I didn’t write them.  No, I don’t advise you to look, but while researching?  Henry VIII Catherine of Aragon lactating erotica.  I didn’t see anything past the title, and I don’t even.)

And then there’s the speshul that’s file 770.  You guys aren’t at the controls and don’t see it — and to the members of the ELoE who pinged me to tell he is a good guy, you didn’t grow up in the same village I did — not only the crazy sh*t that gets linked, but the commenters who come over and who open with “You’re such an idiot” and therefore don’t get approved.

Mike Glyer is at least as smart as the cobbler’s son next door when I was growing up. He’s not stupid enough to openly call names, but there are his choices of what to link.

When I said that I couldn’t mention the letters “H-u-g- and o” in the same paragraph without getting linked, I was right.  Or I might not mention the Hugos at all, or only in passing on the last paragraph.  But if the post supports the narrative the puppy-kickers are building, sure as shooting it will get linked.  Like my post about a new Golden Age, which got linked because in their blinkered little minds we’re calling for pulp.  (Sometimes one wonders about the minds that build this narrative.  You are aware someone who grew up on pulp would be 100, right?  You are aware that Heinlein not only wasn’t pulp, but was in many ways the anti-pulp.  I mean, I read Burroughs, but mostly Tarzan, and it wasn’t my favorite.  I read him because grandad had him, so I read him by 5 or 6.  Books were expensive and we had those. But his technique was outdated by then.)

But it supported the narrative, so it got linked.  The same way that its subsequent “Oh, for the love of frack, no one wants pulp” follow up wasn’t.  The same way my friend Sanford’s post over at Otherwhere Gazette, exploding their nonsense wasn’t.  The same way my post pointing out that I felt they were linking me to homophobia and how stupid this was wasn’t.

Oh, it’s very carefully done.  There is an image being built, and he links to those posts that support it.  Then when caught it’s not his fault and he can’t control his commenters, and he can’t see everything.

And, as I said, I have been conversant with these techniques since dealing with the cobbler’s son next door, while growing up.  (Weirdly he didn’t become a communist politician, and has instead racked up several jail terms.)

So Mike Glyer is smarter than the average bear, and much better at Alinsky techniques, and I’m an idiot to fall for them and come out swinging, which meant I had a spanking coming.

In my defense, but not as an excuse, I’m spending 10 to 12 hours a day painting/scraping and sanding, and by the time I get home can only see so far in comments, deal with a lot of the ones I don’t approve, and… I’m tired.

For whatever reason, my body has decided to be violently allergic to SOMETHING.  If I knew what I would avoid it. We’ve now been over every inch of this house with a fine tooth comb and TRUST me there is no mold.  There is dust, and I’m allergic to dust, but I’ve brought over my epa-filtered vacuum and the appropriate masks. I have no idea what is triggering an all-alarm auto-immune.  The last time I had an attack this bad I spent two nights with feathers in my bed (the hotel kept swearing there were none, till I found the label in the middle of the night.)  And now that the steroid prescription has run out, I’m heading downward again.

Beyond that there’s mere tiredness.  We’ve all of us been working all our free time, including the boys in time from classes/jobs at violent physical labor, so we’re ALL stumbling tired.  Which accounts for injuries, which in turn make the whole thing harder.  Yes, we’re using money we don’t have to pay some people to do some of it, but see the “money we don’t have.”  My last two years have emptied our savings, which come from my writing, mostly. So there’s a limit to what we can pay.

And up there you have an encapsulation of how the left wins/has won most cultural battles.  First, because they don’t care if their narrative is true.  They cast it in stone and then find anything, no matter how much they have to twist to support it.  Second, the rest of us can’t defend ourselves from accusations so stupid they’re not even wrong.  Accusing me of being a White Supremacist is roughly akin to accusing me of being an uplifted purple wombat.  It’s so crazy that how the h*ll do you even combat that?  Third, we have real lives.  My blogging posting and commenting is right now squeezed into a few minutes morning and evening, around brutal manual labor.  And when that is done, it will be squeezed around finally finishing books, so I can put up the sequel to Witchfinder, continue the third (Rogue Magic) and deliver Darkship Revenge and Bowl of Red. Because I’m not a dilettante and I have family depending on me.

Again, this is not an excuse.  I’m smart enough to see the smirking trap, even while stumbling tired.  Unfortunately I was tired enough not to care, because taking a swing at last felt so good.  And it was dumb.  And I knew it even while I did it.

This is their game.  As I said, I knew when I came out of the political closet what I would get called.  Fascist, of course, because not wanting a powerful state makes me just that.  And racist because I disagree with dividing people by races and a system of spoils.  Homophobic because, of course, not giving a really good hot d*mn about who people sleep with makes you homophobic.  Even if you endorse SSM, (which I’m on record as doing back to 06) because, well, you don’t approve of the activists’ dirty pool tactics.  So you are against them.

I knew all this because in the seventies in Portugal I dealt with the original, unadulterated, unapologetic communists.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, over here they’ll say they’re not (except for their approval of every communist regime ever) and bring up stuff about not wanting to expropriate means of production.  Only it works like a communist, it talks like a communist, and it goes “forward” like a communist.  And their tactics haven’t changed in close on to 100 years.

I was surprised with the Sad Puppy fight.  I shouldn’t have been, but I was.  I was particularly surprised because Brad is several shades to the left of me, because the suggested list was of all political colors, shapes, ideologies.  But the “racist, homophobic, sexist” came out again, and the “neo-nazi” and the smart operators shape the narrative and the truly abysmally dumb ones (and yes, from the lack of self-consciousness in saying it and the lack of butt-covering Irene Gallo is one, though perhaps not so much dumb as specialized dumb.  Many artists and art directors are thick as cement with words, though brilliant with visuals.)

They brought everything to bear, because they always do.  They started with the most extreme accusations because they always do.

The end result is that sane people, working people, people who give a d*mn about life and don’t think everything is politics tend to walk away shaking their heads.

The good news is I’m not doing that.  No one ever accused me of being sane.  Also, I wouldn’t have got in this fight (both politics and puppies) if it weren’t worth fighting.

I know damage has been done when a friend who’s known me for years tells me something like “I’m not as conservative as you are.  I support SSM.  I don’t care about people’s color” and I have to point out what the other side says not only isn’t real, it has no basis in reality.

I do disagree with “progressive” (Lord deliver me from those progressing into the past) methods to do things like help the poor.  Minimum wage laws can’t and don’t — they just promote the importation of more illegal workers, because some businesses simply lack the margin — for instance.  But that doesn’t mean I want to kick widows and orphans out in the snow, and their saying so don’t make it so.

I’m a libertarian (note the small l), or if you prefer a rational anarchist.  I don’t believe we can survive without government, but I believe that government is a bad master indeed and must be hemmed in as much as possible.  Weirdly — coff — I don’t believe the eternally-hacked-into, file-losing, its-own-ass-chasing government is a force that can propel us to the bright new future.  If you believe so it’s up to you to prove it.  Throughout history governments have been good at one thing: creating oligarchies.

I don’t believe in oligarchies.  I believe in self-ownership and self-responsibility.  I believe in equality before the law (regardless of race, creed or sex).  I believe in doing your best and looking after those who depend on you.  I don’t believe in special accommodations for anyone, but I believe noblesse oblige and that the strong should help the weak.  (I have.  I do. Often to our own detriment.)  Because we’re all weak sometime.  I just don’t believe in the government mediating it. Government is just another self-interested party. Give it power and it only grows itself.

And I believe in the future.  I believe in the human race.  (What other race would you have me believe in?  Are you by any chance a beaver or a rat?) I believe we can survive, we can improve.  And we should. I believe with some disgusting interludes the future is usually better than the past.

I’ll continue working to make it so.  I’m not going anywhere.  I will also try not to take swings at smirky cobbler’s boys.  Because they are inconsequential.  Instead I’ll feel sorry for the deluded who follow them into the abyss.

This year is shaping up to be a right b*tch even without the various illnesses and accidents.  So I’ll be busy, but I’ll continue talking.  About the puppies?  Oh, now and then.  Though the topic has limited appeal.  And there are other things, like books I’ve found.  And other stuff.  And national politics.  All of which will come up, as they usually do.

And now, if you excuse me, I have a thousand square feet to sand and wax. And I probably should call the doctor and tell him I’m having trouble breathing again.

Life goes on.  And life is important.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers, and many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.

652 thoughts on “Of Pigs, Fights and Life”

      2. Alas, most of us Mormons keep trying to forget him, but he just won’t GO AWAY…(Although he is useful for those people who assume that ALL Mormons have to be Republicans.)

        I wasn’t crazy about Romney either, and was mildly astonished at all the people that assumed all the Mormons would vote for him just because he was Mormon. (And sure, I did vote for him…but only because the only other alternative was the idiot incumbent.)

          1. I would have voted for Zeeba the Syphilitic Camel over BHOzo, so a fortiori for Romney. Not quite my cup of tea, but an honorable man indeed. Alas, one who brings a butter knife to a gun fight. Against the Cosa Nostra one cannot fight by Marquess of Queensbury Rules.

              1. He lost because he’s essentially a religious progressive, he–like Newt Gingrinch, Dick Santorum and Wassisname from Arkansas are perfectly willing to use the power of the state to make us do what is good for us. They’re just of a different opinion of what is good for us than the Reids and Pelosis.

                1. I should add–this caused many Rs. to stay home or vote 3rd party. Mostly stay home.

                  1. That and the fact that his willingness to attack Gingrinch, Santorum, et al contrasted with his refusal to attack Obama made many wonder just how much policy difference there was.

                    1. I guess I was unclear.

                      That is exactly my point. Obama is a socialist/atheist progressive. Romney is a Christian Progressive with Mercantilist/Fascist (economic bits, not the racist/tribal bits) proclivities. Much of their policies were overlap (this is going to be true of any Presidential Candidate of any party. The peasants want their lords and masters to take control of $THING, except $THING is more of @LIST and each peasant has a different @LIST and so the parties are euler diagrams of their memebers @LISTS as an average, multiplied by lobbiest money).

            2. Heh, this is true. Just once, though, it would be awfully nice to vote and not feel like it was a ‘lesser of two evils’ thing. Which it has been since I became old enough to vote way back in ’98. I need to take a closer look at the pool of candidates gearing up, but what little I’ve seen (with Donald Trump being a big exception, because than man is a lunatic) seems mildly promising?

              1. Girl, I’ve been voting in presidential elections since 1972 and the only time I wasn’t voting the lesser evil was 1984, and even then it is undeniable that Reagan was a lesser evil. (Pace Sarah, in 1980 we couldn’t be sure Reagan would be good; we only knew he couldn’t be worse than Carter.)

                Government being a necessary evil we will of necessity forever vote the lesser evil.

                3. 1984 was the LAST time I voted for a candidate, instead of voting against a candidate.

            3. Romney sure didn’t bring a butter knife to the nomination fight. That’s one reason I’m angry at the SOB; if he’d acted like he wanted to be President as much as he wanted to be the Republican nominee I believe he’d have won.

        2. “was mildly astonished at all the people that assumed all the Mormons would vote for him just because he was Mormon.”

          From experience around Mormons in local politics (where I grew up, I don’t know of any in local politics here) that is exactly what I expected. And it is how he won Idaho, he got single digits, to low double digit percentages in Northern Idaho, but Southern Idaho, which is primarily Mormon, gave him majorities in very close relationship to the percentages of Mormons in those districts.

          1. That’s oversimplifying things a bit.
            There was a certain amount of tribalism, but it was not limited to Mormons. Since they comprise a goodly percentage of the local population, most people are familiar with the history of the faith, and run under the assumption that no true Mormon is in favor of giving the federal government more power.
            There’s also the fact that we have close economic and social ties to Northern Utah, where he turned the Salt Lake games from a boondoggle to a success that turned a profit. That type of competency made a huge impression locally.

      3. I think many (I won’t say most because the majority probably have no clue who he is) Mormons, myself included, would like to do just that.

            1. There are times I actually wonder if my name gets flagged as being ‘not a real word and therefore it is a bot’

        1. Yes, but he didn’t know his place in the universe, got uppity and tried to take control of what was not his to control.

          1. LOL auto-correct strikes again. (It was pretty clear that was the case, on account of the sentence not making any sense.)

            I’m glad to hear it, though. When I moved to the town where I finished university, it became a depressing commonality for people to inform me, upon learning that I was Mormon that I was the only one they’d met who hadn’t been rude to them. (I blame that, however, on this a.) being the least-populated state in the nation, and b.) the area of the state that is largely Mormon started out as one of the satellite-colony settlements from Utah back in the day, and like many such places tends toward the…strange and insular…)

            1. With some people the only way to not be rude to them is to acknowledge their obvious superiority. Daring to do your own thinking is an intolerable act of lèse-majesté.

              As Mae West replied to the judge who demanded,
              “Young lady, are you showing your contempt for this court?”
              “No, I’m doing my best to hide it.”

              Note the demonstration of proper techniques for establishment of affirmative consent.

            2. I have worked with Mormons, and have family that are Mormon. They are people like anyone else, some good, some bad. On the whole though, most are good neighbors and good workers, unfortunately, due to EVERY experience I have ever had with one in a position of political or bureaucratic power, I would never trust one in government. Which made it very hard to hold my nose and vote for Romney (as well as his liberal policies) but I did so because he was the lesser of two evils, I am convinced though, that experiences like mine are one of the leading reasons he lost.

  2. There is a reason I have been staying out of most of the mess beyond a few places. I just don’t have the time. And arguing with them does no good, they are, to go back a while to your golem analogy, written in stone. There’s no changing their minds.

    1. Cedar, you are absolutely correct. There is no changing their minds. Doing so would be religious heresy to them.
      But never forget the real goal which is to engage them in fair and open debate thus exposing them for the cruel intolerant bigots they truly are to the vast majority of onlookers.
      That’s why I’ve been tickled to death over the whole Tor flap. Our side stayed reasonable and used logic and truth while their side went ugly early. Got the attention of lots of otherwise uninvolved folks who could not ignore the volume of invective coming solely from one side.
      Several good friends and acquaintances have chastised me for being too nice in all this, but it has always been my intention to remain on the high moral ground and let the other side braid the rope with which they will eventually hang themselves.

      1. I attempt to do this with my blog. And I will engage those who comment at my blog, or posts elsewhere, but I don’t have time to seek out all the arguments and wade into them.

            1. Alas, no. But the others have a role. Especially when those interested third parties start poking around looking for ‘reasonable’ people. Quiet confirmation can do a lot to bolster fiery debate.

    2. The exercise is to sharpen our arguments, to keep those who are headed in the right direction from being overwhelmed and to nudge those on or near the fence closer to reality.

      And sometimes it feels good to let out a metaphorical scream…

  3. When I entered this fight, I knew it would get bad. I entered it because I was given no choice. I have kids. If I didn’t even have kids, I’d have stayed in the political closet, secure in the belief of “apres moi le deluge.”

    I’ll admit to giving into this and it’s even nastier cousin, “burn the whole thing down around them” at times.

    The luxury is the small, sad consolation prize you get for not finding a woman who thought you were father material (except for a couple of single moms who thought I was great father material for someone else’s kid).

  4. I don’t know who said this, but it’s absolutely true:
    “Only an idiot can go through life without making enemies”

    Stay strong, and try to stay healthy.

  6. Let’s see…yesterday I bought a Heinlein that was curiously missing from my tablet library, and today I purchased 4 Hoyts and a Boykin. Now if I could just figure out how to read faster… 🙂

        2. 4 Hoyts, that’s scary. Dangerous even.

          But it’s the tiny Boykin you gotta keep an eye on. All that red hair…

          I still get shivers during Brave.

      4. I’m not sure what a Hoyt is, but I think I’d like some Pancakes and Eggs with my Boykin…

        1. “..who might his quietus make with a bared boykin…”?

          (The Bard always being apropos.)

          M

  7. “This is their game.”

    Nibbling to death by ducks? Niggling innuendo and back-handed “compliments”? The barbs of the banderilleros and ploys of the picadores, intended to goad and enrage their target into a foolish charge?

    It ain’t a nice game and it isn’t intended to be playful.

    This technique was most publicly deployed by the Clintonista defense of his serial sexual abuse. It is the looking at a pointillist work and demanding about each dot whether it represents the work in its entirety — and of course no single dot does; that is the nature of such works — and concluding that since no single dot is a picture of a woman eating an apple, then the whole of the work cannot be a woman eating an apple.

    By such stratagems does a tortoise outrun Achilles.

    1. It’s just a method, a tactic. The objective is to overwhelm by the death of a thousand cuts. At some point, if they don’t learn better, it’s likely to be necessary to rise up with friends and stomp on the damned Lilliputians!

      (Which converting the SFF publishing industry to indie is part of … but the boot will not really be felt until another one or two of the SJ-captive tradpub houses actually falls/i.e. is closed, due to lack of sufficient business sense to actually compete. Especially if the money people decide to set up a Baen-like operation because it is obviously a better business model.)
      Meanwhile, focus on the larger issues and don’t let the flock of small squealing pigs distract you or get you down!

      1. At some point, if they don’t learn better, it’s likely to be necessary to rise up with friends and stomp on the damned Lilliputians!

        They are counting on that as they think it will allow them to destroy us and reign unimpeded.

        I suspect it is more likely that the people they claim we will wind up ruling after if for no other reason than many will, faced with the choice of Franco or Stalin choose Franco.(the one time I got through to a leftist was defending a theoretical Franco shirt I proposed wearing in response to all the Che shirts).

        Even if Stalin does win I will enjoy listening from my cell as most of the progressives scream, “I support the revolution”, as they are shot in the prison yard. They will die still idiots but no longer useful.

        1. They have no concept of how easy it would be to destroy the technic civilization they can’t live without.

      2. Not a problem, if they win enough victories outside of the publishing industry they can rewrite the rules so that SJ-captive tradpub houses will be unable to fall, it is an old tactic. It’s not hard, something as simple as a law/rule that a publisher has to post a half-million US dollar bond against libel and plagiarism claims before being allowed to sell a single copy of each book, with an exception for traditional publishers who have shown that they are reliable, would shut down indie publishing.

        1. Doesn’t have to be a specific exception, either; just “prosecutorial discretion” a la Gibson Guitars.

  8. “Fascist, of course, because not wanting a powerful state makes me just that. ”

    Of course. As Huey Long observed, fascism is coming to America by calling itself anti-Fascism.

  9. Yeah, I hate it how they can be as rude, nasty, and full of lies as they wish to be, but the moment you get tired of it and snap back at them, -you- are the bad person.
    That’s why these days when I get to the point of wanting to unload on someone, I usually just walk away and forget it, rarely do I respond and go straight for the throat anymore. Oh it does happen on occasion, but these days when it does, it’s more out of being annoyed than it is being angry. My better half has been very good at encouraging me to walk away from the idiots, and trust me, I have a very big (and well deserved) reputation in some circles for not suffering fools at all.
    I admire Larry’s ability to Fisk, and Shadowdancer’s ability to lay traps and spring them. But I lived through the usenet flamewars of yore, and I just don’t have it in me anymore to get that involved.

    1. C. S. Lewis describes this admirably in Screwtape,

      “When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy – if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this easily managed.”

      Thus are the techniques of our opponents, using such apparently innocuous ploys and encouraging us to do likewise.

      Keep in mind, their goal is not the winning of debates but rather inducing us to lose them.

      1. It doesn’t matter to them what you do or don’t do, you’ll always be a bad person.

      2. I have to admit there is satisfaction in watching a bunch of other people vent about the same subject that’s making me angry.

        I’d pretty much given up, I just figured that the world had moved on and that the trash winning hugos in the last couple decades was what people actually wanted.

        Then the puppies came along and let me know that there were a *lot* of other people who feel the same way, we just want our SF/F to contain actual science fiction and fantasy, not just SF/F flavoured propaganda cheese food.

    3. It’s probably more useful to spend that energy on a Get-Out-The-Vote effort on our own side than win converts with your rhetoric anyway.

      1. ?????? I think John is definitely on our side, and I didn’t notice him using a lot of rhetoric, perhaps you were meaning to reply to someone else?

  10. I found your books and blog through, I don’t know, something Larry posted a while back, I believe. I saw the first 2 years of puppies, and while I agreed thet the premise had merit they were more of a social experiment and not my show yet, all the garbage that got spewed after last year is what placed me firmly in the Puppies 3 camp,

    Your blogs, here and at mad genius, are ones I enjoy reading because I like being exposed to people with different life experiences and world views from mine, that is how we grow as people, by seeing other things and evolving because of them,

    I work in the offshore oil field, we get a bad rap out there for many reasons, most of which I see used in the arguments going on lately.. we get called misogynists, racist rednecks, knuckledraggers, pretty much all the same things that puppies get called. Now , don’t get me wrong, there are people that fit into those categories out there, but they don’t even begin to define everyone on the rigs( or in the puppy camp), but it is so easy to point at the vilest person and paint everyone with his brush, because then you don’t have to accept the fact that people are individuals first and treat them as such.

    I have and value both friends and people whom I listen to or read of all political spectrums, social classes, ethnic origins and actual national origins for that matter,

    Thanks to this kerfluffle, I have found several amazing authors I hadn’t heard of yet, and a several interesting new people to read to add to my collection of different world views, and thank you for being a part of that

  11. ” You are aware someone who grew up on pulp would be 100, right?”

    More like 70, Yeah, the pulps were dead or gone digest, but you could buy used pulps two-for-a-quarter. I preferred Astounding to Startling, Planet, and Thrilling Wonder but that did not mean I did not buy and enjoy.

    1. Okay, here is where I’m impaired by growing in Portugal. If your family didn’t originally get them, you can’t get them after they go out of print. I only read Simak because a friend’s father had collected them and gave me a box from the back of his closet.

    2. Well, some of the Antis a while back were saying Brad wanted to take SF back to the “pulps of the ’70s” which I found very amusing.

      1. Pulps of the… seventies? The New Wave were pulps? Damn it, Chris, I’m trying to keep a straight face.
        The worst part is most of these people are older than I. Dementia?

          1. Weren’t Zelazny’s Amber books published in the Seventies? Pulp. Pulpy pulp pulp.

            IIRC, Harlan Ellison was really hitting his stride then; A Boy & His Dog was pretty pulpy.

            Maybe they mean Dahlgren?

            Sigh — keeping up with their nonsense has me in need of an Alka-Seltzer. Pulp-pulp fizz-fizz …

              1. I was astounded to discover, on hearing Zelazny’s own reading of Nine Princes as an audiobook, that he intended it as a hard-boiled detective story.

                First published 1970, according to Wiki.

                Rumour has it that it is in talks for filming. If so, that would probably be the best thing about GoT.

          2. The Hitchhiker’ s Guide to the Galaxy was pulp?

            Granted, I never bothered learning the classifications beyond stuff I like/ don’t like.

              1. Unless you’re an author. Then it’s stuff my paying customers like/don’t like. Or so I would think.

            2. Well, they do have some advantages, mostly steering others and yourself toward similar works.

        2. You know, that would explain much: The last gasp of the failing hippie minds, with cognition loss accelerated by all the fun drugs they did back in the summer of love, lashing out at the world that has Not Lived Up To Their Expectations, over and over again.

          Quite sad, really.

              1. I’m on the boundary of Gens X and Y, and, for my future sins, I got taught by Bay Area hippies in high school. Like Sarah said, I’m still mad.

            2. One gets the impression that some of them are also drug addled losers who should not be in a position of trust or responsibility.

        3. I do have to wonder what a third version of Dangerous Visions done today would look like. A happily married man and wife with three kids?

            1. Boy Scout Troop? Are you referring to that sexist homophobic* para-military Christianist organization?

              *Yes, homophobic. Why would any pedophile want to involve himself in an organization dedicated to the grooming of impressionable young males in desperate need of adult mens’ approval?

        4. Left Hand of Darkness, the original Earthsea books, The Dispossessed, and The Lathe of Heaven are now all pulp.

          And hetronormative, patriarchial, white supremacist pulp at that.

        5. It was probably just a mistake, and they meant that New Wave of the 1970’s should be pulped. Maybe the recycled paper could be used for printing Human Wave?

        6. Yeah, the pulps were long gone by the time I was regularly reading classic SF by the time I was nine or so. The first subscription issue of an SF magazine I got was the issue of F&SF with a Gahan Wilson cover illustrating “Santa Claus vs. SPIDER” by Harlan Ellison. Yes, numba one son is the best writer of thrillers featuring St. Nick, but he wasn’t the first.

      2. By the 70’s the best pulp fiction had left print for the silver screen. Think Star Wars. Space opera crossed with sword-and-planet, pure pulp by way for the movie serials.

    3. Or read them in the family library which has been growing for some time. I grew up on pulps, and while the pulps are showing the effects of 5 generations of readers, the next generation will still be able to grow up on a diet rich in every type of SF/fantasy published in the past century, including pulps.

  12. We need people to know more about those tactics. Have you considered having the villains use them in your books?

      1. I’ve seen books propping up furniture, but a house holding up a book?

        😉

        1. The house holds the floor
          The floor holds the book case.
          The bookcase is where the Kindle is.
          The kindle has the books init.

          QED: The house is holding up the books.

      2. Image of a house in a bandana holding a sixshooter, telling a book to “stick em up!”

      3. That’s been my holdup for the last three years plus… a few hours ago I just got the last ceiling joist jacked back up into position. Now off to the workshop to make some more steelwork to bolt everything down so it stays where I put it…

        “Dammit Jim, I’m a programmer, not a carpenter!” [plumber, roofer, electrician, glazier…]

      1. Make it a self-aware computer chip — they’re two-dimensional enough for it to work.

  13. Sarah, lest anyone think you’re overstating what happens with File770, it’s happened to me as well. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I will repeat is so as to make sure people who only see this post know that it’s not just you.

    A while back, I wrote on my blog about a woman who wanted to ban men from literary readings. Obviously, as a man, I took issue with this. She seemed to me to have a personal grudge, but I said over and over that it was possible she was “skipped” over during the Q&A for any number of reasons. The Hugos were not mentioned to the best of my recollection and it wasn’t even particularly related to science fiction save that it was about books and I write books.

    That post was linked on File770.

    A little while later, I wrote a post taking men’s rights activists to task for calling for a boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road without anyone in their ranks even having seen it. I think I even mention Sad Puppies in that one, though it wasn’t really a key point to the post.

    Nothing.

    One helped advance the narrative, one that we are hateful misogynists. The other would have revealed that no, I call out stupid on both sides of the issue.

    Now, I have had to figure out why he would link to one and not the other. It shouldn’t have been a lack of exposure since I shared it in most of my typical haunts for post sharing, including one that Glyer has managed to get himself into. So what conclusions can one draw?

    1. That Mr. Glyer is a very clever bastiche indeed.
      You will note that he only prints excerpts on File770, and those carefully chosen to advance the narrative. True, he posts links to the entire topic, but does so to cover his hirsute arse knowing full well that his readers will never follow the link to read the entire post, but only to leave their snarky trollish comments.
      He is by all estimation so very much an Alinsky disciple judging simply by his actions and tactics.

      1. True. Most don’t click crap. I know how many clicks I get per post of his. Honestly, there’s so much there that there’s no way people are going to click every link.

        Of course, the plus side is that File770 is where someone said I wrote the most offensive thing in this whole situation, so I’ve got that going for me. 😀

    2. Well, he’s honest in his naming. 770 means that User and Group have full privs, but “Other” gets nothing.

      Typical inclusive progressives.

    3. It’s possible it’s not conscious. My sister does it– mom calls it “instigating”– and as best I can tell it’s…sort of like narrative bias, or that thing where scientists believe there will be X result and so that’s what they see.

      Out of the blue example: we’ve all heard about how people don’t see most of what happens around them, right? “It’s amazing what people don’t notice,” yadda yadda, shown by studies, etc?
      I happened to catch an explanation of the origin of that theory– the CIA did studies on it, and it is very well supported. It’s not “people don’t notice stuff,” it’s a variation on how a magician works. When something unexpected and obvious happens, you can slip something in while they’re focused elsewhere. Even the famous “guy in a gorilla suit” thing had to happen while people were focused on the basket ball.
      But it tends to get used as evidence of people simply not seeing things all the time, rather than not seeing everything, as best I can tell because of the “well I saw it, why didn’t everyone else?” effect.

      1. For various reasons not relevant at the moment, there was a racing car engine on a stand in our living room for a couple of years. (don’t laugh too hard, it was easily the most costly single item in the house…) We’re talking about a bright blue V8 engine with polished and satin finished aluminum bits; hardly invisible. My wife could occasionally hang laundry on it.

        People would come over to visit, or for dinner, and walk right by it, since it was at the archway between the living room and kitchen. And most of them would have walked right past it *dozens* of times before something finally clicked in their head. And then they’d spin around, completely freaked out. “WHAT IS THAT?!” And then refuse to believe that they’d walked past it many times.

        1. Problem being, that’s about as far as it goes– they weren’t there looking for “what is in TRX’s livingroom,” they were there for a totally different thing and didn’t see an unrelated detail.

          It’s like describing a magic show as people not seeing a guy who has pidgeons up his sleeves– it’s really more about people being able to be distracted from things, or ability to focus without distraction.

          There’s also the issue of being polite. I’ve been the person who noticed, but didn’t comment on, this or that strange thing. It’s really, really embarassing when someone asks why you didn’t say anything when you noticed the strange thing in the first place, and they don’t accept “it didn’t come up” as an answer.

            1. So MUCH. 😉 (Actually true.) And now back to scraping/sanding/painting. If I can get my body to stand up. I keep going into this state where I go “Come on, climb the ladder” and my body WON’T move.

              2. Er, please don’t kill yourself fixing that house. I’m really looking forward to those sequels, especially to Witchfinder because I’m more into fantasy than SF (But also Darkship!!!) and if I don’t get them eventually I’ll be a very cranky dragon. Also, uh, Christian charity, love, and other nice things (but mostly I want my toys.)

        1. Hmm. 6114. Some sort of IOT. But I don’t see device 11 in any of the PDP-8 books I’ve glanced through…

          1. I’m not sure what is sadder:

            1. One of us went there.
            2. Some of us kept it going.
            3. Even more of us at least got it.

            Also, how do we know it’s DEC and not CDC-160 series.

            2. heck, I love this stream of consciousness stuff. All I was trying to do was convert c4c from hex to binary, not get into computer stuff.

              1. Too late.

                Personally, if we’re going to do non-power of 2 architectures I like the old IBM 7070 with a decimal plus sign bit word. Not old enough to have used them (predate my birth and I’m not a young one) but got fascinated by them in the 90s.

                  1. That’s a good debate.

                    Being a mathematician by training I’m partial to staking a claim for the Lambda Calculus Church developed but I think the official answer is AutoCode. I know a couple of people designed recognizable computer languages before it but I believe AutoCode was the first implemented.

                    1. I might argue for Morse Code, possibly Amerindian smoke signals or African (and other) drumming.

                      Depending on your definition of computer and whether it is strictly required for such a code to be recognized.

                    3. The reason I would draw the line after those is they are not designed to describe to an automated processing system a series of actions to take. That is broadly how I’d define a computer.

                      More strictly I’d define a computer as any system that can analyze and solve a computable function for a given set of inputs. This does not mean it has to be able to solve any arbitrary computable function. A device that is designed to solve a specific one is still a computer just not a general purpose computer.

                    4. So where does a Jacquard loom fall in this discussion? From a certain point of view, it could be argued as the first CNC tool.

                    5. Definitely not ADA, which dates to 1980. The A-0 language, AutoCode, and Fortran all predate 1955.

                  2. @Jerry: Yes, by the definition I gave the Jacquard loom does qualify.

                    @emily61: ADA as in the abortion of a language the DoD developed or as a name for the (to my knowledge) unnamed worked by the Countess Lovelace?

                    1. ADA is an ugly language, sure enough. On the other hand, Boeings, with software written in ADA, don’t die of software problems.

                    3. In terms of design history, it looks like A-0 was first (1951), then in 1952 came AutoCode and GEORGE (which was a rather limited algebraic language, and in some ways an influence on Fortran development), and then Fortran (1953). Of those, only Fortran is really around today.

                      As I understand it, the others were designed primarily to abstract math so that they didn’t need to be expressed as assembly language, perhaps with some simple flow control. As such, they are far more primitive than modern computer languages.

              2. > All I was trying to do was convert c4c from hex to binary,
                > not get into computer stuff.

                Uh.

                Ok.

        2. Are you sure he’s using bits? Without specifying a base, the number could probably be pretty much anything. (I’m doing my best trying to determine whether or not it *could* be anything, but then, keep in mind that, in base e, this number would be e^2 + e^3 + e^6 + e^11 + e^12, or approximately 223059.84…so who knows where we might be able to go, depending on what base we choose?)

  15. I sort of grew up on pulp, in a second-hand way. I was that Odd kid who read Burroughs, Doc Savage and Conan while everyone else was reading Goosebumps.

        1. I have a feeling that references to this particular work of “not Sarah” is going to show up here like a bad penny. Which is a shame, because “Zombie Wife” has a whole lot more WTF! …ewwwww. going for it imho

            1. I totally didn’t know there was such a thing as lactation porn until I was looking for information on getting a mother dog to produce milk when she had almost none. Imagine my surprise at what popped up when I googled something to the effect of “non-lactating bitch”

  18. I may just be a lurker but come here and mgc daily for a reason. Let me make your statement untrue. You are a good person. Maybe missing a bolt, screw sometimes, but who isn’t? (Everyone’s favorite commentator is missing a hardware store). Need to buy more of your shifter series when hugos over and can read more.

  19. What astonishes me the arrogance of the other side. Yesterday we were treated to the spectacle of John Scalzi, TOR’s highest-paid author (correct me if I’m wrong) denigrating Puppies as “sh*tlords” and “sh*tballs” and saying he didn’t want or need them to buy his books.

    A decade ago, Scalzi was nobody. He helped become someone, in part, due to Glenn Reynolds promoting his work at Instapundit. It is very likely that some of the same people he’s now insulting were among those who found his work through Reynolds. Is he such a Big Name now that he can afford to act like an abusive bully on social media without consequence? I suspect we’re going to find out.

      1. If I ever become a Big Name, or even a Modest Name, I hope you guys will keep me from getting a big head. Everyone needs someone to whisper in their ear: “Remember, thou art mortal”.

        1. And, as our resident Imperator can attest, if one ignores those words, expect a Special Meeting in the Senate.

            1. Has anybody heard from him after the Ides of March? [Evil Grin]

            2. I’ve seen him in real life a few times. I think he’s going through one of his times of depression, partly accelerated by the loss of Shadow’s bairn.

                  1. Vacation. She’s making quite the go of it, driving all about and seeing fun stuff. I believe she’s covered a territory larger than her native land…

                    1. Ah… I already wondered if the new singer of Nightwish was one of us 🙂

                      /Just kidding — she’s actually a Dutch professional singer who filled in a few already-booked dates after their previous singer was let go, and she did a good enough job that they asked her to stay. And yes, my favorite Finnish band 🙂

                    3. She’s seen stuff I haven’t! Look, promise me when things stop long enough for me to catch my breath, if I do a tour of places like hte Grand Canyon you guys who are near will meet me.

        3. That’s why I’m standing behind you with this tape measure and push dagger sharp, pointy thing. Honest, I swear.

    3. He got his long term contract. He feels like he can do whatever he wants now. I predicted at Brad’s and I will restate here, that the quality of his work is going to enter a slow decline. Along with this decline he is going to become more and more offensive because he feels safe to do as he pleases now. If TOR is hit hard the boycott that appears to be inevitable at this point it will be interesting to see how his attitude changes if TOR has to declare bankruptcy and his contract is put in line with their other creditors.

          1. Actually that wasn’t a test flight. That was a press photo op flyby, and one of the pilots in another plane decided to show off a little.
            And destroyed the XB-70 in the process and killed several people.

          2. That’s what happens when you fly in too tight a formation. One of you goes down it’ll probably take at least one other with them.

            It happened to the B-70 too.

              1. Fine, ruin my analogy 😉

                Although the broader lesson will fit if his contract does crash and burn due to Gallo’s now banned maneuver.

      2. …the quality of his work is going to enter a accelerate it’s to date slow decline.

        FIFY.

          1. Well, it is slow if you compare it to the velocity of the Earth hurdling around the Sun or the speed of light in vacuum.

      3. If TOR crashes and burns his contract it will be because neo-Nazis and Hatey Mchaters destroyed it in order to get at him; it will never be due to any action of his beyond his courageous self-sacrifice at putting his career on the line in challenging those @#! puppies in defense of SF that is good and true. He will be as much the martyr as those Hollywood black-listed for following the Party’s orders to expose themselves.

      4. Keep in mind that contract was drafted by Tor’s Tradpub lawyers. I’d be willing to bet a shiny new dime that somewhere in it are weasel words that let Tor off the hook for major bucks should a certain author’s books fail to perform up to expectations.
        What I’m sure John fails to appreciate is that the committed CHORF base is extremely small, and not that the majority of fans have had their noses rubbed in the whole sordid mess more than a few who just might have bought his next few books will now hold off. That cusp is razor sharp, and cuts both ways. Heinlein knew his audience well and described the dynamic as his paperback reprint competing with a few beers for the consumer’s dollar. I’m thinking JS is going to be horrified when he learns that a typical reader can buy a six pack and three indie e-books for what Tor charges for his latest.

        1. Also CHORFs are notoriously stingy when it comes to spending their own money. It’s the puppies who are the book buyers when it comes to numbers. And if TOR really does lose the puppies, their bottom line will suffer.

          1. What is our basis for saying it is the Puppies who are the book buyers more so than the Truefen?

            1. Go to their houses and see how many books they have on their shelves.
              Also, look at the sales numbers of all the recent Hugo winners. If the TruFen bought that many books, I, a small time indy author with a $100 advertising campaign, would not be outselling them.

              1. The first is an inference.

                The second could be a comment on the number of non-Trufen versus the number of Trufen. It doesn’t tell us how many books a given Trufen buys.

                1. The first is based on my experiences. It may be anecdotal, but I wouldn’t call it inferred.

                  The second is a very good indicator of how much they buy. If the Trufen bought that many books, AJ should have sold tons of copies. After all, they’re always telling us how many of them there are, and how we’re all just a few old angry white men.
                  Unless of course that they too realize that the past hugo crops were crap and they didn’t want to waste their money on them either?

                  The inferring part does come from my experience with SJW’s in general, they are always cheap, contribute little to charity, and do little to help others. And that -has- been proven in studies. (I’d put up the link, but I’m too lazy to google it).

              2. Actually, in NCT Base East there are very few. Hardcopy books, that is. NCT Base West was filled with them — gathering dust because the most voracious reader in the house had gone essentially all-electronic. (I have a minor vision issue that seems to benefit a lot from the high contrast ratio of screens compared to all but the whitest grades of paper.)

            2. I would say that Sad Puppy supporters and Truefen are likely about equal in number, and both together are a drop in the bucket when compared to the vast majority of SF&F readers who just want a good entertaining read. The sad fact that the Hugo list no longer provided them that is what started this whole thing in the first place. So, while we can by no means claim most readers as active SP it is not unreasonable to assume based on their buying habits of the past few years that when presented with facts they lean strongly towards our camp.
              Baen appears to be selling very well indeed. Amazon is going great guns except where Tradpub have priced e-books out of the market or devoted resources exclusively to socially significant message fiction.
              To put it simply, when the creators of a product fail to serve the needs of their majority customer base in favor of some artificial and unrealistic higher cause they are doomed to fail.
              And I do have a problem calling them Truefen. That used to mean dedicated fans who put their blood and sweat into promoting the genre of science fiction and fantasy. Sadly, it would seem that group was subverted and co-opted by progressive social justice militants who saw it as a great opportunity to force feed the public with their marxist drivel.

              1. I’m all for calling them j@ck@sses at this point.

                My point was he said they are notoriously stingy and backed it up with how many copies their preferred books sold. You call into account how well Hugo winners sell of late.

                Those are different things.

                A book designed to appeal to the ten most generous people alive and no one else will sell at most 10 copies. That does not make those ten buyers suddenly stingy.

                I know there is proof that what they claim to prefer doesn’t sell but I have no evidence they are too cheap to buy it.

                1. I have to disagree with you, sir. I am quite possibly the commentor with the smallest bookbuying budget here, and yet I consistantly buy multiple copies of books. I can’t imagine that people with more resources who love a book give it away less often than I do. If I am good for two or three copies, surely those ten generous fans translate to a hundred copies.

                    1. To determine this, we will have to first agree on whether gifted Amazon cards count as book buying budget, if home school texts do, and if funds designated as gift budget count when used for books. I was opting for yes, no, and yes, respectively. I think Wayne and Pat are also in the running on this competition.

                    2. Recently I’ve been splurging. I spent $24.50 since fall of last year.

              2. It is rather like determining Pluto’s existence by analyzing perturbations in Neptune’s orbit.

                Puppies swamped the Hugo nomination ballots. That indicates the Puppy supporters outnumber the “Fans After Socially Conscious Intelligent Science Tales.”

                One could use Baen’s sales figures as a metric; one could also look at the Amazon rankings of various authors who might be identifiable as Puppy-kickers vis-a-vis Puppy-huggers. I suggest looking at sales over the last three years but suspect that a simple Scalzi vs Correia cage match would be grossly unfair.

                The experimental model is now proposed and available for suggestions for refinement or adjustment. Grants are available for any wishing to perform the experimental analysis. (checks pocket — I’ve got a nickle, two extremely shiny pennies and an old bus token; they’re yours if you complete the work in a timely manner.)

                1. Nah, we don’t outnumber them. We brought in those hordes of GamerGate barbarians to rig the vote, remember? 😉

                    1. Ah! I forgot. I was wondering what all the numbering was about.
                      Tug-of-war? Rumble? Ballot stuffing! Something the left is infamous for, so… projection!

                    2. Hmm… then the Gamersgaters who supposedly came in were people we chose out of the phonebook or dug up from cemetery registries. Or we ‘lost’ the CHORF ballot box. Or something.

                    3. What, we’re Ultron?

                      (Finally saw the latest Avengers movie. It was awesome.)

                    4. Yep, saw that Sunday. After spending a week watching the others (except Guardians of the Galaxy, which I’d seen). Worth it. Now broke.

            3. Admittedly we’re talking anecdote not hard data (and we all know that data is NOT the plural of anecdote), but based on conversations here, at MGC and the like as well as pictures of bookcases (seen on Baen’s bar , FB and most recently at L Jagi Lamplighter’s blog http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/06/17/i-am-not-a-robot-i-am-a-free-fan-too/ ) the puppies have many many people with literally hundreds if not thousands of SFF books.

              Moreover my own recent habit of buying of 2+ (e)books a week seems common. I’d need to count up and remove dupes etc, amongst the Baen Webscription titles but I believe I have been buying over 100 SFF books/ebooks a year for most of the last decade and significant numbers – though not quite that many – for most of my adult life.

            4. Can I point to the gigabyte of eBooks on my harddrive?

              It’s actually up to 1.2 now, and does not include the ones that went direct to my Kindles…

              1. my incomplete ebooks folder (the back up software had not fully backed up my drive before said drive died on me so some books are missing chapters … some are empty folders) with a few duplicates and some of the zip files of 99% Baen HTML files is 5.8 gig.
                Egad.
                There are more in another folder and that is 500+ Meg and then I got some only in the Kindle cloud.
                That said. Tor is losing nothing by me not buying Tor books. Those few authors who I do read with tor books have not drawn me into those stories for what ever reason
                What Tor I have owned were paperbacks from a long while back.

              2. I know that when my wife and I got married and merged our collections, we got rid of ~ 1000 duplicates, and we still have about 1500, not to mention 600 or so on e-book.If you count the RPG books and modules, we get over 2000 dead tree easy.

                1. my dead tree collection is a sad little thing, Most of what I had was sold for a weeks worth of food. Going broke sucks. I never got around to replacing them.

        2. I have never read anything by Mr. Scalzi. Until I recently discovered the whole Puppies thing I’d never even heard of Mr. Scalzi. But I can assure you now I will never ever buy or read anything he writes. Ever.

          1. Ironically, from what I’ve read about Scalzi’s work, I might want to read his first three or four works. Apparently, he wrote them in a somewhat Heinleinian tradition; after becoming successful, he felt free to write the works he *really* wanted to write.

            Even if he’s a jerk and a puppy-kicker, I might someday seek out his early works, but I’m certainly going to avoid his later ones…

            1. Old Man’s War and the rest of that series is worth reading. I’d find them used, so as to not support him or his publisher, though.

              1. I liked Old Man’s War well enough, but before I read anything else by him he came out with his “white male is life on easymode” rant and I decided I’d never give him a bent shekel or googlead pageview again.

              2. Maybe the second. The rest of the series and the various stunts with the Human Division aren’t as good.

            2. I’ve only ever read “Redshirts”, but put it down at the first coda.
              I wanted to like it- I am a fan of Hitchhikers, Discworld, and P.K. Dick- but it never really went there. A book that thought it was more clever than it actually was… a bit like the author, really.

          2. I read Old Man’s War and a few of the sequels. To give the discalced one his due, I enjoyed OMW quite a lot. Of course, among all the “Starship Troopers”-inspired works, nothing compares to Ender’s Game. I won’t say OMW is less good than Weber & White’s In Death Ground and its sequel — just different. I’m trying to be objective here.

            1. OMW wasn’t bad – it was certainly moderately original. And I have to say I enjoyed Zoe’s tale. But the two in the middle were meh.

    4. Scalzi has been the biggest argument against writers using social media that I’ve had the particular displeasure of seeing.

      1. Ohmygawd yes.

        I found him while I was looking for The Forever War (read it when I was a wee lad, couldn’t remember the title). Tried him because he popped up in conjunction. Liked what I read, etc.

        Figured I might follow him on Twitter (my first foray into it) and…..well….I believe I’m a better person from resolving that moral dilemma.

        The man is an idiot but he can spin a good yarn.

        1. elsewhere, I mention selling my books for food, I kept my Forever War (two different versions) and Forever Free, it’s sequel, and Forever Peace (totally not related).
          Have you tracked them down? Forever War, Free and Peace are available as Kindle books by the way.

          1. You, sir, are now on my Christmas Card list!

            I found Forever War but was unaware of its sequels. Damn you, Amazon!!1!

            Gonna buy Forever Free right now.

            (I’ve been at such a point before. Keep on truckin’, man.)

            1. Past the point now, but just not doing much dead tree reading, but I should check Half Price more often.
              The Tim Zahn stuff is my biggest regret.
              Funny thing was just after reading Forever Peace, I met a couple who, except for the girls age, were near perfect matches for the main characters.
              Also a friend kid is named Charlie Moore, but they don’t know about the books.

          2. Forever Free isn’t purchasable from Amazon as an e-book.

            But the book does exist!

            I’ll likely order it through my favorite bookstore.

            Thanks again! 🙂

  20. Sarah, are you sure your immune reaction isn’t to the paint or to the wax? I assume you’re using a HEPA mask for both, the plastic kind that makes you look like an insect invader from Klendathu, but are you wearing gloves for the work? And are you staying well away from it all when not actually painting and waxing?

                1. Add a layer of paperwork for each meal. Make sure there are 3 copies his, yours, “to be destroyed immediately”.

                  If he is truly lucky, Obamacare will be a bad memory in the wind by the time he has his degree.

                  1. Under the new computer record-keeping guidelines he has to enter the details of each mouthful taken; if this leaves him no time to eat more than a half-meal then reduce his calories until his productivity increases.

                    1. Extra credit (i.e. named meats) if he uses the following New Shiny ICD-10 Diagnosis Codes (I am not making this up…)

                      Bitten by cow, initial encounter
                      Bitten by parrot, initial encounter
                      Struck by chicken, initial encounter
                      Exposure to ignition of plastic jewelry
                      Contact with hay derrick, subsequent encounter
                      Walked into lamppost, subsequent encounter
                      Fall from (out of) grocery cart, subsequent encounter
                      Accident to, on or involving ice yacht, subsequent encounter
                      Sucked into jet engine, subsequent encounter (!)
                      Forced landing of spacecraft injuring occupant, subsequent encounter
                      Toxic effect of contact with sea anemone, assault
                      Toxic effect of venom of caterpillars, intentional self-harm
                      Poisoning by smallpox vaccines, intentional self-harm

                    2. Regarding the sucked into jet engine, it’s possible to survive that. There’s a video of a skittle who got sucked into an A-6 engine. His cranial (the not-really-helmet worn on the flight deck) got wedged in the air intake short of the fans long enough for the engine to shut down. Can’t make much sense of the “subsequent encounter” bit, I’m fairly certain Chuckles stayed *far* away from jet intakes after that.

                    3. Yeah, but does it really need its own diagnostic code?

                      And even though I know that “subsequent encounter” doesn’t mean the poor slob got sucked into a SECOND (third? fourth?) jet engine, I still think the phrasing is funny.

                    4. I had read most of that list before, but the last couple were new to me. Where do you find smallpox vaccine these days, if you want to poison yourself with it?

                    6. I know that all the military around Saddam’s mess got the shots, and I seem to remember talk of first responders back home getting it, too– it’s just (as you prolly know) a high enough risk to reward ratio that only people who would be either directly targeted or first responders for a direct targeting are getting it at all.

                1. Just remember:
                  Loot before fire gets you much higher,
                  fire before pillage wastes the whole village.

                  1. On it…already have a design for the pyre although it’s designed for logs so we might need to add levels. That means more bailing wire.

                    1. Well, if we want to go there, then I think some of our illustrious hostess’s boarders should assemble the pyre.

                    2. Dang. Apparently the version of this with Viking kittens in a longboat has been blocked for copyright failure.

                      Pity, that. I’d much rather look at kittens.

                    3. Oops… I should have listened to the video before posting it… I thought it WAS the actual Viking Kitty version.

        2. No, the “boy” in this reference is an adult male, not a child. She is refusing to acknowledge his maturity, not exploiting his youth. Leave us please try to keep our accusations of intolerable inhumanity reasonably accurate defensible.

          1. I’ve got a similar allergy “Anywhere east of the Mississippi” and “any state where the mountains don’t have a tree line”.

          3. Anyplace within 100 miles of the LeftCoasts; it’s enough to make you believe in the Deep One breeding program.

  22. In case i’m not here next time a redecoration occurs, somebody please make a note about remembering to put up some fresh Flying Monkey Strips — we seem to have disturbed a nest of the pests, judging by this morning’s influx on yesterday’s post.

    1. Are you comparing those Pests to Flying Monkeys?

      If so, the Flying Monkeys are insulted. [Evil Grin]

      1. Flying monkeys? It’s a plot hatched by the dragons! They engineered those monkeys to fly so that they (the dragons) don’t have to land when they want a snack!

        1. Hey Now! Those Flying Monkeys are helpful to Dragons so we don’t eat them! ::There’s a spot over there, Please take care of it.::

  24. Allergies. Well you might have candida albicans overgrowth (also called Candidiasis). This commonly occurs after a person has taken a lot of antibiotics, especially if taking the antibiotics has occurred repeatedly. If this is the situation the resolution is simple.
    (1) Switch to a modified Atkins or Paleo diet. Stay away from carbohydrates. Don’t drink soft drinks. Basically you want a high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate, low sugar diet.
    (2) Take omega-3 supplements and use cold pressed olive oil when using oil for low or medium temperature cooking. Also consume a small amount of FRESH coconut oil daily (it kills yeast).
    (3) Use sea salt rather than table salt for the minerals.

    These 3 simple steps have a very powerful positive impact on allergy sufferers when the allergy causation is due to candida albicans overgrowth.

      2. Okay that is good. Suggest you get a test to see if the candida overgrowth is really the root cause. (An easy self test is the candida spit test.) If so there are additional treatments.
        Once the yeast overgrowth is killed and suppressed then probiotics will keep them suppressed.
        (Note: chemical sensitivity is one of the common symptoms of candida albicans overgrowth — cleaning products, paints, etc.)

  25. Anybody that’s spent any time at 770 is aware of Glyer’s skill. He’s quite adept at sketching out a minimalist outline knowing full well his commenters will see a bigger picture and handle the shading for him.

    It lets him preen about in his objective superiority while making digs at anyone who loses their temper.

    I don’t hold the man responsible for his commenters, I don’t hold anybody responsible for their commenters.

    But I do feel pretty good about holding him responsible for pandering to their prejudices.

    1. “I don’t hold anybody responsible for their commenters.”

      Not for specific comments, no, but for general tenor? A blog’s commentariat is like a little garden: watered, fed, weeded by the gardener/blogger. If one finds a preponderance of peonies it is because that is what the gardener encourages.

  27. Slightly off-topic: my rat terrier just told me during our evening walk that she has decided to self-identify as a Great Dane and that I should respect her new identity or I am a Hatey McHater…

        1. Tell her you have always identified her as a great killer of rodents of unusual size, not as a great wimp like a Great Dane (neighbors have one: they goes to our Church–the people AND the dog–the dog is afraid to stay home alone, and is totally a wuss: the people puppies have him cowering behind his people–don’t get me wrong, he’s a gorgeous, lovable, dog, but there’s something off in his brain–he thinks he’s a purse dog).

          1. Usually (not always) that means the dog had something bad happen to it. (I say usually, because of course dogs can also have genetic physical or mental problems that manifest in temperament.) Some of our rescue wolfhounds would be pretty clingy until they realized bad things weren’t going to happen anymore.

            We had good results by having Mom or Dad sleep in the same room as the dog early on, so that the dog started to figure he was in good with the alphas. (And probably it was similar in sounds to having a puppy sleep with a ticking clock in a new home.)

            2. Some of it might be translation error, too– part of the problem with people treating dogs like humans is that they expect the dogs to react like people, and “understand” what the human means. I know that with small dogs, this means people view them as eternal children, which tends to translate into them being higher in the pack– I’d guess that big dogs thus get “you are below dirt level” pack treatment.

              So “bad things” might not even be visible to someone who thinks of dogs as people.

              1. Good point. We tend to treat them as eternal puppies, however large. It’s important for large ones to think of you as alpha dog.

                “Did you just growl at your dog?”

    2. My 100 lb shepherd/collie cross self identifies as a 8 lb lap yapper. His inner Yorkie is coming out…..

    4. Actually, your terrier’s self-identification is probably as something bigger than a Great Dane or an Irish wolfhound, like some kind of paleolithic Dire Canine. Terriers think well of themselves.

      It’s pretty funny how terriers usually get along well with Danes and wolfies, and how common it is for breeders to have both. There’s a famous story of some terrier who used to grab onto the biggest Irish wolfhound’s chest hair and hang there swinging, while the big male hound just ignored him and wore him as a pendant while continuing to walk along.

      1. we had a westie who was raised spending most days in the dog bakery my girlfriend worked at back then.. she would have nothing to do with an dog that was less than 2-3 times her size.. two of her best friends were a pair of full grown blue dobermans, and the hours of amusement we got form her chasing them around was priceless

        1. “she would have nothing to do with an dog that was less than 2-3 times her size.”

          The westie or the girlfriend?

      2. Rhys had a friend who had a Great Dane, and a dachshund, and the Dane would wear the dachs as an earring because the latter liked to go ‘nom’ on a floppy ear, and would be ignored, even when the Dane got up and decided to go for a walk.

    5. This is my first attempt to display an image…but this image is

      (Link is here:
      “http://faxo.com/they-told-me-i-could-be-anything-so-i-became-a-doberman-25468”)

      2. Still remember the novel where the three year old was told she could be anything she wanted and decided she was going to be a ladybug.

  28. Yeah. All too often the benefits of fighting back tit for tat do not outweigh the costs.

    I’m too small fry for it to matter much, but I have been trying really hard to stick to civility and measured responses to the whole Hugo thing over the last few weeks.

    The thing is, I’m not doing it for the anti’s benefit. Sure, it works out that way, which is fine, but that’s not why.

    I do it for myself – as a new writer I’m still working out the whole finding time to write thing, and letting myself get drawn into protracted arguments uses up time on its own _and_ I’ve had whole days where I was just too morose over this to do anything besides my day job.

    I do it to be more effective – I don’t think the serious anti’s are persuadable at this point, but they (and the pups) are the minority. The vast majority are either neutral, haven’t even heard about it, or are at least willing to listen and make up their own minds. My being calm and respectful does more to sway them than my anger would. (There is a place for the Correiaken fisking, but I do not think I am the one to do it, my temperament doesn’t suit it for one thing)

    Beyond doing it to avoid wasting my own precious fleeting time I also do it because I don’t like what fighting does to me. I spent decades leashing my temper, and while none of this has come too close to breaking those bands it has loosened them somewhat.

  29. This is why I’m confused (flabbergasted) by Sad Puppies in general.

    You (SP) aren’t “in it to win it”.

    The CHORF’s And Friends (gawd I love that word) are inclusive, drawing people in and spreading their narrative far and wide, drowning everyone and everything else out.

    The pups are more exclusive, it appears to me (I’ll happily be corrected on this). It’s more-or-less an “in crowd” sort o’ thing. Other’s have been drawn in (such as moi) but more as a result of natural predilection.

    Not taking the other side’s exposed lies as public as possible just makes the conflict incredibly masturbatory.

    Yes, you (SP) are right. Yes, your fight is just.

    But you aren’t looking to WIN. You’re looking to assuage your anger and frustrations.

    At the end of the day, as you eventually satisfy yourselves, you’ll quiet down and move on with your lives while the idiots of the world claim yet another victory and glorify all the ground they’ve gained.

    1. “The CHORF’s And Friends (gawd I love that word) are inclusive, drawing people in and spreading their narrative far and wide, drowning everyone and everything else out.”

      ROFLOL. What people have they drawn in that were not already on their side? Many people have been repulsed — we know because they said so, that the CHORF rhetoric brought them to the Puppies’ side.

      1. Visit CHORFie forums. Much MUCH more “I found you guys…”, “I’m new here…”, “I didn’t know anything until…” than the other forums I’ve encountered sponsoring Pups.

        Pup forums also have more of the same commentors (actives) in their ranks than the other side. Maybe it’s the same amount, more or less, but the numbers make it appear disproportionate.

        Having others tell you they were thrown off by the rhetoric, while heart-warming, doesn’t mean they were the only ones to hear the CHORFtastic message.

        I’d like to be wrong but what I’ve observed (so far) and human history tell me I’m not.

        1. You got any figures on this? You report hearing on their forums the same thing we’ve heard on ours.

          Your impressions are not figures. It has been shown again and again and again that impressions are frequently wildly off statistically. Even on something so innocuous as whether there are problems near the full moon. (There aren’t. Every time they have people who claim that sit down and record incidents instead of relying on memory, it proves spurious.)

          And that’s even assuming that selection bias did not warp your impressions.

          1. irony
            noun iro·ny \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\
            : the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think especially in order to be funny

            : a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected

              1. It is sad to see the decline of trolling as an art form. Ah, for the days of Usenet.

                That said at least trolling hasn’t declined nearly as much as the art of flame wars. They Godwin so quickly now.

                I can remember rejoining a mailing list just to flame an impertinent newbie (now a respected leader in the community…it was our rite of passage). The same mailing list had an earlier flame war with an outsider that earned me the nickname I used to radio DJ under.

                I suspect this is where I tell the kids to get off my Internet.

                1. “Witness…”

                  You had to be a bit more sophisticated back when an angry message to your sysadmin could get you banned from the whole internet unless you had another account somewhere…

                  Kids today, they just don’t know how to troll… it’s becoming a lost skill, like fly tying or flint knapping. Artisanal, like.

                  Then there was the just-plain-weird, like the Hastings UFO Society camped out on misc.rural… baud, two decades ago now. Ronnie Dobbs’ articles usually had useful information buried in there, once you enjoyed the latest news about the Society members…

                  {{nnected Ronnie.

                  Hello. This is Ronnie Dobbs of the Hastings UFO Society channeling to you by way of Madame Thelma on the Psychic CB Channel number 22, lower side, from an undisclosed location.

                  Uh

                  We would like to comment on the following:

              2. You need to work on your intellectual integrity more. 🙂

                Where are your “stats”? Claiming lack of stats as proof of negation of argument (or even as a requirement for acceptance) only does you a disservice when you fail to provide same.

                Hence, irony.

                Reading comprehension would help you, too. 🙂

                Your responses are very 770…

                1. Blatant projection. YOU asserted that one side is more than the other, YOU have to back it up. I do not to produce stats to observe that you need to back them up.

                  You have acted with blatant dishonesty and a total lack of intellectual integrity, and you have compounded it with your slimy accusation that those are my faults.

                  1. Your dislike of my observations provided does not negate them in any way whatsoever.

                    Grow up.

                    Your need for my somehow realization that I should have numbered (in a notebook, perhaps?) every instance of what I’ve observed for the future so they can be provided with a way to not employ their mind in any difficulty (nor critically) is…telling.

                    Did…did you number your observations? I’m just wondering because you could have ended this conversation (with a mic drop after) with such things.

                    Your behavior also makes it incredibly difficult to classify you as a Pup. Even Pup-light.

                    Perhaps you’re not. If so, I’ll apologize for that assumption.

                    1. Your dislike of my observations provided does not negate them in any way whatsoever.Your dislike of my observations provided does not negate them in any way whatsoever.

                      You seem to have either misunderstood the objections, or to have failed to understand the difference between substantial objections and “dislike.”

                      Kind of amusing that you follow that up by suggesting that someone else do exactly what you should do– and grow up.

                    2. @Foxfier-

                      No, I understood perfectly. 🙂

                      Which is why I’m able to point out his/her responses as incredibly intellectually dishonest and lazy.

                      The depressing thing here is that the two groups appear more and more alike. :/

                    3. You seem confused about the distinction between “point[ing] out his/her responses as incredibly intellectually dishonest and lazy” and demonstrating their dishonest and laziness.

                      Je accuse =/= Je convict

                    5. @Christopher:
                      Denial is a river in Africa, not an argument.

                      Apparently you need to attend an argument clinic.

                2. You made the assertion by statistics. At this point I’m still waiting for yours before I even evaluate those opposing you.

                  1. No.

                    I made the assertion of observation.

                    Dat reading comprehension, yo… 😉

                    1. “Pup forums also have more of the same commentors (actives) in their ranks than the other side. Maybe it’s the same amount, more or less, but the numbers make it appear disproportionate.”

                      Emphasis added.

                      Dat writing coherently, yo…;-)

                    2. I had to be somewhere. And I had to pee.

                      Lemme alone. 😛

                      I meant to type out the numbers of the “mundane” commenters to the “regulars”, etc.

            2. Students, please note this example of Trollery 101. Note the three step process employed:

              1) Make an apparent assertion of statistical observation:
              the numbers make it appear disproportionate.

              2) When challenged to provide support for observed “numbers”, mock the opponent with an irrelevant comment:
              “irony”
              or even a picture of a yawning kitten.

              3) When dishonesty is pointed out, accuse opponent of fallacies in which you’ve engaged and demand they meet a standard you’ve irrelevantly and illogically imposed:
              “Where are your “stats”? Claiming lack of stats as proof of negation of argument (or even as a requirement for acceptance) only does you a disservice when you fail to provide same.”

              By following these simple steps, students, you can sidetrack almost any internet discussion. It also helps to throw in insults, especially those imputing to others the behaviours you yourself have demonstrated:
              “You need to work on your intellectual integrity ”
              “Reading comprehension would help you”

              Blaming others for your own flaws (aka projection) is a technique which can guarantee effective trollery.

              1. Love the creation of meaning to give your “argument” validity. It’s not the subtlest of straw man but it certainly ain’t the worst.

                Your purposeful ignorance is well…purposeful ignorance.

                I’ve very sorry that your little world has been crushed or is in threat of being so. You’re trying way too hard to invalidate my original post.

                At least you’re (along with others) proving my point. 😉

                Please, certainly “invalidate” me all you like because you don’t approve of what I’ve noticed. But, again, please don’t expect me to pretend at respect for your self-made inadequacies. 🙂

                1. “At least you’re (along with others) proving my point.”

                  Ipse dixit is a fallacious argument no matter how often you reiterate it. It is impossible to prove a point you’ve yet to make.

                  Sorry to crush your fantasy of being all-conquering. Your troll technique remains sophomoric; we use graduate level trolls for chew toys here.

                  1. Ignoring a point doesn’t make it go away.

                    I’d apologize for how that’s eating at you but, again, they’re your inadequacies. Not mine.

                    1. Tsk. So sad. Delusions of having made a point. Projecting his own inadequacies, too. Standard trollism. Perhaps he needs Vitamin E to put a point to it?

                    2. I do find it rather fascinating how you make a provable statement, claim that it is true, then simply dis anyone who asks you provide any proof of this.

                      My statement I can back up merely by asking the reader to read the last 5-10 posts in this thread. Yours, not so much.

                      And I’m guessing your next act will to be to either completely ignore this post, or cast aspirations on it.

                    3. No, the really bizarre thing is that he thought the puppy blogs were some sort of organized thing, and he could impose on us under “you want to be open, don’t you?” I misdoubt me he’s gone to try to get in trouble in Larry’s and Brad’s blog. 😛 I’m just sorry no one sent him to Kate. She’s been downpin and could use amusement.

                    4. Tsk – of course I should have directed his attention to Kate’s role in developing the SP4 slate! Mea culpa, mea altima* culpa!

                      And of course he would think SP some sort of organized thing — for much the same reason the Pelosicrats were sure the T.E.A. Party was astro-turf.

                      *My current income does not permit the indulgence of a Maxima.

                    5. It is always fun when you get to the bottom of a comments nest, and comments start pinning to different people than you were expecting to. My response was intended to be to Christopher’s posts.

                    1. I’m afraid he’s impugned your character. Not enough depth to be believable.

                    2. (sniffing)

                      You’ve parsed something. Have you tried Beano or possibly some other digestive aid, such as a probiotic supplement?

        2. Of course, a lot of the “I found you guys…” comments on the SP side are often followed by things like “I used to love Sci Fi, but I stopped reading it…and then I discovered that you guys are writing stuff I want to read!!!” and “You mean I can VOTE for the Hugos?!? That’s freaking cool!”

          Since there aren’t any statistics on the issue, it will be interesting to see what happens.

          I do know one thing, however: the organizers of the Sad Puppies this year only expected a nomination or two, perhaps even a nomination per category. They didn’t expect to be this successful.

          Currently, these same organizers don’t expect any SP nominations to win any Hugos this year. I have this sneaky suspicion that they are going to be surprised.

          The impression I have from this, is that Larry Correia (in SP1 and SP2) found a box of matches, and after lighting a couple of them, he proved his point: it can be fun to play with matches. Brad came along and said “Let me try playing with them! I bet I could make a little campfire”, and he accidentally set the field of fandom on fire…and at this point, we can’t predict where the flames will go…

          1. I’m kinda in that group.

            Had no idea I could vote for the awards (didn’t exactly look, but still) and, too, as a result of the Correia-esque boom I’ve “discovered” other authors to follow, love and then hate when I run out of their novels.

            Full disclosure: I was on the fence with Hoyt until I read Crawling Betwen Heaven and Earth and The Big Ship and The Wise Old Owl. One was free and I purchased the other one.

            I then purchased the first of her Darkship series.

            I’m lookin’ a li’l cross-eyed at A Few Good Men.

            I also look forward to the awards. At first I was all about fightin’ for ’em but now I’m feeling more ambivalent. I’m of the thought that perhaps everyone should just walk away and form their own awards and publishers.

            I have, of course, an entire five dollars I can throw towards that endeavor.

      2. ““The CHORF’s And Friends (gawd I love that word) are inclusive, drawing people in and…” I saw a guy like that arrested once. Of course he was hanging around the Port Authority Bus Terminal trolling for runaway girls coming into town.

        1. I find it (un)charmingly reminiscent of the days when you couldn’t wait at an airport without somebody making you a “gift” of a copy of the Baghadavita.

    2. It is impossible to win a wrestling match with a pig, as getting everybody dirty is their goal. The goal of the opponents of puppy sadness is to win over the bystanders, the people who hadn’t noticed how their pockets were being picked. This is not done by refuting the lies, evasions and misrepresentations of the CHORFs and SJWs; it is achieved by demonstrating one’s integrity, by staying on offense rather than defense.

      Our purpose, put plainly, is to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.

      1. Yet I don’t find that action being taken (again, happy to have my “knowledge base” increased).

        The issues, what have you, are spoken mostly internally. Within the group. I don’t see a push for popular opinion.

        Right now it’s all CHORF Theater. As with politics, it’s more about getting the message spread and garnering attention than it is in possessing integrity.

        1. Where you miss the point is that, for most here this is old ground, thoroughly fought over and of scant additional interest. You want to know Sarah’s or mine or any of the regular commenters opinions on the Hugo controversy? Read old blog posts and comments.

          We aren’t interested in chewing over the same piece of gristle every time a new clod falls off the turnip truck. This here forum is not about baiting CHORFs and only occasionally about tending to the popular delusions of crowds. File770 is a carny show intent on drawing in the boobs and we’ve no interest in reducing this venue to its competitor — which is why the annoyance of their misuse of posts here.

          1. Well, I’m curious if this Christopher fellow shares Mike Glyer’s white supremacism and support for burning down minority neighborhoods.

          2. No, I comprehend that stance perfectly. Most anyone following and/or identifying with the Sad Puppies would understand it. Bone deep.

            The issue I’ve raised is not simply about any responses regarding the “H”-bomb but of the overall goal.

            If it’s for any real change, of lasting change (within awards and publishing, etc.), I don’t see how the Sad Puppies movement will achieve it.

            Already a number of figureheads are weary. Tired. They are shying away from it. Responses are becoming fewer and farer(?) between.

            Where on the other side the crazies have been ready, restless and ecstatic at the opportunity to flail away. There are others just getting started.

            Tor is simply going to sit there and wait it out. Barring another of their employees flashing their stupid for all to see, that’s all they’ll need do.

            Our (for the most part) major fault is that it tends to be our natures= to live our lives and leave the stupids to their own devices. If they are to directly effect us, we just shrug and move on.

            That’s kinda how things got to how they are today.

            The Pups need to make themselves much, much more public. Doesn’t mean that would make one and all akin to the CHORFs. Refusing a successful tactic (publicity) simply because it’s used by the bad guys just means you’re going to lose.

            1. You do realize that the CHORFs have given the Sad Puppies far more publicity than they would have been able to achieve all alone, don’t you? Thus, the goal of the Sad Puppies, to get as many people to vote for the Hugos as possible, has been made far more successful by the CHORF actions than by anything the Sad Puppies may have done.

              As for energy, I, too, have the impression that the CHORFs are crazy. They are spending a lot of energy trying to figure out how to keep the Sad Puppies out. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and if I had the time to fairly read the works, such antics would have pushed me to vote this year.

              As it is, CHORFs are trying to solve the wrong problem, based on the flawed premise that all this broo-ha-ha is the result of “slate voting”. It’s not–it’s about getting people to vote–which means that whatever rule changes they propose, may nonetheless be swamped by new voters, regardless of what new rules they might put in…

              1. Yes, CHORF’s have given Sad Puppies publicity. In news articles that they, for the most part, controlled.

                When you come across as not just the bad guy, but the manipulative racist fear-mongering anti-social bad guy that also happens to be okee-dokee with gun murders….that ain’t positive publicity, yo.

                With all the happy ammunition the CHORFies have been throwin’ ya’lls’ way you should be getting any and every columnist you can to write about it.

                Yes it’s an escalation. Yes it’ll get nastier. No you don’t have to play their game. Simply take their (of course) ridiculous responses and accusations and merely show how ridiculous and how outlandish those idiots are.

                Turn their publicity around.

                They get as public as possible and rake the movement and particular people over the coals of their fiery ignorance. Because there’s no real response, everyone that encounters it is left with only that single point. A point that isn’t contended (that they can see).

                Pups (in general) take those sayings and what-have-yous and show each other while nodding their collective heads at the insane absurdity of it all. Reinforcing the enclosed group-think, making yourselves feel better.

                In this sort o’ combat, it is not about the group. It’s about who the group can reach. People like me aren’t “wins”. We already felt/believe, on the whole, the same way. Besides, we’re way-hay-hay too few in number to matter.

              2. In regards to the last paragraph-

                CHORF’s are trying to solve the wrong problem. So are the Puppies. As the CHORF’s aren’t able to comprehend the Puppies properly, so to do the Pups lack comprehension of the CHORF’s.

                Energy is being expended in the wrong direction. No real in-roads are being made. Hence the feeling of weariness.

                Time and again there have been essays here and the other sites I’ve been too (friggin’ more things to read…YAY!!1!) stating their despair over the other side of the issue and how one just can’t argue with stupid.

                Yet that’s exactly where the time and energy is spent.

                I’m going to be very interested in the coming year’s voting. In what support both sides have drummed up and of their prevailing moods.

                1. Funny how everything Christopher suggests seems to be “Let’s you and him fight” and “Did you hear what he said about you?”

                  A stranger waltzing in here, encouraging escalation of a fight doesn’t strike me as a someone who’s intentions ought be assumed innocent.

                  1. Funny how most every response towards me is a purposeful misrepresentation or simply an outright lie.

                    It’s like coming into and-…wait. Damnit. Friggin’ deja vu. This is going to bug me. Where…where have I seen this before? G’damn…c’mon, where was it?

                    Gah.

                    Maybe I read something about it somewhere.

                    Damn.

                    1. Accusations of bad faith are not an effective way to enhance your credibility.

                      In this particular instance they also suggest (if sincere) a lack of self-awareness over how you come off that would embarrass Sheldon Cooper. You might want to review your prior comments with an eye toward how they might come across to somebody who doesn’t already know you.

                    2. Let’s get right to the point then. Would you say that Mosby behaved with professional competence?

                    4. @Christopher:
                      I find it ironic that you seem incapable of comprehending the distinction between assertion and demonstration of a fact, yet you accuse others’ of a lack of reading comprehension your writings.

                      Methinks the fault lies not in your stars.

                    7. @Christopher:
                      One of us ought to, and you’ve demonstrated neither aptitude nor skill for doing it.

                    8. Awww…lookit who’s gettin’ all butt-hurt over the realities. 😛

                      So very CHORFy.

                      Heeeeeeeere CHORFy CHORFy CHORFy….

                    9. Christopher,

                      The commenters you’re trying so desperately to mock have long since established the level of their intelligence and the quality of their discourse before this community. They have nothing to prove here.

                      Regrettably, I fear it has been established that you likewise have nothing to prove.

                      Might you exercise your growing pains elsewhere?

                    10. Sigh — push a troll long enough and they always revert to playground behaviour.

                      Sarah, can we please haz us some trolls with fibre? These crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside are boring.

                    12. @Eamon-

                      Which is incredibly sad.

                      That “level of intelligence” shown is not one to aspire to. Which, honestly, made me curious.

                      Type out simple, honest observations and immediately be set upon with lies, innuendo, misrepresentation and just outright gallant stupidity.

                      The entire thing so far has been very CHORF-like.

                      My post was not an attack. But it was perceived as one. Why? Outside of Alpheus there has been no intelligent conversation. No actual rebuttal. Just the tired ‘net trope of demanding “numbers” in the attempt to destroy and save one from, well, actually requiring thought.

                      The base, the original idea behind the Sad Puppies is, so far, not to be found here.

                      I shall, I suspect, continue to find it within’ Hoyt’s writings/essays. I, sadly, suspect it shall not be found within you. Nor the others.

                      It’s a fun Us vs. Them, though. Which is likely what attracted ya’ll in the first place. 😉

                    13. “Type out simple, honest observations”

                      Simple, agreed, but not the standard definition of honest.

                      Rebuttals aplenty were offered; it was the ignoring of them or non-responsive responses that persuaded folks here that a troll had come a’visiting, forfeiting any right to courtesy or respect by failing to evidence those attributes in its own postings.

                      A numerical claim was asserted and then that assertion was not only denied but inverted into a demand that the person(s) challenging the numbers provide their own. A more honest response would have been an admission that the “observation” was anecdotal and not supported by hard evidence. Failure to engage in such a response is prima facie evidence of an argument in bad faith.

                      If you are truly blind to your attacks you are obtuse, socially inept and personally irresponsible. If you would learn or even participate in honest discussion I strongly suggest you moderate your behaviour and pay closer attention to what you say and what is said in response. Stop being the ass and folks here won’t be inclined to kick you.

                    14. Alternatively:
                      Ohhhh, poor babu; did somebody treat widdle Christopher as he merited instead of how he imagined he deserved?

                    15. I shall, I suspect, continue to find it within’ Hoyt’s writings/essays. I, sadly, suspect it shall not be found within you. Nor the others.

                      Christopher, this is why your shrift is so short around this community. You have no standing here, nobody knows you, nor anything about you. Yet you waltz in to lecture and slip quickly into denigration when called upon for justification.

                      Thus lies the troll label. You’ve spent more time in shallow mockery than bolstering your original point. It’s a shaky structure, it could use some beef.

                      The people you’re so blithely dismissing have years in this community. Being so comfortable belittling the established voices does not speak well for the remainder of your visit.

                      It’s okay, I suppose, everyone piddles in their pants in the beginning. But — maybe you could find somebody else to swap your diapers for you?

                    17. Sadly, it appears not. Even while standing in the midst of it, they can’t see it.

                    20. @Res-

                      Good try, but no. 🙂

                      Observances have been offered. Anecdotal? Sure, what the hell. I certainly didn’t keep an exact (or even lazy) count.

                      I (again) don’t have any numbers.

                      You will then state that my position is obviously wrong/flawed. I would then be required to ascertain your own. In order to learn of either a better viewpoint or that, at least, mine is flawed in some way you would, of course, provide those hard numbers that are ever so important to you.

                      Do you have them? No. Of course not.

                      Perhaps I moved too fast for you intellectual powerhouses? Getting to the meat of the matter, hopefully having a discourse ‘pon which to slake my curiosity, may have made me too eager to assume obvious understandings would be understood.

                      Buuut…no.

                      If you’re going to pretend at an intellectual “level” you must, I dare say, perform at that level. You, and others (don’t think I’m singling you out) have failed. Extraordinarily.

                      Just a dearth of honest discourse.

                      So, yes…..heeeeeeeere CHORFy CHORFy CHORFy….

                      That is, unfortunately, your level. 😉

                    21. “Observances have been offered. Anecdotal? Sure, what the hell. I certainly didn’t keep an exact (or even lazy) count. I (again) don’t have any numbers.”

                      The original claim was numerical. When asked for data you changed the subject. not an argument in good faith.

                      “You will then state that my position is obviously wrong/flawed. I would then be required to ascertain your own. In order to learn of either a better viewpoint or that, at least, mine is flawed in some way you would, of course, provide those hard numbers that are ever so important to you.”

                      False. When asked for numbers; had you clearly stated you had none, your observations were anecdotal, people here would have shrugged and made comment to the effect that the plural of anecdote is not data.

                      Further, it is not scientifically necessary to provide alternate data to prove such data as you might have offered was not valid — it would merely have been necessary to demonstrate a flaw in your data collection or in your reasoning. No additional numbers are required to prove that 2 + 2 =/= 17.

                      “Perhaps I moved too fast for you intellectual powerhouses? …”

                      Sigh. Lengthy pointless screeds consisting of bad Ace Quigley imitations are not very persuasive and merely make most here sadly shake heads over the banality of our visitors.

                    22. @Eamon-

                      “Christopher, this is why your shrift is so short around this community. You have no standing here, nobody knows you, nor anything about you.”

                      Hence my earlier statement (original post) that the Sad Puppies are exclusive. You are. Not. Inclusive.

                      Jesus Christ. The absolute audacity of your statement. I must be considered a part of your group in order to have a valid point.

                      Everything SP is supposed to stand for just absolutely wiped away with your statement.

                      It is breathtaking.

                      The temerity, too. I mean…god damn.

                      This is what I have seen. This is what I have witnessed off and on.

                      I am not for CHORFs, nor the current Hugo mess. I cannot be for the Sad Puppies.

                      You people are not what you say you are. At least, not any more.

                    23. This has nothing to do with Sad Puppies. This blog is not Sad Puppies. This blog is this blog. These people have been friends/acquaintances/family for years. You came in and started acting like they were all new, not just to you but to each other.
                      NOTHING to do with sad puppies. To do with the community here, which is loosely associated/supporters of sad puppies but not the movement.
                      Sad puppies wants more fans reading/voting. That is the definition of inclusive.
                      This community tends to have people feeling out their way, sometimes for months, simply because they’ve known each other so long. It’s hard to avoid that.
                      Stop confusing the blog and the movement.

                    24. “Stop confusing the blog and the movement.”

                      In fairness, Sarah, given where he appears to have his head the confusion is understandable. Small wonder he is upset by a movement.

                    25. The absolute audacity of your statement. I must be considered a part of your group in order to have a valid point.

                      Christopher, man, we don’t have a championship for dodging the point. Really. Don’t work up so much sweat.

                      Your standing here has nothing to do with whether or not you have a point. But it does, naturally, impact your argument when you so rapidly devolve to mocking the intellectual prowess of leading commenters in this community. These folks have honed their wits against a long list of abrasive arguments and against each other. They’ve established their credentials.

                      You’re an unknown. Doesn’t mean you’re automatically wrong. Doesn’t mean you can’t/shouldn’t speak. Does mean you should back your points with something other than shallow (let me stress that: shallow) mockery.

                      Because the jury you’re arguing before? We know exactly how little substance there is in your continued belittlement of your opponents. We are well aware how keen their blades. There’s a few of us carrying some well placed scars from testing their edge.

                      Every time you jab at their intellect? It’s not your superiority you’re highlighting for us.

                    26. Absolutely a-effing-mazing.

                      “… the Sad Puppies are exclusive. You are. Not. Inclusive.”

                      We are not Sad Puppies. We have supported that effort, but this blog is an independent community. Accusing SP of being exclusive because we don’t welcome disruptive snark consistently making illogical leaps, responding with off-topic accusations and rudeness is akin to declaring the Catholic Mass exclusive because one church doesn’t offer a gluten-free Eucharist.

                      As for the rest of your demonstration of bad faith goading; small wonder you’re not being offered inclusion in this blog.

                    27. @Hoyt-

                      Then I find I need to apologize for my confusion. I made the assumption that this site was, in fact SP. Or at least affiliated.

                      Where would I go for that? I get that it’s more or less decentralized.

                    28. Apologizing for your confusion but not your rudeness and disruptiveness?

                      Whatever. Try Brad Torgerson; he assembled the recommended nominees this year, based on suggestions from multiple sources. His SP posts can be found at https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/category/tornadoes-in-teacups/sad-puppies-3/

                      As Larry Correia ran the first two SP experiments and promoted Brad’s running it this year you might look at his blog post announcing the voting results for the nominations at [ http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/20/a-blow-has-been-struck-against-puppy-related-sadness/ ] and has tagged all (I believe) of his posts on the topic at http://monsterhunternation.com/tag/sad-puppies/

                      I recommend you up your reading comprehension before going to Correia’s site if you plan on commenting on long ago posts, as there are people there whose patience with idiocy has been exhausted far longer than ours and they’re not prone to put up with yammer-headed mockery.

                    30. Continued:
                      As Larry Correia ran the first two SP experiments and promoted Brad’s running it this year you will find all (I believe) of his posts on the SP topic at http://monsterhunternation.com/tag/sad-puppies/

                      I recommend you up your reading comprehension before going to Correia’s site if you plan on commenting on long ago posts, as there are people there whose patience with idiocy has been exhausted far longer than ours and they’re not prone to put up with yammer-headed mockery.

                    31. For whatever it’s worth… I’ll believe that they’re “bringing them in” in numbers… maybe not greater, but maybe greater numbers.

                      It makes sense… they’ve got the easier message… “Hey! Come help us fight unrepentant racist homophobic neo-nazis!”

                      Any decent human being would be all… “Cool beans, I’m on with that one.”

                      Unfortunately… longer term? I don’t think they can herd their cats any better than anyone else in fandom can do, so it’s all good.

                    32. Recent events in Baltimore are a significant part of a pattern that might convince an unbiased observer that prevailing narratives about pervasive white supremacism in our society does not match the actual pervasive white supremacism in our society.

                      It is in no way misrepresentation of your words, because the basis is your apparent ties with Glyer. It is not a lie because it is not based on things I know to be false.

                      Your claim to lack awareness of exactly which Mosby was implied speaks to either weak reasoning and research, or a commitment to narratives legitimizing the burning of neighborhoods that adversely and disproportionally impact minorities.

                      Again: Would you say that Mosby behaved with professional competence?

                    33. @RES-

                      Of course I’m going to apologize for my confusion. In no way should I have assumed that this site was other than ya’llses support group, what with all the essays and discussions regarding the Hugo Awards, SP and such.

                      No, I’m not going to be nice to your (and others’) dishonest behavior. Dishonesty = lying. Lying lying lying.

                      Out of this entire site I’ve encountered exactly one (holy shit) person capable of discussion. They don’t agree with my over-all thought but didn’t delve into idiot tactics in a mistaken need for self-defense.

                      They provided a discussion to give me another view and possible experiences to draw upon.

                      The rest o’ you….christ. It was a bullet point presentation of everything Hoyt had written against.

                      However, thank you for the links. I’ve already been to and explored and interacted with those sites.

                      Hence that very first post o’ mine. 😉

                      I will ask about a “Kate”, though. She has a site and/or put together the SP4 slate? I’m vaguely remembering a snippet from one of those (dear gawd) massive amounts of message notices that I really gotta correct.

                      Any way, it was assumed she would essentially wreck me. Which would be awesome! Someone finally providing me with further information? Possibly insider-ish?

                      I could learn there instead of be disappointed (mostly, there is still that one person) here.

                  2. I’m thinking DARVO– the few verifiable claims made are exactly the opposite of what is objectively supported. Not sure if it’s deliberate or not, but definitely trolling for a reaction.

                    Worse, not even entertaining– it’s “I know you are but what am I” with minor research.

                    1. Ah yes, the “I don’t like it so it’s definitely trolling” approach.

                      Christ on a crutch. If this is the level of brainpower for the movement no wonder it’s going to fade out.

                      But, please, continue in taking the time not proving me wrong. I came here to learn and, while I’m learnin’ things I’m not happy to learn, I am accepting of them.

                      Kinda sucks. :/

                    2. “Ah yes, the “I don’t like it so it’s definitely trolling” approach.”

                      No, it is the repetitious fallacious arguments, and feeble attempts at ad hominem that makes it definitely trolling. Very weak and incompetent trolling.

                      You’ve not demonstrated any capacity to learn; somewhat the opposite as you now aren’t even making invalid arguments but just yelling the equivalent of neener-neener.

                    3. Ah yes, the “I don’t like it so it’s definitely trolling” approach.

                      Bulverism was stale when CS Lewis popularized recognition of the tactic.

                    4. I’ve always admired the memorization required to disingenuously reply in such a way.

                      Say a name or term and BOOM, instant validation.

                    5. You are a funny one, ain’t ya?

                      Any foundation for your intimation of disingenuous behavior? Or do you find you have no idea what she’s talking about and so assume the average reader won’t either?

                      ‘Cause, ’round here? Folks don’t drop names for BOOM points or validation. They drop citations, for clarity.

                      Try it, it might surprise you.

                    6. That’s actually mildly impressive– you’ve managed to make a number of accusations that are so baseless that even *I* can’t manage to work up a “what if he’s right?!?!” sense of nagging doubt.

                    8. “But, please, continue in taking the time not proving me wrong.”

                      Possibly they aren’t proving you wrong, because you haven’t managed to state anything substantial enough to disprove?

                2. I think the weariness is actually the result of constantly hearing the same lies over and over again, to the point of getting tired of refuting everything. I’ve seen more than one post saying “I’m not refuting anything anymore, because I’ve already refuted everything that’s being said.”

                  I have the impression that while the flaming arguments may seem to be dying down, there’s a lot of simmering resolve that’s now difficult to see; this resolve is probably going to hit the Hugos hard, one way or the other….

                  As for bad publicity, while it’s true that Sad Puppies are being called everything in the book, it’s also true that a lot of people are getting hit with dissonance…and that, in turn, has probably converted a lot of people to pro-puppy sentiment, even when the original publicity was bad.

                  1. I think we’re just arguing the same sides of the coin on that one (first paragraph).

                    I’ve seen it more on the other side but by “mundanes”. Usually as just another dishonest argument tactic. Often when I gave/saw a direct question or response.

                    My concern is that while both sides have authors just kinda going to their own corners, the Puppy side has had much less active voices than the loony one. When the Pup voices start quieting down, particularly those that lend weight to SP, the others start to get drowned out even more and, worse, the movement (whatever) loses momentum.

                    Which is why the next Hugo’s will be interestin’. There’s a likely chance that the results (or behavior) will make or break SP. I don’t think (worst case) it would disappear completely. It would just fade as public awareness turns to other things.

                    Best case would be stomping the idiots flat and getting science fiction back from message fiction.

                    I personally think most people that encounter the debacle role their eyes and don’t follow/side with CHORFieism. But since they don’t see any (meaningful/loud enough) counter-argument they just go on with their lives.

                    Awareness isn’t support. And the problem as I’ve perceived it so far is that SP has much more of the former than the latter.

                    That’s just one way how movements and ideas die.

                    ***What I’m afraid will happen…

                    SP claims most of the awards, perhaps with more than a few “No Award”s as claimed victories. CHORFies go berserk and their bullshit propaganda goes into overdrive. SP proponents proclaim victory and many then move on with a heady feeling of accomplishment and a sense they’ve done something so don’t need to do more.

                    The fight gets much dirtier but, this time, with even less numbers propping up the SP side. Logical, peaceful non-crazy people tend not to fight as hard nor as willingly as wackadoodles.

                    SP wins a major battle (their primary goal being the Hugo Awards) but end up losing the war they really weren’t fighting anyway.

                    The major players leave because they’re just sick of all the stupid and nothing much changes except for the worst, since the logical voices departed and what’s left are even more pissed off and rabid CHORFs.

    3. Originality: 2
      Grammar: 4
      Logic: 3
      Addresses Hard Facts: 0

      Overall Troll score: 2.5, average.

        1. Based on that let me regrade:

          Originality: 1 (docked a point for generic retort to grading)
          Grammar: 4
          Logic: 3
          Addresses Hard Facts: 0

          Overall Troll score: 2.0, low average.

          Dude, show some pride. The original wasn’t bad. If you’d addressed the Londoncon membership increase over the trend line you’d have gone from 0 to at least a 3 on the Addresses Hard Facts. Those are the only real, public numbers we have to draw SP any influence on how many people the SP drew in until we get the final numbers for this year. They are huge and a big strike at your comment that SP doesn’t draw new people in.

          Maybe instead of trolling you could try in person drama where the scoring categories are originality, scripting, costuming, and acting. Costuming is an easy 5.

          1. If it is your goal to somehow prove the real difference between Puppies and CHORFs is in the spelling, well…

            You’re coming close to convincing me. 😉

    4. The CHORF’s And Friends (gawd I love that word) are inclusive, drawing people in

      If so, then I’ll look at the positive side. of that. All these new people will hopefully learn that they, too, are eligible to nominate and vote for the Hugos.

      If they, and the books they prefer, truly do represent what SF/F fans want, then they SHOULD win. The more people voting for what they like on a fan-based award, the better.

      1. I’d love to just look at the positive of that if all those other negatives weren’t obscuring the ever-lovin’ hell outta it.

        Yes, people should vote as they wish/feel. But it should be based upon the story itself. Not the politics/gender/skin tone/background/ad nauseam.

        I would also like to get rid of all those story-breaking asides that are pages long describing how it’s so wonderful that so many people are gay or somehow otherwise specially oriented.

        I keep getting the feeling it’s not the authors so much as the publishers…

        1. Make up your mind. Because if you believe any of your assertions, you regard the CHORFS as excluding and the SP as inclusive.

          1. That is incredibly incorrect. Nothing in my above statement implies exclusivity from CHORFies.

            Reeeeeeading comprehension….cha cha cha!

            1. “Reeeeeeading comprehension….cha cha cha!”

              I realize you’ve scant personal acquaintance with it, but you might want to attempt trying it. Based on your demonstrated contributions you seem to have inverted the concept.

  30. Two things, one borders on religion, but there’s a passage in the Bible which says not to throw pearls before swine. Took me a long time to figure out what that one meant, but basically it’s saying, don’t waste your time giving truth to fools. On the other hand, someone has to stand up for truth or it gets buried under an avalanche of sewage. So (working through this in my head as I type, sorry) I think the lesson is to keep putting the truth out there for those who are looking for truth, but don’t get into ‘discussions’ with people whose minds are set in stone. It just stresses you, and you don’t need any more stress than you already have.

    The other thing is about the auto-immune disease(s) (because most of us have more than one). Were you aware of the special diet for auto-immune diseases called the auto-immune protocol? Juniper and I just started on it about two weeks ago, and I’m actually starting to feel a little better after a rough winter. It’s pretty restrictive even compared to the gluten-free diet we’ve been on for over twenty years, but hey, if I can feel better, have more energy, and sleep better, I’ll do it! I was reading some of the testimonials from people who’ve been on the diet for a while, and they are pretty impressive — a couple of women who had advanced MS have gone pretty much into remission and are living normal lives now, for example.

    1. I’ll often argue for the benefit of others listening or reading. Which I think is incredibly important to do in such an instance as all this CHORF v. PUPPY business.

      I’ll argue the nincompoops ’cause I troll, yo.

        1. I have a feeling Chris does not quite realize the benefits his prattling is providing is not what he smugly believes.

  31. I’m busy today, so pardon my blunt advice. Don’t respond to, read, or worry about the gossip in places like 770. They only affect 2 things that will matter in the slightest (and then only slightly) to your progeny’s future world: The Hugo and mainstream publishers. Spend 80% of the time you’d put into the most devastating rebuttal that only the choir would read and understand in taking care of yourself and your family instead. Spend 15% of that energy and creativity reaching out to new groups of not-real-fans like gamers, comiconovites, etc. (how many Fee Good Men’s would sell if it were on the shelf in PXs?). Spend 5% on a get-out the vote effort for would-be puppy helpers if you simply must respond to them. Taking their award would be far more useful for our side and punishing for them than the wittiest and most well written monograph.

  32. Sarah,

    Following on from your last post, I’m going to assume the “Golden Age” post you refer to is “Pure Gold”. You say “which got linked because in their blinkered little minds we’re calling for pulp.”

    I’m not Mike Glyer, and cannot speak for him, but in my opinion the Hugo/Puppy relevance of that post would be:
    a) You talk about Sad Puppies by name
    b) You talk about fan politics, and politics in SF, both of which are relevant to the Sad Puppies complaints about the Hugos being biased by fan politics and politics in SF.
    c) You talk about your vision of what SF is supposed to be about. As an explicit SP complaint is that the Hugos are not providing the type of SF they want, your vision of what it should be is clearly relevant.

    The quote covered points a and b, but not your c. And yet point c is why you claimed he linked it.

    So, in my personal opinion, the post was entirely relevant to the roundup it was featured in, which incidentally was titled “The Bark between the Stars” but was not accusing you of being an astronaut. I’ve explained in your last post why I don’t think the post you complain about being missing wasn’t a very notable contribution to the debate.

    Finally, this is a lot of talk which successfully obscures your claim that you were being called a homophobe by Mike Glyer. Do you still stand by that statement, or do you withdraw it?

    1. I neither stand by nor withdraw it. I assume the inference was there due to the original meaning of the title. If not, then Mike is not controlling the aspersions his posts throw, and I believe he’s smarter than that.
      You’re not Mike, so kindly put a cork in it.
      Other than “let’s you and him fight” do you have anything to add.

      1. Sarah, I’m quite happy to debate you on my own merits.

        So, you say that either MG was tacitly accusing you of homophobia, or he’s insufficiently smart?
        Similarly, your reading an accusation of homophobia into the post requires either that you have been reading in search of an offense, or that you are insufficiently smart, because there is nothing in it to support that as a reasonable conclusion. I do not think either you or MG are lacking in smarts.

        I do indeed have something to add: I have given several reasons, in this post and the last, why I think your claim that your posts were included or not included based on bias is unsupported. Perhaps you would like to address that?

        1. Perhaps Sarah wasn’t clear: she has better things to do than get down in the dirt over trivia. She explained why she considers the approach employed by MG to constitute pissy passive-aggressive slander. you are not obligated to accept her conclusion, but neither are you owed further explanation.

          To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, she has found you an argument; she is not obliged to find you an understanding.

          1. “To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, she has found you an argument; she is not obliged to find you an understanding.”

            ….aaaaaaaand now I have another sayin’.

  33. Life is real, life is important, and your time is worth more consumed in writing than in sanding and painting; you write and hire someone else to do the refinishing. And don’t make the boys do it. They aren’t going to waste the time they aren’t using up sanding. Go read David Ricardo on comparative advantage.

    Give up arguing about issues that will be forgotten in a year. They’re not worth your time. Neither is painting walls.

    Use the time you need not writing in reading. It’s still more productive than sanding.

    I can suggest Burnham’s Machiavellians, and C Northcote Parkinson’s Evolution of Political Thought. You got the libertarian part right, but you need some reminding of how rare really good government is, and what a rare blessing it can be, and besides they’re good fun.

    And mind the allergies. Refinishing and carpentry is good therapy if you have the constitution of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, but you don’t.

    Stay well.

    1. Jerry, thank you. Right now we simply don’t have the resources to pay to have the stuff done, otherwise — oh, trust me — I would. I’m trying to cram it all this week, so when I come back from Liberty I can survive.

      1. Hmmm… How much could it cost? Would some sort of book bomb cover it? I don’t need another book on my ‘to read’ pile right now, but I’d buy a book from you today if it’ll help. I know I’d get my $ worth when I do get around to reading it. Just let me know if there’s one in particular you want to try to push up the Amazon rankings or that you’d get a quicker return on.

    3. How rare really good government is?

      Heck, look at how rare “not awful” government is.

      2. From “Dune”:
        ‘She asked me to tell her what it is to rule,’ Paul said. ‘And I said that one commands. And she said that I had some unlearning to do.’
        She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue.
        ‘She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.’

    4. Give up arguing about issues that will be forgotten in a year.

      A good rule of thumb for me is on a given discussion on the net once you go to bed that one is done. Even if people keep hammer you on it let them have the last word there.

      1. Judging from the way we chase one another’s tails some days, I’d have to say I’m not very distinct, but I chipped in anyway.

      1. Literally capital (if in small increments).
        My small contribution has been sent, as well.

          1. Hence while they’ll be a big part of the pyre.

            And we know we don’t have to do it. We want to do it for our varied reasons which all fall under our own interpretation of noblesse oblige (or maybe our desire for certain novels or collections to be available asap 🙂 ).

            1. Hopefully while on the trip to Liberty con, I’ll be assembling the first “Future History” collection, set in around the late 21st and early 22nd century. Editing is easier than writing on planes.

              2. For the collections that are more editing than writing have you thought of Kickstarting them and letting people who contribute get the eBook as a reward.

                You know, then maybe, oh, I don’t know but a stretch goal enough to have you hire a print layout person would allow for physical copies for hardcore fans who might want them for a bookshelf or something.

                Not that anyone here would be like that or nothin’.

            2. What HerbN said! Wow… I feel like a real Patron of the Arts now! Like the Medici or something! You wouldn’t begrudge us that thrill, would you, Mrs. Hoyt? That we’re helping rebuild the destruction Lois Lerner’s colleagues attempted is just an added ego bonus, thanks for the reminder. 😉

            1. Pretty much…for a long time I didn’t have it and now and again people helped me.

              Now I have it to a degree that is only starting to soak in. Now I help other people.

              When we quit doing that, well, that’s when the j@ck@sses win because then them who need help have to go to the government.

              We live in an age where every act of generosity is a political statement if we want it to be or not.

  35. > uplifted purple wombat

    Ey! You got a problem wit’ dat?!

    – Wombat Liberation Front

      1. No!

        Nothing at all alike.

        Wombats are noisy, cantankerous and lacking in personal hygiene.

        Wallabies are cultured, genteel, lovers of romance and subtlety* as well as always impeccably groomed.

        *Sure, we may hit you with a rock, but it is always a highly polished rock of impressive size, exquisitely mounted.

    1. Our household has been quercetining for about six weeks and we’ve made it through our first pollen season in forty years without sinus infection. Probably coincidence. Maybe you should get a doll of an oak tree dressed in latex and stick pins in it.

      1. Thought it was worth asking about.
        I’ve noticed that the various antioxidant flavenoids seem to interfere with stuff I’d rather have continuing. Not enough to say anything for certain, but it’s suggestive.

  37. Hi! I found you blog a week or so ago through File 770.

    I just wanted to say that I don’t think you’re an idiot, and I do think you’re a good person. I’m a mother, a libertarian (not out of the political closet,) and a soon-to-be-published writer, and I admire the stand you’ve been taking. Thank you.

  38. …and it’s so ingrained they don’t even notice…

    This is what gets me down.

    How on earth can things get fixed when half the equation is unable to even recognize a thing is happening, let alone argue the merits of the action?

      1. Thank you!

        Y’all aren’t going to believe the hair on this one… I was expecting hair, from the heartburn, but the dark hair was a surprise. Everybody before took more to my side with the “babies are golden-bald” theory. (The Baron was a year and a half old before we could justify cutting his hair as anything but symbolic.)

        1. By the way, are you “Foxfier Sailorette” on Facebook? If so, I sent you a friend request. [Smile]

        3. I still remember the daze from a toddler cousin who had dark hair. Everyone knows you start out blond and only end up dark.

          1. With the head of hair The Daughter arrived with I wouldn’t have thought it. She came with a full head of deep dark brown, almost black … and, in spite of assurances otherwise, it never thinned or fell out.

            1. No, eagerly anticipating her first book. I thought the look she gave the camera was impressive. An obvious sign of precocious intelligence.

          2. Given the stuff even the “non readers” in our families read, she’ll probably go for “yes.” Omnivorous to the extreme.

  39. Sarah, try taking a look at LEF.org (Life Extension Foundation). They have good documented information on autoimmune disorders etc. etc. and excellent vitamin support for us all…I have no financial interest in, etc. etc. Hope you are better soon to write as I am looking forward to the new books when they come out.

  40. “You are aware someone who grew up on pulp would be 100, right?” I didn’t grow up with it, but in the ’50s a friend lent me some Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories issues, which I devoured. The Shaver Mystery: Deroes and Teroes. I later read 50-70 Doc Savage books (reprinted pulps), and ERB’s John Carter of Barsoom novels. I’m in my ’70s.

      1. Classic stuff…one of the greatest RPG blogs of all time (now sadly gone) used it as primary inspiration for a T&T world.

  43. Off topic and rather depressing, but a few points worth knowing about the shooter at that Charleston, SC church.

    1) None of the Dems’ proposed gun laws would have prevented this atrocity.

    1a) It was not an “assault weapon” and thus would have remained legally available for purchase

    1b) The shooter reloaded five times; no ban of a “high capacity” magazine would have significantly reduced the shots fired.

    1c) He received the 45-caliber pistol for his birthday this year as a gift from his father — a transfer that would have been explicitly exempted from background check requirements under the legislation proposed by the Democrats in 2013.

    2) He broke several laws in having that gun in that church.

    2a) The shooter was he was out on bond in connection with a “felony drug case.” This was sufficient to make the transfer of a firearm to his possession an illegal act. Federal law states: “persons awaiting trial on felony charges are prohibited from receiving firearms.”

    2b) [B]y driving his firearm to the church without a permit and then by taking it inside without the express permission of the pastor, the shooter violated a host of state-level concealed-carry and trespassing laws, some of which attract felony charges.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/419998/none-obamas-own-gun-control-proposals-have-anything-do-shootings-charleston-charles-c

    1. Then there’s another point that needs to be addressed, that goes the opposite direction in terms of trying to prevent this:

      -1) Why didn’t any of the adults at the Church that day have a gun to defend themselves? While there are certainly many factors, one contributing factor is that guns are banned at Churches…which is an odd restriction, when you consider that the KKK was known to terrorize Blacks in the South, and with State Government Approval, KKK members were so difficult to bring to justice…oh, wait…I think I see the problem…

      1. Some state laws prohibit firearms in churches. Apparently some of the legislators are worried about an ND with all the talking in tongues, snake handling, and who-knows-what that goes on there.

        Even in states that allow it, church rules may not. Most of the Baptist denominations have regional or national organizations and rules come down from there.

        Since there have been a couple of armed robberies of churches in the local area a friend has been concerned about this. His pastor said nobody was going to stop him from carrying, and encouraged him to do so… but if he ever had to shoot, he’d be starting from a bad legal position. So, after twenty years at that church, he’s looking for another. So far all the ones he has liked have also fallen under anti-gun orders from above.

  44. Ed Driscoll offers these, the relevance of which to today’s topic seems undeniable:

    Quotes of the Day
    June 18th, 2015 – 5:01 pm

    What is the role of art? Is it, as Lenin and his fellow thinkers believe, a tool to shape minds? Must we reject art that is impure, that comes from sources we hate or preaches messages we find distasteful? I cannot support this; indeed, I strongly reject it. It is a variation on the politicized life, that deeply harmful worldview that demands we consider all aspects of our being by some ever-shifting political standard. I can’t help but think of Kingsley Amis’ snubbing of this view in “Girl, 20.” In that 1971 novel, the narrator, a music critic, is confronted by an editor angry with him for “advertis[ing] these bastards” — “these” being the East Germans.

    “You do realize, don’t you, that this chap’s only allowed abroad because he’s a loyal and trusted servant of that bloody awful regime?” the editor asks.

    “Whether I do or I don’t doesn’t come into what I’m supposed to be at,” our hero replies. “The job you hired me for was to cover the most important events, and important judged by musical standards.”

    Intriguingly, this fictional defense of the right to cover a communist who made beautiful music came even as Amis was drifting rightward. A few years previously, Amis had published an essay entitled “Why Lucky Jim Turned Right.” In it, he jokingly complains of being “driven into grudging tolerance of the Conservative Party because it is the part of non-politics, of resistance to politics. I have seen how many of the evils of life — failure, loneliness, fear, boredom, inability to communicate — are ineradicable by political means, and that attempts so to eradicate them are disastrous.”

    —Sonny Bunch, “We’re losing sight of what art is really for,” the Washington Post, today.

    “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

    —George Orwell, via Terry Teachout.

  45. All I know, Sarah, is that you’re an eminently fair person. You don’t deserve to be vilified for your political persuasion/beliefs; the only thing that counts is your actual work, to my mind.

    What the flap over the SPs has shown me is that to some in the opposing camp (I don’t like saying “Social Justice Warriors”), “everyone who isn’t with ’em is agin’ ’em.” And that’s just wrong — there’s a middle ground, where I am, and where some of the other folks are, too.

    We’re probably the ones shaking our heads, going, “What in the Hell?”

    I see a whole lot wrong with driving Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos to the point of withdrawing their nominations. And I see even more wrong with the false narratives that have been drawn, by Irene Gallo and others…all that does is show me that people are closed-minded on this issue and aren’t about to change.

    Yet there’s a big, wide, wild world out there. Some of us like to read books by many different types of authors. (I’m one of these people.) I pick these reads not by someone’s political beliefs but by whether or not the writer can articulate the story well, to the point I understand what’s going on there.

    Story matters far more to me than PC-nonsense.

    And to know that so many of my friends and colleagues are being discussed in such vile terms…all it does, Sarah, is make me more likely to support SP4 than not.

    Why?

    Because the SPs are trying to show that there is that big, wild world out there. And that story still matters.

      1. I mostly lurk, these days. Lots of edits going on, and I just finished work a few weeks ago on my second novel. (I hope it’ll be out by the end of the summer.) Plus I’ve got two short stories that will be up next week — one is mine (written in my late husband Michael’s SF universe, the Atlantean Union), one is Michael’s (a romantic fantasy).

    3. In fairness, Kloos may not have been driven out. He may have legitimately acted on on his gratitude to Scalzi, PNH, IIRC Fedor(sp?), and others who helped train his writing. Supposing that Hoyt, Correia and Vox Day had given me intensive help in my field of work, I might feel it wrong to accept a favor from PNH or Scalzi.

          1. An apt quote.

            This is why I made the decision I did. I am not a Sad Puppy, no, but I am in sympathy with the SPs because of any number of issues. I think when people feel like they’ve been marginalized or disregarded, they get upset. Then when they say they’re upset, and the other side (“the in-crowd”) says, “But we didn’t do anything,” that just makes the marginalized or disregarded person feel even more that way than ever.

            It’s like what the SPs are saying isn’t even registering in some quarters. It’s just being disregarded, because of Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies co-opting some of the SPs rhetoric. But just because the RPs did this, that doesn’t mean the SPs did anything wrong…I wish I could put it a better and simpler way, because even in my mind I see it as convoluted.

            Maybe the best way to put it is this: As a fan of SF with a long baseline, I believe I know what constitutes award-worthy SF. And I’m not alone.

            Since fans are allowed to vote for the Hugo Award if they pay a membership fee, I see no problem with people voting their conscience. I am still not sure about the morality of slates, mind, but my goodness — it was happening long before the SPs ever showed up (much less VD and the RPs tried to co-opt the rhetoric).

            What I’d hoped, with my friends who are now upset with me, is that they’d do what Sarah herself was hoping. That they’d say, “Hey, we know Barb. We know she’s not ‘fill-in-the-blank bad.’ Why not ask her why she’s supporting her friends among the SPs rather than condemn her for doing it?”

            But that unfortunately did not happen.

            1. If you aren’t part of the solution …

              If you’re not with us …

              If my neighbor likes reading pulpy SF it does me no harm.

              1. Exactly.

                Again, what really baffles me about this whole foofaraw is this — the SPs have been unfailingly polite and courteous to me, even as I continue to sit the fence. (I do agree in large part with y’all. More every day.) You appreciate the value of a well-reasoned position.

                Whereas the “in-crowd” only wants there to be one position. Theirs. Which is self-evident at all times.

                If the “in-crowd” at least saw that some people in SF fandom definitely feel excluded, that would be a start. (A very few have started to figure this out, including Mary Robinette Kowal. She may be an insider, but she’s willing to challenge her own assumptions. That’s a good start.)

                1. [Author’s Name Redacted], in criticizing Sad/Rabid Puppies, acknowledged that certain types of science fiction (including what he writes) are never in line for the Hugos because “our type” of stories don’t win the awards. In fact, he tacitly endorsed this bias without addressing it except as a law of nature. What he failed to acknowledge was that a) this is an option, not a requirement and b) it doesn’t have to be that way.

                  No sensible person can argue that If You Were A Cowpat, My Love is better written than Hard Magic — in truth, the challenges of creating a credible alternate history and believably working through the implications of the “magic” in that world make Correia’s the greater challenge.

                  A cabal had undeniably taken control of the Hugos, restricted the criteria to their preferences and then denied their deed, attempting to distract complainants by making factually unsupportable assertions –

                  (“They write crappy books!” Really? Your company published a number of those; are you saying y’all knowingly publish crappy books? Care to explain that?)

                  – ad hominem defamation –

                  (Just because somebody is a neo-Nazi doesn’t make their book bad; Norman Spinrad’s Iron Dream won a Nebula nomination “justifying” Nazi racial ideology. Arguably an active child molester is a greater societal danger than a neo-Nazi but try arguing that as reason for denying an award)

                  – and begging the question by assuming the desired conclusiion as one of their premises (defining “award-worthy” books in terms of the type of books they think should win awards.)

                  Thus [Author’s Name Redacted] was defending the cabal’s actions without recognizing their invalid criteria or hidden agenda; those were assumed, accepted and all criticism attacked rather than rebutted. Of course, that is to be expected when debating a Marxist experienced in dialectic.

                  Contrary to [Author’s Name Redacted], his books have been quite deserving of popular fan awarded honors and the fact that they are not “literary” is no more valid a basis for denial of such honor than the colour of a NASCAR entrant has to do with whether it should win a race.

                  1. What you’re saying makes sense, RES.

                    Just remember, some of the more popular authors do not even want a Hugo Award. Terry Pratchett didn’t, for example…he figured he didn’t need it, so what was the point?

                    Now, had he been given one early in his career, _then_ I’m sure it would’ve been a different story. But he was nominated later, and refused the nom.

                    What gets me about the current flap at Tor is this: They have a couple of authors in their stable who have been systematically ignored when it comes time for awards. L.E. Modesitt, Jr., is one of them — he writes consistently good hard SF with some real world implications. And as far as I know, he’s never once been nominated.

                    (Please, someone, correct me I’m wrong.)

                    So this does hurt their own authors as much as it hurts other authors.

                    That’s why I think what Feder and Irene Gallo have said is so very shortsighted. Yes, Vox Day and the RPs are certainly comprised of some “interesting characters” (as I don’t want to swear, trying to avoid my blood pressure spiking and all, I will just say that). I don’t approve of them, for whatever it’s worth; I don’t like the RPs co-option of the SP rhetoric, because it has to my mind obscured what the fight is really about — SF fans wanting to be heard.

                    Now, granted, I will give VD and the RPs one thing and one thing only: They have not attacked anyone who’s standing in the middle, like me.

                    I think this is because I’ve never said VD and his posse don’t have a right to be heard. They do.

                    But there’s a lot more going on between VD and the long-established folks in SF&F fandom that I know about. I’m aware of some of the undercurrents, that’s all…which is one reason I’m standing on shore, watching as the sharks circle.

                    It does worry me somewhat that as a relatively new author, I may be blacklisted all because I refuse to disavow my friendship with Jason C. (he and I work together at Shiny Book Review, for pity’s sake; I know him, I like him, I respect him, and that’s that).

                    1. This isn’t true, about PTerry, Barb. He refused to be in the running during a Loncon, because he wanted to enjoy it and not be nervous about it. That was all.

                    2. Thanks for the correction, Sarah. I didn’t know the full story.

                      I do know that’s one the folks on Tor’s side have used as a bludgeon, saying it hasn’t really hurt any more popular authors not to have Hugos.

                      I’m going to assume, then, that TP was up for a Hugo after his illness was discovered? (Please do let me know, ’cause I want to get this stuff right. I’m formulating a blog post, too; providing I can come up with something that hasn’t already been said, and said better than I can say it, that is.)

                    4. That’s shameful.

                      I did some very quick research, mind…my GoogleFu is getting a little better, maybe. The nomination TP turned down was apparently in 1990. (I was hoping that maybe he’d been nominated again and I hadn’t found that.)

                  2. The thing that amuses me is the panic that TNH tried to bring out at the ‘supposed’ inclusion of GamerGate into Sad Puppies; I vaguely remember that there were horrified gasps that oh no, the Hugo awards would be overrun by HALO novels on the ASP side.

                    …I did not realize that the massive pile of HALO novels we have were published by TOR until I saw HALO novels included in Jagi Lamplighter’s photo collection, which prompted me to go look around our shelves.

                    So really, TOR seems to have it’s upper management regularly look down on its’ products, given that reaction.

                    Granted Western gamers don’t have the same tendency to buy character goods and related swag the way Japanese otaku do, but related works tend to be quite popular (or else there wouldn’t be expanded universe novels on the market.)

  47. BTW, I figure everyone here knows what I’m talking about. (I sincerely hope so.)

    In case my longer post didn’t make sense, let me try again:

    At least the SPs are showing they are pro-story and don’t care who writes it.

    The “in-crowd,” OTOH, is showing that for the most part they have no truck with indie authors or small-press authors, and they don’t care who knows it. And they also have shown that they really don’t care much about what fans think, either…which is sad, shocking, and utterly *wrong*.

    So the SPs put up a slate that has as diverse a group of authors I’ve ever seen.

    And the “in-crowd” says the SPs are a bunch of racist, homophobic bigots.

    Who is making the only real argument here? (Hint, hint: it’s not the “in-crowd.”)

    1. Barb, nicely made point. SP just wants a honkin’ big crowd of SF fans; the “In-Crowd” wants to shove others out and is upset that they might no longer be allowed to do that.

      Summa thuh folks are inclined to ‘cuse them in-crowders o’ hoggin’ the beer an’ thuh BBQ but really, they don’t eat all that much and what they do chow down on ‘s mostly thuh beans.

      1. LOL to your last paragraph, RES.

        Thanks for your reply, too. Sometimes when I comment, I almost feel I’m shouting into the wind tunnel, for all the good it does.

        I think we should want there to be more fan involvement. Even a few on the otherwise-known-as-in-crowd side like that idea. Those folks I can deal with; their minds are not closed.

        The problem is, too many of the others not only have closed their minds, but don’t even realize they’ve done so.

        What I think is very, very sad is the fact that folks like Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos deserved their nominations. They were pressured by the “in-crowd” to withdraw them, and then the “in-crowd” said to themselves, “Oh, those two, they’re good people.”

        I’m sure you see what’s wrong with that from a logical standpoint.

        1. Heck, Barb, t’were mah pleasure.

          I suspect what the in-crowders are missing is that none of the SP supporters actually care about the Hugos any more, because we’ve long since sensed the balloting was rigged. All Larry Correia intended to do with his initial SP project was test that proposition (accountants and scientists are like that — we like to put propositions to the test to determine their validity.) SP 1 & 2 demonstrated where the flaw in the system lay: in the nomination process, not the ballot counting.

          SP3 was an effort to boost the Hugos and the Worldcon. The idea that a small fee would get a bunch of reading material and might — might — get some deserved recognition for some stuff we had loved got a surprisingly large buy-in of associate memberships. Crap — who imagined the nominating crowd was so easily swamped!!!!!

          And then, of course, those had been controlling the nomination process said, “Well done! Good going – you sure did a great job of getting out your vote and you guys nominated some pretty swell writing, too. Next year you guys better be on your mettle because we’ll be coming in to win.”

          Well, maybe that wasn’t quite what they said, but surely it is what they meant to say, right?

          2. And then, of course, those had been controlling the nomination process said, “Well done! Good going – you sure did a great job of getting out your vote and you guys nominated some pretty swell writing, too. Next year you guys better be on your mettle because we’ll be coming in to win.”

            That’s more or less what they did say when people over the last decade or so failed to get Sad Puppy-friendly books/authors onto the ballot or to win once on said ballot. It got a tad less polite last year when Larry actually did get on the ballot (where a tad less polite is more like “Nyah nyah you came last!!! luser!”)

            And this year it has of course got rather worse. The good news is that SP3 is succeeding wildly in generating Hugo voters and nominators and generally raising awareness so I think there will be no good way to return to the status quo of 5-ish years ago.

            1. Yeah, pretty much. The response SP1 got was “Well, get your preferred authors nominated then,” so SP2 happened… and they made it a POINT to ensure that Larry didn’t win, ditto VD… and the challenge was repeated again… and pretty much it was “Challenge Accepted.”

              Except none of us expected that the nominations would end up like that. I guess the success in ‘beating’ SP2 had the ASPs complacent.

              I honestly wonder what the Worldcon committee is thinking, looking at the sudden overwhelmingly huge swell of supporting memberships. I have to wonder if they’ll accept the proposal that Gerrib and his ilk are going to make, in the hopes of keeping Puppy supporters out. Regardless of what the ASPs say, the fact we even exist and there was such an uproar about this has been ridiculously profitable to the Worldcon. The fact that the ASPs are using bots to try inflate their numbers in claims of buying books (the most pathetic and hilarious attempt I’ve seen in ‘demoralization’, just a step above Clamps claiming he has friends) means they’re worried that the pro-Puppy side might actually be big enough to do ‘damage.’

              Good heavens, some of the works we like might win. “That cannot beeeee!!!”

              I’ll be submitting my ballot soon, get it out of the way so I can focus on work. Just a few more things to read and judge.

              1. “… Just a few more things to read and judge.”

                Now, why would you be a’wastin’ yore time wit doin’ that?

                Isn’t it simpler to jus’ read the author’s CV, check they’ve made the proper political ‘n’ cultural obeisances and decide by that?

                Actually reading and evaluating the writing? Is that even allowed?

        2. ” Sometimes when I comment, I almost feel I’m shouting into the wind tunnel, for all the good it does.”

          Don’t ever fear that. I may view you as liberal (at least well to the left of myself) but it is always refreshing to realize that there are at least some on that side of me who are unfailingly polite, and use their head for something other than a place to hang a hat and a few dangly earrings.

          Your posts are always cogent and well reasoned, one reason they likely don’t have as many replies is because your thoughts are clearly explained and people don’t have to ask you to clarify.

          1. Thank you, Bearcat. I appreciate your response.

            I just wish things were different, and not just in the world of SF&F. There’s no need for the “in-crowd” to eviscerate the SPs. And there’s no need for the “in-crowd” to think they’re superior to the SPs, either…I just do not understand where some people are coming from.

            There may well be something to the belief that some people (not all, but certainly *some*) have a sense of entitlement. Especially if you’re entrenched, and think that you are the only voice that matters, like much of the “in-crowd.”

            1. How do people know that you’re part of the “in-crowd” if you don’t exclude the “wrong people”? [Sad Smile]

              Sadly, wanting to be “part of the in-crowd” seems to be part of human nature.

              Fortunately, most don’t let the desire to “get out of hand” which includes “excluding the wrong people”.

              Of course, the “wrong people” can be “people who just want to start nasty fights” so there can be good reasons to want to exclude those types. [Sad Smile]

              I’m glad that I haven’t given Sarah or “Sarah’s crowd” good reasons to exclude me. [Wink]

              1. How do people know that you’re part of the “in-crowd” if you don’t exclude the “wrong people”? [Sad Smile]

                Exactly, which goes back to something Sarah’s said many times about “positional good”. When the culture rewards you not for the things you do, but for the noises you make, and you have to increasingly show that you’re more pure, more devoted, more true to the cause than the other guy, then it’s really no surprise that it goes quickly to “othering”, to exclusion, and to generally being nasty to “those people” because all right-thinking folks know that “those people” are the source of all that is evil in the world.

                It’s all just signalling. Automatic, reflexive, and I would think largely unexamined, but still just signalling.

                1. Excellent point, Zachary.

                  The reason we have a saying that actions speak louder than words (yes, even among writers) is because it’s so true, it’s become prosaic.

                  My view is that whenever words have become more important than actions in a fight like this — well, do you remember the saying that’s attributed to Gandhi (but historians can’t find it; they think it’s apocryphal) about nonviolent resistance? “First they laugh at you. Then they ignore you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

                  One thing Gandhi did say, however, that rings true to me at times like this:

                  “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”
                  Gandhi, YOUNG INDIA,1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285

              2. The “In-Crowd” problem is especially difficult when you try to have your cake while also eating it. The Hugos are either awards representing all fandom or they are awards selected by the in-Crowd. Caught in their lie the In-Crowd reacted as all holders of unearned privilege will, by attacking their decloakers.

              3. Very good points, Paul.

                I don’t understand what going on here, from a fandom perspective. It is madness to drive out fans over a difference of opinion. (I thought we were all done with high school years ago. At least the ones at the center of this mess on the established “in-crowd” side are.)

                Paul, you’re a good person. There’s no need to feel excluded. I hope that what Sarah’s done in trying to make the case that some people are definitely feel excluded will resonate eventually…because she is right.

                Also, it bemuses me that while I continue to stand somewhat in the middle, only the pro-Tor/pro-“in-crowd” side seems to be taking shots. The SPs aren’t; the SPs just want to be heard and understood. (So is my understanding, anyway.)

                1. BTW, it should be “definitely *feeling* excluded.” (I wrote this while tired. Just wrapped up a very large edit for a client, and I probably was not working on all thrusters.)

              4. Paul,

                I consider myself fortunate, both here and on the Bar, that the overwhelming urge to post something that will get me banned often coincides with being unable to write.

            2. I may be an obnoxious partisan hack, but I would echo bearcat in saying that your posts are valuable.

              1. TY Bob. I appreciate that.

                And you may well be right w/r/t Kloos. I think it’s hard to know just why he bowed out…other than being quite annoyed at Vox Day. (Who isn’t a Sad Puppy, never has been a Sad Puppy…I know the drill.)

  48. Well, if’n you happened to live out West in my neck of the woods, I would be more than willing to help you do your floor. For peanuts. Well, not peanuts, but a six pack of not-particularly-good beer would be a bright spot, so.

    Chin up, it’s grand.

  49. Vox probably has the right strategy to deal with these people. Hit first and hardest. Don’t try to engage them in dialectic – they couldn’t if they tried. And recognize civility will be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

  51. Pingback: Online Bullying | Wandering Neurons

  52. I ran across a comment by a writer that I enjoy very much. He/She was wading in on the whole Hugo kerfuffle. I started reading her/his comments and came to the very rapid conclusion that he/she had failed to do his/her due diligence before opening mouth/using keyboard.
    Back when I was in high school debate, one of the first rules I was slapped with was “Do not start your research using derivative sources. Always start with the primary/original source(s) and work outward from there. Preferably in the original language (if you can puzzle it out).” As far as I can determine that basic rule is still followed in debate today “original trumps derivative”.
    The more I read of the comments the more I realized that she/he was not even using secondary sources, but was pulling from tertiary or quaternary sources for the basis of the remarks. The conclusion reached in the remarks left me feeling rather like i had just read that the the Texas legislature voted to make pi = 3 or MLK Jr is running for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
    I still grant her/him the ability to write interesting fiction but I’m not convinced that he/she can be trusted to go shopping alone with a credit card.

  53. Anyone recognize this?

    12. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

    It is as if one sees the light coming from the tunnel, hears the whistle, smells the smoke — and decides it probably isn’t a train. It really doesn’t matter what you have in a knife fight, if you don’t understand you are in a knife fight.

  54. Over here from Fran’s site. Please hang in there, Sarah. You make sense and I enjoy reading you.

  55. Sarah, I’m going to have to ask Kate, ’cause then the next thing I found was in 2005, TP declined his nomination exactly for the reasons you stated.

    I don’t know what was going on in 1990. I didn’t find any record of a nomination after _further_ searching. So I’m going to ask Kate, since she’s up on it. (I did read her post a while back about how wrong it was that Terry Pratchett did not get a nomination.)

  56. Got sidetracked on my way to the post, but, we fight these debates, because if we don’t, the people who would rule everyone’s lives will win, and run everyone’s lives into the ground.

    Frankly, I’m completely sick of all of it, but if we don’t fight them now, when it is just words, and shunning, and all that playground BS, we’ll have to fight them when they are strong enough to try and take what they want by brute force. Their power, their prestige, their self image is all positional, all based on how much more they claim their progressiveness than the other person, and if there is noone for them to speak out against, then they will create them out of anyone who is not as good at the game as they are.

    And it will not stop at denouncing. They are like the snake that has bitten the earth.

  57. This post helps me understand Vox Day’s war cry for the Vile Faceless Minions: “We Don’t Care.”

    The left’s power consists in their knowledge that we care when they call us racists-sexists-homophobes. We care because we are good decent people.

    But we need the courage to say “We Don’t Care.” We don’t care if you call us racists. We don’t care if you call us sexists. We don’t care if you call us homophobes.

    Best wishes, Sarah, to you and yours.

  58. Barb Caffrey,
    Your words aren’t lost in the wind. I have so much respect for someone who takes a stand when it is the right one, even when their friends–or so-called friends–insist they are seeing things incorrectly and are willing to walk away from them for seeing four lights instead of five.

    I’m not a Sad Puppy, but freedom of speech is of paramount importance to me, and so much I see in certain bullying movements is directed at stifling freedom of expression. If we don’t have unpopular speech, we can easily lose our freedoms.

Comments are closed.