Year: 2015

Awake and rejoice! At long last and out of a not-so-distant land, the Promo Post has arrived! There’s been a drought of entries lately, as everyone grapples with that messy, so-called “real world” I’ve heard so much about. I’ll never quite grok you vertebrates and all your hustling around. So as we enter the glorious weekend, anchor yourselves to some comfortable couches or chairs and read a good book or three. Don’t forget to leave helpful reviews! As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Code Wrangler, Minion Trainer, and General Henchman-For-Hire

Alma Boykin

Peaks of Grace

Colplatschki Chronicles Book 5

Before Elizabeth von Sarmas came Odile Rheinhart and Marta and Edmund de Sarm…

Stone Walls: Marguerite Thomasina Antonia de Sarm’s father and maids trained her for life as wife, mother, and Lady Sarm. Lovely, practical in the extreme, sheltered behind the walls of Sarm Hall, Marta de Sarm harbors no ambitions but many illusions. Her husband’s apparent treachery shatters those illusions, forcing her to take up power in her own name. Can she trust her father’s men when Phillip of Frankonia, richest man in Colplatschki, pounds on the gates?

Custom’s Walls: In the village below the Hall, Odile Rheinhart struggles to find a place in the world. Some villagers call her cursed and whisper about secret sin, others pity her as a pathetic burden. Until the day an accident pulls her out of her sheltered home and into a world she’d never allowed herself to dream of. Do her new ambitions truly reflect Godown’s will?

Sheltering Walls: Two women, very different, both working with their walls. Overlapping duties and fortunes draw Marta and Odile together even as Phillip the Majestic threatens to break their world asunder. Hall and convent, Lady and Sister, Godown’s Grace may provide them strength to retain their freedom. Or destroy all that they hold dear.

For Godown’s Grace shatters hearts and walls.

Mary Catelli

A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry.

When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives — but all the evidence points to his having made the deal.

Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

Also available from these fine booksellers:

• Barnes & Noble
• iTunes
• Kobo
• Inktera
• Scribd

*Yes, I know, that political closet had see through doors, shelves…  As a friend pointed out, it wasn’t so much a coming out of the closet, until about a year before I did, but a slow conversion.  Though it wasn’t exactly a conversion either.  I was always an anti-communist.  It just took me time for the softer stuff to start bothering me.  I got through school by parroting it, and I didn’t see its intrinsic evil until it started dawning on me much later.  This is one of those “dawning on me.”  Interestingly, of all the political posts I made before throwing the closet door open, this got me the most attacks, to the point I had to password protect the post to stop the attacks.*

There is a war between the men and the women — a blast from the past post Dec. 7 2006

And the women are winning.  And this is a bad thing.  Seriously.  Indulge me.

(Pardon the misspellings.  I’m ranting.  There’s something unholy to an orderly, spellchecked rant.  I won’t inflict it on you.  Besides, I have REAL writing to do.)

I know this goes completely against everything you’ve ever heard and learned.  History — and SF — is full of dreamers who are convinced that if women ruled the world it would all be beauty flowers and non aggression.  (To these dreamers I say spend a week as a girl in an all-girl school.  It will be a rude awakening.)

Dreamers of the Dan Brown stripe posit a peaceful female worship, with yet more beauty and flowers and non-aggression.  They ignore the fact that 99% of the goddess-worshiping religions were scary.  And don’t tell me that’s patriarchal slander — it’s not.  The baby-killing of Astoreth worship has been documented extensively.  (Of course, the Phoenicians were equal-opportunity baby killers.)  The castrations of Cybele worship were also well documented.  Now, I can hardly imagine a female divinity without imagining hormonal episodes requiring appeasement — but that’s because I’m a woman of a certain age, and that’s fodder for another altogether different discussion.  Suffice it to say that the maiden and mother usually also had a crone persona who was … er… “not a nice person.”

Anyway — all this to say since I joined the MOB (Mothers Of Boys) the scales about such things as the inherent equality of men and women as far as their brain structure and basic behavior have fallen from my eyes.  (Well, the scales that remained.  My experience in school notwithstanding, I’d been TAUGHT that females were getting the short end of the stick and that’s a hard thing to overcome.  Learned wisdom is so much more coherent than lived wisdom, after all.)

Again — indulge me — I’m going to make a lot of statements I can too back up, but which would take very, very, very long to document — so it will seem like I’m ranting mid air.  Stay with it.  If I feel up to it later, I’ll post some references.

Yes, women have been horribly oppressed throughout history including the rather disgusting Victorian period that most Americans seem to believe is how ALL of history went.  I contend, though, that women were not oppressed by some international conspiracy of males — yes, I know what Women’s Studies professors say.  I would however remind you we’re talking of a group of people — men — who a) have issues finding their own socks in the dresser they’ve used for ten years.  b) Are so good at communicating as a group that they couldn’t coordinate their way out of a wet paper bag, or to quote my friend Kate, couldn’t organize a bonk in a brothel.  (In most large organizations the “social/coordinating” function is performed by females at various levels.) c) That women being oppressed by a patriarchy so thorough it altered history and changed all records of peaceful female religion would require a conspiracy lasting thousands of years and involving almost every male on Earth.  If you believe that, I have this bridge in NY that I would like to sell you. — Women were oppressed by their own bodies.

Throughout most of history women had no safe and effective means of stopping pregnancy. — please, spare me the “herbal” remedies.  I grew up in a village that had little access to medicine.  If there had been an effective means of preventing pregnancy we’d have known it.  TRUST me.  There are abortificients, but they endanger the mother as well.  However, until the pill there was no safe contraceptive.  The herbal contraceptive is a plot device dreamed up by fantasy writers.  Also, btw, the People’s Republic of China TESTED all these methods (including swallowing live tadpoles at the full moon.)  NONE of them worked.  SERIOUSLY.

What this meant in practical fact is that most women were pregnant from menarche to menopause, if they were lucky to live that long.  I’ve been pregnant.  If you haven’t, take it from me it’s not a condition conducive to brilliant discourse or reasoned logic.  On top of that, of course, women would suffer the evils of repeated child bearing with no rest.  In effect this DID make women frail and not the intellectual equals of men.  And it encouraged any male around to “oppress” them.  I.e., when the majority of females around you need a minder, you’re going to assume ALL females need a minder.  It’s human nature.  Note that beyond suffrage, the greatest advance in women’s equality came from the pill.  Not a coincidence, that.

However, the people who think that women were oppressed by an international historical cabal rule the establishment.  Including the educational establishment.  I find it hilarious that in their minds men/boys are so powerful that they must be kept back and are suspected of being criminals just because they have a penis.  This is attributing to them god-like powers to rival what any Victorian housewife would believe.

Anyway — these people have decided all efforts must be made to equal male and female performance in school.  Since, in practical fact, this is impossible because males and females develop at different paces and favor different areas, they’ve settled for hobbling the all-powerful males.

You see this everywhere from Saturday morning cartoons to kindergarten to all the grades beyond.  In cartoons these days, the girls ALWAYS rescue the boys.  (They do it while keeping impeccably groomed hair, too.  Impressive, that.)  And in school all the girls are assumed to be right and all the boys are assumed to be wrong.

Because it’s been determined girls learn better in groups — not all girls.  I HATED group work.  But most girls — group work rules the class.  Because girls do better in homework, particularly of the “decorating and coloring” kind, this homework persists well into highschool — even with no pedagogical excuse.  Because single-sex education is good for BOTH genders, but BETTER for boys, single-sex education is anathema.

As a matter of fact I don’t  know ANY parents of boys who haven’t been told their sons are ADHD at some point and told the boy needs ritalin.  Even my older son, who is almost as verbally inclined as a girl, and who has always been interested in learning had this pushed at him in first grade.  Middle school is insane for boys, as their verbal skills at that age lag well behind the girls.  They are not only behind academically, they also tend to have issues working in groups.  Boys are accused of sexual harassment on a regular basis at this age.  No girl ever is.

I remember going to the parent teacher conference for my older son, in sixth grade, and sitting in the hallway listening to the other parents.  All the parents whose children had perfect grades were parents of girls.  All the parents whose children were inexplicably not doing well, despite high IQs, were parents of boys.

You’re not outraged?  Reverse those.  Perhaps it will help.  Imagine that our method for teaching teens was leaving all the girls out in the cold and favoring boys.  Wouldn’t it shock you?  It should.

On top of all, we’re fostering a victim mentality in these girls.  We’re giving them the advantages AND telling them boys are oppressing them — these boys are all powerful creatures from which there is no escape.

You’re not worried?  You should be.

If an alien species had devised a way to stop the human race from reproducing they wouldn’t have come up with a better way to drive both girls and boys crazy.

Look — this is striking at the core of our society.  by which I don’t mean American or even western society.  I mean SOCIETY.  Human.  Association.

Insofar as that goes — and without in anyway defending it — there is a reason that, given the chance (mostly by nature and that pesky pregnancy thing) societies became ridiculously anti-woman.  There is a reason Islamic countries are terrified of the female half of their population — no, don’t want to hear anything about higher observances.  Female circumcision.  Veiling (anyone who thinks those who put women in slip covers respect women needs his or her head examined.)  Women’s testimony being worth half of the man’s.  Women punished for being raped.  If that’s respect and kindness, give me insult and intolerance any day — there is a reason Imperial China circumscribed females to non-human status.

The reason is that we ARE more powerful than they are.

No, seriously.  And I’m not talking about the ability to bear life within us, or some such chestnut dreamed up by an anthropologist.  I’m talking about — creating social links.

Women, perhaps because they were the child caretakers and therefore had to be able to communicate child care lore as well as teach the children, seem to have learned to organize and create cooperative links.  Men’s brains seem to run to hierarchies — the order giving necessary to cooperative hunting — while women’s brains run to networks — the communication lines necessary to pass on recipes and child care tips.

The farther we go back, the more we’re sure the greatest innovations leading to civilization were the work of women: agriculture.  Animal domestication.

I’m going to take a wild leap and assume we also invented language.  Stands to reason “Gog go around mammoth from front” is far less complex than “Iga make sure child doesn’t eat poisonous berries.”

In that sense we MADE society.  We fit into society naturally.  Our aggression is verbal, social.  It’s an aggression that consists in freezing out and/or going around people.  Male aggression consists of hitting someone over the head.  Our society — any advanced society — condones the first, but not the last.

We are — so to put it — house broken.  Males aren’t.  Young males MUST be trained to fit into society.  Young females instinctively know how to go around and manipulate the system. (Yes, I’m talking generally.  I had no social clue and was very much male in my approach.)

THIS, ladies, is our turf.  They had a handle on us while continuous pregnancy weakened us.  They could even get the upper hand and push us to a corner.

NOW they can’t.  Science has equalized the odds.  And therefore, our superior organizational skills — ever more needed in an increasingly complex society — already give us an advantage.

On top of that our schools are treating our boys as guilty until proven innocent.  This is alienating them and making them crazy.  It’s also giving them a distaste for learning, which is why most college graduates are women.

We’ve won.  They’re on the run.

It’s now time to remember that they are our fathers/husbands/children.  It’s now time to remember that if we demand that men behave like women and become women in all but equipment only a small percentage will be able to accommodate.  The rest will become embittered, disillusioned and, ultimately, aggressive.  Because that’s how men behave when they’re not happy.

It’s time to stop driving the young warriors from the tribe to live in the wilderness.  They only become dangerous and come back in attack mode.

We’ve won.  Fly the standard.  Sound the trumpet.  And then extend your hand to the enemy — bring those boys back in.  They are no more guilty for the crimes of their ancestors who were terrified of women than the little girls today are guilty of the crimes of women who in the last four decades have been terrified of men.

It’s time to stop this nonsense.  We’re two halves of a whole.  Regardless of how your preference runs, or whether you have both genders in the home — it takes both to make a society.  Or at least a functional society.  And — until science overcomes that — it takes both to make a physical human being.

Go out there and hug a man today.

I’m a little worried about a development at Mad Genius Club yesterday.

It brought to mind when I was a little writer, knee high to a grasshopper — all of 14 or so — and started a fantasy short story.  I was about a bunch of kids who find a magical key that takes them to a parallel world where they can start a colony and do things their way.

One of my more… ah… indoctrinated friends (look, it was a socialist regime.  We were all indoctrinated, but she drank the koolaid.) told me that the story should end after chapter three, because the young people should realize they should come back to the real world and try to change it.

I didn’t say anything and felt vaguely guilty.  Some of the indoctrination must have taken. I abandoned the novel unfinished.

If I were answer it now, my answer would be “These are my middle fingers, Grace, baby.  You’re just p*ssed off you can’t write any fiction.  That change the world b*llsh*t?  F*ck off.  It’s what your side does to encourage the poor prols to fall in line.”

Because here’s the thing: EVERY communist I knew in the seventies told me that about everything, from the school association, to the communist party itself.  “If you don’t like it, you should join and change it from within.”

There is a reason they do that.  As the current administration is finding out (they probably thought the press was the nation, so they thought it would be easier) it’s almost impossible to change an organization “from within.”  The only way to do it is over a long time (as they’ve been trying to do to this country — 100 years and counting) gradually.  Hence “the long march through the institutions.”

One person going in and trying to change it will meet one of three fates: get expelled and then told they have no status to complain (in countries this can mean being dead, of course); get co-opted and given all sorts of busy work so they can do nothing; get disgusted and quit again.

Now, this might be worth it when the institution is the by G-d United States of America.  But … SFWA?  SFWA???????

SFWA’s trouble started with being an organization in search of a mission.  It was supposed to advocate for writers, but the only way to do that is to have the organization run by lawyers, not writers.  In an Oligopoly system, writers didn’t dare oppose their employers who could effectively blacklist them for life.  Yes, some of the early, idealistic ones tried.  And yep, when science fiction was a cash cow they had SOME standing.  Now that it’s the rump end of most publishers who are owned by international concerns?  What are you gonna do, strike?  Before or after they blacklist you?

Other missions have been proposed, including getting us some form of health insurance, succor in times of need, etc.

Some wonderful people still believe in what SFWA was meant to be — a haven and protection for SF/F writers — and I’m thinking specifically of Jerry Pournelle, Esther Friesner, Dave Truesdale, all of whom very nicely said, “but we need you in SFWA” but didn’t add “you can change it from within,” because they’re not smarmy, and certainly didn’t add “you should join and pay them money so you can change them.”

As much as I like some of the wonderful people still in SFWA I think they’re not just in a leaky boat.  No, they’re trying to drain the ocean with a thimble.  Idealistic, yes, and they’re better men and women than I.  But reasonable… no.

Part of the problem is that people of liberty (to coin a phrase) don’t join up well.  SFWA and other organizations eventually collapse under the weight of “people who really like to fill forms and hector others about how to be.”

Which I guess is what the commentor at MGC is, of course, consciously or not.

Thank heavens I’m not fourteen and I’m VERY well past being told “you have to become part of the system to change it.”

I mean, I understand them right?  If the Founding Fathers hadn’t become courtiers of George III and changed the British monarchy, we woul….  Oh, wait.  THEY DIDN’T.

They changed it from outside which is much easier than changing it from the inside.  Also, more effective.  For the results of the other theory all you have to see are all the upstanding citizens who are sent to DC and who become … whatever people become in DC.

Meanwhile, for us, the non-joiners, I think the only benefit of SFWA is to be able to say “I really am a pro, look.”

So I propose the Liberty Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  You join.  We send you a certificate, a hat and a pin.  For $40 a year, we’ll endeavor to also provide some sort of suite at major cons.

This leaves no room for what associations usually devolve into: a vehicle for the social justice crowd.

Hat, pin, certificate, party.  That’s all we can promise.

What else do you need that is realistically obtainable?

Take the pin.  Go write a book.  I don’t know if everybody wants to change the world (I only really care about MY world) but I do know that there are better things to do with your time.

Like write.

The Problem of Labor — David Pascoe

My vantage point these days is an oddly (Oddly?) curious one. A sleep-deprived and writing-deprived one. Perhaps this accounts for the difficulty I have in comprehending how some … people think. Or don’t think. So there I was, minding my own business, which mostly involves me minding Wee Dave’s … business, and monumental foolishness flashed across my feed.

Short aside:

I’m pretty certain (don’t laugh; I might cry) time spent socially networking is proving the bane (one of: shorter aside (nested asides inside nested parentheses! cats and dogs, living together!) being I’m working hard to cut myself slack when it comes to my careers as a father and as a writer. I’ll be attending Superstars this week, paying VERY close attention, and there’ll be an AAR when I’m done and it’s done and the doneness is rare/medium rare or so. That said, this may be my big thing this year. I simply may not have it in me, and in my family, to do a lot else. Except LibertyCon. I have reliable sources that suggest her BbES Princessness will cut me out of the inheritance-by-adoption should I fail to deliver the Young Master to that particular shindig, and I just can’t be having with that. All of which is to say that I’ll be giving up all of the booking of faces, the twits, and as much of the online-y-ness as I can safely manage come the day after Soul Cake Tuesday or whenever that happens. I need the time, and I need the emotional energy to actually make fiction. The news, such as it is, is far, far too unpleasant for me to dwell upon when I have a not-quite-nine-month-old psychic vampire sucking my will to power *cough* live. And as Mrs. Dave recently pointed out to me, I tend to have difficulty asking for help. If you see me online, mucking about with silliness that doesn’t further any of the priorities of great priority-ness, please drop me a line telling me to get back to work. Thank you.

End aside.

So, back to monumental foolishness. This link takes you to Twitchy, purveyor of delightful silliness perpetrated by ostensibly responsible adults throughout these great internets. Should you deign, feel free to follow the links therein to the origin of the idiocy, one of those Great Minds which Think Alike (and Right, and Truth and probably Beauty) over at that Edifice of Rightness, the NYT. Yeah, them again.

Apparently, El Presidente Numero Uno has proposed a tax credit for working mothers parents that should help to offset the costs of childcare. The GOP has predictably (I have as yet to ascertain whether it is also wisely) criticized this as unfair to stay-at-homes. The writer, in all his Received Wisdom, mocks this opposition as wrong headed, evil and all the usual epithets directed at those filthy others Not In the Club.

But the money quote is this one:

The tax code is already hugely distorted in favor of stay-at-home parenting: Labor outside the home is taxed; household work, such as stay-at-home parenting, is not.

So, apparently, I’ve fallen through some red-tinged rabbit-hole into a world where the IRS taxes my labor. Funny, I only remember reporting my income. Is there a block on my 1099 where my employer (slave-driver, I tell you. I never get a day off, and no sick days. On the upside, I can come to work in my pajamas, or even a kilt.) should have tallied said labor? What is the unit of measurement for this work? Is it man-hours? Is there a dollar value attached? I thought that whole calculation was considered extraneous, but what do I know: I’m just a stay-at-home parent, bilking the government and the American People (in that order, of course) out of the untaxed labor I’m putting in while not getting paid. Again, presumably by Daddy Government and the American People. (Seriously, when do I start getting a paycheck for raising an American? Strike that.)

If the logic makes your head spin, well, it should. Keep in mind that you (and I, and apparently all our stuff and all our time) belong to the government, and you’ll start to understand what’s going on here. Also, just why somebody might make that claim. This is really part and parcel of what Cedar wrote about last week.

You see, if you ladies parents decide that you really want to be the ones to instruct your children on life, the universe, etc. and one parent will remain in the house to do so, you’re wrong. You see, you don’t get to have an opinion on that, unless you want to be evil, and you don’t want that, do you? If you stay home, Mom Parent, you’ll be robbing society of the value of your work outside of the home, in a career that actually means something. How can you do that to the generations of feminists who fought for (the mandatory exercise of) your right to hire a nanny, or pay a childcare service, so you can slog the daily nine-to-five like your husband does? Wait, you have a husband? You’re voluntarily buying into the patriarchal notion of marriage? You know that’s just a tool to prevent you from becoming empowered, right? Oh dear, oh dear: I see we have a lot of work yet to do brainwashing education you toward your eventual enlightenment to your rightful place. Look, sweetheart, don’t worry your pretty, little head about it: just know that we’re working for your betterment, and sacrifices will have to be made.

*sough* Sorry, don’t know what came over me. So this is straight out of the Leftymost playbook. Nothing we think we own is actually ours. Not even the unpaid and untaxed (gah) labor we spend raising children the government doesn’t pay us for. Now truly, I don’t want a check from Uncle Sam for being a parent. I understand that’s called Welfare, and if they give you money for a thing, then they will sure as heckfire start requiring you to meet their standards on how you perform same. With mandates in schools requiring specifics on lunches, on curriculum, on nearly everything, how comfortable to start requiring specifics on out of school times and activities?

Look, all of this aside, there are plenty of people out there, Americans (at least legally so) who think you do not own your own labor. Not simply the fruits of the labor, but the work itself. My mother-in-law raises goats, and enjoys the milk they produce. She doesn’t sell this milk, so she doesn’t earn a goat-based income and doesn’t pay taxes on it, but I guarantee she labors. Should the government get a slice of that? Well, do they really want fresh goat milk, or would they like some of the energy she burns caring for her goats? Nevermind. The point is, we’re dealing – again, still, forever – with a group of people who don’t understand logic, and wouldn’t apply it even if they could. And they’ll continue, despite all evidence to the contrary, to try to force us down the path they’re compelled to follow.

I’m not worried about this, at least personally. Yes, the idiots will continue to idiot as hard as they possibly can, but I’ve got plenty of weapons to hand. I’ve got disruptive technology, and a community of like-minded iconoclasts (well, not precisely, but what do you call us Odds, exactly?) at my back. Between us, we’re putting out the word: we’re not alone in this fight.

So, Sad Puppies slate was announced.  To see it, go to Brad’s Blog here.

I would particularly like to endorse Kevin J. Anderson’s nomination.  That the man has never received a Hugo is a sort of blot on the field. I haven’t read the suggested novel yet, but I have yet to read one of his novels that isn’t head and shoulders above most of the competition. Because he’s a professional.

While the slate is not rigid — i.e. if you really don’t like one of the stories suggested or have a burning desire to nominate, say (cough) my short story Rising Above from the Shattered Shields anthology, or even (using Wheel of Time exception) Ringo’s zombie series as a “novel” you are not only within your rights but highly encouraged — let’s remember that the more we can “pile on” (which will never be to the brainless level of the other side, which votes for books and authors they don’t even read) the better the overall results.

On the other hand, it’s been hilarious watching the reaction to the slate.  For instance, I’m no longer shocked and vaguely puzzled at being called a Nazi and the world’s worst person over telling the idiots that they couldn’t/shouldn’t kick anyone (even Vox :-P) out of human society.

No, the fricking ijits have already started calling Jim Butcher fascist.  It’s gobsmackingly mind blowing.

Was discussing this with my friend Bill Reader today, as he said his Romney/Ryan sticker on the car was getting faded, which led to us discussing the once and future election (in this case both of us agree that while Romney was never better than acceptable, we could do worse than Romney, and probably will) and he said “remember when Ryan was picked for VP candidate, our side was all afraid the dems would attack him on his inexperience?  Instead, they attacked him on having blue eyes and being fit.”

He says he read a columnist — I’m going to guess Dowd — attacking Ryan PURELY on the fact that he looked innocent and THEREFORE, obviously, must have an evil heart.

I told him “these are not serious people.”  Then came home to reports from my eyes on twitter (the other eyes, Christopher) which told me that they were attacking Jim Butcher as fascist SOLELY because he was in the Sad Puppies slate.

Dorothy Grant recently told me about the name for when you stand, with a finger on either side of the bridge of your nose, your eyes closed, your head inclined: Sinal Salute.

Guys, the only reason I’m not doing the sinal salute is that I am typing.  I need a moment.

These people are completely unhinged.  They are so unhinged they don’t know the definition of “hinged.”  It never occurs to them to look at the legitimate reasons to oppose something or someone (say, not liking the person’s writing) or the illegitimate but true reason (not liking the person’s politics, which might not have anything to do with what they write.)  No, they jump straight to the crazy cakes reason to oppose say a Hugo nomination.  “He’z a fazcisssss eleventy!”

The sad part of all this being, of course that the policies they highly approve of are in fact fascist, because it turns out the only way to make a communist regime sort of work is to make it fascist but not call it that, like China.  (And then it only works for limited definitions of work.  I mean, it crashes slower.  But it’s more effective than communist regimes.  Which is sort of like saying paper is more edible than plastic.)

These are not only not serious people, these are people who, in a cartoon, would be running from a guy in a butterfly net.  These are people who think that vagina monologues are sexist, not because — duh — they’re a bunch of twaddle centering on a part of female anatomy that not only never spoke but is highly unsuited to thinking with, but because it discriminates against women with penises.

I need a moment.  (Does Sinal Salute.)

These are people Vagina Vigilants who think the most important thing about a guy who landed a probe on a comet is the shirt he’s wearing.

I’ve written characters who would be locked up in real life for being too crazy to live — Dyce Dare, really — but none of them are as insane as people who think that what makes books “important” is “diversity” usually figured out by the WRITER’S external characteristics.  Which means the stories are usually all alike, since they conform to Marxism — but the writers, oh, by gum, they have people who can tan all sorts of shades and who self-define as all sorts of genders.

Now, if only we could read the authors instead of the stories?  (Did anyone say “entrails”?)

Did I mention that a week or two ago, my Book Plug Friday Post got picked up by Passive Voice.  Great, right?  Sure, except that crazy people immediately started attacking me PERSONALLY in the comments.

With most of my BPF posts, I would to “Well, they disagree about indie/publishing/politics.”  I wouldn’t call them crazy.  Except this post was on EDITING and pointing out to people the difference between copyediting and structural edits and the difference in price, as well as caveats before you allow someone to do structural edits on your novel.

Was there room for disagreement?  Sure thing.  There always is.  What there wasn’t room for was calling me the world’s worst person over them.  Let’s take wassherface who wrote the dinosaur tripe.  I don’t think she’s despicable.  A tad immature, perhaps, but that’s curable.  (I mean she MIGHT be despicable.  I don’t know her.  But I rather doubt it, because most people aren’t.  They’re okay but flawed.)

Let’s say she wrote a post about how paleontologists would surely be murdered for going into a working class bar.  I might call her a few choice names, mostly synonymous with “you don’t live in the real world, do you?”  In fact, I more or less did that based on her short story.  That’s fine.  That’s called disagreement.

But let’s say she wrote an article on how to write characters.  And let’s say it was the worst article on how to write anything since Writing the Eye of Argon Way (I apologize because it’s not fair to presume she’d write a bad article, but it’s necessary for the example.)

I might (if I were trying to avoid actual work) comment and point out the flaws.  But I wouldn’t call the author the worst person ever, or infer anything about her, personally, from a technical article.  Much less would I seize the opportunity to bring in totally unrelated stuff.

The left does this because that’s all they have.

These are not serious people. In fact while I want to emphasize they ARE people, they don’t behave like people.  They behave like stray bits of code left behind by the Soviet Union which, devoid of a central animating purpose anymore, or the illusion that it really was better behind the curtain (really guys?  That’s why so many West Germans were shot trying to flee to the East, right?  Oh, wait.) they just carry on their fragmentary and not very coherent bits of programming.  So, the destruction of Western Civ is still on, though only the crazies believe that communism/utopia will magically emerge then.

They remind me of eczema. They remind me of eczema because I have it.  Eczema is an auto-immune disorder.  This means it attacks my own body.  It is also more or less unpredictable.  I mean, there are triggers for the eczema: stress, dry skin, a molecule of detergent left on the clothes after three, four, five rinses, sugars or really any amount of carbohydrates over 20 grams a day (in my case.  Other people have other triggers.)

But you never know to what triggers the eczema is going to react.  Sometimes (my birthday) I’ll eat say a piece of cake, and by rights I should have raw palms (or elbows.  or belly) the next morning.  But sometimes there’s no reaction at all.  Other times it will be all out of proportion.

The only thing I know for sure is that if there is a reaction, it will be disproportionate and counterproductive.

Sort of like the left.

Which brings me to the title of this post.  (I was listening to Leonard Cohen again.  Shoot me.)

Am I tired of the war?  Oh, heck yeah.  They’re not interesting opponents.  They just jump up and down and either name call or scream things that have nothing to do with the subject or that are in and of themselves completely insane.  Like, “discrimination against women with penises, Awk!”  (It helps if you add “awk” or “Polly wants a cracker” to the end of the crazy stuff they say.  Seems somehow more reasonable.) “Sexist shirt, Polly wants a cracker” “Jim Butcher fascist, Need New Cage Liner.”

However, being tired of the war doesn’t mean I’ll give up fighting.  I can’t give up fighting because every time we stop applying a corrective, these people decide they’ve won the war and also that they were right all along.  And THEN they take another step into crazyland.  (Think cartoon character running middair.)  And they are ALREADY not serious people.

Rather being tired of the war means I’ll fight harder because I just — sinal salute — need the craziness to end.  Now.  Yesterday, if possible. I have books to write and I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.

I didn’t start the war.  I just want to end it.  And the only real way to end it is by winning.  Even if the weapons of victory involve pointing and making duck noises while the other size screams.

I figure duck noises are more sensible than “Awk, Awk, fascisssss, Polly wants a cracker.”

*Dave Pascoe — aka number 3 son by adoption — seems to be trying to write the world (it’s a family thing) so Cedar is pitching in, and he’ll run later this week.  He’s not dead.  He’s looking after a baby.  Which ties in with this essay too.*

False Goalposts       – Cedar Sanderson

I recently wrote a post about motherhood. In it, I detailed the ways mothers are expected to leave their children from birth, go out into the world, and have a career. What I didn’t get into was the ways that is a false goalpost. Remember the old Peanuts cartoon, where Charlie would run at the ball, and at the last second Lucy would whip it away, and he would wind up on the ground, seeing stars and wondering what had happened? This is what a lot of young women are wondering.

Things started out so well. They were going to graduate from Highschool, as Homecoming Queen, natch, and have a prom of the ages, and then trip lightly off to college on a path of rosepetals. After school, they would land their dream job, and somewhere in there would be the perfect 2.1 children, boy and girl (no one ever talks about that poor 0.1 child…) who would themselves be sweetly brilliant…

We all know where this is going. The reality that includes drunken sex, parties at college until the GPA dips too low to keep going, or the parent falling ill and the child dropping out of school to care for them, or… I know a lot of these young people, trying to get through school on their second try. Heck, I am one, I just left a lot more time between my first and second try.

Whoa! Where did the ball go?

So, we have established that not all young women will make it through college. A high percentage of those young women will drop out of school because they are pregnant, either before or after having the baby. Pregnancy isn’t all glows and happy baby kicks in the belly. It is a huge job, of carrying a growing being that is consuming all your energy, nutrients, and then there is the wash of pregnancy hormones that turn a woman into someone she may not recognize. Not to mention the issues that can crop up near the end of pregnancy. I had four happy healthy pregnancies, and one of those where I was on bedrest for two weeks with very high blood pressure. Things happen. Do young women figure this into their plans? No.

Let’s say she manages to avoid all this and keep going through school, get a degree before baby. Now she has a bachelor’s in… something. Let’s make it Liberal Arts, for a catch-all degree. Our girl bounces down the commencement aisle to get her piece of paper, all smiles and sunshine in her cap and gown. Wipe away that tear, and think about what’s coming next for her.

Kids these days think that’s it. Get a degree, get a career. I remember working in an office, talking to a coworker, who was still in shock over having graduated the year before with his fresh history degree. He wound up in the office doing customer service work, and barely able to pay his loans. He was working seven days a week just to make ends meet, and his fiancé was working, too. They didn’t know when they could get married – not soon – or start a family. Buying a house? Out of the question. And yet, both of them had their pieces of paper that were supposed to be the keys to illustrious careers.

Whoops! There goes that ball again.

So now our girl has that piece of paper. She also has a baby now. Where does she find work? Well, in the motherhood essay I talked about the woman who was expected to do it all: have a career, have a family, so off she went, leaving her baby in the care of minimum-wage daycare workers. Guess what, that’s where our girl is, working in the daycare. This is the illustrious career she worked so hard for. Of course, having her own children in the daycare she works at costs her almost as much as she is making. Gas for commuting takes the rest of her pay. But she can’t give up her career for her family, that would be admitting defeat. My parents told me at some point they sat down and crunched the numbers when my sisters and I were young. For my mother to go back to work would actually cost the family. Oh, not a lot, and for most it would be breaking even, not a loss. But this girl never looks that close at the budget, she just drags home exhausted every night, to pizza or something unidentifiable in the slow-cooker.

Where the heck is that ball?

Girls are promised in school that they can be doctors, and lawyers, and… So they can. Nothing wrong with shooting for the moon. The difficulties come when they are reaching for false goalposts, and not re-evaluating when circumstances change. Motherhood is not a penalty, it is a score, but it’s not without consequences. A new life, a tiny daughter… what is our girl going to say to her, when she gets old enough to start running up the field toward the goalposts? Shoot for the score, but when life knocks you down, get up and dust yourself off. Recognize that the goalposts might be false, and it’s ok to have goals that are smaller, or less socially acceptable to the world around you. And above all, it’s dangerous out there, take a friend. He’s called a husband, and he’s meant to be your partner, confidante, and supporter. Don’t undermine him, and he can help you score all the goals.

Charlie Brown could never thump Lucy for being such a pill about the ball, nice boys don’t hit girls. But I’m not a boy, and I can look at her, and walk away. Time to play my own game.

I will continue my series on writing later, but today I came down with some nasty bug which I think I’ve actually been “hatching” for about a week, thereby accounting for my total lack of concentration while working and how long this book is taking to get ready.

Anyway — being dehydrated and not wanting to spend more time outside the house than needed, when I went to pick up Number One Son, I swung by the grocery store. Bananas, three things of diet coke and a can of shoe polish…

I go to the express lane and while we’re going through, the cashier out of the blue asks Robert, “Do you speak your mother’s language?”

Now I think I have told you people how my son feels about this sort of thing. And how I feel too. So he said “Yes.”

At which point she compounds the offense by saying “Good,” in that self-satisfied lecturing way…

And then, verily, brothers and sisters, the devil got into me. You could more easily prevent a river from flowing downhill than prevent what happened.

I said, cheerfully, “As you see, he speaks English passably.”

At which point this woman failed to take the hint… and jumped in with “No, no, you have an accent.”

(Really? Astound me.  This is the equivalent of someone telling me — and people do — “you’re overweight.”  I always want to go “Oh no.  How did that happen?”.)

And, then, brothers and sisters, the devil being at its worst, I drew myself up in terrible offense and said sneeringly “That is NOT an accent. I have mid range hearing loss.”  (which is actually true and responsible for part of the “accent”)

Let me qualify it right here…

If she had said “Do you speak your mother’s native language?” I’d have answered truthfully. “No, we thought to teach it to him, and actually started, but I was the only one speaking Portuguese around him and he just tuned it out. I guess he thought I was babbling. Also, speaking Portuguese too much interferes with my English fluency. I thought he’d pick it up as an adult, but it turns out he has the ability of your average hen for any foreign language.”

It would still be none of her business and it would be still rude as hell of her to stick her nose in it, or to pass approval/disapproval judgements on how I raise my kids. HOWEVER I’m ill, and I’d have let it go.

BUT that “Your mother’s language” put the devil in me. I cannot and will not abet any belief that language or culture are established at birth. MUCH less will I abide the idea they are transmitted — or should be transmitted — immutably to our kids. If that were true, then we’d all still be Greeks, Etruscans, Babylonians, or perhaps whatever flavor of cavemen our ancestors were. No WONDER these people have so many issues with the idea of encouraging immigrants to assimilate.

So, let me shout my philosophy from the rooftops — human beings are free. They’re free to speak what language they wish to as their “main” language. They’re free to pass it on to their kids or not. They’re free to reinvent themselves and leave one culture for another.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This means ALL men were created equal and they’re not born with genetic culture attached to them. And they will not be deprived of the liberty of learning new languages, nor yet of not passing the old ones to their kids. Oh, yeah, and if they so choose, they will pick a culture that makes them happy.

And anyone believing otherwise will put the devil in me. Which self-evidently no sane person should want to do.

When I was very young I used to think that stories where everyone died, or stories where pointless but sad things happened were about the best thing ever. They were profound and so different from every other story I’d read till that time which were all boys-aventures or fairytales that ended well and with a moral.
If You Were A Dinosaur my Love’s win bothered me at a level I can’t begin to explain, and it still bothers me, like an aching tooth to which the tongue keeps returning.  It’s not just that could have been written by me at 12 and would have got, from my middle school teacher, exactly the sort of praise it got from science fiction professionals.
It’s the ideas packed into the story that are truly disturbing.
A story that reveals a total lack of knowledge of an entire class of people (manual laborers) and instead others them as sort of scary all purpose evil that will beat to death anyone who doesn’t look/act like them won an award voted on by – supposedly – adult professionals. Not only that, but adult professionals who keep claiming their tolerance and love of the “other.”  What’s more, adult professionals who would almost certainly embrace “Marxism” as a good or at least correct idea.  When did Marxists start loathing and fearing the working class?  And admitting it?
It made perfect sense for ten or twelve year old me to write and love that sort of thing.  The only working class people I knew were in the village and I’d seen movies like everyone else where working class LABORERS were sort of beasts unleashed.  But the movies aren’t real and every adult knows that, right?  Every adult knows that people are just people and that intellectual prowess is not an indicative of goodness or moral right, right?
The only way to think that all manual laborers are a sort of painted devil to scare readers with is to never have met any.  I rather like people who work with their hands and who do real, often difficult and dirty work.
I didn’t raise my kids in mixed (there was always some gentrification pushing in) neighborhoods by choice exactly.  It was a combination of what we could afford and the fact I don’t like driving and most of the older, walkable neighborhoods are a mixed bag.
Kids grew up with children who were the children of the local police chief, or the local chef at a greasy spoon (Robert’s best friend to his early teens), or the occasional child of a college professor.
We never found anyone less than polite or nice.  They might think we were weird as heck, with our paintings of dragons, our house groaning under the weight of books (though you know I once got a 20% discount on appliance purchases from Lowes because I wrote for Baen, which tells you workaday people read.  The clerks gathered around to shake my hand, not because of my writing – I hadn’t been published by Baen yet, I just mentioned I wrote for them – but because I knew Drake and Weber.)  But none of these people were even impolite to us – not even to the foreign chick with the accent.  And after the normal precaution of coming over a couple of times with the kids, they’d let the kids flit in and out of our house as though they’d known us all their lives, and would take our kids fishing and have them stay for dinner as though we were family.
We went to Lakeside (immortalized as riverside in Noah’s Boy) on our weekends off.  Lakeside is a low-rent amusement park and part of the reason we went there is that I don’t go on rides or at least not on most of them.  We wanted a place where I could get in for $5, we paid $15 a piece for the kids to have a full ride pass, Dan got $10 in tickets for the rides he liked, and we could spend the whole day having fun.  My fun was to read a book outside the rides the guys were on.
That park would have been a dead zone if you could have dropped a bomb that killed only manual laborers.  We’d have been the only survivors.  And if a bomb killed only Spanish speakers, only about one third of the park would still be alive.
It was a safe and fun place for the kids and – remember I understand Spanish, too – not once did anyone say “Hey, look at the dork chick reading a book,” much less “let’s beat her up.”
In fact, it wasn’t till we could afford as a treat, to go to Waterworld, a playground for children in our own “class” in terms of parental education that we found people were rude and made horrible remarks. (Not unexpected in feral children raised mostly in daycares, but a shock, nonetheless.)
Thinking about this, I figured that the people who write and vote awards for these sort of stories are people who have never come in contact with laborers or working class people and who never even deigned exchange three words with the clerk totting up their order.
They assume – since they assume they’re the most “evolved” of all people.  All their teachers told them they were closest to the progressive ideal, and they’ve learned all the right opinions, after all – that working class people must be stupid or a sort of less evolved form of themselves.
It would probably shock them to death how many phds do manual labor, either out of inability to deal with life or because they come to the same conclusion I did about relative politeness and decide they don’t want to deal with bullship office politics anymore.
Instead, they imagine everyone not a college professor as a sort of grown up feral highschool student crossed with the worst stereotypes from older books and movies.
They imagine beneath their enlightened selves a lumpen mass of troglodytes who hate anyone who is different, and particularly anyone who is LEARNED like them.  They think working class automatically means racist and sexist and anti-intellectual.
These people have had no experiences as adults with other adults.  They have never bothered wandering off the safe lighted path even enough to LOOK at how the other people live.  They probably mistake muttering mental homeless for members of the “working class.”  They were maybe called “lady” by a repairman and have been scarred ever since.
Maybe it’s that I had the advantage of my grandfathers being carpenters and of having been a curious little girl who grew up following repairmen around to see how things are done.  I can do most of the tradesman level work, except I won’t mess with electrical and plumbing.
I can tell you though, that when prepping houses for sale, the tradesmen that come in and see me work never say “Hey look it’s a chick doing men’s work. Let’s beat her.”  Instead, they go from amused to respectful and end up teaching me some stuff I didn’t know.  (And two have offered me jobs.)
No wonder they can’t interpret criticism of their choices as anything but “they’re afraid of women and gays writing science fiction.”  I mean, what else could it be, when these fine hothouse flowers of academia know for a fact they are the most enlightened human beings alive?
It’s not strange that they should think this.  After all, the aristocracy in every time period has tended to be a little isolated and make a lot of assumptions about other people.  They probably think we should eat cake and shut up already.
What is strange is that we’ve let such people dominate entire fields of mass entertainment, designed to appeal to the very masses they despise.  What is strange is that we allow them to turn entire classes of people off reading, and to preach their silly nonsense just enough to inspire civilizational self-hate.
It’s time this stops.
Read, write, buy decent books, and for grins and giggles vote on awards, too.
It’s time grown ups too over the business of entertainment.  The kids have left half melted pink crayons and chewed crackers everywhere.
Bring in the vacuum, roll up your sleeves.  It’s going to be time-consuming and tiring, but we, the grown-ups must take over.
For their own protection.
In the end, we win, they lose.  Be not afraid.

So, I have a confession to make. I haven’t registered my supporting membership yet, mostly because of being busy with the house staging, but also because my muse is a perverse b*tch who demands I feed her when I’m busy with other stuff.

I will have to do it today, to feed the sad puppies. (Even if the cats disapprove.)

Now, I am not running for a Hugo/don’t expect to get it, not this year when the only novel I put out was Witchfinder. Maybe next year, as the writing seems to be taking off. But it would tickle me to death to have It Came Upon A Midnight Clear on the ballot, mostly because it was a middle of the night brainstorm that got written/posted as a fan gift on my blog. Also because it is a ‘tale of the Usaians’ which will make the SJW’s ill.

(BTW, I have talked to some friends about putting out an anthology of “Stories of the Usaians” and later on there might be a paid fan anthology (depending on how fast the house sells) that gives you a chance to play in the world.)

This is a post in haste, as I have to go run some errands so I have a working office again. I’m getting tired of writing in bed and the cats trying to nestle on the keyboard.

Yesterday in comments Synova mentioned sitting in panels and hearing people rant and go on about Bush and wanting to run away.

I used to feel the same way. And btw, they were doing that at all local cons, too, including mourning about the “ecological damage” the Bush administration was doing; the war (of course, most of these people are sixties rethreads); and funniest of all, the chilling effect on their speech, which they were choosing to make in front of a crowd of strangers in obstreperous tones, while those of us in the opposition didn’t dare open our mouths.

We didn’t dare open our mouths, because administration or no administration, these people knew that even as the complained of being scared nothing bad would ever happen to them. We, OTOH, didn’t dare speak, because even a mild rebuff like “Hey, is that appropriate for a convention on science fiction” would have got the rumor going out “so and so is, you know, a right winger.” The mere suspicion of this was enough to hold your career in midlist (no, not talking about me. For all I know that’s where I fit. But I have friends.) If they KNEW you’d never work in this town again.

In this sort of Alice in Wonderland world, the people complaining of the chilling of speech were the people chilling speech. What was more, they had no idea they were doing so, and they thought of course everyone agreed with them. In fact they thought the only disagreements were over how fast to progress to the left.

I know that science fiction people, or even writers, or even artists, aren’t alone in this. I have fans who post here under pseudonyms and who work in fields ranging from education to federal service. They too would be if not unemployed in deep trouble if they used their real names – that is, if they dared express an opinion against the left when the left is ‘speaking truth to power.’

Sometimes you guys wonder how we got so far so fast (so do I) with one party that is kissing cousins to communism, one that is “socialist lite”, and the constitution mostly ignored. Sometimes you guys wonder how come all the arts preen with being left (and are mostly crap) and how even our churches seem to think the answers to life are in the little red book of Mao, not a noted theologian.

I think we got where we are because the Marxists took control of every institution, and once they take control refuse to let any opinion not their own get through. We have qualms about that. It will shock you in these six years I have yet to mention Obama at a single convention panel, even when I’m furious at something he’s done. Why? Because it’s not polite to do that to a captive audience and I’m civilized. But they don’t know boundaries between politics and life, and so they can’t help blurting out the political meme of the day. They are still doing it; still under the impression they’re downtrodden while making everyone feel uncomfortable. They simply can’t imagine that anyone out there has an opinion different from them.

They other the “right wingers” to the point that looking out at a room of obviously educated people who have written books, they can’t believe there are any there, unless they are outright evil and choose to believe outdated and nasty ideologies because they hate the poor, women, minorities, etc.

Look how they explain our opposing their movement to make science fiction into a boring and lectury (totally a word) crusade for ever smaller “minorities” instead of stories about people doing things. They think it’s because we’re afraid of women and minorities writing science fiction (in my case, this would take a particularly strange turn of mind) instead of us simply thinking readers don’t like being lectured (at least not openly) and that message-fic hurts SF. They have to explain it that way, because they can’t really believe someone might disagree with them on fundamentals.

These are people raised in a theocracy who think they’re “thinking” when they’re simply repeating the holy words “there is no difference between men and women” or “pay inequality is bad” or “privilege.”

But we are starting to talk back and starting to push back. And man, it’s funny to watch. American Sniper has them in a white hot fury by simply existing.

Which reminds me of what Larry did last year, and how furious they were simply because they had entries on the ballot for the Hugo which were NOT their hand picked darlings.

When I was very little and tore up my knees (constantly) my dad would put alcohol or iodine on them. There were no anti-biotic creams or gentler disinfectants available. It hurt like the blazes but he would tell me not to cry because “the hurt heals.”

I think that’s the same thing we’re engaged in administering to our leftist friends (well, I still think of a lot of them with friendship, though only half a dozen will still reciprocate.)

It hurts like h*ll to have their views challenged, because they thought they were at one with all the “right thinking” people. And it hurts like h*ll to find out that people they’ve been friendly with are that straw man they’ve created, the right wingers who hate children and puppies and minorities.

They feel betrayed, and they want to have a good cry or at least a good scream.

That’s human.

What is also human is to go back, mentally, to your place of comfort, and to deny this terrible thing ever happened. No one ever really opposed you, you tell yourself. It’s all a mistake. It was some bad apples, and Larry Correia bought the votes (no one ever explains how or WHY he would do so but I’ve heard it shouted at cons.)

The only way to keep them from doing that is to keep hitting them on the nose with the rolled up newspaper of opposition and the knowledge that no, their opinions are not universal and might not even be a majority and that they need to learn to check what they say, how they behave, and whom they support, lest it splatter on them.

We might even be able to get some of them to think (who knows? Miracles do happen.)

Which is why Sad Puppies is continuing (and why the idea of a Usaian story on the ballot tickles me pink.)

It’s also why those of you who can should talk back: at cons, at lectures, whenever and wherever you can.

Be not afraid. In the end, we win, they lose. Oh, not the Hugo. I don’t count on us winning, just on shouting present. At least this year. Next year? Who knows.

Continue making your presence felt. Being silent is to give consent.

And maybe someday those of you in academia or federal service, in law or post grad studies can even speak up without consequences.

Keep calm and keep talking back.

 

So I’ve been cleaning and thinking, two very bad habits of mine, particularly while combined. And what I was thinking, specifically was this: when did the SF/F field become the play ground of Social Justice Warriors? Why and how did they get entry, cache and power as gatekeepers?

Someone in an earlier post blamed Heinlein and Stranger, but he was wrong. Heinlein was doing what he did very well: flowing with the times. Almost everyone with a really long career can and does that. Most people don’t have long careers because they’re creatures of the moment and of one obsession. Hence, for instance, when a great big fad fades, it takes most careers (horror, spy thrillers, for ex.) in that subgenre.

New Wave was already there at least in proto-form when Heinlein wrote Stranger, and hippies already had an interest in science fiction, or at least in science fiction as it pertained to “new consciousness” and creative sexual arrangements. (They were never so much with the colonization of new planets or really interesting civilizations. I spent most of the seventies reading their idea of a colonization novel, in which every person who was interesting or morally upright in the book went mad and died despicable deaths.) (And no, I’m not going to look up the precise chronology, but I know the movement was there before stranger.)

And yep, some of it was an academic movement. Science fiction had acquired enough popularity the professors got interested and decided to redeem it. This meant attempts to make it respectable which in the way that academics interpret the worth of literature involve infusing it with Marxist values. Never mind.

However, even trying to be academic and self important, that movement hadn’t descended to the level of vacuous self-satisfied smugness of the SJWs (who always remind me of a toddler on the potty saying “Mommy, I pooped!)

More importantly though, one must ask why the field was open to this type of invasion and why the destructive people could take over, further weakening the field until it was so weak that what would a few years ago be considered rank amateurs writing and publishing their own stories can have better results than those people in NYC, in lavishly staffed publishing houses.

The answer is: follow the money.

No, seriously. Humans are many things, but one of them is creatures who work for a combination of three things: self-satisfaction, monetary recompense, and social positioning.

Years ago, when I hit a low point in my career and was incredibly burned out, I bought a book on how to combat the burnout. It said the perfect storm of burn out was created by: low remuneration, low status and workload out of one’s control. (The only thing it advised was to change careers, which is something writers don’t do easily or indeed at all. So I threw it away.)

I’ve found over time that their assessment of why people work is true. Also you need a lot of money to compensate for low status, and if you have low income, status will be sought.

Got that?

Now consider that in the golden age of SF – let’s say the 30s to the 50s – authors were paid advances of around 5 to 10 k and that nowadays they are paid advances of around 5 to 10k, or at least that’s the range if you are a midlister. The darlings, of course, can make more, including millions, but that’s rare enough. Most of the fine flowers of SJWdom seem to be making 25 to 50k a book. But then they are expected to write a book no more than once every two years, and often much more. You do the math.

In the thirties, or even in the fifties you could support a family on something between 5 and 20k a year, depending on the size of the family and how lavish your lifestyle.

In the eighties, you might be able to do it on 20k a year (two books for your average midlister) depending on where you lived and how.

In the nineties… well, let me tell you, you probably needed at least 3 of those 10k advance books EVERY YEAR.

After that… Well, there was the year I wrote six books, and I netted way less than that, because some of them had 5k advances, and the others had delayed payment.

I grew up in a village. I smiled a little yesterday when Charlie said that for the woman to “have to work” was shameful even in the early sixties. It was shameful in the village, too, but “work” meant factory work, menial work, or work outside the home 9 to 5.

The truth is, I didn’t know any woman that DIDN’T work, and bring in at least half of the household income. (Mom brought in 90% of it for much of my early childhood.)

It took all of Dan’s finesse and fast talking to convince me it was okay to stay home and write, even when I was making hundreds a year (94 to 98.) The only reason I even considered it was that I had very small kids and I had seen enough daycare raised children not to want that for mine.

I once had an hilarious conversation with mom on the subject of what constituted “suitable work for a lady.” All I really remember was that she thought “buying and selling” was genteel enough but, say, painting walls wasn’t.

Dan and I who knew nothing about the field in recent years assumed (of course) that the superstars were few (they always are in a creative field) but that most people were making a living, at least if they wrote more than a book, wrote well enough to keep being published, etc.

So when I got my first advance for 5K I thought “well, it’s apprentice wages. Once I prove myself.” And indeed, my second book I got 10k. And there it stuck. (Right now, if you count indie, I average 12.5k per book. But with indie I have hope. I’ve heard stories.)

And then… I went to my first convention. All the writers – and most of them were women – fell into two categories: those who had a day job and had no expectation of quitting; and those who were supported by someone else.

I was raised in the village. And also I’m slightly insane. So I tried to write enough to bring in half of what Dan made. (Making what he made was a forlorn hope.) I sort of managed it, though I’ve fallen behind. However, my income is needed and vital (which is why I need to stop getting sick, etc, and get with the program) and so I continued. BUT my job was neither prestigious nor well regarded (well, maybe among you lot ;) ) nor was I treated like I was making a valuable contribution. All the publishers but Baen treated me as fungible and also as an annoying part of the process of getting THEIR book out. Calls went unanswered. Warnings of the sort of “that cover will give people the wrong impression” went ignored. Even minor things like “do I have a pub date?” was treated as a great imposition. Proposals that had been requested might go unanswered for a year. IN NO OTHER FIELD (except maybe music) ARE SUPPLIERS TREATED THIS WAY.

Yes, I know, midlist, therefore low value. But is it? Midlist used to be the bread and butter of the craft.

Before houses stopped paying enough that writers could consider themselves workers, with a career.

Career means something you do for money; something that builds; something that responds to application and effort; something that allows you intrinsic satisfaction and a degree of respect.

None of these apply to writing.

And so the people it attracts are either people who don’t need the money or those who use writing SF as a way to bolster their real career which is either in academia or in society. I.e. these people can’t get the satisfaction of working for money, so they work to be admired. And the best way to incite the admiration of their circles is to parrot the cause du jour. In the eighties it was feminism, then it was gay rights, and now I’m reliably informed we’re going to trans rights, because it’s a tiny minority and therefore more rarified. I want to drop a marker here and say I totally owned that territory with Ill Met By Moonlight way back in the early oughts.

They can’t work for the money – though given some academic salaries, it’s probably a nice boost – so they work for “attaboys” (or mostly attagirls.)

The incidence of bullsh*t in the field goes up in proportion that writing stops being a real job and starts being a hobby, pursued for either the admiration of the writer’s circle or help in the writer’s real job.

This means pulling ever further (leftward) into “fighting for the underdog” – provided the underdog is one approved of in the goofier parts of the first world, and not, say, women who get their genitals mutilated in the third world.

And there you have it. How the SJWs conquered science fiction and took it down with them. And of course, the fact that they have the Mierdas touch and that everything they touch loses public favor/interest, means that there is less money in SF/F and so less money to pay (always) the writers. Which in turn brings even more dilettanty dilettantes to the table and takes the field further into the carpper.

And so it would have continued, if it weren’t for indie which is giving SF/F a much needed shot in the arm. Of course it means the SJWs will also get more and more shrill in proportion to their lost power.

I predict we’ll reach supersonic whining levels within ten years.

I suggest we kick them while they’re down and make them fight for the awards and prestige they crave. Also, that we point at them and make duck noises.

So, go forth. If you can, sign up for a supporting membership so you can nominate non SJWs for the Hugos. (Think of the poor dears having to wonder if they’ve rigged the process ENOUGH to keep out those low prestige barbarians!)

And if you can’t, keep reading and writing the good stuff.

Keep making money. Money in the field will make it so declasse that it will drive away all the darling dilettantes. Catch them being associated with vile lucre.

Let’s make SF/F popular again. Let’s drive the dilettantes back to their beloved garrets where they can starve in genteel poverty, knowing they’re better than us.

Do it for the children — and the puppies