R4SFF: August 2015

Monday, August 31, 2015

Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Antonelli Affair ... Again

More information continues to bubble up about the Antonelli affair and Sasquan. Much of the recently revealed information concerns other people, beyond David Gerrold, who reported feeling harassed to the Con committee. As evidenced by Antonelli's attendance at the conference, the committee did not act on these concerns.

Most notably, Meg Frank, Events Deputy Division Head and the Co-Director of the Hugo Ceremony at Sasquan, posts that she reported that she felt harassed by Antonelli's actions. However, the Con committee was not supportive of her request, responding with "guilt trips, denial, victim blaming, sarcasm and dismissal." As a result, she resigned her position.

The Con committee apparently felt that Frank had not been harassed.

One of the vice-chairs, Glenn Glazer, attempted to guilt me into not pursuing the complaint, and one of the Operations Division Heads, Robbie Bourget told me flat out that I hadn’t been harassed.

Frank deserves credit for providing a pdf file of all of her correspondence documenting this event.

Natalie Luhrs, who I have mostly found to hold reasonable opinions, has opined that this is unacceptable behavior and that the community needs to remember these events and hold the Con committee accountable. She is specifically incensed by statements made by the Con head of operations, Robbie Bourget, including:

The first step in change is realising you were wrong. The second is public apology. Mr Antonelli has started on the road, who wants to tell him to piss off because we don't want him on our road? Remind me to probably de-friend you in that case. And, no, I am not a supporter of Lou's, the Sad Puppies, the Rabid Puppies or the rapidly becoming extremely rabid Anti-Puppies.

Likewise, one of the vice chairs, Glenn Glazer, in response to a complaint on facebook, wrote:

I know Robbie quite well. She's being running Operations for cons for over thirty years (I was her second at ConFrancisco in '93) and in real life is a probation officer. You are fully entitled to have an opinion, but the objective truth is that she is highly qualified, IMHO more highly qualified than anyone in fandom, to make this kind of decision. What I really think is the problem is that many people can't separate "I decision I don't agree with." from "A bad decision." Those *are* different things.

Glazer's response has drawn particular censure:

@eilatan Wow, the flat-out credentialist put-down. Haven't seen such a shameless example in a while. @michaeldthomas
— P Nielsen Hayden (@pnh) August 29, 2015

Luhrs also links disapprovingly to an email by Bourget further detailing her qualifications and views:

As for my take, this entire exchange has deepened my respect for the people who run cons. They are faced with some very difficult problems. Sasquan elected to interpret their anti-harassment policy in a narrow legal sense as regards prohibiting attendance of the con; without evidence of harassment, a person will not be banned. Bourget makes clear in her email that allegations of harassment without enough evidence can be dealt with in other ways, such as by providing support on the ground to ensure that an accuser is protected from an alleged stalker. This seems reasonable, and the outcome at Sasquan seems to have been acceptable.

Throughout, the Sasquan committee was transparent about their decision making and responsive to questions about their reasoning. I think this is about as much as we can expect from a Con, and I am appreciative of the job that the committee does.

While I understand and respect the views of Luhrs and others, I think the Committee is correct in taking a narrow legal definition of harassment. A wider definition applied strictly is too open to abuse, and to apply it less strictly requires someone to make judgments as to which claims of harassment are to be actionable and which are not. What if someone complained that they felt unsafe around George R. R. Martin because his books, and their television adaptation, contained violent rape? Or if someone (not naming any names) reported that they felt harassed by the depictions of homosexuality depicted in The Legend of Korra?

And as for PNHs complaint of credentialism, I am, with some reservations, a big fan of credentials. And Bourget's seem to be perfect for this job given her work with the perpetrators of domestic violence (DV):

Kat, my work in UK Probation is with perpetrators of DV. I do assessments for Court every Thursday on just those offences. Harassment, Breach of Restraining Order, Breach of Non-Molestation Order, Assault, Criminal Damage. Seriously, I have been thanked by victims, white, black and asian, for the work I do with their abusive partners and ex-partners. I am more than slightly offended that you have assumed that I a) know nothing on the subject and b) do not have respect for the issues of minority groups. UK Probation, so far, is not at all like US Probation. And here's one very important point that I have learned. DV affects absolutely everyone. Statistically more women than men and more black women than white women and, in the UK, more asian women than black women. But, there are male on male DV cases, female on female, black on white, female on male, the full gamut. Each one has to be assessed on its own merits. On evidence specific to the incidents and the individuals, not on hearsay, not on what others think is happening but what both parties tell you balanced against likelihood of falsehoods and evidence gathered from written material by both parties (in this case).

Meanwhile, Lou Antonelli has published a blog post where he complains about not receiving an invitation to George R. R. Martin's Hugo Losers Party. As Martin noted in his report on the party, some people were not invited because he was not able to get an invitation to them. But Antonelli makes clear he talked with Martin at Sasquan, so he was evidently explicitly not invited. As George says, he had an explicit "no assholes" policy.

Antonelli then sends Martin a few choice words. But seriously, Lou: after what happened, what did you expect?

(In yet another post, Antonelli comes across as more reasonable, thanking the committee for allowing him to attend).

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Piling on Sara A. Hoyt

A couple of days ago, I got upset with author Sarah A. Hoyt for referring to her critics as "cock-suckers". Although this is far from the worst form of homophobia, and although many people, possibly including Ms. Hoyt, use the expression without thinking about its homophobic connotations, this kind of thing really pisses me off.

Over the past few days, Ms. Hoyt has been savaged on twitter for being a racist, too. Specifically, she has been criticized for using the term "Chicom":

Thank you to Sarah Hoyt, for introducing me to "Chicom," which was an ethnic slur I didn't know. http://t.co/NdbJvlBrUw
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) August 26, 2015

Ha ha Sarah Hoyt made up a slur ("Chicom", "Chinese communist") to smear Cixin Liu with, you can't make this up #HugoAwards
— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) August 27, 2015

Dear Sarah Hoyt, Don't call anyone a Chicom. It's not clever, funny, or cute. Any admiration I had for you has burnt. http://t.co/5Z20Ldbly1
— Alyssa Wong (@crashwong) August 28, 2015

@tgsokolov @crashwong You missed the exciting bit where Sarah Hoyt called Liu Cixin (and perhaps me) a “ChiCom” — so Hugo not deserved?
— Ken Liu (@kyliu99) August 29, 2015

I'm not sure how this slipped anyone's mind but Sarah Hoyt is kind of the worst. If you're unaware, please educate yourself.
— K Tempest Bradford (@tinytempest) August 28, 2015

I'll admit to being tempted to pile on with this criticism; Ms. Hoyt is not my favorite person right now. But when I looked into what she actually had written, I was forced to admit that she was being very harshly treated. For if you look at what she actually wrote, she doesn't accuse anyone of being a "Chicom". And if, like me, you have no idea what "Chicom" means and look it up on the web, it is not clear it is even derogatory, let alone racist.

Here is what Hoyt wrote on her own blog:

Yes, yes Three Body Problem. Well, I didn’t find it worth it, but I bet you half the people who voted for it voted either under the illusion they were favoring Chicoms OR as a slam against the puppies.

It should be obvious from this that she is not calling the author of Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, or the translator, Ken Liu, a "Chicom". She in fact says that half of the voters incorrectly thought that they were supporting Chicoms. Perhaps by this she means that they incorrectly thought that the author and/or translator were Chicoms, although I am not convinced of this (more on this below). But she certainly doesn't call either of the Liu's a Chicom. In fact, she does not disparage them at all directly; the most she does is disparage them indirectly by implying that they would not have won if not for bias (anti-puppy or pro-Communist China) on the part of the Hugo voters.

What does Chicom mean anyway? I had never heard the term before. If you google the term, the first three hits define it as simply short for "Chinese Communist" (for example, The Urban Dictionary, The Free Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster). There is no mention of the term even being derogatory, let alone racist. It is only when you get to Dictionary.com that you find this:

noun

Slang: Disparaging. A contemptuous term used to refer to a Communist Chinese.

So I think it is fair to say that a reasonable person could think the term was not derogatory, and certainly could be forgiven for not knowing that it is sometimes viewed as derogatory. But racist? There is nothing racist about referring negatively to a group that has a history of appalling behavior. Roughly 1 million people were killed during the early land reforms under Mao not long after coming to power, with another million killed as part of efforts to suppress counterrevolutionary tendencies. Millions more were killed for resisting the Great Leap Forward with another 45 million dying of the resulting starvation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Another million appear to have died during the Cultural Revolution form the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. The Chinese Communist party has been one of the nastiest regimes and it deserves our condemnation. One is not a racist for doing so.

A literal reading of what Hoyt wrote, combined with a literal interpretation of the term itself, should be enough to vindicate Hoyt. If more is needed, it should also be noted that Three Body Problem itself presents a brutal and terrifying account of life during the Cultural Revolution. As a result of this brutality, one of the main characters is driven to betray the human species. That is, the book itself is very critical of the Chinese Communist party. As a result, I think Hoyt's statement, which disparages the Hugo voters, is explicitly ironic.

Moreover, I think Hoyt is drawing a parallel here between Hugo voters and the large number of Western intellectuals who gave their support to Communist China despite evidence of atrocities. There is no shortage of people guilty of this sin. Perhaps the best known, and most notable, concerns the China scholar Joseph Needham, whose Science and Civilisation in China forms the basis for much English language scholarship on China even today. In spite of all the evidence, Needham was supportive of the Communist regime in China, even to the point of accusing the USA of using biological weapon against China and North Korea, until the 1970s. That is, Hoyt is likening support of some Hugo voters for the book to the support some western intellectuals offered the Chinese Communist Party.

In sum, I do not think Sarah Hoyt is guilty of racism here. That is not to say she is not guilty of it elsewhere, or that she hasn't done other things worthy of opprobrium (see above). Perhaps Tempest Bradford's tweet alludes to other behaviors I am not aware of (if so, I hope someone will write to tell me of them).

What I think we are seeing here is the all too common phenomenon by which "the mob" identifies a target, looks for any scent of blood in the water, and then goes into attack mode independently of whether or not the attacks are justified. I suspect many of them did not look at what Hoyt wrote, and that many others did but did not care as they were prepared to use any excuse to attack someone that they dislike. This is appalling behavior, and is one of the reasons why I am being forced to concede that some of the Puppies complaints about SFF fandom are correct.

EDITED 08/30/2015 TO ADD: Indeed, in Hoyt's later posts, she states explicitly that her point was to draw a parallel between people who voted for Three Body Problem and the western intellectuals who professed support for Chinese communism:

I wasn’t making FUN of Chicom. I was pointing out that people like Chu and Kowal and their camp followers just might be stupid enough to think Chicoms are cool and quite capable of voting for a book VOX DAY RECOMMENDED because they thought it was a paean to Chicoms.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Book Review: John Scalzi Lock In

As I have mentioned before, I have found much to like and little to love in John Scalzi's fiction (as opposed to his blog posts which are often entertaining and insightful). Despite this, I was pretty optimistic about his new book, Lock In.

There were two main reasons for my optimism. First, one of my major problems with Scalzi's earlier work has been that it is too derivative of other work. Old Man's War was, to me, too much like a re-telling of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, while Redshirts was too much like Star Trek fan fiction. In contrast, Lock In appears to be something entirely new; a novel set in a world of Scalzi's own invention.

Second, Lock In concerns people with disabilities. As a person with a disability of my own, who has often felt that SFF has neglected to portray people like me, I was excited to see what Scalzi would do.

The premise behind Lock In is that the world has been exposed to a highly contagious virus that comes to be known as "Haden's Syndrome", after its most high-profile victim, the First Lady of the United States. Although most are unaffected, a small fraction of people are "locked in"; fully awake and aware but unable to move or respond to stimuli, in an echo of the real-life "locked-in syndrome."

Another small group of people remain fully able and gain the ability to allow locked in people to ride around in their bodies, becoming what is known as an "Integrator". Others afflicted with Haden's syndrome use humanoid robotic personal transport units controlled by a Haden's brain (nicknamed "Threeps" after C3PO from Star Wars). And some of those afflicted with Haden's syndrome withdraw into a virtual reality world.

The book follows FBI agents Chris Shane (who is a Haden) and Leslie Vann who are assigned to a Haden-related murder with an Integrator suspect. Further Integrator-Haden related murders occur, making the case larger than expected. The result is a science fiction police procedural that touches on issues in disability politics and corporate welfare.

There are a number of things that Lock In gets right. For one, it does a good job conveying the sense in which there is a caste system whereby some disabilities are funded and well-studied while others languish in research backwaters. In the book, Haden's syndrome becomes a cause célèbre and receives vast amounts of government funding. The resulting technologies are reserved exclusively for those afflicted with the syndrome, even though people with other movement disorders, the very old, and the morbidly obese, would plausibly benefit from these technologies, too.

For another, the book also gets at some of the controversy within groups like the deaf community that must decide whether or not to have surgical intervention that might improve hearing at the cost of driving a wedge between them and the deaf community. It also touches on some interesting related issues. Should threeps be treated legally like motor vehicles? Or like human bodies? Who has the right of way? A car or a threep or a pedestrian? But on the whole, I found the books treatment of these issues unsatisfying. Rather than investigate them deeply, the book seems to simply want to flag them and move on; having ticked a box, the books can turn back to the plot. In sum, I view the book as something of a missed opportunity as regards investigating these issues.

The book is an easy page turning read; Scalzi has mastered the form of the airport paperback thriller. At times, I felt like I could hear Scalzi uttering some of the snarkier and most glib lines delivered by the characters, which was a little disconcerting. But most significantly, as far as whether or not the book works as a police procedural, I was also left unsatisfied. Perhaps its is just me, but I get tired of reading books in which master criminals are tricked into confessing to their crimes.

In sum, although I think it is possible to read and enjoy this book, I was left unsatisfied by the type of ending and the books failure to investigate the issues it raises more deeply. Unlike the Sad and Rabid Puppies, I want more message in my science fiction! Someone with a different background to my own, without the vested interest in these issues, might give this book a decent 6 out of 10. But for me, I can do no better than a "not bad" ...

R⁴ Rating: 5 out of 10.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Terry Pratchett in Defense of Fantasy

Patrick Rothfuss has a beautiful blog post about his love of Terry Pratchett and the role Pratchett played in Pat's early development as a writer.

As part of the post, Pat has dug out an interview of Pratchett in The Onion from 1995 that Pat recalls very vividly. It contains a very stirring defense of fantasy as a genre, and I repeat it here:

O: What’s with the big-ass hat?

Pratchett: Ah… That’s the hat I wear. I don’t know, it… It… That hat, or types like it, I’ve worn for years and years. Because I bought one, and I liked it. And then people started taking photographs of me in it, and now, certainly in the UK, it’s almost a case of if I don’t turn up in my hat people don’t know who I am. So maybe I could just send this hat to signings. I just like hats. I like Australian book tours, because Australians are really, I mean that is the big hat country, Australia.

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different iconography, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

I’m looking forward to buying myself a cheese hat.

O: Back to the hat.

P: Let’s go back to the hat… Everybody needs an edge, and if the hat gives you an edge, why not wear a hat? When you get started writing, you’re one of the crowd. If the hat helps, I’ll wear a hat— I’ll wear two hats! In fact, I’m definitely going to buy a cheese hat before I leave here. We’ve never heard of them in the UK, and I can see it as being the latest thing in fashion.

Okay, you can turn the tape back off again.

I loved it. I will file it away next to C.S. Lewis writings on a similar question.

I can also see why it had such a large impact on Pat:

I actually remember where I was when I read that. Right now, twenty years later, I remember where I was sitting as I held the paper and read it.

I’m not going to be cliche and say it changed my life.

You know what? I am. I’m going to say it. It changed my life.

Remember what year this was. It was 1995. This was before Harry Potter was written. Before Neil Gaiman wrote Neverwhere.

Pixar has just released its first movie. There was no Matrix. No Sixth Sense. No Lord of The Rings movies. Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy were a decade away.

There was no Game of Thrones on HBO. Hell, there wasn’t even Legend of the Seeker. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was 2 years away, and even more years from being recognized as brilliant television, rather than silly fluff with vampires.

I had been writing my fantasy novel for about two years, and while I loved fantasy, I knew deep down, it was something I should feel ashamed of. Fantasy novels were the books I read as a kid, and people picked on me for it. There were no classes on the subject at the University. I knew deep down in my bones that no matter how much I happened to love fantasy, it was all silly bullshit.

Even these days, people look down on fantasy. They think of it as kid stuff. They dismiss it as worthless. They say not real literature. People say that *NOW* despite the fact that Game of Thrones and The Hobbit and Avengers and Harry Potter are bigger than The Beatles.

That’s NOW. If you weren’t around back then, you really can’t begin to understand how much worse it was. When I told people I was working on a fantasy novel, a lot of people wouldn’t even really know what I was talking about.

I would say, “I’m writing a fantasy novel” and people would look at me with earnest confusion and concern in their eyes, and they would say, “Why?”

Then I read that article, and it filled me with hope. With pride.

I, too, remember hiding my interest in SFF growing up in the 1980s. And being ashamed of admitting to that interest. I remember having my English teacher tease me in front of the class about liking books in the genre when we were required to talk about our summer reading. I wish I had read Pratchett then, too.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Hugo Odds and Sods ... and Casual Homophobia

A coupe of additional pieces of information have to come to light about Sasquan and the Hugo Awards.

First, on the Political Correctness Police at Sasquan removing material from the freebie table deemed offensive. The poster Captain Comic has related how he approached the convention workers about the removal of the material:

Okay…

As I said, I don’t twerk (?), but I finally ran down the two OUTRAGE twoot lines and someone over at MHN pointed out Jim Hines wanting me found out and the official Sasquan tweent account responding…

Sooo…I wandered down to the wrong room and introduced myself and they sent me to a different office and I walked some more and introduced myself again and showed them my tablet and asked ‘sup?

None of those present knew who used the account for this issue. Had a pleasant enough chat with a con worker who said they basically OK’d the removal because some were “offended” and this year is already tensioned up enough. They also asked if I could stop putting the ribbons out so they wouldn’t have to keep picking them up or accepting them from folks who have.

They also offered to bring all the gathered ribbons they have collected down tomorrow and return them to me.

They seemed more tired than offended themselves.

and how the Sasquan people justified the removal of the ribbons

I can sorta see the point on the puppy ribbon. If I squint. And tilt my head a bit.

But the Larry ribbon? The ConOpsEr said they were told it seemed an attack on a person.

I pointed out it was an issue about strawman arguments against Larry Correia who HIMSELF says this. Got a civil shrug and as I said I wasn’t going to escalate.

But I’ll repeat it one more time:

How did all this little bit of off-handedness become ALL OF THIS?

This makes the Sasquan people come off a little better, although it is still upsetting that they felt the need to respond to the whiney people shouting "I am offended" at the slightest provocation.

Sarah Hoyt then responded with a little homophobic rant:

There is no defense for pulling the ribbons. None. These socialist-cock sucking whores who get their good feelings from being lickspittles to totalitarians and suppressing “unapproved” speech are going to be the death of civilization if we don’t stop their insane stunts.

They should indulge their need for submission in private and leave the rest of us alone.

While I agree with Sarah's basic point, and while I concede that calling people "cock-sucking whores" is a relatively mild form of homophobia and one that Sarah is perhaps not even aware of consciously, it still has homophobic connotations. As the proud son of a proud gay man, this form of casual homophobia pisses me off. I have tried really hard to keep an open mind about the whole Hugo affair, and to do justice to the arguments of the other side. But there is no justifying this, or the other casual (and sometimes also explicitly vitriolic) homophobia emanating from the Puppy camp.

Second, George R. R. Martin has weighed in with the first of two posts about Sasquan and the Hugo Awards. Like me, he was pretty upset by the results in the two editor categories and by the general cheering of the "No Award" results:

I had picked Mike Resnick in Short Form and Toni Weisskopf in Long Form, and indeed, each of them finished above all the other nominees in the first round of voting... but well behind No Award. This was a crushing defeat for the slates, and a big victory for the Puppy-Free ballot of Deirdre Moen. Honestly? I hated this. In my judgment the voters threw the babies out with bathwater in these two categories. Long Form had three nominees who are more than worthy of a Hugo (and one, Jim Minz, who will be in a few more years), and Short Form had some good candidates too. They were on the slates, yes, but some of them were put on there without their knowledge and consent. A victory by Resnick, Sowards, Gilbert, or Weisskopf would have done credit to the rocket, regardless of how they got on the ballot. (All four of these editors would almost certainly have been nominated anyway, even if there had been no slates).

((Some are saying that voting No Award over these editors was an insult to them. Maybe so, I can't argue with that. But it should be added that there was a far far worse insult in putting them on the ballot with Vox Day, who was the fifth nominee in both categories. Even putting aside his bigotry and racism, Beale's credential as an editor are laughable. Yet hundreds of Puppies chose to nominate him rather than, oh, Liz Gorinsky or Anne Lesley Groell or Beth Meacham (in Long Form) or Gardner Dozois or Ellen Datlow or John Joseph Adams (in Short Form). To pass over actual working editors of considerable accomplishment in order to nominate someone purely to 'stick it to the SJWs' strikes me as proof positive that the Rabid Puppies at least were more interested in saying 'fuck you' to fandom than in rewarding good work)).

I also misliked the roar of approval that went up at the announcement of the first No Award. I understand it, yes... fandom as a whole is heartily sick of the Puppies and delighted to see them brought low... but No Award is an occasion for sadness, not celebration, especially in THESE two categories. For what its worth, neither Parris nor I participated in the cheering.

While I do not agree with everything George has written on the Awards, he has been, on-the-whole, one of the clearest voices of reason in this otherwise unreasonable mess.

Third, Lou Antonelli has chimed in with two reports from Sasquan. The first post displays a fair amount of bitterness about the way things went down. He also clarifies a little the letter he sent to the Spokane PD:

Oh, to set the record straight about that letter I wrote to the Spokane Police Chief:

It was a personal letter expressing fears I had. It was not a report, formal or otherwise; it was not a complaint. People who state I filed a false police report or complaint to the Spokane Police Department are lying.

This sounds better; I would still like to see exactly what he wrote. As I mentioned before, there is

a big difference between writing to say that David Gerrold is "insane and a public danger and needs to be watched" ... which is what he said on the podcast, and ... "expressing some concerns over potential security issues at the upcoming Sasquan" which is what he says he did in his apology.

His second post clarifies reports of a snub by David Gerrold:

Some people have said I'm mad because David Gerrold snubbed me at Sasquan. That's not true - I'm not mad that he snubbed me, because he didn't.

He did offer to buy me a beer, but that I guess was little more than a rhetorical flourish. I'm sure he was very busy. It think it would have made a great photo, the pair of us quaffing brews - it might have even helped show some kind of reconciliation was possible. A missed opportunity, perhaps?

Bumping into him in the hallway outside an elevator, I absent-mindedly and rather spontaneously went to shake his hand. He refused, saying "I may have accepted your apology, but I haven't forgiven you." Realizing my faux pas, I turned tail and took off.

That's not a snub, that's him exercising his personal rights. He doesn't have to be nice to me, and he wasn't rude, just firm. I may have other complaints about how some things were done, but a beer and handshake weren't two of them.

He has also made it clear that he regards Sad Puppies as a bad idea and will not participate in future. On the whole, these posts lead me to believe more firmly that his original apology was genuine.

Spinning the Hugo Awards Results

In the pat couple of days, the competing narratives about the Hugo Awards results have solidified into two main strands. On one side, the anti-puppies/puppy kickers/happy kittens/SJWs are arguing that fandom critically evaluated all of the puppy nominations and found them wanting, thus voting "No Award" to victory in five categories:

Those who voted No Award did consider the nominees on their merits. And judged them to be bad & undeserving. https://t.co/E9LdPrvSOs
— K Tempest Bradford (@tinytempest) August 23, 2015

On the other side, the sad/rabid puppies and their supporters are arguing that their opponents voted "No Award" out of spite and independently of the merit of the works and people nominated:

#SadPuppies: SJWs Just Burned Down The #HugoAwards To Prove How Tolerant & Welcoming They Are http://t.co/fjzDPxGd0F pic.twitter.com/SilhDzIQsz
— .avi (@avi_addict) August 23, 2015

As tastes are inherently subjective, it is impossible to know for sure where the truth lies. But I believe that, as is typically the case in such matters, the truth probably lies somewhere between these two extremes.

On the one hand, I personally was less than impressed by a significant number of the nominated short fiction works. I did not use the No Award option but I could see how other people, evaluating on the merits, might have chosen to do so in some of these categories.

On the other hand, we know that a large number of people claimed that they had voted No Award without even looking at the puppy nominated works. In fact, many refused to read these works on principle. Of those voters who posted critical evaluations of the puppy nominated work, and who we can be reasonably certain actually read some of the work, I often felt that their evaluations were prejudiced against the work from the beginning (I'll post some examples one of these days).

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that spite and/or politics played a major role in the voting comes from the results in the Best Editor categories. In both cases, there were multiple deserving candidates. Don't take my word for it; here is the opinion of happy kitten George R. R. Martin:

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM. The first All Puppy category. If Vox Day wins, the end time is surely nigh for both worldcon and the Hugo Awards. VD is not the best editor in the field, or one of the best five, or one of the best fifty. His presence here is no more than a "fuck you" from his followers to those dreaded SJWs. I think... hope... he will finish last. The other four finalists are legitimate editors, however, and deserving of their nominations. I think the contest is between Sheila Gilbert of DAW and Toni Weisskopf of Baen. Jim Minz is a good guy and a good editor, but he's at Baen, and the Baen voters are going to go for Toni, who is the senior presence there. Anne Sowards of Ace and Roc is a worthy choice too, and it's nice to see her getting some recognition, but I think she's a long shot this year. Weisskopf and Gilbert were both nominees last year at Loncon, and Weisskopf was the last one eliminated in the first round of voting, losing out to the eventual winner Ginjer Buchanan. And she had more nominations even than Ginjer last time around. I think this may be her year. The Puppies love Baen the best of all the publishers in the field and will rally around her, but Toni is a solid professional with a lot of friends in fandom and prodom as well, and she's done a commendable job with Baen Books since succeeding the late Jim Baen. The Nukes and the Moens will be No Awarding this category, since it is all slate, but I think (hope) there are not enough of them to matter. It would be a tragedy if we threw out four good editors just because the Puppies like them too. So my prediction here is TONI WEISSKOPF. The first nominee from the slates to take a Hugo.

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM. All Puppies again. VD again. Last place again. Edmund Schubert of ORSON SCOTT CARD'S INTERGALACTIC MEDICINE SHOW withdrew, but too late to be removed from the ballot. That leaves Jennifer Brozek, anthologist Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and Mike Resnick. I think the Hugo goes to MIKE RESNICK. And yes, he's a deserving winner. He's founded an interesting new magazine, GALAXY'S EDGE, at a time when the old magazines are dying. He's a former worldcon GOH, a mainstay of midwestern fandom for decades, well known and much beloved. He's edited lots of good anthologies. Oh, and the Puppies love him... albeit for the wrong reason (losing the column he and Barry Malzberg did for SFWA BULLETIN in a kerfuffle over sexism). More important than any of that, Mike has been a mentor to uncounted number of new young writers over the years, some of whom have gone on to become Hugo and Nebula nominees themselves. Discovering and nurturing new talent is one of the most important things an editor does. Resnick has won numerous Hugos (and lost more), but all for his writing; this would be his first win as editor. All that being said, I do think the slates seriously fucked up this category. A win here, whether for Resnick or one of the other nominees, would be far more meaningful if it came against stronger competition, against Sheila Williams and Ellen Datlow and Gordon van Gelder and Gardner Dozois and the other great editors who have long dominated this category. To be the champ, you need to beat the champ, I always heard; this year, the Puppies kept all the champs off the ballot.

Larry Correia puts the case for Toni Weisskopf well in a strongly worded post:

Editor Toni Weisskopf is a professional’s professional. She has run one of the main sci-fi publishing houses for a decade. She has edited hundreds of books. She has discovered, taught, and nurtured a huge stable of authors, many of whom are extremely popular bestsellers. You will often hear authors complain about their editors and their publishers, but you’re pretty hard pressed to find anyone who has written for her who has anything but glowing praise for Toni.

Yet before Sad Puppies came along, Toni had never received a Hugo nomination. Zero. The above mentioned Patrick Nielsen Hayden has 8. Toni’s problem was that she just didn’t care and she didn’t play the WorldCon politics. Her only concern was making the fans happy. She publishes any author who can do that, regardless of their politics. She’s always felt that the real awards were in the royalty checks. Watching her get ignored was one of the things that spurred me into starting Sad Puppies. If anybody deserved the Hugo, it was her.

This year Toni got a whopping 1,216 first place votes for Best Editor. That isn’t just a record. That is FOUR TIMES higher than the previous record. Shelia Gilbert came in next with an amazing 754. I believe that Toni is such a class act that beforehand she even said she thought Shelia Gilbert deserved to win. Fans love Toni.

Logically you would think that she would be award worthy, since the only Baen books to be nominated for a Hugo prior to Sad Puppies were edited by her (Bujold) and none of those were No Awarded. Last year she had the most first place votes, and came in second only after the weird Australian Rules voting kicked in (don’t worry everybody, they just voted to make the system even more complicated), so she was apparently award worthy last year.

Toni Weisskopf has been part of organized Fandom (capital F) since she was a little kid, so all that bloviating about how Fandom is precious, and sacred, and your special home since the ‘70s which you need to keep as a safe space free of barbarians, blah, blah, blah, yeah, that applies to Toni just as much as it does to you CHORFs. You know how you guys paid back her lifetime of involvement in Fandom?

By giving 2,496 votes to No Award.

So what changed, WorldCon? We both know the answer. It was more important that you send a message to the outsiders than it was to honor someone who was truly deserving, and that message was This is ours, keep out. That’s why I’m disappointed. I wanted the mask to come off and for the world to see how the sausage was really made, but even I was a little surprised by just how vile you are.

Correia makes a similarly strong case for Mike Resnick:

Same thing with Editor, short form. Mike Resnick has the wrong politics, but he makes up for it by being a living legend, and a major part of fandom for decades. He’s super involved and has helped launch more careers than anyone can count. When they went through and broke down Hugo winners by politics over the last couple of decades, he was one of the few who was good enough and famous to still win. He should’ve won this year, big time. But nope. Brad Torgersen endorsed him. Send the message. Same category, Jennifer Brozek, have zero idea what she believes about anything, despite working on stuff that was worthy before, No Award, because Larry Correia endorsed due to her quality work on Shattered Shields. Send the message.

At least some of the happy kittens seem to agree that No Award-ing Weisskopf was a mistake:

You know I'm not a puppy supporter, but Toni has deserved a Hugo for ages. Denying it because the wrong people recommended her was awful.
— Dan Wells (@TheDanWells) August 25, 2015

Brad Torgersen and Larry also seem to have a point when they say that the puppy-kickers were doing little to favor diversity this year; the No Award strategy prevented several deserving female nominees---Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Sheila Gilbert---from having a chance to win an award. And looking at the nominating totals shows that some of the chief losers from the puppy nominating strategy were perennial (white male) award winners Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Mike Glyer.

Correia ends with a little thought experiment about what would have happened had Vox Day read Three Body Problem earlier:

Oh, but now you’re going to say that Three Body Problem won, and that’s a victory for diversity! You poor deluded fools… That was Vox’s pick for best novel. That’s the one most of the Rabid Puppies voted for too.

Here’s something for you crowing imbeciles to think through, the only reason Vox didn’t have Three Body Problem on his nomination slate was that he read it a month too late. If he’d read it sooner, it would have been an RP nomination… AND THEN YOU WOULD HAVE NO AWARDED IT.

And if that doesn’t prove my original point about this fucked up system being more about politics than the quality of the work, I don’t know what will. One of the only two fiction works that actually received an award this year would have been a Rabid Puppy nominee except for timing, and you would’ve No Awarded the winner just to send your little message.

I suspect Correia is correct.

(Twitter is arguing that this is all spin by Vox Day; that he is retroactively claiming victory for Three Body Problem winning:

@Elocutioner @RizziWorld @charlesatan @kyliu99 I'm aware of that. The retcon is he totes would've picked it. Matches nothing else on slate.
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) August 26, 2015

but to be fair Vox was on record as early as April 16th stating he would have put Three Body Problem on his nomination list had he read it earlier, and listed it on top of his voting recommendations on July 24th).

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Science Fiction and "American Values"

There is an interesting post examining the FBI's files on Ray Bradbury over at muckrock.com. According to the files produced following an FOI request, the response to which has been posted in full, the FBI investigated Bradbury in the last 1950s as a suspected communist sympathizer due to his membership of the Screen Writer's Guild and his vocal opposition to McCarthyism.

Regarding science fiction writers as a whole, one informant stated that:

Communists have found fertile opportunities for development; for spreading distrust and lack of confidence in American institutions in the area of science fiction writing ... a number of science fiction writers have created illusions with regard to the impossibility of continuing world affairs in an organized manner now or in the future through the medium of futuristic stories concerned with the potentialities of science.

And that

individuals such as RAY BRADBURY are in a position to spread poison concerning political institutions in general and American institutions in particular. ... the general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria which would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War in which the American people would seriously believe could not be won since their morale had been seriously destroyed.

Bradbury personally is noted as having related that he uses "This medium (science fiction) to try to bring to light some of the current fallacies in human values today." On top of that, his Martian Chronicles, were viewed as being anti-capitalist as they "were connected by the theme that earthmen are despoilers and not developers."

Let no one ever doubt the power of science fiction!

Monday, August 24, 2015

More Hugo Fallout

While waiting for the Hugo awards to start, I came across this tweet from Teresa Nielsen Hayden (TNH) referencing her husband, Patrick (PNH):

Regret not being there when Jayge Lamplighter attempted to talk to Patrick. #Hugos
— tnielsenhayden (@tnielsenhayden) August 23, 2015

and wondered what had happened. To me, the tone of the tweet sounded as Teresa regretted missing out on something she would have enjoyed immensely; perhaps some nasty interaction had occurred?

More details have now emerged from a post by Lamplighter's husband, John C. Wright:

At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extent to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.

Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.

Obviously, I was not there and am relying solely on the words of someone who has a strong opinion in these matters, but this sounds like some poor behavior from both PNH and TNH directed to an author who writes for PNH's employer, Tor Books (as does her husband). Moreover, I have not yet come across anything by Ms. Lamplighter that could have earned their wrath (her husband, on the other hand ...). In the meantime, Wright has said he will sever all ties with Tor.

I hope that PNH will respond with either an explanation for what appears to be poor behavior, or an apology, whichever is appropriate.

Wright's post also relates an interesting anecdote about PNH and the rise of Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day):

I should also mention something of which I was previously unaware, but which a close friend (who happens to be a tireless and diligent librarian researcher) explained to me in some detail.

It seemed that the monster known as Vox Day is a creation entirely of Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

Theodore Beale, some years ago, was a well respected judge of the Nebula Award committee for SFWA, and a writer of a libertarian column for a conservative website. Out of the blue, unprovoked, and unannounced, Mr. Hayden launched a series of bitter personal attacks against Mr. Beale. The two men were not acquaintances, and the attacks were based solely on the conservative or libertarian ideas Mr. Beale express in a column written for a conservative or libertarian readership in a conservative journal.

It was thought policing pure and simple. Reading back through the archives and old comments, one is astonished to come across a remark by John Scalzi chiding Mr Hayden for being a thought policeman, and criticizing an author’s outside political writings into the discussion. This was before Mr. Scalzi became the bootlicking toady of Mr. Hayden, obviously.

Even more astonishing, the remarkable and controversial stances Mr. Beale delights to strike were nowhere in evidence in those pre-Hayden days, nor is there is single comment by any woman anywhere that he was anything other than a perfect gentleman. Mr. Beale’s opinions about the scientific basis of an alleged genetic equality of the races and sexes appear to have been provoked (at least at first) by sheer, cussedly perverse delight in pointing out the flaws and blindspots in Mr. Hayden’s political dogmas.

If I have time, I will try to track down the exchange between Beale, PNH and Scalzi.

I am not saying that anything in the past justifies Vox Day's more recent behavior, but it does cast more light on the origins of this feud. It also paints a picture consistent with something I read in a recent article on the Hugo Awards in Wired about Vox Day:

Torgersen told me something that helped me understand Beale, which is that he believes Vox Day is a character Beale plays—“Performance art, like Andy Kaufman,” Torgersen said. “He embraces this nemesis role that he inhabits. He’s the dark star circling around the outer rim of the solar system. He’s Darth Vader breathing heavily into your phone. He wants people to be enraged and flipping out and tearing their hair and completely losing their minds. And he gets that every single time."

None of this justifies Vox Day's behavior. But it does make it easier to understand.

In any case, I am not sure how much of this is accurate and I would be obliged to anyone who can write to correct me. But as it stands, these apparent facts suggests that "my side" of the debate has to accept a large share of responsibility for the events that have happened. With allies like these, who needs enemies?

Lastly, Damien Walter has weighed in over at The Guardian. Damien has attracted plenty of criticism from the Puppies for his jingoistic championing of social justice causes and his snark filled rants. In this article, he crows about the Hugo outcomes as a victory for diversity in SFF. I don't have a problem with that. He then goes on to attack two authors who have remained aloof from the fray, one of whom---Andy Weir---was denied a spot on the John Campbell award shortlist as a result of the puppies actions:

Both bookshelves and cinema screens are currently dominated by the Matt Damon/Andy Weir vehicle The Martian and its archaically old-fashioned (and vastly overrated) SF. The lead sci-fi news story of recent weeks is Ernest Cline’s high seven-figure advance for a third novel, which will presumably pander to exactly the same Beavis and Butthead demographic as Ready Player One and Armada.

What Damien and many others have failed to realize is that it is possible to promote the books you love without tearing down everything else. Nor is it necessary to malign anyone who likes the things you do not. Without tolerance for divergent tastes, SFF has a major problem.

EDITED 08/25/2015 TO ADD: L Jagi Lamplighter has clarified the interaction in the comments responding to her husband, John Wright's, blog post:

First, I think John has made it sound a bit worse than it was…but this is not his fault. I did not repeat to him all of what PNH said because I did not him to get upset during the reception. (I was afraid he would be very angry if he knew someone had sworn at his wife.)

Mr, Nielsen Hayden did shout, swear, and stomp off…but he was shouting and swearing at/about John, not at me personally and, actually, as far as swearing, he just used the phrase “tell him to shovel it up his…” You can figure out the rest.

This may not seem like swearing to many of you…many folks speak that way normally. But I do not. Nor do people normally speak that way to me.

My first thought after he stormed off was; isn’t it interesting that he yelled at the one person in the room whose only reaction is going to be to pray for him.

I was not the least upset…but I did think it ironic that, of everyone present, I was the person who got shouted at. But I suspect Mr. Nielsen Hayden knows nothing about me personally, has never read my blog, and is unaware of the irony.

and

It was quite horrid and unprofessional behavior. He shouted in my face and swore. I was shocked really. I didn’t think someone who was supposed to be my superior (in the sense of me as lowly Tor writer) would ever treat me in such a fashion.

In my opinion, this doesn't make PNH look much better.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Hugo Fallout

Last night, the winners of the Hugo Awards were announced. To no-ones great surprise, but to my personal disappointment, "No Award" was the result in 5 categories. To put this in context, in the entire history of the Hugo Awards, No Award had only won in a total of 5 categories before last night.

When voting for myself, I had elected to avoid using the No Award option. This was in part because I wanted to avoid this outcome, but also because I did not feel that I had a clear enough grasp of the quality of prior award winners to make a judgment as to whether the nominees this year were markedly inferior to past winners. But I am not surprised by the result, given the amount of vitriol spilled on the web over the vote.

I am a bit surprised by some of the awards, as well as by the information contained in the nomination and final vote tallies which were also released. On the final vote tallies:

Best Novel. The voting was very tight between Three Body Problem, the eventual winner which I loved, and Goblin Emperor, which I disliked intensely. I was also disappointed to see that in the race for lower positions, No Award beat out Skin Game, a worthy nomination from the puppy slates.
Best Novelette. The single non-puppy nominee, The Day the World Turned Upside Down, won, despite being a mostly forgettable self-indulgent whine-fest about a boy who must deal with an actual, but not always internally consistent, reversal of gravity that coincides with his own metaphorical world turning upside down after being dumped.
Best Short Story. No Award won in a landslide over Totaled which I thought was a very worthwhile piece of writing.
Best Related Work. No Award won in a landslide over The Hot Equations, from which I learned a lot.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the logically inconsistent and stunningly idiotic Interstellar finished fourth, although was disappointed to see that it placed above The Lego Movie.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. I was very pleasantly surprises to see Orphan Black rewarded, even if the nominated episode was not the best the show has ever offered up.
Best Editor, Long Form. Very disappointed, but not surprised, to see Toni Weisskopf trounced by No Award.
John W. Campbell Award. No surprise to see Wesley Chu deservedly dominate, but a little surprised to see so little love for Kary English.
Best Fan Writer. Not a huge surprise to see Laura Mixon win, especially after the heady endorsement by George R.R. Martin (see here and here). Hell, even I drank the Kool Aid and voted for her. But since casting that vote, I have looked deeper into the matter and now believe that I made a terrible mistake; this was a poorly researched hit piece. I'd like to think that the voters will come to look back on this choice with regret in the same way that I have.

As for the nominations, I was surprised to find that:

Best Novel. Andy Weir's brilliant The Martian and Jeff Vandemeer's Annihilation, came in only12th and 17th, respectively, in the nominations. At least Andy has the movie grosses to look forward to.
Best Novella. Patrick Rothfuss's The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which I thoroughly enjoyed, just missed out on a nomination.
Best Novelette. Scott Lynch's A Year and a Day in Old Therandane came in only 11th, while contributions by Joe Abercrombie and Patrick Rothfuss to the same volume did not register (I enjoyed all three of them).
Best Related Work. Volume 2 of William Patterson's Heinlein biography came in 11th, while Jill Lepore's brilliant Secret History of Wonder Woman came in 12th. Both would have missed out even absent the puppies, which is a travesty.
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. X-Men: Days of Future Past came in 9th, which seems crazy to me (I loved it).
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Orphan Black only barely received a nomination.

The fall-out over this result will no doubt continue for several weeks or months and I will have more to write about it later.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

The Political Correctness Police

Over the past two days, twitter had a minor shit-fit about some materials that were distributed in the freebie area at Saquan. The first was a satirical flyer purporting to be a letter in relation to membership eligibility for the SFWA (in the letter, the Socialist Fiction Writers of America):

Saw this in the #Sasquan freebie area; took the entire stack over to Ops. #Worldcon #SickPuppies #NotMyWorldcon #Pfft pic.twitter.com/sdmH6pgCQZ
— Dori Smith (@dori) August 21, 2015

This letter was lifted from a comment on Amanda Green's blog by someone who goes by Captain Comic, and the same commenter has claimed responsibility for posting the flyers around Sasquan (in reply to this post by Sarah Hoyt, along with a promise not to distribute any more).

The response was as expected. Twitter broke out into uproar about how offensive the flyer was. The material was removed. The Sasquan committee tweeted out approval over its removal:

@dori @omegar24 Thanks for notifying Ops and policing the tables. A concom can't be everywhere, but a community can.
— sasquansf (@sasquansf) August 21, 2015

And numerous commentators referenced the convention anti-harassment policy and how there needed to be repercussions for the action of distributing the flyer.

There is no doubt that this is a pretty juvenile piece of humor. However, it is associated with a serious argument reductio ad absurdum about the role of identity politics in SFF at the moment. I can see why some people would be offended by it. I personally do not think it rises to the level of offensiveness necessary to justify suppressing the flyer and silencing the point of view. Nonetheless, I am not surprised that it was suppressed.

And then even more "offensive" materials were found and removed:

Also found these from the purveyor of that earlier offal #Sasquan flyer. Original h/t @avram http://t.co/ZNh7oVwnys pic.twitter.com/bdvpQuRGKI
— Dori Smith (@dori) August 21, 2015

Let us make no mistake: there is nothing about these ribbons that is offensive, or should be offensive, to anyone. If they are offensive, it is only in so far as they express support for a cause that is unpopular. There is no acceptable reason for removing materials that simply express support for a different opinion. And I am disgusted that the conference organizers would react with outrage:

@jimchines @dori @avram If not, then please do tell us. Ops is in room 402 in the row of rooms being used as offices.
— sasquansf (@sasquansf) August 21, 2015

Shame on everyone involved.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Monday, August 17, 2015

Book Review: Naomi Novik Uprooted

Naomi Novik is the author of the popular Temeraire series of novels, an alternate history, in which the English and French fight the Napoleonic Wars atop flying and talking dragons. Uprooted, which appears to be a stand alone novel, takes place in a different universe, instead being set in a fantasy version of Eastern Europe. Indeed, it is apparently loosely based on a Polish folk tale.

The protagonist of Uprooted is Agnieszka, a rural peasant girl growing up in a valley next to The Wood, a mysterious and hostile forest. The residents of the valley rely on the local wizard, known as The Dragon, to protect them from The Wood. In payment, the Dragon takes a 17 year old girl once every ten years to live with him. No-one knows what the (very long lived) Dragon does with these girls, except that at the end of their decade with him they do not wish to stay in the valley and return to their old village life.

As we enter the story, the decade is coming to an end and the Dragon will soon choose his next girl. Agnieszka is of the right age but does not expect to be selected due to the presence of her friend Kasia, who is beautiful and talented and has been groomed by expectations of her choosing for many years. To everyone's surprise but the reader the Dragon turns up and chooses Agnieszka who is whisked off to live as part servant, part student in the Dragon's tower. For Agnieszka turns out to have some facility with magic and it is the Dragon's obligation to tutor her in it.

The rest of the book then takes some interesting trails through what is otherwise familiar territory. The Dragon is forced to deal with the young and feisty Agnieszka and must un-learn some of his curmudgeonly ways. Agnieszka must learn to let go of her plans for her life, while fighting to keep intact her ties to the people of her village. The Dragon turns out to be a poor tutor for Agnieszka as her magical powers take a different but complementary form to his own and she must turn instead to a book written by the mysterious Baba Jaga. Together, they must learn to confront the forces that live inside The Wood before those forces overwhelm their entire world.

Novik writes very well which makes for a very brisk read. The Eastern European setting, while not differing tremendously from the standard Western European medieval fantasy, adds an interesting flavor to the mix. I found Agnieszka to be very likeable, and thought the character behaved intelligently and reasonably in light of the information she has available to her. If this sounds like I am damning with faint praise, it is not intended to be that way: far too often I find myself bouncing off a fantasy novel because I do not find the characters' actions believable. That is not a problem here.

As the book reaches its climax, there is a predictable (dare I say clichéd?) digression into a discussion of how humanity's contempt for nature is the root cause (pardon the pun) of evil lurking within The Wood. But just when I was afraid that the book was going to veer off into some sort of environmental screed, the book recovers and ends with the neutral message that nature and humanity need to find a balance, with nature accepting the inevitability of "progress". This is not the sort of heavy handed message fiction complained about by the Sad and Rabid Puppies.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot. It was a fun read populated with compelling characters, with enough differences from the typical fantasy to make it seem fresh. On my patented rating scale, that makes it a "very good" ...

R⁴ Rating: 8 out of 10.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Sexism in SFF

Provocative article in The New Statesman entitled "I read the 100 “best” fantasy and sci-fi novels - and they were shockingly offensive."

Essentially, the author set out to read all of the books (or, at least, those she had not already read) on NPRs 2013 list of the 100 best fantasy and science fiction novels. What she found was, in her words, "barely disguised sexism and inability to imagine any world where women are involved in the derring-do."

I looked over the list and thought it was a little strange for a "best of" list. Partly, this can be explained by the fact that the list was compiled from a vote by thousands of NPR listeners; popular votes often leave off great fiction. In this case, for example, they managed to leave off the entire oeuvre of Octavia Butler. Young adult and horror novels were also excluded, although that criterion appears to have been applied inconsistently (Heinlein's juveniles were allowed, but A Wizard of Earthsea was not, for example).

Nonetheless, it is not a terrible list, and so I was a little surprised at the author's strong reaction. That is not to say that I thought it was entirely wrong; I was just surprised by the overall finding, as well as some of the examples cited.

Partly, this reflects weaknesses in my memory. For example, in describing Anne McCaffery's Dragonflight, the author points out that the sex between the main male and female characters is explicitly described as rape. I had completely forgotten that (in my defense, it has been close to three decades since I read it).

But partly, I think it may also reflect that the author of the piece read some of the books very shallowly, or did not finish them after bouncing off something in the early pages. For example, in describing Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, the author complains that

despite the same years in combat, one of the supporting female protagonists, Marygay, only gets made an executive officer while Joe, the male protagonist becomes a major.

What was more disquieting was the military regulations about enforced promiscuity of the women soldiers ... Maybe it was assumed that the men would be promiscuous but this wasn’t mentioned. Given that both the men and women were soldiers ... why would only the women have to be compelled to sleep with men by military regulation?

But in the book, it is clearly established that Marygay is not promoted because she has too much empathy for the aliens. And there is at least one scene in which Joe complains about being paired with a woman whose libido exceeds his own.

Likewise, Brandon Sanderson's Final Empire is described as sexist due to the exploitation and callous disregard of lower class women by the nobility. But my recollection of this book is that the protagonist is a strong young woman who is portrayed very positively (perhaps my memory is failing me again, or maybe, as a man, I miss some things that women find offensive?)

I guess I cannot fault the author for not reading every book deeply to the conclusion; she has no obligation to continue reading something she finds objectionable. In her position, however, I would like to think that I would have given the books---voted, as they were, among the best the field has to offer---a bit more of a chance.

There is also a lot of truth in what the author writes. Much SFF, especially older literature, does fail the Bechdel test, applied to books as:

Does it have at least two female characters?
Is one of them a main character?
Do they have an interesting profession/level of skill like male characters?

In fact, as the author points out, some have no female characters at all.

I think all of this is worth keeping in mind as I evaluate new fiction.

R⁴SFF