Tag: books

Wallowing in Pseudo-Madness

The Wasp Factory vs One Bright Star to Guide Them

Phil Sandifer debated Vox Day about two very different works of fiction by two very different authors on June 11, 2015. Since the interview is no longer available the now-defunct original site, I’ve posted the archived version here.

Below is a transcript of my interview with Vox Day, which you can listen to over at Pex Lives. I’ve lightly edited it to remove infelicities of language on both Day’s part and my own. I’ve also added a couple of footnotes clarifying aspects of the discussion. I am sure that Day would offer several clarifications of his own. Thanks again to Kevin and James for hosting this, and to Max Braden for preparing the transcript.

Phil Sandifer: Hi, I’m Phil Sandifer and I’ve got with me today the man at the center of the whole Hugo Awards controversy, Vox Day. Hello, Vox.

Vox Day: Hey, Phil. How are you?

Sandifer: I’m doing all right. So, the idea behind this interview is that Vox and I mutually agreed upon two works, one that he thinks is a great story and that I think is terrible, and one vice versa. The first is going to be John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, which is one of Vox’s Rabid Puppies, it’s up for a best novella Hugo this year, and the other is going to be the late great Iain Banks’s 1984 debut novel The Wasp Factory. We’re going to start with One Bright Star to Guide Them, by John C. Wright, who you’ve called a contender for the greatest living science fiction writer. The book’s promotional text describes it like so:

As children, long ago, Tommy Robertson and his three friends, Penny, Sally, and Richard, passed through a secret gate in a ruined garden and found themselves in an elfin land, where they aided a brave prince against the evil forces of the Winter King. Decades later, successful, stout, and settled in his ways, Tommy is long parted from his childhood friends, and their magical adventures are but a half-buried memory.

But on the very eve of his promotion to London, a silver key and a coal-black cat appear from the past, and Tommy finds himself summoned to serve as England’s champion against the invincible Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. The terror and wonder of Faerie has broken into the Green and Pleasant Land, and he alone has been given the eyes to see it, to gather his companions and their relics is his quest. But age and time have changed them too. Like Tommy, they are more worldly-wise, and more fearful. And evil things from childhood stories grow older and darker and more frightening with the passing of the years.

One Bright Star to Guide Them begins where other fairy tales end. Brilliant and bittersweet, the novella hearkens back to the greatest and best-loved classics of childhood fantasy. John C. Wright’s beautiful fairy tale is not a subversion of these classics, but a loving and nostalgic homage to them, and reminds the reader that although Ever After may not always be happy, the road of life goes ever on and evil must be defeated anew by each and every generation.”

Now, this is obviously the one of the two books that I think is awful, but I do want to say before we start, I really do love the premise. I really love the idea of going back to a sort of Narnia-esque children’s fiction world from the perspective of adulthood. There’s obviously a lot of stories in the “return to a children’s story in adulthood” style – I should point out for listeners who are coming to this through my work that the first two chapters are actually almost beat for beat the first two stories of Alan Moore’s Marvelman in terms of the plot – but I really can’t think of one in this sub-genre that’s played with Narnia in particular. There’s a very short story by Neil Gaiman called “The Problem of Susan,” but that’s about it. So I do want to admit up front, I do love the premise if nothing else. But you obviously love a lot more than just the premise here, so my first question is simple, Vox: why is this story great?

Day: Well, before I explain why I think it’s a great story, I think that it’s probably important for the purpose of full disclosure to point out that, number one, I was the editor who was responsible for publishing this story, and also I wrote that particular description that you just read.

Sandifer: Okay.

Day: So, it’s fair to point out that I am absolutely, utterly and completely biased in this regard, less because I have a pecuniary interest in the novella selling well – anyone who knows anything about publishing realizes that novellas are not the way that you make a lot of money in the publishing business – but I am very, very biased towards John Wright in particular as a writer, and One Bright Star to Guide Them is one of my three favorite things that he’s ever written. So I think very highly of him as a writer; the other writers that I think very highly of in the science fiction field are China Miéville and, until his most recent novel, Neal Stephenson.[1]

Now, what is particularly great about Wright, and something that a lot of people don’t necessarily realize, is that he’s not a writer who puts a lot of what I would call “craft” into it, by which I mean we’re not dealing with works that are written and re-written and re-written and re-written, for the most part. Now, in this particular case, he did write it as a short story, and then turned it into a novella later, but in general, what you see is what you get. It’s actually somewhat depressing to edit the man, because the stuff that he turns in just having dashed it off is much better than most of the stuff you see from other people.

Now, in the case of One Bright Star, like you said, the premise is fantastic. The idea that you’re beginning with these children who have been through this wonderful, incredible, fantastic experience, and then suddenly visiting, catching up with them thirty-some years later, is original in itself.

Sandifer: Right, I mean, there is, as I said, a large sub-genre of this. It’s hardly the only story, I think even from last year – I know a lot of people have compared it to Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which came out around the same time. [2]

Day: Sure, but there’s… You know, I’ve read The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it’s good, but what’s different about One Bright Star to Guide Them is that it is much more clearly written as an homage, not just to Narnia, but there’s actually elements of a great deal of other children’s fantasies that are much beloved.

Sandifer: Right, there’s a line that very closely hues to Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising that I noticed, for instance.

Day: Right. There’s also a fair amount of The Chronicles of Prydain. A lot of the fictional events that are referred to are much more out of Prydain than out of either The Dark is Rising or Narnia. And then there’s also a couple other ones, references to less well-known works. There’s certainly a call-out to George McDonald in there, the original fantasy writer, and so there’s a fair amount of depth there for those of us who were into that type of literature.

Sandifer: I think one of the reasons, though, people go for Narnia in particular – because, I mean, if you look at the reviews on Amazon, Narnia does seem to be the one that everyone goes to first when talking about the sort of influences on this, and I’m going to hazard a guess, no small part of that is because both Narnia and this are pretty explicitly Christian allegories. Do you think that’s a fair statement to say about this book?

Day: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that that’s both part of why One Bright Star to Guide Them generates such powerful reactions in people who love it and in the much smaller number of people who dislike it, because I think in many cases, people’s reactions are being colored by their own personal feelings about Christianity, both for better and for worse.

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Continue reading “Wallowing in Pseudo-Madness”

Freakshow Cubed

The Guardian is desperately, and rather quixotically, attempting to maintain Mr. Tubcuddle’s public viability by putting him front and center of its praise for the very worst book I have ever read in its entirety. Because while I’m confident that Samuel L. Delaney’s Hogg and the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom are even worse, I’ve declined the opportunity to wallow in the wicked filth of those literary abominations. I was not so fortunate with regards to The Wasp Factory, which was published 40 years ago, although the world would be a better, brighter, more beautiful place if it had not been.

It was 1984, and the publisher Macmillan was holding a small event for booksellers, and had invited a tiny handful of journalists along as well. They would be announcing upcoming titles, trying to get the booksellers excited about them. I was one of the journalists, but I only remember one author and one book from that afternoon. The author’s editor, James Hale, was thrilled about a first novel, which Macmillan would soon be publishing, and which James had discovered on the “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. The author had been asked to say a few words to the assembled booksellers about himself and his book.

The author had dark, curly auburn hair and a ginger beard that was barely more than ambitious stubble. He was tall, and his accent was Scottish. He told us that he had really wanted to be a science fiction writer, that he had written several science fiction books and sent them out to publishers without attracting any interest. Then he had decided to “write what he knew”. He had taken his own obsessions as a young man, his delight in blowing things up and his fascination with homemade implements of destruction, and he had given them to Frank, a young man who also liked blowing things up but went much further than the author ever had. The author was Iain Banks, of course, and the book was The Wasp Factory.

The story, he told us, began when Frank’s brother, Eric, escaped from a high-security psychiatric hospital, and let Frank know he was coming home. But, Iain warned us, that wasn’t what the story was about. 

What The Wasp Factory is about concerns an idiotic plot that wallows in nearly every form of depravity with a protagonist so retarded that he doesn’t realize he’s not a girl, he’s a boy who had his genitalia gnawed off by a dog. And this isn’t even the most disgusting aspect of the novel; the titular metaphor is even worse.

Because Iain Banks is not a terrible writer, the sheer awfulness of the book is even worse than it might otherwise have been. And it serves very well as a litmus test for the fundamental wrongness of those who admire it; besides Mr. Tubcuddle, the gentleman with whom I debated the merits and demerits of the book has now gone the way of the book’s protagonist, and, incidentally, deleted the transcript of our debate, which fortunately can still be heard via MP3.

An excerpt from the debate:

Day: And this also touches on my third point, which is: this is an idiot plot. I mean, this is what Roger Ebert described as – you know, he said that “the idiot plot is any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot.” So, you’ve got somebody who literally has never looked in her pants to discover that she’s got a vagina, you’ve got the father who is beyond idiocy with the whole story about the dog and the creation of the fake genitals just in case she ever asks, and then of course you’ve got Eric, who apparently never figured out that his sister was actually his sister either. I mean, this is an idiot plot. There’s no way around that.

Sandifer: This is grotesque, it’s a grotesquery. I think that the ludicrousness of it is a joke in the same spirit as “killing three people was just a phase I was going through.” I don’t think it’s an idiot plot so much as it is a parody of rural grotesquery that is deliberately at the absolute limits of what is even remotely plausible.

Day: I personally think it’s well beyond those limits, and, you know, I’m not saying that there’s no humor to it, but, you know, I didn’t find it funny, for the most part. The occasional one-offs, like you mention, you know, those were mildly amusing, but just to wallow in that depth of depravity and violence and murder, you know, it’s literally disgusting, and I didn’t find it funny, I didn’t find it edifying. Like I said, the plot is a literal idiot plot. Whether you want to say it’s because it was parody or not, it’s still an idiot plot. I’m not one of those people who finds… What’s that show, the guy from The Office…

Sandifer: U.S. or U.K.?

Day: Ricky Gervais.

Sandifer: Yes.

Day: He has that television show where he pretends to be retarded or something, and every ad he’s gurning, you know what I mean? It’s a relatively new show. I don’t find that funny either. And so, maybe the fact that it’s got an idiot plot but it’s a parody, therefore it’s supposed to make it intelligent, but to me, the plot is still what the plot is, and so I found it very, very disappointing, because the whole plot is totally dependent on the three major characters being and behaving like complete idiots.

And the problem I have when you talk about the whole psychosocial aspect of Frank is Banks, in my opinion, gets the characters completely wrong. Frank is not convincing in any way, shape, or form as a girl who believes she’s a boy, and that sort of thing. I’m pretty sure that Iain Banks never had any daughters, because if you’re a parent, and you’ve got both boys and girls, there is not a chance in hell that a little girl, even if you raise her as a boy, is going to behave like a boy.  This is where I think it goes beyond parody and is a level of absurd that is not credible. I would have found it much more credible if Frank had some female attributes and characteristics in his thinking that he couldn’t explain. But instead, like you said, he’s more of a parody of a hyper-male, and that to me makes no sense whatsoever.

UPDATE: Its not your imagination. There is literally a media conspiracy of silence regarding Neal Gaiman’s behavior toward women.

Speaking with our contacts in the comic industry, Fandom Pulse was told by an insider that there is a concerted media effort to squash this story. There are allegedly marching orders not to report on this, which makes the situation even more bizarre. Online comic forums and Facebook groups controlled by mainstream media forces shut down discussions to keep this story from getting out. If these orders are confirmed, the entertainment media corruption is on full display beyond anything we’ve ever seen. 

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How NOT to Talk to Girls at Parties

Neil Gaiman, who is being accused of sexual assault by two women, really does not appear to be an ideal role model on the basis of his short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”. And while the title of the story is amusingly ironic in light of the current accusations, reading the story tends to be rather less ironic and rather more problematic for Mr. Gaiman.

This is the climactic excerpt of the story, in which the hapless protagonist abruptly is dragged out of a party by his best friend, Vic, who had previously disappeared into a room with a girl he had just met at the party, Stella.

 As Vic pulled open the door, I looked back one last time, over my shoulder, hoping to see Triolet in the doorway to the kitchen, but she was not there. I saw Stella, though, at the top of the stairs. She was staring down at Vic, and I saw her face.

This all happened thirty years ago. I have forgotten much, and I will forget more, and in the end I will forget everything; yet, if I have any certainty of life beyond death, it is all wrapped up not in psalms or hymns, but in this one thing alone: I cannot believe that I will ever forget that moment, or forget the expression on Stella’s face as she watched Vic hurrying away from her. Even in death I shall remember that.

Her clothes were in disarray, and there was makeup smudged across her face, and her eyes—

You wouldn’t want to make a universe angry. I bet an angry universe would look at you with eyes like that.

We ran then, me and Vic, away from the party and the tourists and the twilight, ran as if a lightning storm was on our heels, a mad helter-skelter dash down the confusion of streets, threading through the maze, and we did not look back, and we did not stop until we could not breathe; and then we stopped and panted, unable to run any longer. We were in pain. I held on to a wall, and Vic threw up, hard and long, into the gutter.

He wiped his mouth.

“She wasn’t a—” He stopped.

He shook his head.

Then he said, “You know . . . I think there’s a thing. When you’ve gone as far as you dare. And if you go any further, you wouldn’t be you anymore? You’d be the person who’d done that? The places you just can’t go. . . . I think that happened to me tonight.”

It would appear that Mr. Gaiman has, at least in his imagination, contemplated what it would be like to go further with a young woman than he would dare. We already know, by his own admission, that he is the sort of 61-year-old man who would “cuddle in the bathtub” with a 22-year-old nanny that he had just met that day.

Which admission tends to raise considerably more questions about how much further Mr. Gaiman has, in fact, dared to go, and how much more inappropriately he has behaved. Given what we already know about him, the ages of some of his better-known literary subjects also tends to raise additional, and even more disconcerting, questions about the man.

One thing that we’ve known for at least a decade, however, is that Gaiman is a sketchy creep and a Gamma male. And needless to say, File 770, Whatever, and the various science fiction sites that have been slobbering all over Gaiman for more than a decade are completely silent on the subject even though the mainstream media is covering it.

UPDATE: A keen-eyed reader notes an astonishing coincidence.

The review quote on the Gaiman book cover is by Junot Díaz, accused of sexual harassment in 2018. He was eventually cleared of misconduct. What are the odds?

Creeps of a feather flock together…

UPDATE: Unlike the SJW sites, Fandom Pulse is on top of it.

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It’s Not Just Books

The destruction of knowledge at the behest of the Zero Historians isn’t limited to printed matter.

More than two decades’ worth of content published on MTVNews.com is no longer available after MTV appears to have fully pulled down the site and its related content. Content on its sister site, CMT.com, seems to have met a similiar fate.

In 2023, MTV News was shuttered amid the financial woes of parent company Paramount Global. As of Monday, trying to access MTV News articles on mtvnews.com or mtv.com/news resulted in visitors being redirected to the main MTV website.

The now-unavailable content includes decades of music journalism comprising thousands of articles and interviews with countless major artists, dating back to the site’s launch in 1996. Perhaps the most significant loss is MTV News’ vast hip-hop-related archives, particularly its weekly “Mixtape Monday” column, which ran for nearly a decade in the 2000s and 2010s and featured interviews, reviews and more with many artists, producers and others early in their careers.

This is why Castalia Library is expanding its efforts from just publishing leatherbound classics to leveraging its subscriber base to preserve knowledge in general. Among our efforts, which will include opening up Infogalactic editing to all Library and UATV subscribers and making it easier for them, is releasing free Library ebooks for all Library, Libraria, and History subscribers. We’ll also provide an inexpensive bundle of those titles for which we have permission available for sale as ebooks.

We’ll go with a standard cover for all of them, although we’ll update the logo once we’ve got the Castalia Library-specific one instead of the modified History variant. An example can be seen below. An announcement with a link will be made on the Castalia Library substack within the next week; if you haven’t subscribed there yet, we very much encourage you to do so.

We’re also going to start doing books that are transcriptions of worthwhile video works from various UATV and other video creators. If this is something of serious interest to you – and by serious, I mean cleaning up least five 1,500-word transcriptions per week – please email me with TRANSCRIBE in the subject line. We can provide an AI-transcribed text as a starting point, but it takes about twice as long to go over the whole video and edit it for print as the length of the video. So figure 20 minutes of work for a 10-minute video.

This is going to be particularly important in light of the meltdown we hear is coming in the book industry. The financial takeover of Simon & Schuster by KKR, a private equity firm, combined with the incipient failure of Barnes & Noble, means that the distribution system is going to be further converged and cease to function normally, which will have a tremendous negative effect on all of the mainstream publishing houses going forward.

UPDATE: MTV News isn’t the only site destroying its own archives in the last year:

Tech news website CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results, Gizmodo has learned. Archived copies of CNET’s author pages show the company deleted small batches of articles prior to the second half of July, but then the pace increased. Thousands of articles disappeared in recent weeks

UPDATE: Wikileaks is also being wiped.

Julian Assange has been instructed to direct WikiLeaks to destroy any remaining classified documents and information in their possession and provide an affidavit once completed, as part of his plea agreement.

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Mailvox: The War on Knowledge

An email from a reader illustrates how even the profession of the Librarian has been inverted in order to destroy the knowledge they are charged with preserving.

My wife and I are volunteers for the Friends of the Library at the branch library in the college town where we first met, where every year we help out at the book sales. A month ago we received a peculiar donation. It turns out the new director of the library at our alma mater made the decision to liquidate the library’s special collections. Among those liquidations was a special collection library that had been initiated in the nineteenth century by a member of college founder’s immediate family.

In my years at college, I treasured this special library – it was housed in an elegant top-level room in the college’s oldest building, and required special access to visit. Nearly all the books were old, and all of them were on special subjects of great interest to me – literature, poetry, theology, the sciences. Many titles had bookplates with the names of the alumni who donated them over the years.

After some investigation I discovered that this new head of the college library pulled all of the books out of that special library, and put them in an enormous rented bin in the main lobby, with a sign suggesting that students could use them for art projects and scrapbooking, you know, to cut and paste their contents to express themselves and be “creative.” The majority of books sat there for weeks, and then she called our group to donate them to our book sale.

The last day of the book sale is bag day, where a brown grocery bag of books is only a dollar. What the library doesn’t sell at the end of sale is brought to a pulper. I pulled all of these books and placed them in private storage—if I hadn’t, they would have literally been shredded a week ago.

The process is ongoing. I’m told that the librarian is closing all of the special collections in all departments of the college, so I don’t want to share any names just yet, but before this is over, I hope I’ll have saved at least a thousand out-of-print books.

This is not new. Well over a decade ago, another university library in my state was destroyed. This library, in a literal ivory tower built exclusively for holding and preserving hundreds of thousands of books, was at one time among the top ten libraries in the nation. A new library director had not only decided to gut the
interior of the building and destroy all of the original architectural detail and period decor, but he also pulled out and destroyed a great majority of the books to make room for “computer stations.” They did not sell the books, they did not offer to donate them, and the director specifically instructed staff to discard the books in locked university dumpsters so that they couldn’t be taken by anyone.

The bad, the ugly, and the false. That is the makeup of the world these people are actively contriving and constructing. It really is time to build a consortium of knowledge, physical and digital, containing archives of the world’s books and works that are under attack and being taken away.

The Serpent promises knowledge and provides nothing but ignorance. What we have collectively taken on as a responsibility with Castalia Library and Infogalactic may eventually prove to be one of the most important things any of us have ever done. We are the only true Librarians and we stand between Man and the state of Zero History that Clown World seeks to impose on him.

The Zero Historians need to destroy all human knowledge because only in its absence can they present their lies as truth. And indeed, the better we understand their motives and methods, the more it appears this is not the first time they have attempted such a grand endeavor.

Inversion is always the key. Now it should be perfectly clear what a fundamental lie the asserted conflict between Christianity and Science, and between Faith and Knowledge, has always been.

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Subscribe, Scan, and Stockpile

Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies predicts a Clown World campaign against books:

Soon, you will see a silent undertaking to destroy the last decentralized form of offline knowledge:

Books.

If the elites don’t do this, then these books will be turned into training AI about the true history of the last 2000 years.

I highly recommend a) subscribing to one of Castalia’s series, b) scanning any unique book to which you have access, and c) stockpiling both books and electronic texts. The latter should be in the simplest possible forms, either PDF or TXT format.

We are the monestaries for the 21st Century and beyond. The Zero Historians are coming to destroy all human knowledge and neither the atheists nor the agnostics are going to stop them. So it again falls to us.

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The Next Library Serial

Yesterday marked the end of the successful 116-part serialization of Sir Charles Oman’s STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, which ended with an intriguing take on the iconoclastic brilliance of the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley by Sir Oman.

He knew what was expected of him: “I am the Duke of Wellington, and must do as the Duke of Wellington doth”, was one of his touches of sardonic humour. But it was also one more indication of the fact that he regarded an inflexible adherence to his own peculiar code of duty as the highest obligation.

But above all, to thine own self be true,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

In the aftermath of the completion of the STUDIES, we want to know which Library or History book you would like to see serialized next on the Castalia Library substack. Please feel free to share your opinion on the matter by voting for one of the four selections in the next 24 hours. The serialization will be announced and begin tomorrow. And if you haven’t subscribed yet to the substack, you really should consider doing so, since it is free.

Library and History subscribers debate the next serialization.

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Another Reason to Subscribe

Folio Society is celebrating… something.

We want to hear about your LGBTQ+ recommendations

One of the greatest comforts reading can offer is the feeling of being seen, whether in the form of fiction or true stories.

We’d like to do our part in amplifying voices and connecting more readers with stories that have moved them.

So in celebration of Pride month, we’re asking you which LGBTQ+ books and authors you’d like to see as Folio collectibles. Editor’s Pick:

Conundrum

A memoir of identity and belonging, and the pain, joy and discovery that the journey from man to woman entailed.

From the team at Folio, Happy Pride!

I’d very much like to see Folio do an edition of Space Raptor Butt Invasion by award-winning author Chuck Tingle. If any work embodies the spirit of Pride, it’s that epic and inclusive tale of interspecies love in space. But failing that, Moira Greyland’s The Last Closet would be my recommendation.

It’s not going to get any better going forward, because the lunatics aren’t just running the asylum, they literally own it now. If you want to help us defeat the complete convergence and eventual demolition of the deluxe book industry, there are three things you can do:

  1. Subscribe to a Library, History, or Libraria subscription.
  2. Buy a leather book from Arkhaven or NDM Express.
  3. Subscribe to Castalia Library or the forthcoming Signature Society.

Speaking of NDM Express, the first t-shirt of the month has been announced and it is the very handsome Castalia History LEGO ERGO SCIO shirt.

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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE sold out

The Libraria edition, anyhow. The Library edition would be sold out already too, except for the fact that we published 250 additional copies. So, if you’ve been on the fence or if you’re planning to buy someone one for Christmas, you should probably do it soon before the Library edition is also sold out.

Also, if you want to keep up with Castalia Library’s announcements, news, and production updates, I HIGHLY recommend obtaining a free subscription to the Castalia Library substack. As an added bonus, you’ll receive daily serializations of one of Castalia’s works.

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The Rehabilitation of a Pedo

Not only does SFWA resolutely refuse to eject the pedophiles, past and present, convicted and unconvicted, from its midst, but the morally-depraved science fiction community is now even trying to rehabilitate the reputation of confirmed dead lesbian child-abuser Marion Zimmer Bradley, upon whose work the new Star Wars Acolyte is obviously based.

After her death, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter, Moira Greyland accused her not only of aiding and abetting her second husband in child molestation, but in herself molesting their daughter. Since Ms. Greyland made this accusations only after MZB was dead and could no longer defend herself or refute the charges, MZB had no opportunity to go to court and clear her name. Some authors have donated the money earned from sales to Bradley to various child-related charities. Given that she edited Breen’s book, Greek Love, and edited and contributed at least one article to his journal, The International Journal of Greek Love, she had to at least suspected his unhealthy interest in boys. “Greek love” is an old euphemism for male homosexuality, especially the relationship between an older man and a boy or youth. Many who knew her well said they had never seen or suspected anything untoward. However, others believed the accusations. Victor Gollancz, Ltd., the publisher of Bradley’s digital backlist, donated all the profits to the British charity Save the Children. Author Janni Lee Simner donated the money she earned from sales to MZB to the American anti-sexual assault organization Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network. Other writers chose to keep the money they earned…

She was awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000 posthumously.

After her death, she was cremated, and her ashes, appropriately enough were scattered on Glastonbury Tor, in Somerset, England.

Her influence as a writer will last so long as her stories are in print. Her influence as an editor continues to spread, as the writers she mentored are now mentoring a further generations of writers.

Remembering Marion Zimmer Bradley on Her Birthday, SCIFI.RADIO, 3 June 2024

If her influence as a writer continues to bear fruit such as Acolyte, she’ll be completely forgotten, and deservedly so, before the end of the decade. No one reads Darkover anymore and the market for lesbian pedophile space witches isn’t likely to survive Clown World’s collapse.

It’s fascinating to observe how the same freaks who believe and assiduously repeat obviously false information about those of whom they assiduously disapprove will openly deny and attempt to discredit the direct and convincing testimonial evidence of the actual victims of the criminals they are defending.

The dead lesbian pedo Marion Zimmer Bradley has never been disavowed by SFWA, is still recognized as a Hugo and Nebula Award winner, and there are at least two known pedophiles who are honored as SFWA Grand Masters. The real reason the SF community hates me to this day with a white hot passion has nothing to do with Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, my open contempt for their diversity pets, or even my ideological views. It’s because I published this book and they know their attempts to rehabilitate their fallen heroes will never, ever succeed.

There is a perfectly valid argument for separating the art from the artist in many cases. The problem, in the specific case of MZB, is that it is not possible to do so when so much of her art was steeped in her particular wickedness and written with the avowed objective of infecting society with it.

UPDATE: From Wikipedia. It will be interesting to see how many of these SF authors join the rehabilitation efforts going forward. And notice that there is no mention of me being one of the authors who has publicly condemned her.

A number of science fiction authors have publicly condemned Bradley. Among the first was John Scalzi, who within a day of the allegations being made public, described the allegations as “horrific”. Hugo Award winner Jim C. Hines wrote that Bradley’s positive effect on her readers and associates “makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic.” G Willow Wilson, who along with Bradley is a fellow World Fantasy Award winner, said she was “speechless”. Diana L. Paxson, who collaborated with Bradley on a number of novels and who continued to write novels set in the Avalon Series after Bradley’s death, said that she was “shocked and appalled to read Moira Greyland’s posts about her mother… I never personally observed, nor had any reason to suspect, that (Bradley) was abusing either of her children.”

UPDATE: In response to this post, SciFi.radio has memory-holed the article. But the Internet remembers…

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