Tag: SFWA

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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An Accurate Review

In which a reviewer of fantasy books tries, and quite understandably fails, to finish reading the award-winning masterworks of one N.K. Jemisin:

I believe that the Broken Earth Trilogy specifically the fifth season which is the first book is so bad
that it’s essentially unreadable. I don’t remember a book that I’ve read that I believe personally is as bad as this one, and it shocks me that not only is this book extremely popular, but every single book in the trilogy won the Hugo award for the best book. This is a beloved series that many people claim
this is the best fantasy series of all time and I could not have a more contrary opinion to my feeling about
this book.

The fact that a third of this book was written in the second person is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing. The second person does not work when it comes to books, it works in some other forms of media, it works in video games, it works quite well in video games where you can picture yourself into the main character and people are talking to you in that way, but in a book it comes off so odd that it’s off-putting and difficult to suck in. There is a reason that virtually no books utilize the second person, and it’s not because they’re not as smart as NK Jemisin that they haven’t been able to pull it off, it’s because it doesn’t work.

I believed, constantly, as I read this book, that Jemisin was trying to be too smart and it came off as ridiculous. The second person is horrible, the way that she writes is atrocious. At times where she uses these italics and bolds and all caps within the text to really drive home a point, to really make this strong emphasis, you shouldn’t have to rely on that to make a really strong point. It comes off as kind of crazy.

I thought the twist that was in this book, and there is a major one, and I still don’t know if it actually occurs because I didn’t finish the book. I got 95 percent of the way through, and I said ‘I cannot bear to finish this book’ but I’m about 100 percent confident that there is a major twist that happens at the end of this book that is so obvious that it becomes one of the most telegraphed and poor choices for a twist that I’ve ever read. I can’t say what it is, but I can say that myself, and I suspect a great many readers figured out what it is within the first 50 or so pages. It’s not so much that the twist is ruined, you know. I’ve figured out twists before and it’s disappointing, it doesn’t happen a lot for me. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, I’m oftentimes the last person to pick up on these things, and I really do like it that way. I prefer to be surprised, I don’t want to figure stuff out, I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to be, you know, the dummy that is the last one to get it, but man, it’s obvious.

The problem is that the way that the book is structured with this bouncing around in a timeline is ruined
because of the twist. It’s a really poor way to tell the story and the story would have been much preferable to be in a more cohesive, clear, linear fashion, and I don’t think that’s true for all books. I think some books that use time jumps and these different point of views and these things can be very very good, some of my favorite books utilize that, but I think the book sacrificed a great deal in quality to do this and it didn’t work. The twist did not achieve its stated goals.

Now when I’ve said this before, I heard a lot of people in the comments say ‘you’re supposed to figure it out.’ No, you’re not! That is a retrospective retelling of the events to try to justify what occurred in this book. Now the last thing I’ll say about a major reason that I disliked this book is the way that characters move on from traumatic events. I think it’s horrible, some horrible things happen in this book, and this book bills itself as being a tear-jerker and just very depressing and these bad things happen, and that
that’s true for the large part, but the characters have these horrible things happen and they reminisce about them for a moment, and they take it in, and then they just move on. That’s crazy, that’s not real life. When horrible things happen people sit with them for great amounts of time, and maybe in later books they reinvestigate this, but in this first book, man, it didn’t work well.

So I can’t say enough negative things about this book and I am absolutely floored at how popular this book and this book series are.

The secret is that the book and the book series are not even remotely popular. By her own admission, N… K… Jemisin can’t making a living off them. This is the problem with manufactured “success”. It simply isn’t real, and no amount of fakery and propping up pets, poster children, and other imposters is going to fool anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about.

And yes, the reviewer is correct. One of the cruelest things I have ever done is inspire the SFWA crowd to demolish their own awards by handing a Best Novel award or two to N… K… Yes, I knew “the indirect backlash and overcorrection” would happen. Yes, it was intentional. But no, I never imagined that they would do it THREE straight years in a row. That really exceeded my expectations.

The only thing that would have been funnier would have been if they’d actually followed through on their rhetoric and given an award to Chuck Tingle. But even that would have been less damaging than what they actually did.

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May the Fourth

Owen Benjamin comments on the nerdiest fake holiday since Kwanzaa was invented.

To celebrate May the 4th we should all appreciate what a Boomer institution Star Wars is:

  • Luke forsook his rural upbringing to take part in a political campaign he had no place in.
  • Leah was a strong independent feminist.
  • Obi-Wan was a childless hippie who devoted his life to eastern mysticism.
  • Han is a wandering deadbeat who lives with his dog and is obsessed with his car.
  • Darth Vader abandoned his family to pursue his career.
  • The robots are in an openly gay relationship.
  • Everyone treats the empire like the great evil while fully enjoying the comforts and protections it provides.

In retrospect, Star Wars may have been a much darker commentary on the realities of Clown World’s politics than most of us realized at the time.

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SF Freaks Gonna Freak

Dave McCarty, the head of the Hugo Awards, has been accused of sexual assault by several women in the literary ghetto formerly known as the science fiction community. The only real surprise is that children are not, as yet, reported to be involved:

There’s been a months-long campaign to discredit the Hugo Awards and Chengdu Worldcon from the establishment elites including cross-dresser John Scalzi, former SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal, and Neil Gaiman again, which has caused many who have been disillusioned with Worldcon and the Hugo Awards to laugh at how inept this group in charge of science fiction publishing has become.

It was revealed through a chain of emails that several participants were disqualified from the Hugo Awards for the very woke identity politics that were championed by this group, including orders to spy on the social media and political activities of the people involved. This led to mass apologies and several people stepping down from convention activities because of their corruption.

Now, Dave McCarty, who headed this Hugo Awards committee, is being accused of multiple instances of sexual assault.

Posting to the left-wing echo chamber BlueSky, artist Meg Frank said, “Dave McCarty is emotionally abusive, generally manipulative, and has sexually harassed myself and numerous others. I’ve spoken openly about this and made CoC complaints when possible. He is not a missing stair, he is a creepy handyman who has been using his previous community service as a shield. The hugo shit is awful, and I feel terrible for many people but he is worse than all that.”

Not to be outdone in the victim Olympics, Jesi Lipp quoted the post and said, “I’ve never made it a secret that he groped me at a Smofcon in 2011 and it has always been largely treated as a non-issue.”

Fandom Pulse seems skeptical. I simply note that longtime Hugo-centric SF fandom site File 770 is named, by the owner’s own admission, after what was either an orgy of sorts, or even more tragically, just the first party that the sort of losers whose social lives revolve around an annual science fiction event ever attended.

File 770 is named for the party in Room 770 at the 1951 Worldcon that upstaged the convention.

ROOM 770

— This was a St. Charles Hotel room registered to fans Max Keasler, Roger Sims, Rich Elsberry and Ed Kuss at the 9th Worldcon — nicknamed NOLacon — held in New Orleans in 1951. Frank Dietz had been hosting a room party which was asked to quiet down by a hotel detective, and Dietz resolved the matter by taking eveyone to room 770 circa 11:00 PM Saturday night, whereupon a massive party developed which lasted till 11:00 AM the next morning. Numerous fans drifted in and out, including the legendary Sam Moskowitz, and just possibly, Canada’s Norman G. Browne for whom this was his first convention.

Ain’t no party like a Hugo Party. And thank God for that!

Anyhow, I’m sure it’s no problem that giving another Best Novel award to an angry black woman devoid of any vestige of literary talent won’t solve.

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The Saga of the Baen Exemplar

Jon is a sociopathic grifter who goes through life trying to insert himself into other peoples’ troubles to try and score clout for himself. He starts shit for others and then cries how he’s a victim. When you take exception to him fucking people over for clout he will say everybody but him is a secret leftist sell out and you just hate him because he’s “Christian”. Do not trust him. He’s fucking cancer. Seriously. I can’t accentuate this enough. Trust him at your own peril. That dude is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  • Larry Correia, 25 September 2023

I have zero interest in saying anything negative about Larry Correia or contributing to the never-ending stream of Baen-related drama. I’ve never had any problem with him, personal or professional. He’s a significant figure of the right-wing cultural scene and I like both his Monster Hunter and Grimoire novels. Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted was a conscious attempt to out gun-porn Larry in a science fiction setting. And even our disagreement about the ideal way to handle the Hugo Awards led directly to my favorite experience of my entire literary career, the epic two-year Rabid Puppies rampage, for which I will always be grateful.

However, given the public nature of these accusations about a valued contributor to both Arktoons and Unauthorized, I would be remiss if I did not clearly state for the record that Larry Correia is flat-out wrong about Jon Del Arroz. Larry is flat-out and provably wrong. I can testify, from personal experience, that Jon is neither “fucking cancer” nor a “vile fucker”, and that it’s both unprofessional and incorrect for any established writer to assert that he is.

Unauthorized subscribers who wish to hear Jon’s take can watch his UATV-exclusive video on the subject.

And since we’re speaking of Jon Del Arroz, I’m pleased to observe that his novel JUSTIFIED, the first in The Saga of the Nano Templar, launched in episodic format on Arktoons today.

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Further Evidence Against Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke was science fiction’s most famous pedo. He’s far from the only one, but he’s certainly the most famous. While it is massively embarrassing that one of the genre’s greatest writers – one whose short stories are published by Castalia House in two volumes of THERE WILL BE WAR, namely, “Superiority” in Vol. II and “Hide and Seek” in Vol. III – was a sex predator, and while the man cannot be said to have committed any sex crimes in Sri Lanka due to the fact that even the most heinous abuse of children is apparently still legal there, no individual who considers the known facts can reasonably deny that the evidence against the man is both comprehensive and conclusive.

While I was familiar with most of the information in The Dark Side of Arthur C. Clarke, the 2017 article from Vice that contained an eyewitness account of a personal encounter with Clarke was new to me, and further clinches the case against the SF great and his wicked predilections.

I grew up in Sri Lanka. My dad was doing some work for the Canadian government. There were a lot of expat kids in my area and we had free reign of the neighbourhood. Our parents mostly let us do what we wanted, but we were told to stay away—never go near—a large property that bordered my house. When we asked why the reasons were always vague.

There were some rumors (sic) that someone very famous or maybe powerful lived there. We all got the sense that he was …a danger in some way. One day I was home sick from school. My grandfather was visiting from Canada and he was assigned to watch me. I remember that I was in pajamas (sic). We were in the backyard and my grandfather was painting peacocks. Out of our hedges this man appeared and approached us. I instantly knew it was the man from the property. The man from the property wanted something from my dad, who of course wasn’t home. My grandfather was star struck by the man.

Grandpa could barely speak. The two began chatting. The man flattered my grandfather’s painting. He said he also liked to paint but only people. The man looked towards me and said let’s paint the boy. I was placed on a stool in front of the two men. I was eleven years old. Very quickly the neighbour said the clothes were spoiling the beauty of me. He asked me to remove my clothes. I looked at my grandpa and did as I was told. Soon after I was on the stool, naked, and crying. I don’t know how long this went on but at some point my father arrived home.

He quickly reviewed the scene, saw the man from the property, and…went ..nuts. He just lost it on them: raising his voice. Getting in people’s faces. I honestly thought he might kill them both. Within a couple of hours my grandfather was gone and they never – ever – spoke again.

Although in some circles it was common knowledge, the man from the property was a famous British science fiction novelist. Apparently he had been banished to (then) Ceylon from postwar Britain rather than face prison for being a pederast. I think about that day sometimes. My father didn’t have a temper and rarely ever even raised his voice but the man he became in that moment while essentially unrecognizable. While we’ve had our ups and downs from that moment forward I never questioned his love for me again.

The stories people told their therapists about, VICE, July 17, 2017

In retrospect, two of the surprisingly more damning elements are a) Clarke’s personal relationship with King Charles and b) the BBC’s lack of interest in the story. What might have seemed incredible even in 2012 appears obvious now in light of what we now know about Jimmy Savile and the BBC’s now-confirmed preference for ignoring major stories about sex predators.

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I Didn’t Even Have to Ask

There is an old saying, attributed somewhat dubiously to Voltaire: “I prayed the Lord to make my enemies ridiculous, and He answered my prayer.”

I can’t claim any credit here, and I very much doubt any divine intervention was required, as the SFWA has not only managed to make itself ridiculous again, but is now demonstrating that there is no reason for it to even exist anymore.

If you’ve read my body of work here at Upstream over the past year or so, you know I’m not a big fan of the SFWA. From their long and sordid history of hagiographic treatment of serial child molesters to cancelling their own honorees to getting vast amounts of member data leaked, it’s safe to say that SFWA as an organization has entered the “skinsuiting” phase of their existence; a once-valuable entity that had meaning, now merely doing whatever it can to rake in cash on little more than its former notoriety.

If that sounds too harsh, allow me to present what came to mind after I had a chance to pore over their recently released tax returns for 2021. That year’s filings have been of particular interest, given that 2021 saw a highly profiled but spectacularly failed lawsuit.

The “LOLsuit”, as it became known in certain corners of the internet, was the effort of member author Patrick Tomlinson to subpoena Cloudflare into revealing the identities of the users on an Opie and Anthony fan forum that had taken to trolling him. It’s been highly speculated since that Tomlinson received help from SFWA’s Legal Fund for the effort. Many who had taken a look at our previous article on SFWA’s filings from prior years were anxious to see if barely-an-author’s escapades would be reflected in 2021’s long-awaited filings.

Welp, wouldn’t you know it, their legal expenses nearly quintupled compared to 2020 (that year’s filings can be found here):

LEGAL EXPENSES 2020: 17,533

LEGAL EXPENSES 2021: 83,750

Which, naturally, leads me to wonder if 2023 is the year I should consider filing that lawsuit to force the organization to publicly acknowledge that I am still a member. The Legal Legion certainly has a much better record in the California courts than SFWA’s legal team.

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RIP Greg Bear

Five-time Nebula winner Greg Bear died November 19, a week after heart surgery from which he never awoke. A CT scan showed stroke damage was caused to many parts of the brain by clots that had been hiding in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain ever since an earlier surgery eight years ago. After a review of the possible outcomes by the medical team, and following the wishes expressed in his advance directive, Bear was taken off life support and died two hours later.

He wasn’t a major talent or a SF icon, but he was a legitimate author who represented the last gasp of mainstream science fiction being founded in actual science. I didn’t know him, and I didn’t particularly like the three or four books of his that I read, but his passing is indicative of an era that is observably in the process of ending.

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They Devour Their Own

Having run all the sane, unconverged writers out of science fiction, the lunatic SJWs are now busily occupied with devouring their own. Some nonentity named Stephanie Burke who writes SF porn is crying about how people she didn’t know accused her, in public, of things she didn’t do and things she never said.

Why, can you even imagine such a travesty?

Home from Balticon and I will never return. I was accused of some nasty things, treated like a criminal, judged without proof save for hearsay, and stripped of my remaining panels. My only recourse is to make a complaint. My reputation which took close to 20 years to build is now destroyed. I am devastated. This is my complaint. I am angry and I am hurt and I am at a loss because all of the networking I have done here is dead. The publishers I wanted to talk to probably are hearing the lies.

The hilarious thing is the way it’s now clear that not even writing very bad sex novels, convincing your little boy that he’s a girl, having a mental illness, and declaring, with all sincerity, that “the G-word” (apparently Gypsy) “is equivalent to the N-word” is enough to save anyone from the SJW thought police these days.

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