Those people on the other side of the debate, the ones you attack with such righteous fury, who called down your wrath by acting in such an asinine and nasty fashion. . . they’re you. They’re called to this genre by the same love of different worlds and different realities, aliens and spaceships, dragons and wizards. A lot of them were the same weird kid in high school. They like D&D, or Star Trek, or Doctor Who, or Guardians of The Galaxy. And some of these folks have lucked out by being able to make some money, even have a career doing what they love.
They are not orcs designed in some dark wizard’s lair, they are not some inscrutable alien horde come to slaughter us and lay eggs in our corpses, they are not some shadowy cabal bent on destroying what is right and good with the universe, they are not evil.
They are just fans with slightly different taste in fiction. They are fans that got understandably angry when other fans derided, belittled and otherwise seemed to condemn the things they loved. Fans that perceived insults and, as humans are wont to do, threw insults back. Fans that, like you, will argue that the other guy threw the first punch.
If you don’t like what’s happening to the genre, maybe you should consider how many times you’ve said how horrible those other fans are. It shouldn’t be hard to understand how they feel, since you’re reacting in exactly the same way.
(I leave as an exercise for the reader to determine if I am addressing the Puppies or their opponents.)
1 Comment
Dale Gulledge · August 29, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Thank you. I agree that this needed saying. I have read and loved novels written by authors championed by both sides of this divide. Yes, I have my political opinions. If you were to draw conclusions about them from the fact that I’m reading your blog, you would probably be right. But I will read and enjoy a good book with interesting ideas and characters even when I don’t agree with the author’s politics.
I remember casting a Hugo vote for Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky and watching with great pleasure as it deservedly received both Hugo and Prometheus Awards. I doubt such a thing could happen in the current climate. Drawing battle lines over politics results in books getting attention as much for having the right politics and for their ideas and writing.
Comments are closed.