“Cultural Appropriation” has reared it’s sombrero-sporting head in the literary community once again in another series of critiques and critiques of critiques and critiques of critiquing and those doing the critiquing, over something that should, in the end, be a fairly straightforward caution for authors to just get it right, Read more…
You know what I mean. From the presidential election down to what stupid little award our geeky niche genre decides to award itself, we cannot seem to have anything like a polite disagreement anymore. Everyone gets up in arms about everything from who’s using what bathroom, to who’s cast in Read more…
I was pondering making comment on the SF kurfuffle du jour, but many obvious predictable people are making the obvious predictable points, all biases are being confirmed, and if anyone’s going to change their minds on the Internet it will only be upon facial contact with the hard cold unyielding Read more…
A couple of days ago, Toni Weisskopf posted a link to this letter from Edgar Rice Burroughs to a young Forrest J. Ackerman. It’s a pithy letter, shorter than most blog posts, but is a prescient rebuttal to this hot mess of a Guardian article appearing almost exactly 84 years Read more…
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, Read more…
Fuck this shit! Up to now I’ve been pretty quiet about this, but you all have finally pissed me off. I’m seeing all sorts of grandstanding, self-congratulatory, “I’m so fucking proud of fandom,” nonsense all over the place. This is some sort of high-water mark for the genre. Schadenfreude for Read more…
I have read some stupid assertions about Science Fiction and Fantasy over the years. As I have internet access, this is inevitable. People say idiotic things occasionally. Then I read this from the Daily Kos, and watched as the bullshit reached such a density that the article collapsed through it’s Read more…
10) No, the Hugos weren’t captured by some sort of conspiracy. It’s silly to say it’s a conspiracy. So silly, in fact, that saying that someone else is saying it’s a conspiracy is a nice bit of rhetorical judo that makes one feel intellectually superior to the crazy wing-nuts who are Read more…
It’s done. When the creative class itself packs their bags and calls it quits, it’s over. This is where we end. Any tyrant now knows that they can suppress any artistic expression they don’t like just by making some threats. The temptation is to retaliate. Make fun of North Korea Read more…
Say you’re a publisher. Say you’ve been profitable in the past but have been sliding into financial difficulties. Let’s even say that you’ve had a few past issues with lawsuits over breach-of-contract. Then, let’s just posit that some blogger does some research and finds all sorts of shenanigans: There is Read more…