Category Archives: rant

Free Speech Takes a Major Hit

An Open Letter to the AAS

So with the holidays coming up, my reading list – We interrupt this blog post for the following public service message:

Earlier this month, the Rosetta mission made history by landing a probe on a comet. This is slightly more difficult than playing a video game, in case you were wondering.

Dr. Matt Taylor was the ~~spokesperson~~ spokesman for the ESA, the organization which accomplished this feat. He wore a shirt which caused some people to get knots in their knickers. I discussed this at the end of my review of Interstellar. I’d hoped we’d heard the last of this because the stupid, it burns.

Then the AAS (American Astronomical Society) issued a statement. Let’s look at it in detail, shall we? Continue reading →

Some Thoughts on Bradley, Breen, Kramer, and Delaney

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Warning: This post deals with issues of child molestation and may not be safe for work or young children. These situations discussed herein are complex, and to keep this post from becoming longer than it is, I’ve not addressed all aspects that have come up in different places. Feel free to bring up in the comments things I’ve left out.

I don’t know how much some of you keep up with the controversies in the sff community (either observing or actively participating) and how many wish some of the more shrill people would shut up and write more (or in some cases just shut up). If you’ve been paying attention, you might be aware of revelations about several child molesters. The reaction to these revelations has been disturbing at times, to say the least.

What got the whole ball rolling was a post on Tor.com (since taken down) singing the praises of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, followed shortly by this post from Diedre Moen. Bradley’s second husband, Walter Breen, had been convicted of child molestation. I remember reading that years ago in an obituary (in Locus, maybe?) when Bradley died. Moen’s post pointed out that she was an enabler to Breen’s depravity, something I had not heard. The post contained both quotes from the court documents regarding this as well as a link to Stephen Goldin’s site where there are further links to the complete depositions as well as additional information.

Shortly after Moen posted that information, Bradley’s daughter Moira Greyland came forward with allegations that Bradley had molested her beginning when she was three and ending when she was twelve.

Breen was tried and convicted, but it’s too late to for Bradley to face charges. Bradley and Breen are both dead, and if these things are true (and I think they are), I hope it’s quite warm where they are now.

There’s been quite a bit of bandwidth devoted to these revelations, with much of it in defense of Bradley. Not all but a great deal. I’ll address that below.

Next on the list is Ed Kramer. With all the commotion about MZB, Kramer’s name was sure to come up. He’s one of the co-founders of Dragoncon, and Dragoncon tried to sever ties with him for years because of his rumored pederasty. (They eventually did.) While Dragoncon was doing this, a number of people in the field were actively supporting him. Granted a man is innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law, and no reasonable person wants to be participate in rumor mongering, but when things are as open as they were here, you should really stop and think. Monsters can be kind and charming. It’s part of what makes them monsters. Kramer was recently convicted after pleading guilty.

A number of people over the years have supported Kramer and Bradley. Some certainly had no idea what was going on and chose to believe that nothing was, especially if someone said the stories were only rumors. It was easier that way. This is a perfectly normal human reaction. We tend to want to believe the best about people, especially if they are artists whose work we’ve enjoyed. And in Kramer’s case, he was manipulating the situation by doing everything he could to get the trial delayed while claiming he was being denied a speedy trial.

Other people willingly chose to close their eyes to what was going on right in front of them. And a few aided and abetted.

Jerry Pournelle addressed how much was known about Bradley and Breen in his circles in a comment on Sarah Hoyt’s blog. There are further discussions between Pournelle and some others on that post starting at Dave Freer’s comment further down the page. The whole exchange indicates how sticky things can become when trying to determine how much specific individuals may have known about what took place in a case like this when not everyone was in on the “open secret”.

There has been a great deal of discussion about whether or not an individual should continue to read Bradley’s and/or Delaney’s work. I’m not even going to try to link to it; there’s too much. Numerous readers have said that her books have helped them through a dark time in their lives. Other people have said they are going to burn anything they have by her and/or Delaney (who’ll be discussed next).

The question of to what extent an artist’s personal life can be separated from their work is one that won’t be settled in a single blog post. I doubt if it ever really can. It’s a complex question that’s too much a matter of personal conscience for everyone to reach a consensus on. What can be done is to not honor or support someone whose proclivities cross the line into abuse, perversion, or molestation.

Which brings us to Samuel Delaney. Delaney has been openly gay for decades. This is common knowledge in the field. What is less known is that Delaney is a supporter of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). This is an organization that supports and promotes sexual relations between adult men and boys. In other words, it’s an advocacy group for pedophiles. I won’t link to the organization. You can look them up on your own if you’re so inclined.

Here are a few quotes from Delaney:

I think sexual relations between children and adults are
likely to go wrong and that most of them are likely to be, start off
as, or quickly become, abusive, that I also support a group like
NAMBLA?which I do. But that’s because I feel one of the largest
factors in the abuse is fostered by the secrecy itself and lack of
social policing of the relationships, Source

“I read The NAMBLA Bulletin fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found. … Before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about, the issues they are really talking about; and deal with what’s really there rather than this demonized notion of guys running about trying to screw little boys. I would have been so much happier as an adolescent if NAMBLA had been around when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.”
— Samuel Delany, science fiction writer (Queer Desires Forum, New York City, June 25, 1994).

I find these quotes extremely disturbing. I don’t know if Delaney actually advocates sex with children and teens, but he certainly isn’t taking a stand against it. As far as I know, there have been no accusations of him having sex with children or teenagers, and I am not saying he has. But he supports a group that advocates for pedophiles, calling their views “one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found”.

It’s interesting that SFWA recently named him a Grand Master.

You see SFWA has been acting like a thought police in the field lately. Two respected authors were taken to task over calling a female editor from the 1950s a “lady” and then fired when they refused to apologize for it (link here). Larry Correia calls someone a word that is often used to refer to female genitalia, and the torches and pitchforks were being passed around (link here). One author had a meltdown on Twitter over something a comedian who had been asked to host the Hugo Awards might say (links here and here). Then there was the individual (a lifetime member) SFWA ejected last year over a tweet linking to a blog post with racial content many found offensive. I’m not sure where to start linking on that one, there were so many posts. None from SFWA, which won’t even publicly name the individual in question.

Has SFWA or its leadership said anything about Delaney and his associations? Or Bradley and the allegations against her?

*crickets*

If they have, I’m not aware of it. I can’t keep up with every blog post or tweet out there, nor do I want to try. If there has been some type of statement from SFWA or any of its officers regarding these things, I would appreciate someone letting me know. They have addressed Kramer’s membership, sort of.

Here’s why the silence, the excuses, and the apologies are a mistake. In spite of the talk in recent years of fantasy and science fiction going mainstream, it really hasn’t. Sff on film has, driven in large part by the Marvel Comics blockbuster movies and other special effects oriented films. It’s cool to be a fan of those and to publicly exhibit your geeky side. But sff in film tends to focus on visuals, superheroes, and outer space, things that the general public feels comfortable with. The more unusual ideas about culture, technology, and sexuality remain in the written form.

There is still a large segment of the population that views sff, especially written sff, with suspicion. After all, it was those weird kids in junior high that carried that stuff around, played D&D, and were generally kind of creepy. At least in some people’s minds, and those stereotypes are still around.

And when the mainstream media picks up on the preeminent sff writers group defending child molesters and honoring writers who have views about adult-child sexual relations that are…problematic (and sooner or later they will), expect a backlash.

All it will take is some demagogue or self-appointed protector of our children’s minds looking for a boogeyman to stir things up. When some kid goes off the deep end and goes on a shooting rampage, one of the things the media focuses on is the kid’s interests. And they tend to fixate on things of a fantastic nature: role playing games, comics, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Which inevitably leads to a segment outside the sff field calling for a boycott or Congressional hearings or public book burnings or…you get the idea.

I don’t want that to happen. It’s time for some people in the field to draw some lines and say certain things are not acceptable. Under any circumstances. Ever.

Why We Need More Heroic Fantasy…

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…with the emphasis on the heroic.

This is going to be a strange rant, and in some ways, it’s going to be vague. I’ll explain why below. Continue reading →

Discriminating Taste

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In yesterday’s post about not being a literary snob, I made the comment that I’ve become more discriminating as I’ve gotten older. I said I would explain what I meant by that today, and I will.

When I was in school, I was one of those students who would finish early and use the extra class time to read. I discovered many of the major sf writers through the anthologies of Robert Silverberg. The library at the junior high I attended in 7th grade had a number of them. These were the reprint anthologies he edited in the 60s, not the New Dimensions series. I doubt those would have been deemed acceptable, or as we would say today, age appropriate.

On the weekends (provided I could talk my father into taking me) I would also go to the mall, where there was a Waldenbooks, or the flea market, which had a couple of used book stalls. One of them sold paperbacks with the covers torn off for a quarter. I didn’t realize at the time that these were stolen books, reported to the publisher as having been pulped.

It was through these venues that I discovered the works of Jack Williamson, James H. Schmitz, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Isaac Asimov, Eric Frank Russell, Poul Anderson, and Silverberg himself, not to mention the juveniles of Robert Heinlein. Fantasy was just entering a boom phase, and before long I was reading that as well. When I joined the Science Fiction Book Club in 9th grade, I first encountered the writers who made the greatest impression on me: C. L. Moore, Edmond Hamilton, Fredric Brown, Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, Leigh Brackett, and the writer who had the greatest impact on me, Henry Kuttner. (I’d been reading Ray Bradbury since 5th grade, and Robert E. Howard was still a few years in my future.) Outside the genre, some of the biggest influences I encountered during high school were Raymond Chandler, Rafael Sabatini, and Humphrey Bogart.

As I got into college and then graduate school, I continued to read widely in the field. Until I got married, there was usually plenty of time to read a book or two a week plus a variety of short stories and comics.

It was during this phase that I developed some of the attitudes I discussed in yesterday’s post. I began taking my reading seriously, at times too seriously. I followed the award nominations and tried to read the titles that got the most buzz.

After marriage and then parenthood came along, time began to be more and more at a premium. Books began to pile up faster than previously. And I realized something. Reading wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Or rather, make that what I was reading wasn’t as fun as what I had read when I was younger.

Over the last decade, I’ve reached a decision. It is very likely I’ve passed the halfway point in my life. If I haven’t I’m approaching it. My father’s side of the family tends to live into their 90s and beyond on a regular basis if they take care of themselves. I may not be at the halfway point yet, but time is slipping away.

Life is too short to read things because You Should or Everyone Is Reading This or It’s Going to be on All the Award Ballots or This Book Has Something Important to Say. Especially that last one. There are more good books out there that I haven’t read than I’ll ever be able to. Unless I get locked into solitary confinement for twenty years with access to the world’s libraries, I’ve come to see the need to be more discriminating.

Not discriminating on the basis of prejudiced against because of the publisher or the franchise, but discriminating on the basis of is this something I’m going to enjoy as much as I would that pulp over there? In other words, more selective. I’m trying to read more to my established tastes than to what certain voices in the field say I need to read.

So what am I trying to focus on? Well, if you’ve read much of this blog, you know sword and sorcery is a major part of that. So is epic fantasy, at least during periods when I have plenty of time to block out for reading, i.e., when classes aren’t in session. As far as science fiction goes, space opera, especially space opera with a hard science bent, but also hard science in general, followed by time travel. Historical adventure has been growing as a percentage of my reading over the last few years. Horror is still there, but I’m pretty discriminating about it. In the mystery field, PIs tend to be what I gravitate to, with police procedurals coming in second. Cozies I can do without. I consider noir and crime to be different from mystery, but they also get a lot of my attention. And of course, I love short fiction of almost any genre.

You can see the trend here, can’t you? Adventure in some form. Sense of wonder. An exhilaration at being alive. Optimism coupled with a thread of darkness. Anyway, those are the things I look for in fiction. You can keep the books written to promote your agenda or expand my consciousness. I’ve got a villain to fight, a princess to save, and a monster to slay.

Overcoming Literary Snobbery

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When I was a lad, just discovering how vast the field of science fiction and fantasy was, I was firmly in what David Hartwell has referred to as the omnivore stage. To put that in plain English, I read everything I could get my hands on with no regard to author, publisher, or to a limited extent, quality. If it had anything to do with spaceships, other planets, or aliens, then I was interested in it. (This was shortly after a certain fantasy movie in science fiction drag hit it big.) I soon branched out to other subgenres.

As I grew older and more discerning, I also grew more discriminating. As in discriminate against. I became interested in only reading works of originality. My definition of originality was pretty rigid. The work had to be something created by an author on spec that had been published by an established publishing house or the continuation of such a work. Franchise work, by its very nature, had to be substandard.

At least that was my thinking at the time. This years before electronic publishing leveled the playing field.

Fortunately, my thinking has changed and changed for the better. I came to realize that franchise, or work for hire, had value.

At first it was just the acknowledgement writing a novel, say, in a franchise owned by a major studio could teach authors the skills necessary to succeed on their own when they wrote “good” books. There is some truth in that, but it’s still a pretty snobby and condescending attitude. It didn’t occur to me then, when I was younger and had all the answers, that there were other reasons authors wrote in a franchise.

For one thing, it was (and is) a way of keeping a career alive. I didn’t understand about the returns system and Bookscan numbers. It also never occurred to me that authors might write in franchises simply because they loved the characters or world.

Things have changed in my world. I hope I’ve become wiser, humbler (relatively speaking), and more open minded in my reading tastes. As well as more discriminating in a positive way. I’ve become educated in the way publishing works. I’ve gotten over the “if it’s not from a major publisher, it probably isn’t any good” syndrome. In fact, if anything, I’ve swung more to the other extreme. I’m finding the works from the big houses tend to be the more bland, safe, paint-by-numbers type of book. Yes, I realize there are exceptions to this, and that there are a number of fine and innovative authors doing groundbreaking work. But what I’m discovering is that if I want to read something that breaks the mold, a work in which the author is taking chances, or a story without an Important Message, then the indies and small presses are the way to go.

There are a number of authors I’ve discovered through their work for other publishers who started out in franchise work. Franchise work that I’ve started to seek out. Warhammer is at the top of the list, but there are others.

There are still some work for hire type books I’ll tend to give a wide berth. There are still media tie-ins written by someone with no love of the genre or the property they’re writing, works designed to fatten the corporate bottom line. To the extent I can distinguish them, I’ll give them a pass. I’m looking for good story-telling, vivid description, in-depth characterization, fast-paced action, and crackling dialogue.

Those are the things I’m looking for. And I don’t care if it’s a franchise or a stand-alone novel, from a major publisher or an indie author. As long as the tale is well-told, the source doesn’t matter.

I’ll explain in my next post how I think I’ve become more discriminating in a positive way.

A Taste of Sour Grapes

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I’m gonna bitch now. You’ve been warned.

I have a point to all this, but still, this is mostly going to be a sour grapes kind of post. I thought I’d let you know in case you aren’t in the mood.

Sour grape the first: Back in late December I download a review copy of a forthcoming fantasy novel from Net Galley. This is an online clearing house where publishers post novels for reviewers. Request of a book is not an automatic guarantee of receiving a copy. Anyway, life happened (more than once), and I didn’t get to the book until Saturday. For one thing, it was more of a doorstopper than I thought it would be. I waited until I thought I would have the time to get through without taking a month and wiping out my other review commitments. I just did that with a shorter book, and let me tell you, it tended to kill a lot of the joy of the book. This particular novel came out at the end of January, and I wanted to get the review up since my original plan was to post the review on the release date. When tried to access the book, I received a message saying the lending period of the book had expired.

Excuse me? What lending period? I don’t recall anything about a lending period when I requested a review copy of the book. If I had been provided a paper review copy, I don’t think I would have been asked to return it after a certain amount of time had passed. And what if I hadn’t finished the book when the lending period ended? I guess I would have been out of luck.

Personally, I find this rather insulting. The assumption seems to be that I might give the book to someone else who wouldn’t pay the publisher. For the record: I have never given away or copied or allowed to be copied an electronic review copy. Nor have I done the same with any paper review copies, although in the interest of space limitations, I may clear some out once the books go out print.

This is a publisher I had intend to read more from. I still intend to read this particular novel. It looks quite interesting. But I’ll be buying it in a second hand store. The same way I’ll be buying all the other books I read from this particular publisher from now on. Which probably won’t be many.

Sour grape the second: I got a coupon via email from B&N for 20% off (that’s an additional 20%, in addition to my member discount) last week and used it on Friday. It was a special Valentine’s Day promotion. Sunday morning I got another coupon, same thing as the first, an additional 20% off, only this was a President’s Day promotion. Both coupons expired today.

There’s a publisher who prices ebooks as the same price as mass market paperbacks. Now I don’t think a publisher should necessarily make their ebooks dirt cheap, but considering ebooks don’t involve certain costs that print books do such as printing, shipping, warehousing, and returns, I don’t think ebooks should be the same price as a paper copy. A dollar or two less should be reasonable.

I decided to use this second coupon to buy a fantasy novel from this publisher which got a lot of buzz last year. It’s the sort of thing that would be perfect to review here. (I could have used the coupon on the novel I talked about in sour grape the first, but I’m serious about waiting for a second hand copy.)

Anyway, when I got to the register, it seems that this coupon had already been used. It was the same one I used on Friday. Seems the Valentine’s promotion and the President’s Day promotion were one and the same. It would have been nice if B&N had made that distinction.

And not sent me the same coupon again after I’d already used it. It shouldn’t be that hard to program a computer to check and see if a coupon has been used and not send a second one. But there are a lot of things it shouldn’t be hard to get a computer to do that trad pub can’t seem to figure out.

I didn’t buy the book at Barnes and Noble, in case you’re wondering. Might order it from Amazon, though. If I don’t get it second hand, that is.

These are two examples of what I consider stupid decisions in the publishing and bookselling world. When this kind of disrespect is shown to customers and reviewers, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for traditional publishing and chain bookstores.

Thank God there are lot’s of good indie writers out there.

I’m Helping to Harm Literature? Cool!

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There is an article today The Guardian that is too good not to poke with a sharp stick. It quotes the head judge of this year’s Man Booker prize, one Peter Stothard, as saying “If the mass of unargued opinion chokes off literary critics…then literature will be the poorer for it.” He went on to say, “There is a great deal of opinion online, and it’s probably reasonable opinion, but there is much less reasoned opinion.”

Now, aside from the fact that the previous sentence doesn’t make any sense when examined closely, Stothard’s views smack of elitism.

As further evidence they do, here’s another quote:

If we make the main criteria good page-turning stories – if we prioritise unargued opinion over criticism – then I think literature will be harmed.

He thinks literary criticism exists to tell us (that would presumably be the unwashed masses of genre readers, as opposed to readers of litfic) what is good and why it’s good. He says that. I’m just too lazy to quote him again.

Excuse me, Mr. Stothard, but are you aware that “good” is a subjective term? That what two educated, intelligent people regard as good can differ widely? I don’t need you, or anyone else for that matter, to tell me what is good. There are critics and bloggers whose opinions I value and seek out because I understand their tastes and how those tastes compare with mine. I have a pretty good idea if I’m going to like a book or story based on what they think of it. And no, I don’t have the same tastes and likes as they do. Just the opposite in some cases. But because I know their tastes, I can make an informed decision regarding whether I want to read (or watch or listen to) a particular work.

And I really don’t understand why “good page-turning stories” aren’t the main criteria. Most people read for pleasure, at least as far as fiction is concerned. (The reasons for reading nonfiction can be complex, so I’ll restrict my comments to fiction.) That means their primary goal is mostly likely to be enjoying a good page-turning story.

The majority of adults, at least those who bother to read more than texts on their phones or the National Enquirer, do not have as their primary reason for reading to be improved, enlightened, made socially aware, or because it’s good for them. The people who read for those reasons are in school. Come to think of it, people in school don’t read for those reasons either. They read because it’s required.

We read to be entertained, Mr. Stothard. We read because we want page-turning stories, as you so arrogantly put it. Any improvement, enlightenment, or social awareness is secondary to that goal.

I blog because I want to share the page-turning stories I’ve found. If blogging harms literature, or rather a narrow view of what literature is, as defined by an exclusive and elitist club, then fine. I’m guilty as charged.

And completely unrepentant.

Adventures Fantastic

Reviews, Views, & Occasional News