Uncategorized – Page 78 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Goodbye KBoards, or how I was banned for the sake of social justice.

In 2011, I joined an online message board forum called Kindle Boards (later KBoards) where other self-publishers had joined to give each other support, share what works, and otherwise band together as a community. Back then, self-publishing was considered the kiss of death, and many of my former writer “friends” shunned me for starting down that dark path. Having a community where people could assure you that you weren’t crazy was really a big help.

Yesterday, I was permanently banned from KBoards. But from the way it went down, I doubt that I’m going to miss the place, because it is a very different community now from the one that I joined in 2011.

The brewhaha started when a new member posted a thread to announce a book promotion site that she had just started. These types of sites offer advertising opportunities to authors and curated book recommendations to readers. There are dozens of these sites across the internet, and they are an important part of the indie book world.

On the thread, someone noted that the OP’s promo site did not accept erotica or LGBT books, according to the submission guidelines. Immediately, people began to pile up on the OP, demanding an explanation and accusing her of being unfair. The pile-up had all the signs of a social justice mob:

Unsubstantiated accusations that get taken at face value and added to a laundry list of perceived wrongs.
The formation of a narrative that ties in with a much wider set of perceived injustices, making the accused guilty by association.
Calls for “justice” that make a peaceful and mutually amicable reconciliation impossible.

I’ve seen it happen many times, as I’m sure you have too. If the accused tries to make amends, it only makes the social justice warriors howl even louder. The only thing that can satisfy them is the complete ruination of their enemy—and sometimes, even that is not enough.

As a side note, I would like to point out that I have nothing wrong with people who write LGBT books. Should these books be allowed to be published? Absolutely! The book world is a richer place because of them. I have nothing against people writing them, reading them, publishing them, or promoting them. People should be free to write whatever they want, so long as it does not cause criminal harm (such as doxxing or child porn).

But that’s not what this social justice mob was about. They had taken one line from the submission guidelines (which has since been removed) about not accepting LGBT books, and twisted it in every possible way to skewer the OP. For example, people took it to mean that books of any genre with LGBT characters would not be accepted, when original intent was pretty clear that genre LGBT would not be accepted. There is a difference. They then went on to say that LGBT is “not a category” (though according to Amazon, it most certainly is), and to accuse the OP of all sorts of other things.

When I saw this social justice mob forming, I decided to step in and stop it by deflecting some of the attention onto myself. The idea was to tank their attacks, rile them up just enough for the moderators to take notice, and leave it to them to stop the bullying.

Until this point, my opinion of the moderators at KBoards was pretty good. Even though I’d been on the receiving end of the “cattle prod” a couple of times, I’d always felt that they were more or less fair—or at least that they gave fair reasons for everything that they did. On the KBoards forums, the mods are generally praised as one of the main reasons why the place is so friendly and welcoming.

Part one of my plan worked out perfectly. I poked the SJWs just enough for them to show their true colors, and the thread was predictably locked. The OP and some other KBoards members sent me private messages thanking me for standing up to the bullies. When the mods re-opened the thread, however, all of my posts were gone, but the pile-up that had started the mob from forming was still in place. And predictably, the bullying began again in earnest.

I was disappointed in the mod’s decision, and stated as much, but tried to exercise restraint since there wasn’t much else I could do. Then someone openly accused the OP of being “discriminatory” because their site didn’t promote LGBT books. In response, I started a new thread:

Can we please stop calling promo sites “discriminatory”?

On another thread announcing a new promo site, a bunch of writers are piling up on the OP for stating in their guidelines that they do not promote LGBT books. Rather than derail that thread even further, I figured it would be better to start a new thread to say my piece about it.

It really galls me when anyone accuses a promo group of being “discriminatory” because it doesn’t promote their particular kind of book. By turning their rejection into a social justice issue, it flies in the face of the obvious: that readers aren’t morally obligated to like every kind of book equally, and that promo sites have to pick and choose which books they promote according to (among other things) the tastes of their readers.

Look, I have no problems with people writing, reading, publishing, or promoting LGBT books. If you’re an LGBT author who writes LGBT books, rock on and more power to you. But as a reader, I probably wouldn’t subscribe to a newsletter that promoted them—not because I hate gays, but because it’s just not the sort of thing that I read. Does that make me evil and discriminatory? Am I having “wrongfun”? Should I be forced to read a book that I don’t want to read? No? Then why say all that of promo sites that don’t carry those kinds of books?

My BS test for this sort of thing is to replace the allegedly oppressed minority group with Mormon Texas Czech (I defy you to find a smaller minority group!). If a promo site rejected, say, religious historical fiction, would I get all huffy and accuse them of discriminating against my Moravian Mormon heritage because they rejected my novel about a 1920s Czech immigrant who ran away to Utah and started a kolache shop? No—I’d shrug and figure my book probably wouldn’t do all that well at that site anyway, since their readership obviously isn’t into that sort of thing, and look for a promosite that would be willing to carry my book. And if that site doesn’t exist, I would create it!

Behind these knee-jerk accusations of discriminatory behavior is an implicit call for a new regime of gatekeepers to ensure that the “right” books—the ones that promote the accuser’s particular brand of social justice—are entitled to premium placement. But the fact is that no one is entitled to anything in this business, nor should they be. Besides, we tore down the gates years ago.

I knew that the thread would ruffle some feathers, but I did not predict the response—though in retrospect, it wasn’t surprising at all. Instead of trying to engage with my ideas, the SJWs reported the thread to the mods, who promptly locked it. Only two responses got through, both of which came within spitting distance of Godwin’s Law (“What if a promo site refused to accept books with Jews in them? Huh? HUH?”).

A lot of people were upset that the thread got locked. It accumulated more than 400 views before it dropped off the front page, and I got several PMs saying “I totally agree, these people have gone too far,” and “I was in the middle of my response when the mods locked this thread,” etc.

When I got back to my computer, I posted on the first thread, where I basically said “I find it telling that instead of engaging with me, you got the mods to lock my thread. Since when did disagreement become tantamount to hate speech?” In response, I got the following PM from the moderators:

Joe,

even before the blow up in the My Book Cave thread, you had been pushing the boundaries in your posts here and many had to be edited or removed.

In the My Book Cave thread, it was the tone of your posts that was the problem. I advised you via PM that people who appreciated the restrictions posed by My Book Cave were welcome to post their support in a civil manner. You have refused to do that, instead choosing to make more than one inflammatory post or thread. I refer you again to my most recent PM.

Accordingly, you are placed on post moderation. I note that this at least your third significant moderation action. As you indicate in your most recent post, now deleted, perhaps you need to think about whether KBoards is the place for you. Hopefully this period of post approval will give you that opportunity to think about it.

Betsy
KB Moderator

In response, I wrote the following:

The question is not whether Kboards is the place for me, but whether KBoards has become the sort of place where people can be bullied in the name of social justice. In the last couple of days, I have received multiple PMs thanking me for taking a stand against these bullies, which tells me that this problem is much larger than just me. The fact that your response is to put me on post moderation tells me everything that I need to know: that disagreement truly is seen as hate speech in this community. I won’t be the only one who leaves KBoards because of this.

The final message that I received from the moderators was this:

Joe,

Please tell me where I equated disagreement with hate speech? In the My Book Cave thread, to the best of our ability, we have removed and continue to remove posts on both sides that attacked other members or the OP in the thread and left those that stated their reason for not using the service or asked more questions about it.

I refer you again to my prior PM. You, and others, are more than welcome to state your support for My Book Cave in a civil manner. Instead, you have attacked your fellow members for stating their reasons for not wanting to use the service and for asking questions to clarify the restrictions. There were also questions about the erotica restriction and the restrictions on language. These are reasonable questions. It would also be reasonable for a member to state (as you did, in one bit of your locked thread), that you would appreciate a site that had restrictions. Posts that stated a different point of view in a civil manner without attacking your fellow members would have remained and have been protected.

You chose not to do that, but to instead start yet another thread that attacked your fellow members. While we were discussing that thread (which had not been permanently locked at that time–we were still in discussion), you chose to make yet another post continuing the same discussion in the original MBC thread.

Refusal to accept moderation is a bannable offense. You have been previously banned and placed on post moderation and tonight have refused to accept post moderation. Immediately after posting this, I will ban your account. KBoards is clearly not the right forum for you.

I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Betsy
KB Moderator

There are a number of things that I found disingenuous about this exchange.

First, I never attacked anybody. I never singled anyone out. I never engaged in personal insults, though personal insults (now deleted) were directed at me. And while I was aggressive in the way that I engaged, I also endeavored to be as intellectually honest as possible. I cannot say the same of those I disagreed with.

Second, it’s pretty clear that the mods were not treating me with the same benefit of the doubt as the bullies. SJWs have a way of rewriting history, and that’s exactly what they were doing by claiming to ask “questions to clarify the restrictions.” There were no attempts to clarify the promo site’s submission guidelines: as soon as one person suggested that any book with an LGBT character would be rejected, everyone assumed that it was true.

Third, it seems quite clear that the mods were waiting for an excuse to ban me. They locked down my thread within minutes of posting it, based solely on reports from people who disagreed with it. With the phrase “perhaps you need to think about whether KBoards is the place for you,” they issued a veiled threat which they followed through on within minutes. Their claim that they hoped “this period of post approval” would help me turn around was duplicitous on its face. So was the question “Please tell me where I equated disagreement with hate speech?” because my account was locked and my IP was banned, making it impossible for me to respond.

Looking back on what I could have done differently, I suppose I could have toned down my rhetoric a bit, or refrained from engaging. But at what point does silence become complicity? If I had let the social justice mob run its course, and the OP had been attacked outside of the boards, would I have done the right thing? When it became clear that the mods were going to let the bullying continue, what was I supposed to do?

Honestly, I feel like I came out of that exchange with my integrity intact. If that means I got banned, so be it.

And to be frankly honest, if KBoards is the kind of place where social justice warriors can dominate the discussion and drive out anyone who disagrees with them, then I really don’t feel bad about getting banned. There is a war going on in our culture today, and I would rather pick a side than be complicit through my silence.

A glorious fisking and what it means to be a real man

Oh my heck, I just read the most glorious fisking of my life over on Larry Correia’s blog. The subject is a New York Times article titled “27 Ways to be a Modern Man” (is it just me or is the NY Times taking its cues from Buzzfeed?), and Larry pulls no punches. Glorious. Absolutely glorious.

It got me thinking, though, about what it means to be a real man. Jokes about meat and action movies aside, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the subject these days. It’s actually getting to be a serious problem with our society, as evidenced by the fact that a list as pathetic as Brian Lombardi’s can be taken seriously enough to be published in a major national newspaper.

So without further ado, here’s my list:

1) A real man provides for the needs of his family.

The traditional role of fathers is to provide, or to supply what is wanted or needed. There are many good reasons for this. Families have needs, some of which women are uniquely suited to fulfill, others of which men are uniquely suited to fulfill. Individual circumstances necessitate adaptations, but a real man knows that his duty is to his family.

A real man provides his family with shelter and security, with material support and protection. He makes his family feel safe, both from evil and from want. He provides them with love, with advice, with a positive example and role model for them to emulate. He provides his children with everything they need to grow up healthy and have families of their own.

A real man is not an absent father—unless, of course, the State steals his children from him and makes that impossible. Misandry is a far greater problem in our society than misogyny, especially within family law, but that’s a subject for another time.

2) A real man respects women and girls.

To respect someone is to regard them as being worthy of admiration because of good qualities, and to treat them in a proper way. A real man respects and values women, and treats them accordingly.

He does not see them as objects for his lusts, but as human beings. He recognizes the importance of their contributions to society, especially as wives and mothers, and helps them to feel wanted and appreciated.

A real man never lashes out at or physically abuses a woman. If a woman abuses him, he does not abuse her back.

3) A real man is someone that others can depend on.

A real man is dependable. He keeps his promises. He does what he says he will do. He understands that people are depending on him: his spouse, his children, his family, his parents, brothers, sisters, and friends. Inasmuch as it is within his power, he does not disappoint them.

4) A real man takes care of himself.

A real man understands that he cannot help others unless he first helps himself. For that reason, he strives for independence and self-reliance, so that he can better serve those who depend on him.

A real man does not need to be mothered, especially not by his wife or girlfriend. He cleans up after himself. He showers and keeps himself clean. He knows how to do his own laundry. He knows how to clean his own dishes. He knows how to eat healthy and how to exercise. He knows how to manage his time.

In short, a real man has his shit together. He may be a child at heart, but he is also a responsible adult.

5) A real man knows how and when to lead.

A real man does not wait for his parents or his wife to tell him what to do. He does not leave the decision-making to other people when it’s his responsibility to step up and lead. He knows how to take charge when people are looking up to him, and how to inspire confidence in those who look to him for direction.

Because he knows how to lead, he also knows how to follow. He does not his drag his feet or grumble about the tasks he’s assigned to do, but fulfills them to the best of his ability. He knows when to take charge, but he also knows when to step down. He also knows when to get out of the way.

6) A real man knows the difference between taste, quality, and value.

This was the biggest issue that I had with the NY Times article: 80% of the stuff on Lombardi’s list were merely matters of personal taste. A real man understands that different people have tastes that are different from his, and is perfectly willing to accept that. He does not condemn others for having “wrongfun.”

That said, he can also recognize quality and value. He understands that a $10 knockoff tool may, in the long-run, be more expensive than a well-made $50 tool. He knows how to use the right tool for the job, and how be efficient and do quality work.

7) A real man strives constantly to learn, grow, and improve.

At the same time, a real man recognizes that he is not an expert in all fields. When out of his area of expertise, he is able to admit what he does not know and to accept counsel from those who know more than him.

Life is a process of constant growth. Just like a muscle will atrophy if it is not exercised, so too will our minds and spirits deteriorate if we do not constantly strive for self-improvement. A real man recognizes this and does all he can to be a better man.

8) A real man faces his fears with courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear: it is the strength to overcome fear. The difference between heroes and cowards is often no more than the decision to stand up and do. A real man understands this, and overcomes his fears to do what is necessary. From the outside, he may appear fearless, but the truth is that he simply knows how to face his fears.

9) A real man helps others to achieve greatness.

A real man is not interested in petty infighting or drama. He does not keep score or hold grudges. He does not feel that he is diminished in any way by the achievements of others. Instead, he inspires and lifts those around him, often without even realizing it. People naturally look up to him, because he brings out the best in them.

10) A real man’s greatness is measured by the way he treats those he loves.

A real man is not overly concerned with titles or awards. He knows that greatness is not bestowed upon him by those in positions of authority, but is attributed to him according to how he treats those whom he loves. Because of this, he has developed a tremendous capacity to serve his fellow men, and exercises that capacity daily.

“Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That is the true measure of a man: how much he gives of himself. Some men literally give everything, dying to serve and protect their loved ones. Others give their lives by living, giving freely of their time, talents, and love.

Regardless, a real man does not live for himself alone. He always lives for others.

A short rant about simultaneous submissions

TL;DR: If you run a short story magazine and it takes you longer than six weeks to respond to submissions, you should allow simultaneous submissions as a courtesy to your writers.

A simultaneous submission is when the writer sends the same story to multiple markets at the same time, instead of going down the list one-by-one and waiting for a rejection before submitting it to the next market. Multiple submissions are when the writer sends multiple stories to the same market at the same time. Generally, most sci-fi magazines do not accept simultaneous or multiple submissions.

I can understand why you don’t want to open the door to multiple submissions. A lot of us are fairly prolific, and if you allow us, we can swamp you with manuscripts in very short order. But simultaneous submissions are completely different.

Of course it’s frustrating to find a great story, only to learn that the writer has sold it somewhere else. But you know what’s even more frustrating? To watch your stories languish in slushpiles for months and even years while you know that you have readers who would eagerly snap them up the moment you publish them yourself. When you don’t allow simultaneous submissions, you are effectively demanding exclusivity for the length of the submission period, and exclusivity hurts readers and writers alike.

See, the publishing world has changed. The magazines aren’t the only available option for publishing our stories anymore. It is entirely possible for us to publish those stories ourselves, and to do quite well by them. In fact, if we have a story that’s ready to go, we’re putting off the money that we could be making if we decide to submit to the magazines instead.

The current status-quo regarding simultaneous and multiple submissions was made back when publishers held all the power, and writers could not realistically be their own publishers. It’s a holdout from the era of the gatekeepers, before the golden age of self-publishing. But that era is over, and we’re no longer as dependent on you as we used to be.

Which is not to say that the magazines have no value. On the contrary, you provide a great deal of value, and we want to support you with our content. That’s why we’re still submitting our stories to you instead of publishing themselves. When you publish our stories, it allows us to reach new readers and boosts our reputation in the field. We’re all in this together, and we want to support you just like you want to support us.

But look, can we meet in the middle here? When our stories are locked up in your slushpile for five months at a time, it makes us think twice. If you’re going to take your time, let us send our stories elsewhere while we wait to hear back from you.

I’m not going to lie: when it takes you three or more months to respond to our submissions, demanding exclusivity all the while, the word that comes to mind is “unprofessional.” I don’t care if your magazine has been in print for longer than I’ve been alive, or that you published such-and-such big name author before he was famous. It’s 2015 now, and that’s what it looks like.

I understand that you might not have the resources to respond to every submission in a timely way. That’s totally understandable. But if that is the case, there is no good reason why you can’t allow simultaneous submissions as a professional courtesy.

There are a lot of magazines that I would love to be published in. Many of these are semi-pro and token paying magazines that still want to support, in spite of the fact that they don’t pay very well. But even the pro-paying magazines make me think twice when my stories are locked up with them for months at a time. If your goal is to keep your slushpile manageable by getting me to self-reject, the best I can say is that it’s working.

If you run a short story magazine and you aren’t able to give us a timely response to our submissions, then please, do your writers a favor and allow us the courtesy of simultaneous submissions.

The Decline and Fall of Fandom and the Hugo Awards

Lately, I’ve taken a serious interest in family history. A huge amount of records have gone online in the past decade, making it far easier to trace your ancestors. Before that, my father was able to trace the Vasicek line to the Czech lands (places with cool names like Frenštát, Vratimov, Trojanovice, Staříč, etc), but that was as far as he could go. Just a couple of years ago, however, my sister found the parish records for that region. They’re mostly all scanned and online, and they go back as far as the late 15th century to the start of the Hapsburgs. The pieces are all there—all we have to do is put them together.

Needless to say, this has got me really excited. It also made me wonder: how far back is it possible go? According to my sister, who is also a certified genealogist, the European records start to get really sketchy around the 7th or 8th century. Only the royal lines go back that far, and since they were all trying to connect themselves to mythical figures and Biblical characters, the records are not very reliable.

So I went to Wikipedia to look up the period of Late Antiquity leading up to the 7th century, and soon became completely absorbed in it. This is the period when the Roman Empire collapsed, leaving Europe in a hot mess. The Vandals, Franks, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, and Saxons were running around all over the place, sometimes fighting for the Romans, sometimes fighting against them, constantly fighting each other, and migrating clear across the continent in their search for new homelands.

As clear as I can make it out, this is how it basically went down:

There once was a tribe on the Italian penninsula that built a city called Rome. Through innovations in engineering, warfare, governance, and philosophy, they conquered virtually all of the known world and built a mighty empire. Rome became legendary as the center of it all.

Over time, however, the Romans became decadent and corrupt. The empire slowly began to disintegrate and fall apart, though great pains were taken to preserve the appearance that all was well. By the end of the third century, it had effectively split into two halves: the eastern empire and the western empire. This division fell roughly along cultural lines: the Greco-Roman culture in the east, and the Latin-Roman culture in the west.

Around this time, a barbarian tribe (or alliance of tribes) appeared on the northeastern frontiers of the empire. Known as the Huns, these barbarians launched an invasion of Europe that completely shuffled the deck. They only briefly threatened the Romans, but had a much larger impact on the barbarian tribes of Europe, displacing them from their homelands and forcing them to seek a new home. This launched what is known as the migration period.

There were a lot of barbarian tribes seeking a new homeland: the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and the Vandals. With the Huns at their backs, they invaded the Roman Empire, which was the weaker of the two.

…except “invade” isn’t quite the right word. Many of these tribes became allies or foederati of the Romans (often after defeating them). Even some Hunnic tribes were absorbed into the empire in this way, and were often employed as mercenaries to fight against the Frankish, Gothic, and Vandal tribes that hadn’t allied with Rome. The salient point is that Rome had become weak, and thus had to make concessions to these barbarians who were starting to flood the empire.

At the end of the fourth century, a tribe of Visigoths that had settled in the eastern empire became upset with the way that the Romans were treating them. After being starved, taxed, and treated as sub-human, they took up arms under a leader named Alaric the First. They were unable to make much headway against the eastern empire, so instead they went west and invaded the Italian penninsula.

Over the course of the next two decades, the western empire vacillated between accomodating them, backstabbing them, and declaring outright war. This was mostly due to internal power struggles that had little to do with the Visigoths. Even though Alaric threatened the heart of the western empire and laid seige to Rome three times, they treated him with outright contempt, blatantly violating previous agreements and going so far as to ambush him under a flag of truce.

In 408, the internal power struggle eliminated the faction that was willing to accomodate the Visigoths. Shortly thereafter, Alaric decided that he’d had enough and marched on Rome. In 410, he sacked the city, shocking the civilized world.

Up until that point, Rome was considered sacrosanct. Sure, the barbarians were overrunning the frontiers and threatening vast swaths of the empire, but Rome was the cultural and spiritual center of the world. How could it possibly fall? But it did, and following the sack in 455 at the hands of the Vandals, the Roman Empire never regained its former glory.

Reading up on this history at the same time as the 2015 Hugo Awards played out has made me notice a bunch of similarities between the two events. Obviously, the decline and fall of Rome is not a perfect analogy for the decline and fall of the Hugo Awards, but there are some very interesting parallels.

The Hugo Awards were founded in the 1950s, back when SF&F fandom was a tiny community of geeks on the fringes of society, and not taken seriously by anyone in the cultural mainstream. Over the next several decades, the geeks took over the world, dominating the popular culture with things like Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, etc.

But somewhere along the way, this happened:

Fandom (with a capital F) became decadent and corrupt as the Truefen jealously guarded their turf, creating all sorts of weird Hugo categories (“related work”? “short-form” editor vs. “long-form” editor?) and pushing back against the mainstreaming of the SF&F field. As a result, Worldcon went from the premier SF&F convention to a second-tier convention that falls well short of Dragoncon, Gencon, San Diego Comic Con, Salt Lake Comic Con and Fan Ex, etc, all of which are 1-2 orders of magnitude larger than Worldcon now. The once-prestigious Hugos were now decided by mere hundreds of votes.

Around this time, a tribe (or alliance of tribes) of cultural Marxists began to invade the cultural space. Also known as Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), they began to dominate multiple forms of media, pushing out many of the more conservative readers and viewers who resisted. Fandom (with a capital F) gradually embraced them, using them as mercenaries in their internal power struggles.

By this time, Fandom had split into two broad divisions: Baen and Tor. Baen books were more about action & adventure, while Tor books were more about social issues (though of course there was some overlap). These two houses dominated the field, but it was the Tor side of Fandom that had more ownership in the Hugos than the Baen side.

The SF&F fans who had been displaced by the SJW invasion formed the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies. To Fandom, however, they were all just “wrongfans”—essentially, barbarians. And it wouldn’t exactly be right to say that the puppies “invaded” Fandom, because many of them were already there or were willing to coexist and make alliances. Others, of course, were not.

Vox Day entered the scene as one of the disgruntled puppies who had had enough of Fandom. The Tor side was far more susceptible to his machinations, responding to him in knee-jerk fashion at every turn, so he went after them. In 2015, he sacked the Hugos, causing “no award” to sweep five categories (and place in eight more).

To an impartial observer, Vox Day was the only clear victor of the 2015 Hugo Awards. How else can you explain all the “no awards”? His stated goal was never to win the Hugos, it was to destroy them, and he accomplished that spectacularly. When an esteemed professional such as Toni Weisskopf loses to “no award” purely out of guilt by association (on a ballot decided by less than 6,000 total votes, no less), how can anyone possibly take the Hugos seriously anymore? What was once considered the most prestigious award in the SF&F field has now proven to be a narrow, exlusivist club of politically like-minded elitists.

Fandom (capital F) accomplished many wonderful things back in the days before SF&F entered the mainstream. In a very real sense, they conquered the world. But by doggedly trying to hold on to their turf and refusing to let others play with their toys, especially those who see the world differently than them, they are declining. Like the sack of Rome in 410, the sack of the Hugo Awards in 2015 was a watershed moment that demonstrated just how much the old order had decayed.

Can the Hugo Awards be saved? I seriously doubt it. The “truefans” will jealously clutch it to their chests until they die, and with the graying of fandom, that will probably be accomplished fairly soon. But just as the Renaissance rose from the long-cold ashes of the Roman Empire, so too I hope that something good will eventually come out of all of this. Because really, there is a place in fandom (lower-case f) for everyone, and that has never changed.

Sad Puppies 3: A Play in Three Parts

PART THE FIRST

Sad Puppies: Wouldn’t it be great if the Hugo Awards weren’t about identity politics anymore? If conservatives and libertarians weren’t shut out by the blatantly liberal bias? If we didn’t care about a writer’s skin color, or their gender, or their sexual orientation, but about the quality of their stories?

Social Justice Warriors: EVIL RACIST CISGENDER SCUM! You only say that because you’re WHITE, MALE, and PRIVILEGED!

Sad Puppies: Actually—

Puppy Kickers: Haha! We beat you wrongfans last year, and we’ll beat you again this year! Sad puppies suck!

Sad Puppies: Oh yeah?

Sad Puppies sweep the 2015 Hugo nominations.

Puppy Kickers: What the hell, puppies? You violated the gentleman’s agreement that has governed the Hugos since time immemorial!

Sad Puppies: Of course we did! Your “gentleman’s agreement” was elitist and wrong.

Puppy Kickers: Oh yeah? THIS MEANS WAR!

PART THE SECOND

Flashback to before the nominations. Enter Vox Day.

Vox Day: Fear and tremble, denizens of fandom! I will wreak vengeance on my enemies and destroy the Hugo Awards for all time! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Social Justice Warriors: Vox Day is EVIL! THIS MEANS WAR!!

Sad Puppies: No, don’t destroy the Hugos, Vox! There’s still a chance they can be saved.

Vox: Hmm, very well. But I shall not march in lock-step with you.

Vox Day organizes the Rabid Puppies slate. Return to present.

Puppy Kickers: Look, the Sad Puppies slate is almost identical to the Rabid Puppies slate! The Sad Puppies are really just followers of Vox Day!

Sad Puppies: That’s not true. We were actually the ones to convince him to—

Social Justice Warriors: RACISTS! NAZIS! MISOGYNISTS! RACISTS! NAZIS! MISOGYNISTS!

Sad Puppies: Actually, if you look at our slate, you’ll see that—

Puppy Kickers: RACISTS! NAZIS! MISOGYNISTS! RACISTS! NAZIS! MISOGYNISTS!

Rabid Puppies: It’s no use to try to reason with these people. Sinistra delenda est!

PART THE THIRD

Puppy Kickers: Slate voting is EVIL! We must defeat the puppies at all costs to prove that vote rigging has no place in the Hugo Awards!

Social Justice Warriors: Here is a voting guide for how to make the puppies lose.

Sad Puppies: You hypocrites! How is that not rigging the vote?

Puppy Kickers: Haha, we don’t care! We’ll vote the way the SJWs tell us to, and brag about how we haven’t read any of the books on your crummy slate.

Sad Puppies: But—but there are a lot of good people here that are overdue for recognition! Toni Weiskopff, Kevin J. Anderson, Jim Butcher… and there are a lot of great new authors too, like Kary English. Our slate isn’t remotely racist or sexist. We’ve got people from all across the political spectrum too, because all we really care about is telling good stories!

Social Justice Warriors: We don’t care! If we can’t have the Hugos, NO ONE CAN!

The 2015 Hugo Awards. “No award” sweeps five categories.

Social Justice Warriors: VICTORY!

Puppy Kickers: Um, yeah! What they said! Uh… guys?

Vox Day: BWAHAHAHA! You fell for my Xanatos Gambit, you pitiful mindless fools! I HAVE DESTROYED THE HUGO AWARDS!

Rabid Puppies: All hail Vox Day, slayer of worlds! Sinistra delenda est!

Sad Puppies: Wow. Just… wow.

Rabid Puppies: Join us, Sad Puppies. Yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works. Sinistra delenda est!

Social Justice Warriors: Next year, we should give Anita Sarkeesian a Hugo!

Why my books are not in Kindle Unlimited

Last year, Amazon came out with a book subscription service called Kindle Unlimited. As a reader and an Amazon customer, I’ve noticed that they’ve been pushing this service quite aggressively. As a writer, I’ve been following it quite closely, especially with some recent changes with how they compensate their authors.

However, if you check my Amazon catalog, you will find that none of my books are available on Kindle Unlimited. And if I had to tell you why, I could sum it up in just one word:

Exclusivity.

In order to enroll your books in Kindle Unlimited, Amazon demands that the content of your book cannot be available anywhere else. Not on competing retailers. Not on your website. Not on a site like Wattpad or posted on social media. It’s KU and KU only, take it or leave it. And you can’t get around that by doing separate editions, since it’s the content that must be exlusive, not the book.

Recently, Hugh Howey argued that KU’s exclusivity doesn’t really hurt writers or readers, because all of Amazon’s competitors in the ebook market suck so hard that it’s no big loss to lose them anyways. I disagree, though. Different readers have different needs, and as great as Amazon is, it isn’t the best choice for everyone.

I believe that readers should be empowered to make their own choices, not only in what they read, but in how they read it. Some readers would rather sideload their ebooks, and don’t want to deal with Amazon’s proprietary .mobi format. Others would rather keep their books native to their device and not deal with Amazon’s apps. Others live in parts of the world where Amazon tacks on an arbitrary $2 USD surcharge to every kindle store purchase, and that obviously doesn’t work for them.

Put simply, I believe that exclusivity is a bad deal for readers—and that because of that, it’s also a bad deal for writers. The less control that readers have over what they read, the less they are going to read. The more control that middlemen have over the market (and for all the wonderful things that it does, Amazon is still a middleman between readers and writers), the less pressure there is for them to innovate and improve.

On many of the indie writers forums and communities that I frequent, it appears that other writers are more interested in short-term monetary gains than in doing what best serves their readers. And that’s unfortunate, because Kindle Unlimited is structured in such a way that it pits writers against each other in a zero-sub game. Instead of paying a fixed rate for each page (or KENPC) read, Amazon sets a “pot” and pays each author a share of it, in proportion to how many borrows/pages they got. Thus, if one author gets more reads than another (or games the system to make Amazon’s algorithms think that he had more reads), that means less money for the other author.

A lot of writers argue that it’s not really a zero-sub game because Amazon usually adds to the pot after the month is over, thus manipulating the borrow rate to hit some undisclosed target. Even if that’s true, though, it makes things even worse. If Amazon has a target borrow rate in mind, why not tell authors up front? It basically amounts to not telling authors how much they’re going to be paid until after their books have been sold. In any other supplier relationship, this blatant lack of transparency would be insane.

From what I can see, it’s all about control. Exclusivity gives them a great deal of control, not only over the marketplace but over authors as well. The lack of transparency and ever-changing borrow rates make it difficult for authors to gather the data they need to decide whether to stay in KU or to publish their books widely. And authors who decide not to opt into KU are punished by having their books rank lower, thus achieving less visibility in the Amazon ecosystem. In the year since KU came out, my Amazon income has fallen by at least 60%.

Even with all of that, though, I would be happy to enroll all of my books in Kindle Unlimited if Amazon dropped the exclusivity requirement. There are a lot of readers who prefer Amazon’s KU subscription service, and I would love to make my books available for them.

But exclusivity is a bad deal.

Content Ratings for Books

A couple of weeks ago, there was a discussion on The Passive Voice blog about trigger warnings and how they are destroying literature. The post spawned a discussion that went on for 240 comments before Passive Guy closed it (probably because we got too political), but it ended up being very insightful.

Laying aside any issues of politics social justice, the fact exists that there is simply not a standard content rating system for books. We have rating systems for movies (MPAA is the main one here in the US) and video games (ESRB), but the majority of books are published without any sort of rating at all.

Is this a bad thing? Personally, I don’t think so, but I know that it matters to others. Last year, there was a big kerfluffle in the book world over an app called Clean Reader that screened objectionable content based on a number of user-controlled filters. It seems that there is an unmet need for some sort of system to help readers avoid offensive content.

That was why the discussion on TPV was so fascinating to me. Between the cries of “censorship!” and “triggering!” there were some very interesting points brought up. Yes, there are politically-motivated people who use “trigger warnings” as a means of advancing the political correctness regime, but there are also sensative readers who appreciate that sort of thing. When I first published Bringing Stella Home, I put a warning on it that stated “if this were a movie, it would be rated PG-13,” and at least one reviewer really appreciated that.

It’s a little bit ridiculous to equate trigger warnings with censorship, though both may be found on the same slippery slope. Still, there are places that scan your metadata and block you from publishing based not on the actual content, but your description of the content. Erotica writers know far more about navigating this maze than I do, though I have experienced it with books like Sholpan. Ironically, adding a content warning to the book description can sometimes get your book blocked altogether, even though the content is far tamer than some of the books on the site from traditional publishers.

So what’s an indie author to do? The commenters at TPV mentioned a site called AO3, or Archive of Our Own, as a place to check out. It’s a massive repository of fanfiction with a very refined system of filters and tags, along with a rating system that seems to work really well.

Since I really don’t want to reinvent the square wheel, I decided to check it out and see if this was the sort of thing I could apply to my own original books. I’ve never been a big reader of fanfiction, but I know that many of my readers are, so adapting the AO3 system seemed like a good way to present them with a system that felt intuitive and familiar.

The AO3 content ratings system has four components: content ratings, pairings/orientations, content warnings, and finished/unfinished. Obviously, the last one really doesn’t apply, since anything I publish commercially is going to be a finished work. The pairings/orientations component also seems unnecessary, since in a book where romance is a major plot driver, the reader should be able to gather from the book description whether it’s M/F, M/M, F/F, or whatever. Also, fanfic readers tend to read for that sort of thing, while general readers do not.

That means that the relevant part of the system is the content rating and the content warnings. I looked for a more detailed official explanation, but it really does seem like ultimate discretion is left to the writers.

There are four countent ratings: G, T, M, and E. If you’re more familiar with AO3 than I am, please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that the equivalent MPAA ratings are as follows:

G: General Audiences.
T: PG and PG-13.
M: Restricted.
E: NC-17.

Of course, it’s virtually impossible to avoid some degree of subjectivity with these sorts of things. What is the threshold between a T and an M? I’m not sure, but I think it lies somewhere between an implied sex scene and one that describes the actual act, or violence that advances thea plot versus violence that IS the plot. There’s also the threshold between an M and an E, but I’m less concerned about that because my books don’t tend to be that extreme.

The key part of the AO3 system, which also removes a great deal of ambiguity, is the content warnings:

The key part here is the ! tag, since the last two obviously don’t apply and the ?! tag is too purposefully ambiguous to be useful. The ! tag very clearly states that one of the following things will be true:

A major character will die, OR
The descriptions of violence will be graphic, OR
There will be rape or non-consensual sex, OR
The sex will involve minors.

In other words, the ! tag indicates a trigger warning. A book rated T, for example, may have some non-triggering crude or obscene language, but a book rated T! is going to have something that would trigger, say, a rape victim, or a victim of child abuse. Obviously, some readers won’t be triggered as much as others, but adding a warning tag makes it easier for readers to use their own discretion.

Again, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that this is the best way to adapt the AO3 system. Towards that end, I’ve added a rating to all of my books, so that if you’re familiar with the AO3 content rating system, you should be able to tell pretty easily where each of my books rate. Unless something drastic changes, I expect to use this system to rate all my books in the future.

Of pioneers and politics

Today is Pioneer Day here in Utah, where we celebrate the achievements and heritage of the Mormon Pioneers. One hundred and sixty-eight years ago today, Brigham Young looked over the Salt Lake Valley (a barely hospitable desert at the time) and declared “this is the place.”

I feel a great deal of pride for my pioneer heritage. My ancestors walked across the plains in the Willie Handcart Company, they organized one of the most successful cooperatives of the United Order, they fought in the Utah Wars, and they built numerous cities across the Intermountain West. Before the pioneer exodus, they built and later abandoned the Nauvoo Temple, endured the horrible conditions at Winter Quarters, and left trails of bloody footprints as they fled their homes and lands during the Missouri persecutions.

One of my direct-line ancestors was Lyman Wight, leader of the Mormon Militia. When the Missouri mobs captured the Mormon leadership and a kangaroo court sentenced them all to death, Lyman Wight’s reputation was so fierce that the mob hesitated to execute him. They offered to let him free if he would renounce Joseph Smith.

Lyman Wight looked the Missourians in the eye and said “Joseph Smith is the best friend you ever had.”

The leaders of the mob asked him why he said that.

He told them: “if it weren’t for Joseph Smith, I would have slit all your throats years ago.”

The mob then threatened to execute him. Lyman Wight answered without hesitation:

“Shoot, and be damned.”

None of the members of the mob dared to execute him, fearing that his ghost would haunt them to the end of their days.

There are tons and tons of stories like that in my family, and even more that belong to my friends. History is alive here in Utah, where monuments to our pioneer heritage are scattered throughout the state.

The Mormon corridor has a very unique subculture compared to the rest of the United States. It’s a unique and sometimes paradoxical blend of individualism and collectivism, of self-reliance and communal spirit, of libertarian ideals and obedience to moral authority. To an outsider, I’m sure it must be extremely perplexing, but there’s nowhere else in the United States where I feel so totally at home. These are my people. This is my home.

That’s why I found this map of the “eleven American nations” so fascinating. According to the corresponding Washington Post article, almost all of the battles in the culture wars can be explained by the lines on this map. Furthermore, the mobility of American society is causing these regional differences to grow sharper as Americans pick up and move to the places where the dominant culture best suits them.

A further explanation can be found here, where the author of the map (and the book American Nations) states:

The borders of my eleven American nations are reflected in many different types of maps—including maps showing the distribution of linguistic dialects, the spread of cultural artifacts, the prevalence of different religious denominations, and the county-by-county breakdown of voting in virtually every hotly contested presidential race in our history. Our continent’s famed mobility has been reinforcing, not dissolving, regional differences, as people increasingly sort themselves into like-minded communities, a phenomenon analyzed by Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing in The Big Sort (2008). Even waves of immigrants did not fundamentally alter these nations, because the children and grandchildren of immigrants assimilated into whichever culture surrounded them.

The thing that I find most fascinating about this map is how closely the borders of the Far West “nation” parallel the State of Deseret, first proposed by Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers. The Mormons didn’t get along very well with Congress, and the territory was eventually pared down to the current boundaries of the state of Utah (the name “Deseret” was also replaced). But cultural boundaries cannot be declared by presidents or kings.

According to the author, the development of this region “was largely directed by corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco, or by the federal government, which controlled much of the land.” I’m not so sure that’s the case, however. Corporations certainly became important players after the railroads crossed the country, but culturally, I would argue the pioneers had a much deeper and more lasting impact.

The Intermountain West is remarkably conservative, with Utah ranking as one of the reddest states in the nation. With the government expansion under President Obama and the Tea Party revolt in the Republican party, the politics in this part of the country have taken a decidedly libertarian turn. As issues like healthcare, gun control, gay marriage, and late-term abortion have each swept the nation in turn, my positions have changed to reflect the libertarian attitudes of the culture in which I live.

In 2008, I considered myself “agnostic” as far as politics were concerned. Perhaps there was a greater truth out there as far as politics were concerned, but I wanted nothing to do with it. Now, however, I believe very strongly that individuals and families should be free to live their lives as they see fit, without being subject to Leftist schemes to redistribute their wealth or bloated, self-serving government that overreaches its constitutional bounds.

I think this view would resonate very deeply with the pioneers. They came to the West to practice their religion freely, and emphasized self-reliance and thrift. Their industriousness was a means of guarding their independence from the governments that had oppressed them in the east, and continued to oppress them as they sought to build their Zion. Though they could be quite collectivist at times, it was local and voluntary, a far cry from State-enforced socialism. And while they cared for the poor and needy, they did all they could to keep them from becoming dependent on welfare.

These are interesting times we live in, and interesting cultures we hail from as well. As I look back on my own pioneer heritage, I can’t help but look forward as well. The “shoot and be damned” independent streak of my ancestors is still with me today, and I have no doubt that pioneer spirit will continue to guide me in the future.

Why I stopped watching House of Cards

I started watching House of Cards a couple of weeks ago, and really got into it for a while. As longtime readers of this blog will remember, I spent a semester in DC at a high-powered K street internship, and was thoroughly disgusted by what I found there. House of Cards is all about the sleazy back-room political machinations of scrupulously ambitious people, so it gave me a lot of satisfaction to watch them all screw with each other.

Kevin Spacey’s performance in particular is absolutely fantastic. Periodically throughout the show, he breaks the fourth wall and turns toward the camera to give a monologue about the nature of political power. It’s such a characteristic part of the show that they spoofed it at the 2013 Grammys.

By the start of the third season, though, I started to have some misgivings. At various points in the show, I asked myself who my favorite character was, as a way of analyzing the writing. In the first season, I had several favorites. In the second season, those characters either died or did things that made me hate them. By the start of the third season, I didn’t like any of the characters—I only hated them in varying degrees.

The only potential exception to that was Senator Mendoza, the main antagonist of the third season who sets himself up as the Republican nominee for president. While all of the main characters consider him an asshole, that’s mostly because he doesn’t honor any of the back-room deals and secret combinations that they do. But since the story was setting him up to go head-to-head with Frank Underwood, I could tell early on that things wouldn’t end well for him.

The main reason I stopped watching, though, was because of all the gratuitous sex. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not one of those people who throws a book across the room the moment sex is acknowledged as part of the human experience. I’ve read and enjoyed (and even written) plenty of books where sex is an important part of the story. But when it becomes gratuitous—in other words, when it no longer serves the story—that’s when I get tired of it.

In order to do sex well, I think it needs to 1) convey an important facet of someone’s character (for example, Kirk in Star Trek), 2) serve an important plot point, or 3) impact the character arc in some important way. If the story can hold together just fine without the sex, then the sex is actually a sign of weak writing. Throwing it in just to titilate or hook the audience is like using adverbs to convey emotion: if the writing was strong enough to begin with, you wouldn’t have to do that.

So without getting into spoilers, that’s why I checked out of House of Cards. I hated all the characters, the writing was getting weaker, and the sex was too gratuitous.

I AM A REAL PERSON

To whomever it may concern,

On June 8th, I wrote an email to Tor.com withdrawing one of my stories in response to the highly unprofessional and inflammatory comments made by Irene Gallo about the Hugo awards controversy. In the past week, it appears that many other writers and readers have contacted both Tor.com and Tor Books to express similar disconent. It also appears that some of the senior members of your organization are attempting to dismiss these responses as manufactured outrage propagated by bots, and not by real people.

I would like to make it clear to anyone at Tor.com and Tor Books that I am a real person, and that the email that I sent on June 8th was not solicited by Vox Day or any other person. Ms. Gallo has since apologized “to anyone hurt by my comments,” and while I appreciate the gesture, without a retraction of her original statements, the gesture is empty. Furthermore, repeated comments from Moshe Feder, the Nielsen Haydens, and other senior members of your organization demeaning large segments of your company’s clientele lead me to believe that the problem is not with a few individuals acting in poor judgment, but with the corporate culture at Tor.

In my first email, I stated that I could not in good conscience continue to support your organization by submitting my stories for publication at Tor.com. The events of the last seven days have made me reluctant to buy Tor books as well. In the coming months, I hope that we can move past this controversy so that we can get back to reading, writing, and publishing stories that we all love, without concern for politics. However, until the corporate culture at Tor has changed to be more inclusive of readers and writers like me, I do not see how that is possible.

Sincerely yours,

Joe Vasicek