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

Friends in Command — excerpt 1

Mara Soladze never expected her greatest moment of triumph to feel so empty.

The SMG bucked in her hand as she sprayed bullets across the starship bunkroom. Her hand was steady, her grip firm. The three Gaian Imperial officers cried out in terror as she cut them to the floor. They fell with bright red bloodstains on their uniforms, the immaculately white fabric soaking it up like a sponge. The fat one—her father’s killer—raised his hands to plead with her, his strength quickly fading as his blood pooled at his knees.

Mara regarded him coolly, trying in vain to savor her victory. As much as she wanted to relish the moment, she found it impossible to feel anything at all.

The man’s bulging, corpulent face began to sag. She tried to remember what he looked like when he’d given the order to the firing squad that had shot her father—that awful dispassionate look, as if he were squashing a bug—but for all the stars of Earth, she couldn’t remember what he’d looked like then. All she saw was a terrified man who didn’t want to die.

Her finger squeezed the trigger, and a burst of gunfire exploded in the center of the man’s head.

The Imperial officer slumped to the floor. “That’s for my father, you son of a bitch,” she heard herself say. The words hung limp in the air, losing their force almost the moment they left her mouth.

The scene blurred before her, and her vision turned to darkness. This isn’t real, she told herself. It’s a dream—you’re dreaming this. She felt as if she had just watched the massacre through a stranger’s eyes. But, of course, it wasn’t a stranger; it was her. And the scenes playing out before her were more than just dreams. They were memories.

“I did it for you, Father,” she shouted into the void. “I paid him back for killing you. Is it enough?” Will it ever be enough?

* * * * *

Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV) comes out on July 1st, but you can pre-order it now! I’m very excited for this book to come out. If you’ve read the other books in the Sons of the Starfarers series, I think you’ll really enjoy this one. From now until release day, I’ll be posting short excerpts (350 words or less) for you guys to preview. Thanks for reading!

Friends in Command

The future of the Outworlds now lies in uncertain hands.

The Imperials are back, and this time, a ragtag flotilla isn't going to stop them. But they aren't the only enemies of the new Outworld Confederacy. Together, Aaron and Mara must face a threat from within.

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About the Book

The future of the Outworlds now lies in uncertain hands.

The war for the Outworlds is on. The Imperials may have lost the first round, but they’re back—and this time, a ragtag flotilla isn’t going to stop them.

When Aaron recieves a captain’s commission in the new Outworld Confederacy, Mara is his natural choice for second in command. But Mara never expected to live past the first few battles. She only joined the resistance to avenge her father, and fears the monster she’s starting to become. The only thing she has left to live for now is her friends.

The Imperials aren’t the only enemy in this war, though. The friends must face a threat from within in

SONS OF THE STARFARERS
BOOK IV: FRIENDS IN COMMAND

Details

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Sons of the Starfarers, Book 4
Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera
Tag: 2015 Release
Publication Year: July 2015
Length: short novel
List Price: $9.99
eBook Price: $2.99

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$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek fell in love with science fiction and fantasy when he read The Neverending Story as a child. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Genesis Earth, Gunslinger to the Stars, The Sword Keeper, and the Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic at Brigham Young University and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus Mountains. He lives in Utah with his wife and two apple trees.

Other Books in the "Sons of the Starfarers"

Brothers in Exile

Comrades in Hope

Strangers in Flight

Captives in Obscurity

Patriots in Retreat

A Queen in Hiding

An Empire in Disarray

Victors in Liberty

The Complete Sons of the Starfarers

Some of the links in the page above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. You will not receive any additional charge. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

My take on the Sad Puppies

There’s been a lot of mud-slinging in the past few months regarding the Sad Puppies, and it’s increasingly difficult to navigate the SF&F side of the internet without getting caught up in it. I’ve been reluctant to weigh in publicly on Sad Puppies 3, simply because I’ve been dissapointed to find that authors whom I otherwise love and respect saying things that I find reprehensible. As Mark Twain so famously said, better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

That said, I think we’re fast approaching the point (if we haven’t passed it already) where neutrality and silence are just as contemptible as outright partisanship. Lines are being crossed, and people are being bullied and defamed. In such an environment, I would rather have people know where I stand than to try to pretend that nothing is happening.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to assume that you already know the basics about what’s going on. If you don’t, I would recommend you start by reading these two posts by Brad Torgerson announcing Sad Puppies 3 and explaining why it’s necessary, Larry Correia’s explanation for why he started the whole thing, and Eric Flint’s rebuttal to them both.

The Sad Puppies controversy is a bit complicated, and my position doesn’t fall neatly into any one camp. There are people like Brad Torgersen and Eric Flint that I respect on both sides of the controversy. That said, the people that I find toxic all fall squarely into the anti-puppy camp. They are the ones who define fandom the most narrowly, and in my experience they are the ones with the most intolerant views.

My own experience with Worldcon and the Hugos is rather limited. I attended Renovation 69 in 2011 and was actually rather struck with how small and insular the convention seemed to be. Until then, I had revered the Hugo Award as the most prestigious award in the SF&F field, and when I realized that the vast majority of readers were not represented at the con, that prestige was tarnished. But my response at the time was to shrug and say “oh well.”

I don’t say this to disparage Worldcon at all, because I enjoyed myself there and would genuinely like to attend as often as I could. But the Hugos themselves lost quite a bit of their allure, and I no longer felt it so important to participate in the voting or involve myself in them.

When Sad Puppies 1 happened, I therefore stayed mostly on the sidelines. I sympathized with Larry Correia, both because I’ve met him in person and found him to be an affable fellow, and also because we share similar political and religious views. However, I didn’t really get involved.

For Sad Puppies 2, I also mostly stayed out of it. There were quite a bit more rumblings the second year, and when the anti-puppies rubbed their victory into everyone’s faces following the 2014 Hugo, I was seriously unimpressed with their behavior (especially Scalzi’s).

So when the Sad Puppies swept the Hugo nominations in 2015, I have to admit that it felt pretty gratifying. I already knew that the Hugos didn’t really represent my side of fandom, and I’d had enough experience with the anti-puppies to see through their hypocrisy and intolerance. Then the SF&F corner of the internet exploded, and things became truly popcorn-worthy.

Which brings us to where we are today. In some ways, I still feel like I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t have a membership to Worldcon 2015, I have no particular interest in either killing or saving the Hugo Awards, and don’t really have any aspirations to win a Hugo or any other major awards for that matter. As a self-published indie author, my readers are my greatest reward.

But in another sense, I cannot avoid having a dog in this fight. Science Fiction and Fantasy is my livelihood, and the Sad Puppies controversy affects the very core of my field. Authors whom I look up to and respect have become targets of some of the worst smear tactics, and if no one stands up against these bullies, things are only going to get worse. The lines have been drawn, the wagons have been circled, and my voice, however small, is needed in this hour.

With that out of the way, here is where I stand:

I believe that everyone who loves science fiction and fantasy has and should have a place in this genre, no matter how reprehensible I find them or how vehemently I disagree with their views.

I believe that SF&F authors flourish best when there is no single dogma, political or otherwise, that dominates the field. Those who enforce their brand of social justice through bullying and smear campaigns are anathema to everything that makes science fiction and fantasy great.

I believe that TRUE DIVERSITY in the SF&F field is good and worth working toward. TRUE DIVERSITY includes women, people of color, other ethnic minorities, and people of every gender and sexual orientation. It also includes Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians, residents of the “flyover states,” and devout practitioners of every faith, be they Christians, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, or supplicants at the temple of Athe.

I believe that sexism that is directed against men is still sexism.

I believe that racism that is directed against whites is still racism.

I believe that it is impossible to defeat racism and sexism through racist and sexist means. Those who attempt to do so are bigots and hypocrites of the worst possible stripe.

I believe that no one is entitled to any award. True recognition is earned, not bestowed.

I believe that books should be judged solely on the merits of the story itself, and not on the merits of the author.

I believe that readers should be free to read whatever they want, and not have to answer to anyone or feel guilty for their reading choices.

I believe that the Sad Puppies have legitimate grievances, and that they have done nothing wrong or dishonorable by pushing their Hugo slate. I’m not sure if I can say the same of the Rabid Puppies, but to the extent that they’ve played by the Hugo voting rules, I can’t say that I hold that against them.

I believe that people should be judged by their own words and actions, not by what others say about them.

I do not believe in guilt by association.

I do not believe in unsubstantiated accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, or affiliation with the National Socialist German Worker’s Party or any of its ideological offshoots. In today’s climate, those are all four-letter words as far as I’m concerned.

I do not believe that gatekeepers add anything of value by excluding people from the field.

I do not believe that fandom is an exclusive club.

I do not believe that the Hugos are representative of the entire field, nor that any single award is or should be.

I do not believe that the Sad Puppies are out destroy all that is good in science fiction and fantasy (or the Rabid Puppies, for that matter). I doubt that any single faction could accomplish that even if they wanted to.

Above all else, I respect my readers. I am grateful for them. I would not be able to do what I do without them.

I understand that many of my readers may not share my personal views. I also understand that it is possible to respect someone and still disagree with them. I hope to always be worthy of respect. But whether others choose to respect me or not, I must live in such a way that I can always respect myself.

OMG OMG OMG!!!

I know this is my third post today, but I saw this on Youtube today and I HAD to post it.

I’ve been dying to see The Martian ever since Matt Damon’s awesome performance in Interstellar. Haven’t read the book yet, though it’s definitely on my TBR list—everything I’ve heard about it is really good.

First Gravity, then Interstellar, and now The Martian—I love love love these near-future space movies!

An open letter to Tor.com in reference to Irene Gallo

To whomever it may concern,

I am writing to withdraw my short story, “The Curse of the Lifewalker” (submission id: 55c13821ebd3) from the Tor.com slushpile effective immediately. In light of the highly unprofesional recent behavior of Ms. Irene Gallo, an associate publisher of your organization, I cannot in good conscience support or be associated with Tor.com.

On May 11th, posting on Facebook in her official capacity, Ms. Gallo said the following of the Sad Puppies Hugo slate:

There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.

Not only was her comment highly unprofessional (especially considering how many Tor authors have been nominated by the Sad Puppies), it also represents a grave insult to the honor of Mr. John C. Wright, one of the Tor authors that Ms. Gallo so flippantly dismisses as “bad-to-reprehensible.” On his blog, Mr. Wright commented:

My father in law, may he rest in peace, was a Jew serving in the US Military during World War Two in the European Theater. In fact, he won a Purple Heart medal for wounds to his hands he received while liberating a Nazi death camp. His unit was standing about idly, troopers on one side of the wall, ragged prisoners on the other, waiting for the carpenter to arrive with tools to tear down the planks, but in a fury of impatience he did it with his bare hands, like a superman. He turned down the award, thinking others whose wounds were from the enemy deserved it, not he. That is the kind of man he was, an odd mixture of towering ego and meek humility.

Irene Gallo should have been penning me polite notes of congratulation on receiving an historically unprecedented number of awards for the prestigious Hugo Award, and rejoicing that any victory for me or for Mr Anderson (who would be receiving his first ever Hugo for his life’s work producing over 50 bestsellers) would reflect well on our main publisher whom we both loyally serve, Tor Books.

Instead, Irene Gallo just said I was a member of the barbaric and racist National Socialist totalitarian political movement that my family fought, suffered, and shed blood to expunge from the earth.

In light of these recent events, I consider Ms. Gallo to be a toxic personality and therefore cannot, in good conscience, associate or do business with an organization in which she is an associate publisher. If she apologizes for her behavior or is dismissed from your organization, I will reconsider my decision. Until such time, I will no longer submit any of my stories to Tor.com.

Joe Vasicek

UPDATE

Since Ms. Gallo’s inflammatory statements went viral, she has issued an apology “to anyone hurt by my comments.” While I feel that this is a step in the right direction, without retracting her statements it amounts to little more than an apology for how other people feel—in other words, a non-apology. In my view, she should take responsibility for her statements and retract them, at which point I will accept her apology and encourage others to do the same.