Tag: Locus magazine

Are vaccine-related deaths decimating the SF field?

This is an extremely polarizing and contentious issue right now, so I’m going to try to make this post as fact-based and non-sensational as possible.

Full disclosure: I never got the covid shot. My wife and I both had covid before the “vaccines” became available, and decided that our natural immunity provided enough protection for us. We were also trying to become pregnant, and even in January 2021, we had heard rumors that the shots were affecting both men’s and women’s fertility, as well as women’s menstrual cycles, and didn’t feel that the risk was worth it, in spite of the tremendous social pressure to get “vaccinated.”

At the end of the day, we simply did not trust that the “vaccines” were safe (and I put “vaccine” in quotes, because we now know that these shots do not provide lasting immunity, nor do they prevent transmission. The health establishment literally had to change the definition of “vaccine” for that word to apply to these treatments). We were wary of the fact that the emergency use provisions absolved the manufacturers of any liability, and that the long-term effects of these shots was unknown. In our family’s calculation, the potential risks outweighed the potential benefits, especially since we already had natural immunity and were unlikely to contract covid again.

In the past year, some very disturbing things about the “vaccines” have come to light. A recent poll by Rasmussen shows that more than 1 in 4 Americans believe they know someone who has died of the covid “vaccines”—not from covid itself, but from the vaccines. Interestingly, more Democrats (about 1 in 3) than Republicans (about 1 in 4) claim that they know someone, which is interesting, because the political left was much more taken with the “vaccine” mania than the political right. Remember that super cringey vaccine song on Colbert’s show?

The last two years have been crazy, for sure. But how has it affected the science fiction and fantasy world? The January issue of Locus Magazine made me curious about this, since Greg Bear recently passed away “after complications from heart surgery,” and the obituary section mentioned two other people under the age of 60, one of whom “died unexpectedly.”

So I went through all of the back issues of Locus from January 2021 to the present, and made a comprehensive list of every person mentioned in the obituaries, with their age and cause of death. If they died of a stroke or an accute heart-related issue, I bolded their name, since the mechanism for death appears to be related to blood clots caused by the spike protein that the mRNA “vaccine” is designed to generate. Also, I bolded the name of anyone 70 or younger who died without the cause of death listed. The global average life expectancy is just north of 70, which is lower than the US, but I decided to take the lower of those numbers. I also bolded any names where the cause was listed as covid, since many people who died in the first couple of weeks after getting the shot were automatically listed as covid, especially in the initial rollout.

Here is the list:

JAN 2021

  • Ben Bova (88): “contracting COVID-19, developing Pneumonia, and suffering a stroke.”
  • Phyllis Eisensetein (74): “suffered a stroke in January 2020 and entered hospice care not long after.”
  • Richard Corben (80): “died December 2, 2020 after heart surgery.”
  • Dean Ing (89): cause not listed (died July 21, 2020).

FEB 2021

  • James Gunn (97): cause not listed.
  • Storm Constantine (64): “following a long illness.”
  • Anton Strout (50): “died unexpectedly.”
  • Jael (83): cause not listed.
  • Alison Lurie (94): “in hospice.”
  • Richard West (76): “of COVID-19.”
  • Joseph Altairac (63): cause not listed.

MAR 2021

  • Kathleen Ann Goonan (68): cause not listed.
  • Rowena Morrill (76): “following years of poor health.”
  • Jean-Claude Carrière (89): “of natural causes.”

APR 2021

  • Norton Juster (91): “complications following a stroke.”
  • Dean Morrissey (69): cause not listed.
  • Michael G. Adkisson (65): cause not listed.

MAY 2021

  • John C. Pelan (63): “of an apparent heart attack.”
  • Wanda June Alexander (69): “diagnosed with lung cancer last year, and though she underwent successful treatment, her lungs were severely damaged, and she entered hospice care in January 2021.”

JUN 2021

  • Marvin Kaye (83): “in hospice care.”
  • Don Sakers (62): “of a heart attack.”
  • Jan Stirling (71): cause not listed.
  • Jim Rittenhouse (64): “in hospice care.”
  • Anish Deb (69): “of COVID-19.”

JUL 2021

  • Bob Brown (78): “after a valiant battle with esophageal cancer.”

AUG 2021

  • William F. Nolan (93): “of complications from an infection.”
  • Stephen Hickman (72): “of natural causes.”
  • Joe McKinney (52): “in his sleep.”
  • Paul Alexander (83): cause not listed.
  • John Longendorfer (90): cause not listed.

SEP 2021

  • Elizabeth Anne Hull (84): cause not listed.
  • Patricia Kennealy-Morrison (75): cause not listed.
  • C. Dean Andersson (75): “in his sleep… after a long illness.”
  • J.W. Rinzler (58): “of pancreatic cancer.”
  • Ron Weighell (70): “a few weeks after suffering a stroke.”
  • Lorna Toolis (68): cause not listed.
  • Judi B. Castro (58): “following a brief illness.”

OCT 2021

  • Erle Korshak (97): cause not listed.
  • L. Neil Smith (75): “after a lengthy battle with heart and kidney disease.”
  • Carol Carr (82): “of lung cancer.”
  • Genevieve DiModica (73): “of natural causes.”

NOV 2021

  • Mary Kay Kare (69): “of a blood infection.”
  • Gary Paulsen (82): “of cardiac arrest.”
  • Lou Antonelli (64): cause not listed.
  • Douglas Barbour (81): “of lung cancer.”
  • Otacilio Costa D’Assuncao Barros (67): “was found dead in his apartment… after two days without contact by neighbors. The cause of death has not been disclosed.”

DEC 2021

  • Petra Mayer (46): “died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism.”
  • Robert Thurston (84): cause not listed.
  • Jim Fiscus (76): “died suddenly.”
  • Catherine M. Morrison (52): “after a brief illness.”

JAN 2022

  • Anne Rice (80): “of complications from a stroke.”
  • Diana G. Gallagher (75): “of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
  • William G. Contento (74): “after a long struggle with prostate cancer.”
  • Jeremy G. Byrn (57): “after a long illness.”
  • Chris Achilleos (74): cause not listed.
  • Jose Luis Benicio da Fonseca (84): cause not listed.

FEB 2022

  • Willie Siros (69): cause not listed.
  • Dave Wolverton (64): “after suffering a severe head injury falling down the stairs the previous day.”
  • Ron Goulart (89): cause not listed.
  • John Jos. Miller (67): cause not listed.
  • J. Brian Clark (93): cause not listed.
  • Sally Gwylan (67): “in a traffic accident.”
  • Jane E. Hawkins (70): “was a cancer survivor, but she received a terminal diagnosis and went into hospice.”
  • Elizabeth Miller (82): cause not listed.
  • Bill Wright (84): “fallen at home and ‘thought he had broken his back.’”
  • Chuck Verrill (unknown): “after a long illness.”
  • Athos Eichler Cardoso (87): cause not listed.

MAR 2022

  • Angelica Gorodischer (93): cause not listed.
  • Tom Dupree (72): “of cardio-respiratory arrest.”
  • Harold R. Johnson (68): “of lung cancer.”

APR 2022

  • Andy Remic (50): “of cancer.”
  • Faren Miller (71): “after being hospitalized with serious respiratory problems.”
  • Shirley Hughes (94): cause not listed.
  • Melissa Mead (62): cause not listed.
  • Priscilla Tolkien (92): “after a brief illness.”
  • Aiki Flinthart (unknown): “after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis.”

MAY 2022

  • Robert C. Cornett (69): cause not listed.
  • Bill Johnson (65): cause not listed.
  • Valerio Evangelisti (69): cause not listed.
  • Joel Houssin (68): “after a long battle with MS.”
  • Carlos Emilio C. Lima (65): “from an infection following surgery.”
  • Lygia Fagundes Telles (98-103): cause not listed.

JUN 2022

  • Patricia A. McKillip (74): cause not listed.
  • Sergey Dyachenko (77): cause not listed.

JUL 2022

  • Ken Kelly (76): cause not listed.

AUG 2022

  • Eric Flint (75): cause not listed.
  • Geoffrey H. Goodwin (50): “of heart failure.”
  • Dorothy J. Heydt (80): cause not listed.
  • Barbara Haldeman (Barbara Delaplace) (69): cause not listed.
  • Jonathan Lyons (52): “succumbed to injuries after being mugged.”

SEP 2022

  • Nichelle Nichols (89): “of heart failure.”
  • Alexei Panshin (82): cause not listed.
  • Robert “Bob” Self (55): “as the result of an accident.”
  • Wayn McCalla (53): “following a long illness.”
  • Roland J. Green (76): cause not listed.

OCT 2022

  • Peter Straub (79): “after a long illness.”
  • Bruce Taylor (75): “after a brief hospital stay. He had a heart condition and was in poor health recently.”
  • Maureen Kincaid Speller (63): “she had cancer.”
  • J.G. “Huck” Huckenpohler (81): cause not listed.

NOV 2022

  • Robert A. Madle (102): “died peacefully in his sleep.”
  • Albert E. Cowdrey (88): cause not listed.
  • Hilary Mantel (70): cause not listed.
  • Matthew Mather (52): “died suddenly.”
  • Lani Forbes (35): “of neuroendocrine cancer.”

DEC 2022

  • Tom Maddox (77): “of a stroke.”
  • Martin Morse Wooster (64): “the victim of a hit-and-run.”
  • Jill Pinkwater (81): cause not listed.
  • Sue Strong Hassler (84): “of complications from back surgery and COVID.”
  • Anne Fakhouri (48): “following a long illness.”
  • Justin E.A. Busch (63): cause not listed.
  • Ned Dameron (79): “of ALS.”

JAN 2023

  • Greg Bear (71): “after complications from heart surgery.”
  • Anne Harris (58): “after suffering a stroke.”
  • Marcus Sedgwick (54): “died unexpectedly.”

To be clear, there may be benign explanations for many or even most of the people whose names are bolded. Strokes and heart attacks have been killing people long before the covid “vaccines” existed, and continue to kill people without any help from the “vaccines.” Also, many people who died under 70 may simply have been in poor health—after all, it’s not like the SF field is known for robust physical fitness. However, there may also be people on this list who did die of vaccine-related issues, whose names I did not bold because they were over 70 and the cause wasn’t listed. So it cuts both ways.

My purpose is not to compile a comprehensive list of vaccine-related deaths in the SF field, but to point out some deaths that appear to be suspect. And of the 114 people listed, more of them “died unexpectedly” or “died suddenly” than died of covid, which is worth noting.

If you haven’t seen the documentary Died Suddenly, it’s worth watching, even though it does have some flaws. Most notably, toward the end it recycles some disturbing footage of people who either did not die, or who died before the pandemic, implying that they all died of the vaccines. You can find a much more in-depth and non-sensational treatment of vaccine-related deaths and injuries on Chris Martenson’s channel, especially in this video where he interviews several morticians about the clotting issue:

Vaccine safety is a very serious issue, and every day, it seems that we are learning new things about the covid “vaccines” that call into question all of our assumptions and beliefs. The science fiction field has always leaned to the political left, especially on the traditional publishing side. For the past two years, many of our conventions and other events have pushed mask mandates, or required proof of vaccination, including our own LTUE here in Utah.

Has this lockstep, unquestioning, and at times almost militant advocacy of the establishment narrative led to the tragic loss of several writers and artists before their time? Has it decimated—indeed, is it continuing to decimate—the talented creators in our field? How many wonderful stories will never be written because of this? How many voices will no longer be heard?

I hope that we can come to a place where we can honestly start asking these questions. Because if we can’t, then the science fiction and fantasy field has lost much more than those who have died, and the gifts they would have shared with us.

Reading Resolution Update: After Action Report

My 2022 reading resolution: Read or DNF every novel that has won a Hugo or a Nebula award, and acquire all the good ones.

Earlier this month, I finished my last Hugo/Nebula book and ordered the last two ones that I hadn’t yet acquired. The first of those (Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin) arrived just this morning, and the other one (Way Station by Clifford D. Simak) is supposed to arrive next week, so I think that now is a good time to do a retrospective and share some of my thoughts.

There were 104 books in total, including the most recent award winners (I decided not to count the retro-Hugos midway through the year). Of those, I’ve read 35 through from start to finish, and decided that 24 were worth keeping. The rest of them (69, or almost exactly two thirds) I DNFed.

Finishing one in three books is actually about on par for me. I’ve found that if I don’t allow myself to DNF books early and often, I just don’t read. Also, it doesn’t really surprise me that nearly one third of the books I read all the way through didn’t really impress me. What can I say—I’ve a very opinionated man.

Of the 28 books that have won both a Hugo and a Nebula, I finished 12 (or about two-fifths) and found that eight (or a little over a quarter) were worth keeping. So not much different than the overall totals.

Of the 45 books that won only a Hugo, I finished 18 (exactly two-fifths) and found that 14 (about a third) were worth keeping. So my personal taste seems to be tilted more toward the Hugo than the Nebula. The difference becomes even more stark when you take out the 20 books that were nominated for (but did not win) a Nebula, a whopping 16 of which I DNFed. Excluding those, we’re left with 25 books, 14 (or more than half) of which I finished, and 11 (or just under half) I thought were worth keeping.

The contrast becomes even sharper when we look at the Nebula-only winners. Out of the 31 books that didn’t win a Hugo but did win the Nebula, I finished only five (less than one-sixth) and found that only two were worth keeping. Both of those were books that weren’t even nominated for the Hugo. When we look at the 16 Nebula-winners that were nominated for a Hugo but didn’t win, I finished only two of them (one-eight) and didn’t think that any of them were worth keeping.

So the best predictor that I wouldn’t like a book is if it won a Nebula and was nominated for a Hugo, but didn’t win. In other words, if the SFWA crowd (which is mostly authors) said “this is the best novel published this year!” and the denizens of Worldcon said “yeah… no,” that almost guaranteed I would hate it. In fact, just getting nominated for a Nebula is enough to make a book suspect.

This is why, earlier in the year, I posited the theory that SFWA has done more to ruin science fiction than any other organization. I saw this trend coming all the way back in the spring, when I was only halfway through the reading list. In the early years, SFWA was all about politicizing science fiction, and in the last few years, it’s basically turned into a nasty bunch of mean girls all trying to get a Nebula for themselves.

I tracked a few other awards just to see if there were any correlations. For the 18 books that placed in any category in the Goodreads Awards, there were only four books that I finished and two that I thought were worth keeping. Network Effect by Martha Wells received 22,971 votes in the Science Fiction category in 2020, which came to 9.69%. Blackout by Connie Willis gained only 337 votes in 2010, but that was 9.19% back then. Both of those books were keepers. The only other book that got a higher percentage for its year was Redshirts by John Scalzi, with 4,618 votes at 10.82%, but I DNFed that one. Most Hugo/Nebula winning books didn’t even clear the 5% threshold in the Goodreads Choice Awards, and in my experience anything under 10% that doesn’t immediately jump out to me probably isn’t worth reading.

Of the six Hugo/Nebula books that were nominated for a Dragon Award, the only one I even really finished was Network Effect by Martha Wells. But that makes sense, since it’s no great secret that the Hugo/Nebula crowd is trying to sabotage the Dragons by pulling exactly the same shenanigans that they accused the Sad Puppies of doing. Accusation is projection is confession, after all. As of 2022, there has never been a Hugo/Nebula winning book that has also won a Dragon, and while part of me hopes that it stays that way, another part of me is very curious to read the first book that does.

Almost all of the 104 Hugo/Nebula winning books placed somewhere in the various Locus recommended reading lists, which isn’t surprising since those lists are generally regarded as feeders for the Hugos and Nebulas (and used to get more people voting in them, too). Of the seven books that weren’t on a Locus list, the only one I finished was They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, which also has the distinction of being the most difficult book to find.

(A lot of people think They’d Rather Be Right was the worst book to ever win a Hugo, but I actually enjoyed it. Unlike most Hugo/Nebula books, it was remarkably anti-Malthusian, which is probably why it’s so hated. As for the worst book to ever win a Hugo, I personally grant that distinction to Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre.)

There were only ten Hugo/Nebula books that won or were nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and I only finished two of them (and didn’t think either were worth keeping). Perhaps that means that makes it the actual best predictor that I’ll hate a book, but ten is a pretty small sample size, so I’m holding off judgment for now.

The best two decades for me were the 50s (7 books, 4 keepers) and the 00s (16 books, 6 keepers), though the 80s came in close with five keepers out of sixteen books—and let’s be honest, Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis are basically two halves of the same book. In contrast, the worst two decades were the 70s (only one keeper out of 13 total books) and the most recent decade, the 10s (15 books, 2 keepers).

So far, the 20s aren’t shaping up to be much better. In fact, I think it’s entirely fair to say that given the state of fandom since the election of President Trump (and the general state of insanity in this post-Trump era), a Hugo or a Nebula should count as a mark against a book, rather than for it. That is, the primary value of these awards is to tell you which books to avoid. Perhaps this will change at some point in the future, like it did after the madness of the 70s or the malaise of the 90s (not a good decade for science fiction, apart from books published by Baen), but I’m not holding my breath.

So that was my reading resolution for 2022. If I hadn’t allowed myself to DNF, I can guarantee that I never would have accomplished it. As it stands, though, I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out.

What sort of reading resolution should I set for 2023?

Bowing Out

Back at the end of August, I blogged about how I was going to do a writing challenge in September to produce more short stories to fill out my publishing queue. At the time, I had a couple of stories that looked like they were going to be picked up by one of the major magazines: the editor had expressed interest in buying them, and we were going back and forth with an editorial discussion about the series.

Well, to make a long story short, all of that fell through, and it looks like I’ll be self-publishing those stories after all. I’m not really sure what changed, but to give you an idea of what kind of a short story market this is, it’s been around for decades and regularly gets written up in Locus Magazine’s year-in-review. The editor said that things had gotten crazy on his end, then didn’t respond for about a month, and when I sent a polite followup email asking for an update on the status, he gave me the standard “I’m going to pass on this one, but send me your next story.” Which strikes me as kind of weird, given how our previous correspondence led me to believe that the contract was just a formality and he’d be sending one over soon, but whatever.

So now that these stories are back in the publishing queue, I no longer need to write a bunch more to fill it out. In fact, I’ve actually got enough stories to publish one a month through next April, and after I finish the third Christopher Columbus story, I’ll have enough to get through June (one of my older stories comes out of exclusivity in May 2023). Here is the schedule as of right now:

  • OCT 2022: “Blight of Empire”
  • NOV 2022: “Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter”
  • DEC 2022: “The Freedom of Second Chances”
  • JAN 2023: “The Body Tax” (needs to be revised, but it’s already been workshopped)
  • FEB 2023: “Christopher Columbus, Treasure Hunter”
  • MAR 2023: “The Library of Fate”
  • APR 2023: “Hunter, Lover, Cyborg, Slave” (needs to be workshopped and revised)
  • MAY 2023: “Christopher Columbus, Wormhole Mechanic” (partially written, needs to be finished)
  • JUN 2023: “In the Beginning” (still under exclusivity, though I got a special exception to publish it in my third short story collection, The Stars Our Destination.)

Given that I have enough stories to fill out the next nine months, I’m going to bow out of the September Shorts challenge. This is really good for two reasons: first, it allows me to focus more attention on my current novel WIP, the sequel to Star Wanderers; and second, because I’ve fallen really behind on the Zedekiah Wight stories for my J.M. Wight pen name, and this should give me some space to work on the next few of those.

So that’s the plan: refocus on Children of the Starry Sea and work on Zedekiah Wight stuff on the side.

2020-02-06 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the February 6th edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.

It has been an eventful week in American politics. Impeachment, State of the Union, Iowa Caucuses… don’t worry, I’m not going to go off on a rant about politics (much as I’m tempted to do so). I recognize that of the three main factions that exist in the United States—Team Red, Team Blue, and Team “I don’t want to talk about politics”—the vast majority of my readers belong to the latter. That probably includes you.

I wonder sometimes about the rest of the science fiction community, though. I read Locus Magazine each month, and while I think the editors generally do a good job of allowing all their contributors to offer their own views, you can hardly turn the page sometimes without an underhanded jab or a snide remark at the people on Team Red. Most of the time, they don’t seem to even realize that they’re doing it.

Does the science fiction genre rightly belong to the people who hold the “correct” political views? Should it? I don’t think so. If science fiction is truly the genre of ideas, then there needs to be a place in the genre for all ideas, even the really bad ones. Why? Because eventually, the people who decide which ideas are good or bad will be the absolute worst people to do so, if we give them that power.

That’s why I still read Locus Magazine, and why I’m still subscribed to all the SF&F short story podcasts (even if I don’t always listen to them). There was a real stinker of a story by N.K. Jemisin on Lightspeed last month: a barely disguised political screed arguing that tolerance is not enough, that free speech shouldn’t be a right, and that “some people are just fucking evil.” I didn’t finish that one. However, Lightspeed has put out some really tremendous stories in the past, and I’m sure they will again in the future.

Is this a frustration that you’ve had with some of the other authors you read? Do you ever feel that they, like many of our politicians, just aren’t listening to you? I think the main reason for all of the outrage in our politics these days is that everyone wants to talk and no one wants to listen. From what I can tell, that’s not just true in the United States, but in Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Hong Kong—pretty much everywhere else as well.

When I was in the Boy Scouts, I did a team-building ropes course during summer camp one year. One of the obstacles took us forever because everyone was screaming at everyone else, telling them what to do. For the next obstacle, our coach told us that the only people who could speak were the ones who had said nothing in the previous obstacle. I thought that we were going to fail. Instead, the quiet kids figured it out faster than any of the rest of us, and with their direction we were able to finish the course faster than I thought possible.

That experience taught me that it’s just as important to listen as it is to speak. Often, even more so. One of the reasons I deleted my social media was because I felt that I was becoming addicted to hearing myself speak, and consciously or not, surrounding myself with people who enabled that addiction.

If science fiction is truly the genre of ideas, then the best way to defeat the bad ideas isn’t to silence or cancel them, but to push them out with better ideas. As for the people who are “just fucking evil,” the best way to deal with that is to take a good, hard look in the mirror. That’s what I try to do. I just wish our politicians would do the same.

2019-11-14 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the November 14th edition of my author newsletter. To subscribe to my newsletter, click here.

So the latest controversy in SF&F fandom is the stripping of John Campbell’s name from the Campbell Award. The latest issue of Locus magazine has an op-ed from Cory Doctorow defending that decision, and it was so deserving of a fisking that I went ahead and fisked it myself. You can find it on my blog.

That said, I do think there were some good things in Doctorow’s piece. The message in the second half of the article, that people are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and that we should learn from our misdeeds and set them right, is a message that I think we really need to hear, especially in today’s cancel culture that defines everyone by the worst thing they’ve ever said or done.

However, the good parts of the article are completely contradicted by the bad parts, where Doctorow argues that Campbell’s entire legacy is tainted and therefore needs to be cancelled. He also (surprise surprise) brings up the Sad Puppies and calls us all “white nationalists,” “Nazis,” and “the misogynist/white supremacist wing of SF.”

It’s not that I want to defend Campbell’s sexism and racism. I’m sure he had many odious views. I could even be convinced that it’s appropriate to retire the Campbell Award and replace it with something else, similar to moving offensive Confederate statues out of the public square and into museums instead.

The problem is that Campbell’s detractors are just as odious in their worldviews as he was, if not more so. When accusing someone of being “male” and “white” is enough to get them cancelled, how can that be anything but sexist and racist?

Which brings me to the ugly parts of the article: the naked hypocrisy. Doctorow stops just short of calling for the digital equivalent of a book burning, but he left me with the impression that he’d be the first to light the match. I don’t think that’s a misread either, because of this line:

Campbell’s impact on our field will never be truly extinquished (alas), but

Yep. And all the moderates, conservatives, libertarians, and old-school liberals in the field are part of the “misogynist/white supremacist wing of SF” too. Who’s the fascist again?

That’s about as far into politics as I care to go. I know you probably aren’t into science fiction for the politics, but if you want to read a more detailed fisking of this ridiculous article, you can find it on my blog. In the meantime, I’ll be back to more important things, like writing.