VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Vox Day Interview (by Nick Meniscus)

COUNTER-GUESTPOST!!! "Screw you, Meniscus; Science Fiction is about MEN!!!" by Randy Midiclorean

 (That guest post on sexism in SF by Nick Meniscus caused quite the online furor, so much so I had to delete almost all the comments for fear of libels and looking a bit like Twitter.

One of the commenters demanded the right to counter-post and, although Spool Pidgin does not necessarily agree with his opinions, balance has to be observed (he also funded our kickstarter, so...). 




Seriously, answer me:  have you ever seen a space rocket that looks like a vagina? Nope, didn't think so...


Space rockets are a thing that exemplifies another thing:  Science Fiction (in the fiction-writing game we call this a metaphor. You're welcome). Space rockets look like they do (and, by extension, science fiction) because MEN MADE THEM. Men with slide-rules and tweed suits that gently smelled of pipe tobacco.


Men that Mr Nick Meniscus can never hope to live up to. Meniscus is that wretchedest of beasts; a woman-servile 'new man' gamma male who thinks you CAN get to the moon in a labia-plated capsule, or that the complex problems of the cold war could have been solved by firing diaphragms at Moscow. Too busy fussing over his 'inner child' to ever return call his inner-Burt Reynolds. Sickening.


Listen to me, Meniscus you limey jackrag-  women were never meant to strut about the SFnal domain, period. It is a literature of male concerns, male problems, like how to convince tri-brained arachnids not to invade earth (The answer is lasers). To allow women to do so is akin to allowing them to walk into that place only Paul Mau'dib--Dune's Quizatch Hadderack--can freely enter, and I don't think even YOU want a space messiah with tits.

Or DO you?

Randi Midiclorean's latest graphic novel.

Don't get me wrong, women are human too (In much the same way Diet Fanta is still part of the Coca-cola family), but when God devised evolution some 6000 years ago, he mandated females maintain the cave's hearth, clean its kitchenette and bear children. Their brains are not suited for hamstringing mammoths or planning space opera trilogies. More likely they'll foot massage the mammoth and douse the publishing contract in potpourri. That's science. Evo-psych science (You'll find it in Leviticus).


I tell you, everything's gone to France (That's one worse than hell). In the last decade alone, the percentage of men (OK, white men) writing SF professionally has dropped from 94.23% to a woeful 92.64%.


How far can this go? 75%?  65%?  Fifty percent?!?! How the hell is that representational?  What's that buzzing sound, you ask? I'll tell you:  C.L. Moore whirling in his grave!


But it's not all a wasteland full of asexual goblins like Nick Meniscus worshiping a cyber-titan Jane Fonda. At mine, Larry Correia and Vox Day's male-only writer's workshop, PhalluS-F, true SF soldiers on. We eat barbecue, crit stories and sniff each other's armpits so as to synchronize our testosterone. I hope, dear reader, it heartens you to picture that. Trust me: there's still hope, still time to turn back, which--for me--is the only way forward.


Ad Astra, brothers!


-Randy Midiclorean, author, has a Prometheus Awards and six cease and desist orders. 


Follow up here...

Kicking Against The Pricks: Thoughts On That Vox Day Troll Fiasco

"Come, my armies of light! Sally forth and attack Pidgin's Landing. With my unbridled genius, my athleticism and that mouse I designed that didn't sell very well because it had too many buttons, we shall soon overrun that most loathsome blog!"

"Oh..."

                                                                               *


'It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.'

-Acts 26: 14 (KJV)


Well, not really. These troll-surges aren't half as bad as people make out. You hear about some bloggers shutting down comment rolls, terminating their blog or even losing their minds. I feel for those people, truly, but I don't get 'em (Though I'd hazard it's the repetition that ultimately snaps them. Trolls are a one note bunch. Or the racism and misogyny, of course:  I'm lucky there). For me it's fun. A breeze. A piece of piss as we say in Limeyland.

Which is phrase that links well to Vox Day. For some reason that previous post where I questioned the very existence of his wife stuck in his craw. He sharted about it on his 'Alpha Game' website (An 'alpha-male' development project that's best understood as a kind of penis cult inside an echo chamber). Therein he defined me as a 'gamma male', which is funny, because I swiftly became Chuck Heston in The Omega Man as his gormless followers descended on Spool Pidgin.

I'd like to tell you it was a tough, valiant battle but it was more a pull-the-trigger-with-left-hand-smoke-with-the-right Somme-type affair.

The first wave had no comprehension of irony or satire and were thus tragically cut down in their knicker-sniffing prime. Second wave realized  they should at least pretend to understand irony and satire and still got cut down. The third wave was more of a trickle by then, one that had no option but to criticize my weight and writing ability. This, readers take note, is the troll equivalent of boys and old men being sent out into the breach with rifles made in 1892. The last push. Not pretty.

Not that any of this should surprise us. Men who wish to become alpha males by taking instruction from another male aren't exactly brimming with self-awareness or wit. But all trolls, in my experience, are irony-vacuums, whatever their political stripe (If you ever find yourself in an Antarctic base with six other people, one of whom you suspect is a troll, just stick that episode of Brass Eye in the DVD player and see what happens). Your righteous fury can only ever feed trolls. Absurdity castrates them.

Oh, come on. I'm allowed to be a little smug...


                                                                            *


One troll explained that Vox Day resides in Italy these days. I nearly spat my cornflakes out with laughter. Daily, the Great Leader spouts about the Hispanic onslaught on America or the liberal junta crushing it from above and his readers swallow it whole. But he's not even there. He ran away. Much like Oswald Moseley (Britain's would-be fascist dictator whom Day oddly mirrors in character and appearance, sans 'tache) who scarpered to Paris, Day would probably counter this humdinger with 'You can't clean a dunghill while under it'. And, like Moseley, we can all sit back and giggle at the man's hypocrisy, which is only exceeded by his megalomania.

"So you wanna be an alpha male, huh? First you gotta get y'rself a rad black shirt. Then you gotta pose like someone out of Color Me Bad. Hey, no laughing at the back! The nineties ruled, scumbags!"

But I ask you; what happened to this man's galaxy-sized intellect he insists on telling us about? He thought, and still thinks, that I actually believe his wife doesn't exist. I guess his unquestioning belief in his own abilities sent him arse-over-tits with that one. It rendered the last paragraph of my post--where I reveal my conspiracy theory uses the same spurious, cherry-picking, confirmation-biased methodology as his daily dribblings--totally invisible.

(There was that photo of me breaking into 'his house' too. Didn't that set something off on his radar?)

But I shouldn't be all that gobsmacked. Most people, after all, know him as that dupe who thought John Scalzi was actually admitting to being a serial rapist.*


(*Then he added an extra two paragraphs to cover his ass, hoping no one would notice. See here.)


                                                                      *


Let's give the shit his due. Vox Day is highly capable at debating, as he repeatedly tell us. In his anti-atheist polemic, for instance, he's savvy enough to quickly dispense with the old 'atheists don't get theology' argument like the polystyrene fort it is. In all honesty I'd put money on him instead of me in a face-to-face debate.

Yet his tactical nous is scuppered by his being strategically flawed. His very worldview hamstrings him. You could be a modern day Demosthenes, but if you're seriously refuting a century and a half of evolutionary evidence you may as well be Stan Laurel.

Put simply, his beliefs constrain his understanding. With evolution this becomes painfully clear, even to a dunce like me. For instance, Day is under the impression some species are 'more' evolved than others (a misapprehension rooted in his racism, perhaps), and that the Coelacanth has somehow ceased evolving merely because its physical appearance hasn't changed. Any Cnut (No, not a spelling error, I promise) wishing to turn back science's tides surely has to be better informed than that.
 
Another example is his belief the Enlightenment was satanically informed. Well, in that case, good for Old Nick: the weight of evidence suggests a marked downturn in human violence from the Enlightenment onwards. Of course, that we should place any value in the words of a man who believes a supernatural being taints the affairs of humanity in defiance of the will of an omnipotent god is itself a good question. 

Whenever I read a Vox Day post I think of a fly trapped in an upturned cup, the cup being the self-oppressing nature of his own ridiculous and outdated worldview. The fly spins around and around at incredible speeds, often pulling some dazzling aeronautics, but never gaining enough momentum to smash its way out.

Or, to put it another way, he may call us to his potty to show us a turd that resembles Michelangelo's David, but it IS still a turd.


                                                                        *


I have regrets, serious doubts actually, about dragging his wife into it. She is, ultimately, a real life human being who never did me any wrong (That said, I hope against hope that she is a product of his mania; Vox Day refuses to believe in marital rape, and so one has to logically assume he has no moral qualms with sexual assault as long as the paperwork's kosher). 

Mostly, though, I shouldn't have brought her good looks--or otherwise, were that the case--into it. Two bickering heterosexual male bloggers always seem to end up doing that.  I could argue 'Well HE started it', but that's no reason to copy the dick is it? Besides, you're a blog reader, not me and Vox's dinnerlady. So apologies for that ugly bout of objectification. High time I got on board the good ship 21st century.

Vox Day would probably tell you that last paragraph is quintessential 'gamma man'. He always says that sort of thing after the fact, of course. I don't know why he doesn't just write out a comprehensive list of all Gamma man's attributes and thus save himself a lot of bother. 

This is how Vox Day dresses when he blogs. Note terrified eyes as he searches the horizon for N.K. Jemisin piloting a Blitzspear. (Sorry; one for the 2000 AD fans)

So, yes:  I doubt. And Vox Day never does. Neither do all his cronies who left steaming lumps of brainwrong in my comment lounge. White, male and well-off (Day's dad was a millionaire CEO; how else do you think Day can lounge about in Italy or fritter cash on a gaming mouse no one wants?) they are unaccustomed to it. They all found a slipshod and superficial philosophy that fits them comfortably and saw no reason to explore beyond it because that would require actual work. They don't even see any of that as a weakness.

Still, we can all take heart in this thought:  Once, centuries past, men like Vox Day and his followers ruled the world unquestioned. Nowadays they are reduced to barking--uselessly--at nobodies like me. 



 

Vox Day Round-Up: Schrodinger's Spacebunny

 Narcissistic, nineties-obsessed, corpse-in-waiting Vox Day has--all you SF snark-watchers will no doubt have noticed by now--exceeded himself this time, racially insulting author and fully-rounded adult N K Jemisin in scenes reminiscent of a cage-humping baboon howling itself to climax.

Greater minds than mine have commented already, though I will note that, for someone so creationist and anti-evolutionist (I suspect he has a personal stake in the latter) Day is surprisingly quick to wheel out Neanderthals as proof of his racist (and scientifically selective) theories. As ever, science is but a Chinese buffet to libertarians.

(Except, as the Waffenwonder says here, not a jot of his bile was racist. Vox Day tip: if you say something racist but don't SAY it's racist the PC brigade can't touch you. Not a bloody leg to stand on, mate. Go on; try it in your daily life!)

Oops, but I digress...

All this hideousness provoked me into ad hoc research (ie: cyber-stalking). I noticed Vox Day has a wife he refers to as--not Brunhilda, surprisingly--but 'Spacebunny'. Spacebunny. Yup.

Wanna see a picture?

Oh, don't look at me like that. Day posted this picture on his own blog in a noble attempt to prove his wife was more of a 'hottie' than some other fantasy writer's (rumor has it if you've the hottest wife of all they hand you a Nebula award).

To recap, Spacebunny is married to this:

Intrigued, I typed Vox Day and Spacebunny into Google images, in the hope of finding a photo of them together so I might produce a set of commemorative plates in the style of HRH Charles and Diana. No such photo emerged. So I tried 'Vox Day wife'. Same again.

Then I noted another odd thing: both times the same old photo of Spacebunny emerged. In fact it appeared to be the only photo of the woman. A professionally-taken modelling photo apparently. Hmm...

She has a life outside Vox Day (as do we all, thank Baal's balls). Check her (locked, 50- followers) Twitter account:

Note her photo.

And a Pinterest account with absolutely no personal or personally-taken photos, exceppppt:

She sometimes emerges from her star-warren to have a go at people too. See this meme someone made about her antics:

It suggests an almost identical argumentative style as Vox Day's. And... what's this? Whoever made it used THAT photo. Like they even had a choice...

(At this juncture, one might also ask how someone so clearly camera-cozy appears on no other photo with a name to it?)

Just to be thorough, I then acquired Day's address, caught a Delta Airways flight and negotiated with his front door. Still no evidence. No one was home, not even in the safe behind his signed and framed Charles And Eddie tour poster.

Faster than one can say 'elaborate sock-puppet', I'll bet you're ahead of me on this.

"But," I hear you cry (actually, I don't hear you; it's just a cliched figure of speech) "why would Vox Day lie about having a classically attractive significant other? Why go to such lengths? And how can you possibly hear me, sat as I am by my computer on a whole other continent?"

Well, I'm not saying that. Not even slightly, not even in the face of the fact Vox Day has a reputation for manufacturing sock puppets and fake reviews.

But... hypothetically... why might he?

As well as his stodgy fantasy novels and by-the-numbers critiques of atheism, Mr Day has leaped on the 'game' cashcow-cum-bandwagon:  a burgeoning and lucrative business where some superficially charismatic, rohypnol-rattling 'dude' teaches us lesser men how to 'man up' and 'score perfect-ten chicks'

But--again, hypothetically--what if an 'alpha dude' had no 'perfect-ten chick'? Why, that'd be humiliating! But would he just stare into the mirror and consider oblivion? Heck no! He's the alpha-dude! He'd either go out and 'score' a dazzler or--and, boy, this is an uncharitable thought--construct a false inamorata with her own Twitter account and everything. Oh, and give her a name like 'Spacebunny' because a proper name might be checked.

Anyhoo...

Before Vox Day's minions (real and sockpuppety) pop up in here to burn me alive in a wicker model of their leader's phallus, I should add this post is no less spurious, cherry-picked and unscientific as anything on Vox Day's blog. Bullshit, it's technically called. But if Vox Day can say NK Jemesin isn't fully human, then I can say Vox Day's wife doesn't even fucking exist.

Follow up post here:  http://jamesworrad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/kicking-against-pricks-thoughts-on-that.html?m

"You know, darling... I never did get what that last paragraph of Worrad's was about."

"Screw him, Ted. We have us. And Jesus. Jesus with a flaming broadsword."

Cliche Round Up: SFWA Bulletin Sexism Debate

The Love Wizard greets our photographer

 Long time spool readers (yes they DO exist. Shut up) will recall a post I did on the hapless cliches and general bullshit of the SF-lit blog community. I thought it might be a good (and popular, community-bridging) exercise to go back and check up on the state of the arse. And where better than the latest flame-war, the first casualty of which is almost always the English language.

It all began when the SFWA allowed their member's bulletin to house that golden, model T-ford of all SF fandom cliche: two hairy-belled, sweaty veteran male authors discussing women editors as sexual objects. Legendary rocketship qwertybangers, Mike 'The Love Wizard' Resnick and Barry 'Wingman' Malzberg lent us insight into the industry-as-was:

"Anyone who's seen photos of Bea from the 50s knows she was a knockout as a young woman."

And:

"During its first few years of existence CFG was populated exclusively by men. Then Bea joined. Then the members' wives got a look at Bea in her swimsuit at the 1950 Midwestcon. Then the club's makeup changed to the 50% men and 50% women that has existed ever since."

And:

"Let me tell ya, Mary Shelley was quite the piece of  ass. I was trying to give her some insight into the industry and Malzberg here--you dog!--wanted to give her insight into the industry four times a night! Wasn't to be though. Guess who got all preachy? Yup, H.G. Wells, cock-blocking us again...'

OK, maybe I made that last one up. But I'm not a member of the SFWA and I don't have a copy of the bulletin to hand. I'm told Love Wizard and Wingman refuse to put anything on the net, due to it being filled with 'Darn Lesbian Nosferatu'.

And so it came as a genuine shock to the boys and the SFWA (who tried to balance the piece with a cover of a barbarian woman in a chain-mail bikini) when people chided them for their old-time attitudes. Old hands at the game, they seized this opportunity to unleash the Ur-cliche of all those under critical fire:

 In case of emergency, smash the glass and grab the Stalin analogy. Warning: may contain hyperbole.

                                                                             *


Would a brave and reasoning knight come defend them? Well, until he arrives, Resnick and Malzberg will have to make do with ol' racist, sexist, nineties-fixated, face-like-a-hen's-egg-filled-with-tepid-vomit Vox Day in this, his sober and level-headed post, 'Seriously Fascist Women's Association'.

Day cut and pasted a long list of "the most censorious liberal fascists in the SFWA". Day (who never ceases to inform us he is  'highly intelligent... and can still out-sprint most men 15 years younger') doesn't cosplay all that much. But when he does, he does so as Senator McCarthy.

Eager for the cliche crown, Day finishes off by dropping some Tea Party beats into his general rabies: 

"It shouldn't be long before all criticism of  the Obama administration are banned in the SFWA Forum."

Hell yeah. Have you seen Barrack in a two piece? Bea ain't got shit on him.


A writer pal of Day's (using Morse code from her bunker) adds:  "And they have no memory of the past and want to erase it (Spool note: Say whu-?).  Which is why by keeping alive the memory of SF, Mike and Barry MUST be silenced."

 That's Sarah Hoyt, who later, (and presumably smoking Ayn Rand's ashes through a Prometheus award) has this to say about the critics:  "Maybe they feel inadequate compared to the giant women of the past, who made it big despite working in offices where pinching your secretary’s bottom wasn’t out of line."

Well, in fairness, they were Giant women, Sarah. They were probably more concerned with getting their husbands out of that oven two lost children tricked them into with magic beans.

Here, clearly, is a woman of, er, real nuance when it comes to gender politics:  

"(These people are) the sort of person who thinks “because I have a vagina is a winning argument in every circumstance, instead of just the trump card on an argument with your significant other on who is going to do the dishes."

Or how about some classic pseudolution cliche? "Women don’t like confrontations.  I think this is evolutionary, baked in the cake from when the pregnant female needed the help of the band.  Women are likely to go around, give hints, and try to solve the problem by other means. "

Not only does Hoyt achieve pseudolutionary cliche nirvana here, she does so while suffering a bout of amnesia as to the very character of  the people she was originally criticizing. Maybe, like she said,  Hoyt has no memory of the past and wants to erase it.

More Hoyt wisdom: "You want to compete?  You have a dream of making it in science fiction?  Then shut up and write.  And stop being convinced everyone is making you a victim because you have a vagina."

(On a personal note, this is singularly the best writing advice I've ever received. I've really no excuse now)

A Sarah Hoyt cover. Note the man is being patriotic and thus has no time to pinch your ass. Deal with it, socialist!

                                                                        *

So the boys and their defenders owned all the classic cliche. But their young gun critics delivered in terms of faddish, seasonal banalities.

*headdesk* and 'Teh' (as in 'the') were inevitable. I've long made my peace with that. Death and taxes etc.

Some cliches, though, seem to have mercifully gone extinct. No one, for instance, accused anyone of 'showing his/her/your ass', a chestnut that ran rampant across 2010's #Racefail. More shockingly, 'fail' (used as a noun) only appeared a measly three times, thank Baal.  The curse may be lifting. There was only one elephant in a particularly lonely room, too.

'Douchebaggery' (ie nasty, idiotic behavior), however, had a good run, in line with its current popularity. SL Huang led with: 'They’re the people who made your public face into sexist douchebaggery.' Not literally of course; that would require Resnick and Malzberg squirting cold water into their rectal cavities and firing it out into a rough portrait of, you, the reader, onto a stretched canvas (something Huang noticeably provides no photographic evidence for).

But by far and away the most overused, gawdawful, help-itself-to-your-reading-tolerence's-last-loo-roll, stock phrase was 'Old men yelling at clouds', a homage (or 'rip off') of a Simpsons episode. Reflected humor is a beautiful thing, here allowing critics to pound two chauvinists with a lump of ageism.  

 I bumped into it reeeepeatedly while searching. Oh yes. A Trick Of Light blog is typical of the genre:

 These Old White Men start yelling at clouds and suddenly (SFWA's) work doesn’t seem to count for anything. That’s not right. It’s not right on top of a whole pile of things that aren’t right.

 (readers will soon note there is indeed a pile of something alright, and FOX television want it back)

Angela Highland earned extra points for: "the same sort of cloud-yelling, cane-shaking, rampaging sexists that can’t deal with the notion of girl cooties all over their precious rocketship stories." with its ladling of emergent jejunette ‘girl cooties’ into the mix.

Girlie Jones painted us all a bleak, dystopian future:  “Old Men Yelling at Clouds” btw should become the actual term for this stuff". Clearly a boot in the face of humanity forever. Or maybe that should be an old sock.

Not satisfied with letting this phrases’s once-lighthearted corpse hang from its gallows, Roqoo depot accompanied his blog post, Old Men Yelling At Clouds, with a most amusing ‘meme’, press-ganging a popular photo-meme of Sean Bean in GOT with the popular meme caption ‘______ is/are coming’ (for this one insert ‘lady writers’). The idea being Mike Resnick is a bit like Sean Bean. A sexist Bean. Not Bean the man, Bean the Meme.

No, I think you'll find geeky, overused, continually-borrowed visual humor is coming. As bloody bastard always.

Y'know, It was actually a funny episode...

                                                                      *

Despite the progressives wide platter of faddish arse, I feel one has to come down on the side of the lady-lovin', cognac-sipping forces of sexist regression, who really pulled out all the stops to bring us classic mad men-era broad-analysis swiftly followed by perhaps the most pitiful attempt to duck and hide behind George Orwell's mustache yet known. None of yer modern tat, oh no! This stuff was old when Heinlein and DeCamp were scribbling Rice Burroughs fan fiction. You know that feeling of admiration mixed with pity you'd feel whenever they wheeled WWI veterans up to the cenotaph? Exactly that.

However, individually speaking, hats off to Foz Meadows, who nobly climbed over the hurdle of being morally right to bring us a startling piece of boilerplate, cliche-blistered 'snark' (as the kids call it. Well, by kids I mean 30+ year old people with a Wordpress account. Bloody Wordpress).

In--you guessed it--'Old Men Yelling At Clouds', the author deep-fries her words in that blog bromide people are want to call 'Fisking'. 'Fisking' is when you cut and paste someone else's article (here, Wizard and Wingman's aforementioned gyno-Stalin freak out) and then intersperse it with your own 'snark'.

The upshot? The blogger gets to think they're Jon Stewart. The reader has to amble through stodge. 'Fisking' is a boom industry in Blogland.

The prose is loyal to the hallowed traditions of both 'fisking' and the more frantic end of social justice-minded posts, in which the author asks a series of rhetorical questions. A series of rhetorical questions, understand? You hear me now, Resnick? A hotdamn series of rhetorical questions, the final clause of which is rendered in italics for hardly any reason?  

Nothing wrong with the structure then. Jobsagud'un. Check also: a warning about 'explosive ranting' (Call the bomb squad!), a '*headdesk*', a 'teh womenz', an inappropriate yet increasingly de rigeur rape analogy (other similes are available, viewers!) and another 'old men yelling at clouds', though Meadows nearly scuppers the deal in the same paragraph by flirting with originality.

(A non-cliche-related note, but there's a bit where she says a Resnick story about a true messiah materializing 50 years from now is 'debunking Judaism'. Now I'm no theologian (unless you count those 20 years I spent under the tutelage of Maimonades), but surely he'd be (notionally) debunking Christianity with that one? Am I missing something here? What if I wrote this last question in italics; would that help?)

A worthy winner. But it was neck and neck with many other contenders--both defensive and critical--and, ultimately, it was the taking part that counted. Probably. I'm sending a desk and some bandages to all entrants.


(Update: The curse continues! )

The Write Agenda Allies With Vox Day: Welcome To The Hotel Lowest Common Denominator.

The Write Agenda's Poster Campaign For Theodore Beale/ Vox Day

 You, er, couldn't make it up, as they say. Well, you could, but friends would say you're painting a very bleak picture.

As reported here last October, The Write Agenda are the fake publisher conman community's answer to having their racket strangulated by the information age. Before the internet it was simplicity itself to dazzle some novelist wannabe with a paper-mache 'publishing front' and then siphon them of cash and, in the process, hope. Nowadays, of course, the Rubes and Marks merely have to tinkle your company's name into a qwertyslab to see you're far from kosher. How's a villain s'posed to make a buck, huh?

The answer is to go on the offensive. Create a website full of 'concerned' but oddly faceless writers who attempt (the operative word here) to besmirch efforts like Writer Beware (headed by the wonderful Victoria Strauss); a group of publicly-minded individuals who have done much to depth-charge these wolf-ships of publishing into financial insolubility. To view the Agenda's site is actually oddly life-affirming. For once, it's the bad guys trying to Canute back the tides.

But with this latest move, King Canute has just belly-flopped into the brine. Anyone who visits here regularly or, indeed, keeps up with SF goings on online won't need me to tell them who Theodore Beale, aka 'Vox Day' is:  a mainly self-pubbed fantasy writer and Christian fundamentalist-creationist who believes that working women are more dangerous to society than rape, that they shouldn't vote, that they shouldn't be educated and that the brainless thugs who assaulted an Indian man living in Britain for thirty years will be 'the heroes of tomorrow'.

You'd think the only affection in existence for such a man would be located in the nerve endings of his own penis. BUT... here's The Write Agenda's endorsement of his presidential campaign for the SFWA:

"Theodore Beale is an agent of change, but this is not why we are endorsing him. We’re endorsing him because we have reviewed John Scalzi’s term as President (here, here, here and here) and we know the set of skills that one needs to succeed in the position. Simply put, Theodore Beale has them. He is the right person for the job. He has our vote, and if you are SFWA member, we hope that you will give him your vote as well. Beale is the “warrior scholar”  . . .  give him your vote!"

I'm not so much flabbergasted by The Write Agenda's crass leech-fest (few would be outside of Sesame Street) as reassured by their obvious stupidity. TWA's entire strategy depends upon being and owning the narrative. To be seen to own 'the narrative' requires a public image that's reasonable and balanced (OK, so their website's prose fails that requisite, but still...), something--and tell me if I'm out of line here--that is nigh-impossible when you support a 'warrior scholar' who thinks Hispanics should be expelled from the States and that humanity is very possibly 'divided into various subspecies'. 

At some point TWA dimly sensed this and attempted to defend Beale's racist, misogynist and anti-enlightenment ideals with this lone statement:

"Theodore Beale’s only crimes are that he writes controversial pieces and that he disagrees with John Scalzi. Being controversial is nothing new when it comes to past (or present) SFWA Presidents. Why is it such a big issue now?" 

(The author John Scalzi, you'll recall, is the outgoing Prez of the SFWA and shared enemy of both Vox Day and TWA (Go John!), due to the SFWA's links to Writer Beware)

Damn it, people! Why are you making such a big deal of a rape over work bias? Why a mountain out of a mere violent assault-lauding molehill? Get over yourselves, Puh-leease...

A moral vacuum makes for strange bedfellows it would seem (And I urge you not to compare Vox Day with TWA and fall into the easy pit of 'Well, he's a bigot but at least he's consistent'. He isn't. As this post shows, Day was happy to lick up to Scalzi when it suited his sales and equally happy to turn on his benefactor when that worked better).  The irony is, Vox Day would come down as hard, possibly harder, on the scammers TWA represent. Not from any moral imperative, I hasten to add, simply the fascist's need to be seen attacking a nebulous other whenever their administration begins to look weak before the masses. Which, if Day was ever allowed to rule the roost, would be quite-a-bleeding lot.

Anyway, I tweeted TWA and asked them why they are supporting a vocal white supremacist. I'll keep you posted, though I don't expect an answer. That would be too much like conviction.

Spot The Deference

“One final irony: I first ‘met’ Mr. John Scalzi when we were on opposite sides of an Internet flame-skirmish. I’ve since come to like and admire the man as well as his work, and we even happen to have a few things in common besides our SFWA membership." 


-Vox Day, from a Self-Promo-piece John Scalzi allowed him to write on his highly popular blog-site, Whatever, 2008



Must have been difficult for his Alpha Game, playing toad to a 'Gamma Rabbit'...

The Fight Against Vox Day: A Report From The Front

To the front they come. From the fields of literary spec-fic, from the factory floors of popular genre and the shop fronts of self-publishing. All of them united in their resolve to crush Vox Day and his online Jackboot-Johnnies.

Valiant fighters of The SFF Chronicles Forums Volunteers, 14th Division

"No, Mr Day," they say, these comrades in laptop and pen, "your machinations to become dictator of science fiction and fantasy shall not go unchecked. We draw a line here in the touchscreen sand."


This reporter can tell you that determination and solidarity are the watchwords here in the Twitter trenches. A profound sense of purpose imbues each man and woman as they prepare for the offensive (especially women, for 'Pox Day' would have them voiceless and churning out wereseal novels, such is his lily-livered and putrid 'Alpha Game').


Vox Day mistook us for 'Rabbit People', sending his running dog fifth columnist trolls into our innocent forums and comment rolls, but a brilliant counter-punch--masterminded by Field Marshall Elect Jonathan Scalzi--has left his lie-spewing mouth listing and silent.

Not for 'John' Scalzi to laze in a mansion sipping cognac whilst cajoling fascist troops unto LOL-soaked death! I can vouch that, only yesterday, I saw him come to the front with General James C. Hines.


There, to much cheering, the 'Old Man Warrior' saluted our efforts, handing out cigarettes, churitos and a cat with bacon taped to its flank. Before anyone knew, Scalzi had rolled up his sleeves to help muck out the cyber-latrines. All are equal here; can Mr Day's servile bullies say as much for their 'Great Leader'?


In this atmosphere of unquestioned siblinghood, it is surely inevitable the forces of decency and fair play shall win. But every person is needed, from Hugo award winner to humble SF/F fan. Will YOU stand idly by whilst the dogma of racist sexist dipshittery threatens our very freedoms?


REMEMBER:  IF YOU TOLERATE THIS THEN YOUR BLOG ROLL WILL BE NEXT!