You know the best part of the internet? The dirty work of the Left is done in the full light of day. You might not think that’s good, but allow me to explain.
When I first broke into publishing, my (I assure you well-intentioned) mentors told me that not only should I watch everything I said in public, not to give anyone the chance to create a rumor about me, but I also should immediately drop anyone who happened to seem to be on the outs, because I never knew why the publishers had dropped the person, and I didn’t want it splashing on me.
I probably don’t need to tell anyone that while I worried obsessively about the first, I never did the second. My friends were my friends, and even if I had no clue why they were being dropped, I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t know them. This has paid off, actually, because over time my friends have been the best asset to my career.
But in 2003 when I was dropped by Ace, a desert formed around me, and people I’d trusted as friends stopped talking to me.
Did they hear anything about me? Were there rumors flying? There was no way to know.
You could be banished to the hinterlands by rumors that made absolutely no sense and had nothing to do with reality. All it took was one person who disliked you or had reason to believe you were the wrong political color — and suddenly no one would talk to you.
There was no confronting your accusers.
In that sense, the Internet is a great boon to us, because now what the crazy Leftists do, they have to do in the full light of day.
We have yet another advantage, because today unless you’re a very old-fashioned writer, you no longer fear that your publisher will drop you because of an opinion you expressed, or an opinion your friends expected
Take, for instance, how Origins, a gaming con in Ohio that had invited my friend Larry Correia, one of my colleagues at Baen and a devoted gamer, to be guest of honor, today decided to uninvite him, less than a month from the con with this kind of vague patter.
Now, if you’re wondering what beliefs Larry could have that would offend a con… Yeah, I was puzzled by that too. Larry is a libertarian (note small l) who grew up poor as dirt in a California farm. His dad is an immigrant from Portugal. His books are pure fun. I figured perhaps the con was anti-fun. Or perhaps, Larry being anti-Stalin was a problem. Maybe the con was all in for the butcher of the steppes.
As it turns out, we were wrong. Well, not far wrong, as I’d almost bet that the people involved, if not actually warm-fuzzy about Stalin and cheering on the killing of the kulaks, think that he did more good than harm, and that seriously, all the kulaks needed to go because they were in the way of progress.
It turns out that little Miss Muffet below, took it upon herself to not only complain about Larry to the con, but also to brag about what she had done and what quick action she’d got.
For those not clued in to the science fiction field (and why should you be?), there was never any attempt to rig the voting for the Hugo award. The Sad Puppies movement, of which I was a member and Larry was the leader for two years, was a movement to bring back fun to science fiction and fantasy and have stuff that people want to read actually win the Hugo award. (Which is supposed to be a reader award.) We noticed that over the last several years, the award had gone to “literary” science fiction and fantasy, which frankly most fans don’t read, and we compiled a list, after fan suggestions (all of this in public), and then told people to consider reading the stories and voting for them if they liked them.
The establishment sf/f response to this was to humiliate our nominees, accuse us of vote rigging, and somehow get an article (later retracted when they realized they’d gone too far) in Entertainment Weekly, saying we wanted to prevent women and minorities from publishing science fiction. (And afterwards to pass an amendment to the voting rules that does in fact permit them to rig the voting.)
That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes. First, the “counsels” of the movement were Larry, Brad Torgersen, me, and our friends Amanda S. Green and Kate Paulk. Larry, Brad and I are traditionally published. We are writers. We have no say whatsoever in who gets published or not. Kate and Amanda are indie authors, who, again, have absolutely no say on who gets published or not.
The other side of the movement was headlined by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, of TOR books (TOR books get a lot of Hugo awards. A statistically disproportionate amount, you could say), who, with his coterie, is tied into a publisher and has some say in what gets published.
So, if we’d started a movement to keep people from being published, we’d do that… how? Second, the only white male in the bunch is Brad Torgersen, whose wife happens to be African-American (one of the low points of the whole thing was people accusing Brad of marrying to hide his racism. Yes, they’re that vile). Note also that all of us write women and characters of color (just in case they try to claim that’s what they meant) often in heroic roles. Oh, and according to the State Department, Larry and I are Latin, since we’re Portuguese.
But this special snowflake had “heard” something about us wanting to keep women and people of color from fiction, and without so much as pausing to think headed out to do the dirty deed.
And people just as idiotic as her supported her mentally vacuous act of malice.
Ten years ago this would have been impossible to prove. No one would know who had decided to disinvite Larry or why. The rumors would keep spreading, and it would keep getting worse. It would be whispered in the dark, people would shy away from Larry, and it would spread like a blight upon his career.
Now we see the nefarious work done in full daylight. And we can see the evil doers for what they are: sad little people trying to destroy people on nothing much but the voices in their own bizarre, illogical heads.
Be glad for the internet. It’s allowing the left to show the world exactly what they are.
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