It's interesting seeing the sci-fi community handle what gaming and other communities have gone through. I heard Scalzi speak last week and after that and his comments in the article I'm buying every one of his books in hardcover, forever.
Wait, did they? I just saw this and will have to look again, but I thought they were opposed to leftist, minority, and women authors, and it seems all the winners, save Guardians of the Galaxy, were exactly that.
You are right though that they did, in a way, succeed. They infected the organization and had name recognition. They disrupted the process and more deserving candidates didn't get nominated because their reactionary trash got in in its place. But I'll take the minor victory here. It's... something.
- Nonetheless, based on his voluminous writings, it can be said that Theodore Beale—who writes fiction as a hobby while working as a game designer—openly opposes racial diversity, homosexuality, and women’s suffrage. Beale quibbles with those assertions, as he did with me when I reached him at his home in Northern Italy. For example, he says he doesn’t oppose all women’s suffrage, just women (and most men) voting in a representative democracy, like the one we have, um, in America. The reason: “Women are very, very highly inclined to value security over liberty” and thus are “very, very easy to manipulate.”
Wow.
- The Culture Wars are raging at the highest levels (and all corners) of American society. Substitute weaponry for verbiage, and this could easily be the stuff of a sci-fi novel.
I didn't imply any inherent supremacy on my part, but I still stand-by my comment of him being an absolute ass-hat. He can be against an encompassing representative democracy all the ding-dong day and that's fine but I'll still think he's an absolute ass-hat for thinking that, and I can be scared and/or upset that people think in a similar fashion.
Does that let you dismiss his beliefs? Because, it certainly looks like you're not even seriously considering why someone might have a different opinion from you. That looks an awful lot like inherent supremacy of your own opinion over that of others.
It's true that considering other opinions is important, but I think you're taking this line of thinking too far. There are some beliefs that are just wrong. It's a mistake to act like all opinions are necessarily equal.
Libertarians don't believe in anything like that. We don't believe that violence is acceptable in any form, we do believe in universal suffrage and representative democracy, and we highly value all people as a part of that democracy.
To imply that Libertarians are misogynist violent abusers is very rude and ignorant.
I've been a part of the Libertarian party for over 10 years now, am on the Libertarian committee of St. Louis and am a voting member in our primaries. Internet Libertarians are a joke to anyone who is actually in the party. We will surely take their votes though.
It is a damn shame that Libertarianism has been taken hostage by some fucked up version of the right wing when they are one of the worst things about the Republican party. You would think that with our staunch support of gay rights, marijuana legalization, and pro-choice agenda that it would be very clear to the misogynistic religious right that they are not welcome here, and yet I have to deal with this newly prevalent version of Reddit Libertarian all the god damned time. It's a huge pain in the ass and it sets back my party all the time.
The best way to think of Libertarians who actually live outside of their parents' basements are as Democrats who want to reign in spending, or Republicans who want gay people to smoke marijuana on their wedding day. Everything else is essentially a stolen use of the word Libertarian.
Right there with you. Libertarian used to mean something entirely different:
- The term libertarian was first used by late-Enlightenment free-thinkers to refer to the metaphysical belief in free will, as opposed to determinism. The first recorded use was in 1789, when William Belsham wrote about libertarianism in opposition to "necessitarian", i.e. determinist, views.
Libertarian came to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, especially in the political and social spheres, as early as 1796, when the London Packet printed on 12 February: "Lately marched out of the Prison at Bristol, 450 of the French Libertarians." The word was again used in a political sense in 1802, in a short piece critiquing a poem by "the author of Gebir", and has since been used with this meaning.
The use of the word libertarian to describe a new set of political positions has been traced to the French cognate, libertaire, coined in a scathing letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857, castigating him for his sexist political views. Déjacque also used the term for his anarchist publication Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement Social, which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February 1861 in New York City. In the mid-1890s, Sébastien Faure began publishing a new Le Libertaire while France's Third Republic enacted the lois scélérates ("villainous laws"), which banned anarchist publications in France. Libertarianism has frequently been used as a synonym for anarchism since this time.
Although the word libertarian continues to be widely used to refer to socialists internationally, its meaning in the United States has deviated from its political origins. Libertarianism in the United States has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom (for common meanings of conservative and liberal in the United States); it is also often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, free-market capitalist libertarianism has spread beyond North America via think tanks and political parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
And here's a link to a part of that wikipedia page where it talks about different kinds of libertarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Prominent_currents
No True Libertarian, and all that? I've been acquainted with quite a few members of the big-L Libertarian party, and the small l libertarian movement (Free State Project, Porcfest, etc.) and they generally fit all of the negative stereotypes they've been assigned.
Scalzi and Rothfuss are both in an odd category for me. I enjoy their online personas more then their actual books - I wonder if that will be a trend for authors in the future. But his books are fun and easy, kinda "beach reading" scifi. I still enjoy them.
- Sci-fi is no place for that
Lesson Time:
Star Trek, the de-facto Sci-Fi series, is entirely about gender and racial politics. It depicted an Earth that had settled its racial and gender politics to move beyond that and into the Final Frontier. Star Trek had women in positions of power. It houses television's first interracial kiss. Its cast was more diverse than any other I think you can find in the 1960s. In short, Sci-Fi is one of the most important places for gender/racial politics.
- It's a place for telling engaging stories about engaging topics.
I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. That race and gender politic-based stories aren't engaging? We're going to have to agree to disagree here, I think.
Side note: I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with Nichelle Nichols about her time on Star Trek and its role in televised diversity, and how NBC was going "all-color" in its network. It was awesome. It was also at Comic-Con.
I'm a novice's novice when it comes to scifi, but when I think of scifi (or scifi-ish) movies and books that I've really liked (e.g., brave new world, man in the high castle, matrix, cloud atlas, gattaca) they are pretty much all about race and class based oppression. There's a reason for that. It's because scifi stories are all essentially thought experiments, experiments in which the writer tries to envision a world where some new technology exists that radically changed the world. Then (s)he attempts to figure out how characters might behave in that world in a way that is consistent with human nature. Since human nature is to oppress, that's what the characters with power do. However, the trick is that it's easier for us, the readers, to spot the problems in the imaginary world, because the tools of oppression are decoupled from our day to day social order. I think. That is, it's easier to look at handsome, white Ethan Hawke and feel bad for him, because his genes are suboptimal, than it is to look at your local inner city and not blame the victim.
And let's not forget Ursula LeGuin's brilliant "The Left Hand of Darkness" - she wrote about gender issues long before they were on most of America's radar. Also Theodore Sturgeon's short story "The World Well Lost", and many others, I'm sure.
- Sci-Fi is one of the most important places for gender/racial politics.
I guess it's fair to say that, but I don't think sci-fi should be primarily about delivering a message, i.e. that racism is bad or whatever. I think it should be primarily about coming up with some new idea, specifically of scientific/technological nature, and trying to write a story about it. There's room in there for black lebian writers and gay latino characters and all manner of progressivism, but once the point of your story is to deliver some message, it becomes the sort of thing that the Sad Puppies are complaining about. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, for instance 1984, but I think those should stay the exception and not the norm.
(and yes, I don't really find gender/racial politics very engaging at all, but that's personal preference)
Sci-fi has always been political and "delivering a message". Back in the day it was warning people about the dangers of unchecked population growth, or rapid AI development. Recently it's been a lot of dystopian bioterror or dangerous scientific advancement. All of these issues are political. You can't imagine a future society without dealing with where you think our society is heading today, it's at the heart of the genre, it's always been "preachy" as you put it.
So when people say they don't want scifi to be political, they mean they don't want it to be political in a way that challenges them. Social issues like terrorism or government control? Totally fine. Social issues like gender politics? Not ok! It's an arbitrary bar, and it's incredibly transparent to everyone but the Sad Puppies that what they are really doing is trying to silence authors that challenge them.
If you don't like Scifi that scares you, don't read it. If you don't like the Hugos, start your own award. Don't whine because other people like things you don't like. It's bible belt book banning all over, just in a internet vigilante form.
I don't think good sci-fi has ever been grounded in politics. It's always been grounded in ideas, and the politics come from those ideas. Writers imagine what the world might look like when the population skyrockets, or what might happen when we perfect AI, and then go through with the possible consequences of that setting. The message is a side-effect of that process, and in some sense it's up for debate by the reader. The very best sci-fi doesn't convey a message so much as pose a question.
Sci-fi grounded in the message, meanwhile, has a definite aim. Its aim is to tell the reader what the author thinks about something, like terrorism or government control or gender politics. In my view that really gimps the story into being an elaborate setup for the message, instead of being the consequences of its setting. Of course there are exceptions, as I've stated before.
And really I don't care much about the Hugos, or the Sad Puppies. Maybe I'll read the Three Body Problem, it looks pretty good. All I'm saying is, the Sad Puppies bring up a fair point that warrants consideration rather than dismissal.
- I don't think good sci-fi has ever been grounded in politics. It's always been grounded in ideas, and the politics come from those ideas.
The same is true for the books the Puppies are attacking! Go look at the Hugo winners and nominees from the last few years. Time travel, planet terraforming, alien politics, it's all there. None of them on there are solely about pushing gender politics or racial issues. They are, however, starting to include those views in a discussion about what the future looks like. That is what the Puppies are reacting to.
- The very best sci-fi doesn't convey a message so much as pose a question.
That's not really up to you to decide. If you don't like sci-fi written a certain way, don't read it. If others do, and if they give awards based on what they like, so what?
And again, if the Puppies don't like the Hugo winners, they can start their own awards. There are other awards in science fiction, like the Nebula. But they won't, because It's not about a fair, just award system. It's about other people enjoying something they don't like, and trying to take that away from them.
- All I'm saying is, the Sad Puppies bring up a fair point that warrants consideration rather than dismissal.
Right, and I'm disagreeing with you, strongly. It's not a fair point. It's an angry point based on a selfish, intolerant worldview.
- The same is true for the books the Puppies are attacking! Go look at the Hugo winners and nominees from the last few years. Time travel, planet terraforming, alien politics, it's all there. None of them on there are solely about pushing gender politics or racial issues. They are, however, starting to include those views in a discussion about what the future looks like. That is what the Puppies are reacting to.
I'll hardly judge books I haven't read. The Sad Puppies aren't in the right; however, they are bringing up a more general issue about what constitutes good sci-fi. It's not their actual positions that are important, its the more generalized version of them., that being the aceptance of political aims in SF.
- That's not really up to you to decide.
Wanting books I like to be recognized for their achievements is totally reasonable, would you agree? Then why can't the Puppies do the same?
- Right, and I'm disagreeing with you, strongly. It's not a fair point. It's an angry point based on a selfish, intolerant worldview.
Filter out the selfishness and intolerance and it's something that warrants discussion.
You aren't addressing anything I'm saying. I'm going to try one last time for a real conversation here then give up.
1) If the puppies want good books to get awards, why not start their own award? The Hugos have every right to award the books they like, the same way you are saying the Puppies deserve. The Hugos aren't telling the Puppies what to do. The Puppies are telling the Hugos what to do. That's the issue with the Puppies, only one group is seeking to control the other.
2) You say Puppies are upset about sci-fi that is "an elaborate setup for the message, instead of being the consequences of its setting.". Please provide actual examples of that in recent Hugo winners.
You've dodged those points every reply, including that one. While I doubt we will convince eachother away from our respective corners online, I would encourage you to actually read the books you're disparaging. The Hugo have nominated some really wonderful books. Before you validate the toxic campaign the Puppies are running, you might want to give those books a chance.
huh? "gender/racial politics" are at the root of the issue...
right... and that was used by sexist and racist groups to skew the awards.
good edit -- social justice warrior is such a nothing term
I can understand that but I think that people want to overpoliticize representation in literature. If people write about their reality as a woman/person of color/non-straight or cis person, that's not about politics that's about lived experience.
Right but it doesn't sound like that was the case? Full disclosure I don't know the media that won but from what I've seen it looks well rounded and meets the requisites of sci-fi
Sure. I think an expanded audience would inherently lead to expanded pool of nominees for the awards and I think people will vote for what they identify with rather than a story that's been told before. And that's how the genre grows.