Lee Goldberg vs. Naomi Novik: The Ultimate Smackdown
A year and a half ago, Lee Goldberg and Naomi Novik were on an NPR show discussing fanfic, and Goldberg said all sorts of insulting things to her on air and on his blog. ("Her arrogance and stupidity is mind-boggling.") Well, he's sorry for that now. Because now he can expose Naomi Novik as a hypocrite for this quote in the New York Times:

"Around 1994 Ms. Novik began writing fan fiction, stories based on the characters of other writers. She called it “embarrassing, terrible early work” that could not be published — thankfully, she said — because it would be tantamount to copyright infringement on other authors’ characters."

See! She changed her mind once she had published original fiction!

But Naomi Novik posts a correction on her LJ to the story:

"Okay, so, I do have to put one small correction on record here (for anyone who has not read more than three entries back in my lj and doesn't already know this about me) and say hey, yes, my 1994 fanfic was indeed terrible crap and it is embarrassing in the way that all juvenalia is embarrassing, but that was the stuff I wrote twelve years ago; I am very proud of my more recent fanfic and love writing it (a little too much, sadly, when I have pressing deadlines to procrastinate from)."

Lee and his supporters don't back down, though, particularly when Kete says, "Lovely, to see you back-pedaling now that she's definitely more successful than you! ;-)"

Scramble to prove Lee Goldberg is more sucessful ensues. Plenty of quotable lines but the prize here goes to Goldberg fan Mark A. York:

"I read part of an excerpt and aside from the interest in sailing to Istanbul, transporting Dragon eggs is plain ridiculous to me personally. I couldn't read it."

Thanks to the mouse on wank_report for the tip-off.