The first volume of William H. Patterson's biography of Robert Heinlein is released today, but the scuffle over it is already a week old.

This is approximately the millionth Heinlein biography to hit the shelves, so perhaps it is a bit difficult to see why it matters, but this underestimates the devotion of Heinlein nerds. Jo Walton, (papersky) published a review on Tor.com, in which although she says some nice things, she concludes:

Patterson’s biography is also riddled with tiny insignificant errors of the kind that make me lose trust. [...] If I can’t trust Patterson on details that I know backwards and forwards and inside out, how can I trust him on matters that are new to me?

A reasonable doubt!

( OR IS IT? )

Meet Lironess, a person of such stunning perfection that she feels confident, nay obliged, to point out the shortcomings of others. Constantly.

When she's not diagnosing diseases over the internet, she's apparently advocating approaching strangers at cons with skin diseases to ask them:

"OMG What the hell is wrong with your skin?"

Yeah, not even kidding*.

Unfortunately no one told betnoir that icky diseased people exist solely as teaching moments for the beautiful people, and that she better learn to live with it or else spend the rest of her life in misery. Luckily for her then, that lironess is here to explain it to her.

The spat lands in sf_drama, where lironess baleeted her most offensive comments (though considering what's left - just WOW) and apparently whole threads if bizarro goodness like handing out condoms to furries, and horse sex, and her inability to spell freak. she then demonstrates her utter lack of getting teh internets, as well as proving that there really isn't a maximum fail quota per post.

After calling like, everyone, a coward or accusing them of hiding (for commenting in an unlocked post in a very public community? huh?) lironess prepares her flounce by calling betnoir (and everyone else) out. As in, *cue scareh music* she can FIND people:

"It has been fun to watch you all hide on a community and make your statements thinking I would not see and reply. However, I can find all of you, any where."

betnoir names a place and time.

but yanno, it's waaaay to far, plus it'd be a hassle and betnoir's fucking parents would sue and it would be a big mess and lironess doesn't care enough to bother. Or something.



*I debated if this should be in UNF because disability!fail = so fucking unfunny, plus there's bonus!fail on both sides, but for sheer overwhelming WTF wankiness I think it belongs here.

Before I get started, a disclaimer: The closest connection I have to Irish fandom is that I've flown over bits of Ireland from time to time. And, when I was a kid, I saw a lot of commercials for Lucky Charms. So I'm probably going to be missing a few subtleties. Also, this is something that happened recently, and recently . . . recently isn't really the decade that I'm best at.

With that said, it seems that there's a guy named Pádraig Ó Méalóid. Who's active in Irish con-going fandom. Or at least, he's active in large parts of Irish con-going fandom. But not Octocon, the Irish National Convention, which is going to be held next weekend. You see Pádraig got a letter the other day, that went a little something like this:

Hello,

I'm writing on behalf of the 2009 Octocon Committee. I am the Co-Chair.

Due to your behaviour at the convention some time ago and your online behaviour earlier this year we have come to the unfortunate decision to ban you from this convention. We believe that your attitude towards us has been far to aggressive both online and in the past at the convention.

This matter is not open for discussion and we will not enter into any online discussion regarding this nor will we discuss this with any other persons. This decision is final.

We are deeply saddened by this as this is the first time a committee has had to ban someone. We will of course will refund your money; if you reply to me with your address I will forward this onto you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Nichola Hannigan

Now, if you're like me, you look at a letter like that, and think "she probably meant 'far too aggressive'." Also, you'd find that third paragraph amusingly repetitive. (I have to warn you, if that was actually your reaction, you're going to want to lay some tarp around your work area, as one of the links that comes later is going to make your head explode. And that's hard to clean up.)

And, if you're someone like Pádraig, you'll go ahead and post the letter to your livejournal. I mean, I'd have done that as well, but with far more mockery.

But Pádraig wasn't the only place in which this news was broken. Cheryl Morgan happened to mention it as well. To quote the seemingly innocuous paragraph:

In less good news my email is currently buzzing with the news that my good friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid has apparently been banned from the convention. I know that Pádraig has been rather critical of the Octocon committee this year, and perhaps rather more aggressive about it than he should have been, but I know my fan history well enough to remember that banning people from conventions rarely ends well. The right way to deal with one’s critics is to prove them wrong by running a great event.

Comment 3 is by one James Brophy, who was, at that point, on the Octocon committee. And he's there to link to the convention's Code of Conduct, and defend the committee's decision. Against all challengers.

The first one he takes on is Pádraig. To his protestations of "I don't know what the hell they're talking about," James replies with "You turned your ignorance of your own actions into a press release." Zing!

Then there's another challenger. Gary Farber replies in his own, inimitable fashion. And at great length. And other people agree with him. Also, Chris O'Shea points out that the code of conduct in question wasn't actually put up on the web last week, which is apparently after whatever happened that made them kick Pádraig out of the convention. It also is in the realm of possibility that the code went up after they sent the letter.

Chris concludes with:

Octocon’s PR has the ears of the world at the moment, it would be a good time to explain what is going on, because in the absence of such, things will only get worse.

James isn't going to take that lying down! In the next comment, he announces his resignation from the con committee, and comprehensively flips his shit. This is where the grammar induced head-explosions are going to start, by the way, as his language skills seem to go at the same time as his temper.

I'm not a hundred percent capable of parsing the claims in the post, but as I understand them, they more or less go as follows: a) Pádraig is a mean guy. b) Also, he says mean things, both to people, and about people. c) One time, he took some prints from a photographer that he shouldn't have.

Rather than do a play-by-play for the rest of the thread, I'll summarize. Gary makes fun of James's difficulties both with the English language and with logic. James explains that one of the lurkers who supports him isn't speaking up, because he's a writer, and fears that Cheryl Morgan will ruin his career. Cheryl gets upset at that, and bans James from her blog, until she's contacted by the guy in question. Which, rather surprisingly, she is, so she un-bans him. Various other members of the committee show up, not so much to explain their actions, as to explain that they wanted this to be kept private, and they are saddened that Pádraig has put his own interests above those of a convention which he's not allowed to attend.

As one might expect, there's some discussion about there elsewhere on the internet; the one bit that jumped out at me as providing useful data was a comment on lj which suggested that one of Pádraig's major sins was founding a convention that's been more successful than Octocon over the last decade or so.

And that's all I've got.

This wank brought to you by wank_report.

A bit of context: The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF is the next installment in the Mammoth Book anthology series edited by Mike Ashley. Recently, its table of contents, which lists the twenty-one stories and authors that will be included in the book, was posted on the SF Signal website.

Almost immediately, there is some grousing from the peanut gallery -- it seems that not one of the authors included in the lineup are (a)women, or (b)nonwhite. Commenters proceed to point this out, mostly keeping it down to a few sentences and seemingly content to speak up and move on. Luckily, Paul Di Filippo, one of the authors featured in the anthology, arrives on the scene, CAPS LOCK AT THE READY AND BRIMMING WITH RAGE.

( IF MAKING BAFFLING POTATO METAPHORS IS WRONG, I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT! )

( Spoilers for Torchwood and oh god great linky madness within. Enter at your own risk. )

This post brought to you by the ridiculously helpful mousies on wank_report, the letter W and the number 4. (The W is for wut and 4 is how many cups of coffee I've already had today).

(Be warned: long wank report is LONG. Continuation of this clairvoyantwank post. ETAs are under the third cut.)

This weekend, Torchwood fans flocked to Chicago for TorchSong, a John Barrowman-centric convention with a website that looks like it was modeled after a Geocities page circa 1997, a half-assed commercial that aired on BBC America, and some awfully expensive tickets.

When the con was first announced, the only guests were John, his sister Carole, and Mark Sheppard. When people started emailing the organizers about possible other guests, they were emphatically told while more guests would be coming, there would be no other Torchwood guests because it was a John Barrowman event, not a Torchwood event.

Ticket sales apparently convinced them this was not a good strategy, so over the following months they added Kai Owen, Tom Price, and Gareth David Lloyd. Fans squeed, and despite being not particularly impressed with the organizers' behavior, they willingly plonked down as much as $500 to see John and friends and to see John perform. (Later, 'special' auction packages went for up to $1,410.)

Then things start to go wrong.

On Wednesday, Kai Owen was forced to drop out due to a family emergency. Thursday, the day before the con began, they announced that John Barrowman had torn ligaments in his ankle and he would not be attending.

Aaaaand we're off.

( Act I: Pre-Con )

( Act II: The Convention )


( Act III: The Ongoing Aftermath )
ETA3: "UR JUST JELUS!!"

ETA4: Con-goers have now created their own special clubhouse: torch_tanic (torchsong_09 post announcing it. Commenters are not amused, but you'd never know it because she deleted all the wholly negative ones. Raise your hand if you've got a screencap.) (Thank you kaylamds for the heads-up.)

As those of you who haven't been living under a rock may know, a new Star Trek movie just came out. Over on fanficrants, roq is upset about this. Apparently, TEENAGERS are now WRITING in HER fandom! Quelle suprise!

She has some choice words to say about it.

( Wank long and prosper )

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

Fedcon USA has set a new bar for convention self destruction stupidity. Cancelling events in the middle of Saturday afternoon!

For convience here's a timeline of ill omens that lead up to yesterday's Britney Spears moment.

FEDCON GMBH a German group that puts on Trek Cons in Europe decides to work with Tim Brazeal at Trek United

Wait! The same Trek United that was supposed to be raising funds for another season of Enterprise? Yep the very same...

Despite this, everything seems to be going along fine, they even have Jonathan Frakes on as their headliner. Actually, No

Well, they'll have Adam Baldwin! Ummm...

This,and several other line up changes start making some of the forum members thinking something hinky is going on. Barbra, one of the Volunteers, even goes to say theres no conspiracy going on here.

A few days before the event they announce Aaron Douglas (Cheif Tyrol from New BSG) is joining the show! Only Aaron can't seem to get any of the organizers to get him his plane tickets Tom, the Security Chief, is playing damage control trying to keep everyting calm on the boards, but it's already getting out of hand. A very pissed off Aaron Douglas returns calling out the organizers on their lies. Tim Brazeal finally shows up with several half assed explinations Over the next few pages. Including the fact that he has back problems witch will all too conviently put him in the hospital for the next 24 hours! Aaron doesn't buy it. And the echange just gets more heated as things go on.

The con finally arrives, and the first day is small but fun for those who attend (most estimates put the number in the 200 range, far below their thousand or so they were hoping for) All of the Gold Ticket holders are thinking they are getting the shaft for putting up all that money before and and getting no real perks.

Then Saturday comes, and the show gets shut down at 11:00 am.

Wow, what a shocker, who thought anyone could make Flanvention look good...

ETA: Over at the Omega Sector we have a little comment by Virogen about how Tim Brazeal has been pulling crap like this for a while now...

ETA II: Scott Merritt of Pegasus Publishing has just announced: Because I can do it (and partially to mitigate my losses for the weekend) we will be producing a limited edition commemorative t-shirt that says “I got FRAKKED at F(crossed out)DedCon USA! anyone interested in obtaining one of these needs to contact me by Thur 6/19/08 as I’ll be printing and mailing them next weekend. My email is pegasushelp@gmail.com. Heck, I wasn't even there and I'm ordering one!

ETA III Trek United is starting to worry about it's future due to Tim Brazeal being the owner of the site. Amazingly there are people taht still want to believe in Tim.

ETA IV: Oh, Scott Merrit points out in the Con News comments this intersting tidbit about the downed forums:
As of this afternoon the Forums over at the FedConUSA site have been shut down. I find it suspicious that this occurred less than an hour after I posted the contact information for the Texas Attorney General’s Office with encouragement for fans who feel that they were ripped off to contact them.

Here's another retro-wank. It involves a fannish breeding camp in the Ozarks.

Intrigued? ( Read on )

This is not the Starbuck's of wank.* It's a bitter re-heated brew, percolated with the stagnant grounds of yesteryear.

Andrew Burt is the VP of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Association of America. ( Some pixel-stained technopeasant wretches are less than pleased by his leadership. )

Damage control was done. The e-piracy committee was disbanded. A committee was put together in order to figure out what to replace the old piracy committee with... And lo, the SFWA was graced with a new improved exactly the same damn thing.

There was much rejoicing, in the sense that "rejoicing" means "bitterness" and "more disillusionment".

How would Andy top that? Why, by entering the race for SFWA president.

Thus commences a largely one-sided dogpiling. Highlights include discussion of the Dunning-Kruger effect and a 300 macro.

[ETA via hopefulnebula] Campaign poster macros are great justice!

[Late ETAS for completion's sake on the off chance someone checks back again, which if nobody does is a pity because this stuff contains at least twice the funny.]
"Greetings, gentlebeings!"
Burty supporters defile Earth Logic.
George R.R. Martin weighs in.
Burt as Walter Mitty.
MST3King ahoy!

And now, the raisins d'être, what makes this stale wank fresh again, via the Whatever with a tip of the hat to our lovely nonnymice: The Flickr group.

But wait... The son of the bride of the ETA strikes again
Burt announces that television is a dangerous threat to writers everywhere, as it gives away content for free and often does not involve white scientists having vanilla 1950s-style sex with their 20-year-old coquettish assistants while infodumping about math. He subsequently declares war upon the Writers Guild of America.


* I'm weak. One can only wait so long for RDR updates...
& ETA 'coz I can't spell at 7 AM.

I had this pointed out to me by a buddy who'd spotted it. I know nothing about any of this, so I'm just prettifying it a bit.

More print SF wank. Kind of a followup to this one.


Andrew Burt, VP of SFWA, also runs Critters, an online critique group full of aspiring authors. Well, in our weekly notes, we're encouraged to check it out, boys and girls! Cory Doctorow is the enemy of author's rights, and he's gunning for Ursula K. Le Guin!

Note that Doctorow is Canadian. Blame Canada!

Burt links to Pournelle's polemic.

Pournelle links to LeGuin's story on Boing Boing AND to web.archive.org (kinda fubar, sorry) 'cause that nasty, tricksy Doctorow will surely hide the evidence.

Burt said yesterday, that nasty, tricksy Doctorow was snubbing poor Le Guin. Doctorow has edited his post. (He's HIDING THE EVIDENCE, ZOMG, JUST LIKE POURNELLE SAID HE WOULD!!! Of course, if he didn't he would be SNUBBING LE GUIN ZOMG!!!)

They both made much of the Creative Commons License they say Doctorow placed on Le Guin's work. The default footer of Boing Boing does indeed contain a Creative Commons License statement, but I somehow doubt that's part of an evil conspiracy to take food out of Le Guin's mouth, as that's been part of Boing Boing's footer for years (since at least 2003, according to web.archive.org).

Update!

::Edit::

Another update courtesy of the mousie!

::Edit Jr::

From the comments (thanks cheshyre!)

It was necessary to crush the pixel-stained
technopeasants* in order to save them.

Or:

The SFWA embarrasses itself. Again.


The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Association has a serious hate-on for e-books and a disturbing fascination for DRM. (And weirder anti-piracy measures, such as the Shades of Grey thang.)

They don't so much embrace technology as try to be the RIAA for the cover-painting-by-Michael-Whelan set.

Summary from the Nielsen-Haydens' blog : SFWA raided a site called Scribd (it's basically Flickr for text), and sent a cease-and-desist for a whole passel of files.

Among said files are reviews, a reading list for high school kids, a novel released under a Creative Commons license, and back issues of a magazine that'd been uploaded for promotional purposes.

The list of files marked for deletion.

Note the sig: Vader said, "Luke, I am your feather." Bothered by typos? Avoid pirated ebooks.

It's not just a job for Dr. Andrew Burt; it's a lifestyle. (But if I were him, I would've gone with DO NOT WANT!!! instead.)

ETA From puipui: Nick Mamatas mocks the second take-down email to Scribd.

In other news, I just got a tin deputy badge from a box of Crackerjacks and will be placing some parking tickets I just printed out on my home computer on the windshields of cars on my block. If anyone receiving the ticket asks, yes I am authorized to hand out these tickets and they are real tickets, the fines from which I will collect. If these real tickets get me into trouble, then they are not real tickets and anyone suckered by them is to blame for his own foolishness.

Ars Technica weighs in: Worse than Vogon poetry.

[...] it quickly became apparent that the USS 1701-SFWA had a crack in its dilithium crystals.

Cory Doctorow ain't happy, either.

Indeed, I have told Vice President Burt on multiple occasions that he may not represent me as a rightsholder in negotiations with Amazon, and other electronic publishing venues.

Hi kids; I got served a C&D over summer break.

Thanks to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, I now have a terrific “teachable moment” when I start school on Tuesday. When my students ask me what I did on my summer vacation I can tell them I was accused of violating copyright and learned all about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the SFWA and counter-notifications.

From the magazine folks: We received a notification that one of our issues had been taken down because ‘because the copyright owner contacted us and asked us to.’ That statement was of great interest to us, because we hold the copyrights for these issues at the magazine.

Lawrence Watt-Evans is not pleased with Cory or SFWA. (Afaik... I'm assuming this is him, from a brief Googling.)

( There are several reasons I quit SFWA. Cory Doctorow and Andrew Burt are two of the minor ones. )

The president of the SFWA (one Michael Capobianco, not the Andrew Burt dude) makes some statements here and officially, there.

Scribd's response to their response.

ETA Like maddened ferrets in a wet burlap sack

Speaking of Scalzi, the Whatever is back and he's putting in his two bits.

[...] believe me when I say a great number of us groaned and wondered why it is SFWA, which is often very positively helpful to writers, has to kick itself in its own balls as often as it does.

Distressing lack of wank in the post itself from the man who ran against the current SFWA prez, but it should get started once the blog's readers wake up.

ETA From limyaael: The SFWA ditches its e-piracy arm.

(* Correction: "Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretches")

Ahhhh, the smell of batshit in the morning, to quote someone from the wank.

Fanficrants is often a source of some interesting wank and such, but this one hit a whole new level of it.

So there's this chick, see, she likes X-Men fandom just a teensy bit too much, as posted here in FFR.

( Hooboy. )

But it gets BETTER, ladies and germs, because the nutter in question hath SEEN the FFR rant and gotten positively irate.

( My children love him like they love Jesus! )

But wait, here's the batshit trifecta!

"scottswife" responds directly!

( UR ALL L00SERS! )

elsewhere7 gets it FTW!

I don't think it's over!

Besides, everyone knows that he loves Emma anyway.

ETA the first!: She's back! Troll or hoax, this is some primo stuff

ETA the second!: baron_waste shows up to tell us how dumb we are to think this is real:

( UR ALL DUM! )

My word, but we lot are enjoying this.

And Scott's Wife is responding to questions, complete with furbashing!

*Ahem* *steps up to the microphone* This is my first posting of a wank, and though it is now a little old and crusty, I hope it'll still serve to entertain... or whatever.

Anyway, this one really fits under 'psuedo-intellectual definitions'.

Gregory Benford, whether you've heard of him or not, is a hard-science fiction author. In his blog, he has a conversation with Darrell Schweitzer about the rise in popularity of fantasy fiction, as opposed to science fiction. The conversation begins thusly, with Benford's side:

We’ll run current commentary here, and to start, here’s something a bit more substantial, yet in the news.
George Martin’s mammoth fantasy novel sits atop the bestseller lists, so it’s time to ask:

WHAT DOES THE RISE OF FANTASY MEAN?

A conversation between GB and DARRELL SCHWEITZER

Four out of the last five Hugo awards were won by fantasy. Yet it’s the award of the World Science Fiction Convention, named for Hugo Gernsback, who edited the first science fiction magazine.

Fantasy has very, very cleverly managed to capture the apparatus erected by science fiction fandom and pro-dom, and fantasy writers now dominate the Science Fiction Writers of America. They’ve taken over the Hugo awards—which I thus usually don’t attend. A Harry Potter novel won a few years back and I walked out.

That's polite. [/sarcasm]

But wait! There's more! Fantasy = Intellectual Cowardice!

( Read more... )

Marvel at the galaxy-spanning leaps of logic! I'm not sure if I should be offended or just amused that he's smeared-- er, profiled an entire group of genre enthusiasts like that. It's sort of like saying that science-fiction fans are all pimple-faced teenage boys with no social lives and, especially, no girlfriends.

Oh, wait-- people already say that!

Not to be deterred, Benford concludes by saying in essence that those in the West should damn well better start reading intellectual hard science-fiction so as to better their societies, because if Americans and Europeans don't, the Chinese and Indians will! After all, who can create a better society when you spend your free time thinking about really big problems like dragons?

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE BETTER SOCIETY?!

Original wank and the ensuing comments can be found at: http://benford-rose.com/blog/?p=3

I was reading the F_w friends page, and someone requested some Usenet wank. Completely unrelated, I was reading rec.arts.sf.written for the first time in months and found this bit of wankery.

Some poor man dared to ask if the Honor Harrington series was any good. 1080+ posts later, and they're still going on and on and on...but not on the original topic. This thread has it all: insults on people's taste in books, their taste in humor, and a really long tangent on the mechanics of book publishing.