{"id":5345,"date":"2013-06-05T19:14:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T23:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5345"},"modified":"2013-06-05T19:14:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T23:14:46","slug":"sf-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5345","title":{"rendered":"SF Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a Great War going on currently<\/strong> in the SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; don\u2019t ask where the second \u201cF\u201d went; it\u2019s a secret). Although I\u2019ve been a member for years, I wasn\u2019t aware of the controversy until Vox Day started discussing it (in pretty strong terms) over at Vox Popoli<\/a>, because I don\u2019t follow the SFWA Forum<\/i>. I just read the members\u2019 Bulletin<\/i>, which is what sparked the fist fight.<\/p>\n

One of the magazine features I\u2019ve enjoyed for the last few years has been \u201cThe Resnick-Malzberg Dialogues.\u201d In this series, old pros Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg talk back and forth about the history \u2013 and sometimes the future \u2013 of the Science Fiction genre from the perspective of two guys who\u2019ve been through the wars and met the people most of us never had the chance to. I\u2019ve never been a fan of either guy, but I\u2019ve learned a lot from picking their minds at one remove. Even when they disagreed with each other, which was fairly often.<\/p>\n

Anyway, in a recent issue they dealt with the almost mandatory subject of women in science fiction. In the course of the discussion (which I personally judged a bit obsequious and politically correct), they mentioned that a couple of the women under discussion were quite attractive, and one of them spoke admiringly of how one looked in a bikini. Also they used the word “lady.”<\/p>\n

And the heavens parted, and the Furies were unleashed.<\/p>\n

Sarah Hoyt, in an excellent blog post today<\/a>, speaks with more authority than I can:
\n<\/p>\n

So how [expletive deleted] did these columns \u2013 innocuous and reminiscent \u2013 become the latest fire storm in the long-drawn civil war in science fiction. And who is fighting this war, anyway?<\/p>\n

Ah, sit around my children, and make long ears. Aunt Sarah will tell all. Well, actually not, but I always wanted to say that. I have guesses and ideas at what is causing this series of conflagrations starting with Orson Scott Card\u2019s non-calling-for-the-death-of-all-gays but opposing their belonging to his church (this my atheist, Budhist and various other flavors of Christian gay friends find a non event, btw.) and continuing to what can only be called the wilding hunt for Malzberg and Resnick.<\/p>\n

This hunt has gotten out of control\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I expect I won\u2019t renew my SFWA membership when it next comes up. The organization is growing increasingly irrelevant, especially for self-publishers like me. I\u2019ve kept with it mostly to have credentials of some kind, because credentials are pathetically important to those of us with low self-esteem.<\/p>\n

In any case, it looks like SFWA is going ideological, and if I want to belong to an ideological writer\u2019s organization I ought to join a Christian one.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a Great War going on currently in the SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; don\u2019t ask where the second \u201cF\u201d went; it\u2019s a secret). Although I\u2019ve been a member for years, I wasn\u2019t aware of the controversy until Vox Day started discussing it (in pretty strong terms) over at Vox Popoli, … Continue reading SF Wars<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","category-writing"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}