Born to Run
Last night, over on the G+ wasteland, I saw some comments on a kerfuffle involving this year's Hugo Award nominations. Short form - a couple of dudes got nominated and some other people think there's been ballot-stuffing or the like.
The dudes in question are Larry Correia and Theodore Beale, the latter writing under the pen name Vox Day (OMFG AREN'T I CLEVER NO ONE WILL GET MY CLEVER WORDPLAY ON BEING THE VOICE OF GOD). I've read only a little from each of these fellows, about enough to be comfortable in not wanting to read more. The borrowed copy of Correia's Monster Hunter International failed the 100-page test, and failed it spectacularly; occasional dives into his online presence haven't improved my take on him, and he was an utter dick at the one face-to-face encounter I've had with him. Baele's not a good writer by any means; well, his grammar's pretty good, but that's about it. Assuming he's not engaging in some kind of long-form trolling or performance art, his blog posting indicates that he's a pretty terrible human being as well (but has occasional reasonable economic ideas). John Scalzi refers to him as Racist Sexist Homophobic Dickweed (RSHD), and I can't find it within me to disagree.
Whether or not the nomination process was gamed doesn't affect me at all, and I'm not sufficiently outraged to buy a WorldCon supporting membership just for the privilege of voting against these guys and for some of the good stuff I've read in the past year (like, Charles Stross's very good and very creepy Equoid). There is no shortage of material out there for me to read or view, and I can continue to vote with my wallet.
That's easy enough to do in many, many cases. Take occasional whipping boy Orson Scott Card. He's a dreadful homophobe, and a disingenuous coward, and seems to be able to only write variants of one story. Makes it easy to not support him in any way. (Disclaimer: Yes, I saw the Ender's Game movie, and it was terrible, and I donated twice what I paid for the tickets to anti-bigotry organizations after seeing the movie.) On the other hand, there's Bryan Singer. I like Singer's movies, and I'm looking forward to Days of Future Past. Singer's long been known as a chickenhawk, and of late, some very unpleasant accusations have been made against him - Google's right over there, should you want to know more. I'll see the movie. I'll probably watch The Usual Suspects again. But if these accusations prove to be true, some part of me will probably be a little bit conflicted.
The dudes in question are Larry Correia and Theodore Beale, the latter writing under the pen name Vox Day (OMFG AREN'T I CLEVER NO ONE WILL GET MY CLEVER WORDPLAY ON BEING THE VOICE OF GOD). I've read only a little from each of these fellows, about enough to be comfortable in not wanting to read more. The borrowed copy of Correia's Monster Hunter International failed the 100-page test, and failed it spectacularly; occasional dives into his online presence haven't improved my take on him, and he was an utter dick at the one face-to-face encounter I've had with him. Baele's not a good writer by any means; well, his grammar's pretty good, but that's about it. Assuming he's not engaging in some kind of long-form trolling or performance art, his blog posting indicates that he's a pretty terrible human being as well (but has occasional reasonable economic ideas). John Scalzi refers to him as Racist Sexist Homophobic Dickweed (RSHD), and I can't find it within me to disagree.
Whether or not the nomination process was gamed doesn't affect me at all, and I'm not sufficiently outraged to buy a WorldCon supporting membership just for the privilege of voting against these guys and for some of the good stuff I've read in the past year (like, Charles Stross's very good and very creepy Equoid). There is no shortage of material out there for me to read or view, and I can continue to vote with my wallet.
That's easy enough to do in many, many cases. Take occasional whipping boy Orson Scott Card. He's a dreadful homophobe, and a disingenuous coward, and seems to be able to only write variants of one story. Makes it easy to not support him in any way. (Disclaimer: Yes, I saw the Ender's Game movie, and it was terrible, and I donated twice what I paid for the tickets to anti-bigotry organizations after seeing the movie.) On the other hand, there's Bryan Singer. I like Singer's movies, and I'm looking forward to Days of Future Past. Singer's long been known as a chickenhawk, and of late, some very unpleasant accusations have been made against him - Google's right over there, should you want to know more. I'll see the movie. I'll probably watch The Usual Suspects again. But if these accusations prove to be true, some part of me will probably be a little bit conflicted.