Same with Harlan Ellison. Guy had some interesting stories, but he was a douche-bag, married, what, eight, nine times, always complaining that he wasn’t understood as a writer.
The idea that ‘genius’ is necessarily flawed is stupid. A true genius would know how to make his/her way through the world without being a douche-bag.
I grew up near the LASFS house in North Hollywood in the 80’s and recall being blown away at exactly how reactionary a lot of the old guard was.
Living in a country where people are actively burning the biggest forest in the world because the rhetoric of a president emboldened them to act, I’m just so tired and angry about odious people being shitty using a guy in a position of power as inspiration…
I hope we get to be better going forward, and I want to hear the stories that we ended up losing because of gatekeepers. A world where “but Asimov did it” doesn’t excuse you anymore. It’s not much to ask, is it?
It is good that at least the Hugo’s have been able to ward off angry jerks trying to hijack it.
It makes me sad to see gamergate put alongside thedonald. It really was about journalism before Gawker deflected it as sexism which triggered the misogynistic mob flock to its “defense”, offending everyone and neutering the original principle.
It is insane how facist racist dickheads imbed on things. Trolls tell the someone in the media something is a secret symbol, it gets reported, and now every one of the facist tools think the ok/gotcha is actually their secret sign.
Sorry for the rant, just feels like these guys are getting everywhere and staining things and I’m glad the Hugo awards are seeing successful resistance and Ng working to make it less of a safe place for them.
What’s gamergates?
Umm… no. It was always about rampant misogyny.
The legitimate complaints about journalism were kept pretty quiet then, because the first I heard about it was arseholes complaining that someone’s game had been favourably reviewed, because the game maker was in a relationship with the reviewer. Except that it soon came out that the review was from long before they had a relationship, and that the entire story was being pushed by the bitter-ex of the game maker.
Afterwards there was some attempts to point out legitimate problems with games journalism, but by that point the entire movement had been taken over by arseholes.
Absolutely. The complaints about “ethics in game journalism” were attempts to gain cover and legitimacy, nothing more, and any actual attempts to improve journalism were only harmed by association.
I remember, as a child, reading – and watching – science fiction that filled me with a sense of adventure and excitement, but also left me feeling weirdly uncomfortable with the attitudes of some of the characters. I couldn’t quite articulate what was wrong. There was often a thread of hopeful, scientific and social advancement, mixed with beliefs that seemed so far behind the times. The attitudes may have only been 10 years old but they felt ancient to me.
As I grew older, I started to recognize them for what they were. Sure, I wanted to “be the hero and win the love of the most beautiful” etc, etc. But not in a space-Western “cowboys vs. ‘injuns’” kind of way. And the whole “damsel in distress” was pretty stupid and limiting after a while. I don’t want to give anyone a pass, but I think it’s very difficult to see “wrongness” when everyone else around you is either too complacent or too afraid of seeming “different” to say “Hey, the emperor has no clothes!”
(Increasingly, I’m seeing a similar shift now with veganism and its kin: The fringe of “weirdos” is now getting mainstream enough to be in Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts, and there’s an increasing awareness that the lives of animals and the state of the environment are important enough that maybe we should feel guilty about bacon. On the other hand, the Neanderthals, climate change deniers, etc. are fighting tooth and nail, their extinction.)
And the fact that she devoted the bulk of it to solidarity with the Hong Kong protesters is especially significant, because of the growing importance of Chinese audiences and fandom in sf, which exposes writers to potential career retaliation from an important translation market.
When the protests have been ground into the streets and Hong Kong has been thoroughly mainlandized, will it still feel like an accomplishment to have expressed “solidarity”?
And I wonder what Ng would make of this:
This is fairly on the mark, and that you didn’t hear about much else is one of the things people from the ethics side of all that are still bitter about.
The issue with the accused relationship was a flashpoint, it set off years of pent-up frustration with games journalism at the time. Basically, frustration journalists being too figuratively in bed with developers and creators was set off with a story of one being literally in bed.
Publishers paying for promotion, editors forcing out journalists that wouldn’t play ball, companies owning stake in the reporting company, jounalists owning stake in developing companies, and the more benign not taking hard shots at companies to avoid losing “access”.
There were serious concerns.
Unfortunately, the game creator at the flashpoint was already deflecting critism of the game itself as sexism, which the various accused and gawket seized upon the “gamers are sexist” narrative, downplayed and didn’t report on the acrual issues, and once that hit Anita’s orbit, it set off a different flashpoint.
You had people legitimately upset about journalism getting falsely painted as sexists being joined by angry MRAs and conservatives complaining about “narrative pushing”.
With them in the mix and mainstream outlets picking up on the bad actors and referencing articles by the fellow journalists, perception was getting shot to hell.
There continued to be a core of people concerned about the actual issues, though after spending time falsely accused and attacked by people that disregarded anything they had to say, I think a lot of hard feelings generated as well.
I was pretty much just an observer at the time, my most active involvement was not visiting certain sites anymore and watching people I knew try to explain to people screaming sexism at them about their actual concerns. In some ways the mess had a positive effect on me, I care a lot more about sources and double check things before I share/like. But there are times that I miss the trust that I used to have, and am terrified to know how little effort it takes to frame a whole group in a bad light.
Bringing it back to the original topic, word of how China is reporting Hong Kong to their people scares the hell out of me. People want to think there’s no way truth could be drowned out that sharply and successfully demonize everyone involved, but it is completely possible.
Ng came across as a rabid hypocrite. If she believed this nonsense, she should have declined the Award.I doubt if she knew what fascism really means. She ranted on like an aggressive dominant drunken male. I would have booed her, but I was in the overspill area.
Well bless your heart.
We’re going to need to relocate a LNG pipeline for all these new users looking to gaslight Gamergate…
they’re not the gaslighter! You’re the gaslighter! Why do you hate the real fans? Why? /s
So, debunking the idea that this is “nonsense”, complete.
Now, as for accepting the award - the award’s purpose - calling out the best new writer - is valid on its’ face. She takes issue with the original namesake and origin of the award, which, IMHO, she is uniquely qualified to do as an award winner.
Your specious argument is kind of like saying if the MVP award in sportsball had originally been coined by a racist, one should choose to refuse the award on that basis rather than point out that the origin of said award was racist and try to effect change.
You can be for a thing but against the origin of a thing at the same time, regardless of what the cold light of black-and-white news media may try to convince you of otherwise.
Same. I remember reading Sixth Column as a kid and thinking it was cool how it talked about magnetic and gravitational spectrums. And then I didn’t think about it for decades, Now, not only will I never revisit it, but I won’t pass it on to the next generation in my family. So some of the worst old stuff eventually gets weeded out. Some of it has held up great. A lot of it has held up, but requires context and critical reflection. Thanks to Ng, Cory, Scalzi, and the rest for helping me reflect.
Worthy thread
