I went on the Tom Wood’s Show again, this time to talk about the political goofiness in the publishing and game industries. https://player.fm/series/the-tom-woods-show-129947/ep-1181-against-sjwism-in-sci-fi-and-fantasy-larry-correia-returns
I went on the Tom Wood’s Show again, this time to talk about the political goofiness in the publishing and game industries. https://player.fm/series/the-tom-woods-show-129947/ep-1181-against-sjwism-in-sci-fi-and-fantasy-larry-correia-returns
Larry,
At around the 30:00 mark of your discussion, you mentioned how the fact that a group of angry SJW’s throwing hissy fits ends up working against them (and directly for you and Baen) because people start doing their own research and buy a bunch of your books and drive up your sales because smart people realize that whiny bitches are usually make crap up.
Well, yep. That’s me. I didn’t know you from anyone else, and I even admit that when I read the Origins release that announced you as the GoH originally, I didn’t recognize your name. Perhaps the billionaire’s butt-hurt fiance/spouse should have kept her ugly mouth shut, because when I found out a few hours later that you had been disinvited, I started doing a bit of research. Wikipedia first (yeah, I know, bad idea, but there are links at the bottom), then I found a link to your blog. Lots and lots of books that you have written were the first thing to jump out at me. Then I ready your “About Me” blog post here on MHN, and read the gun control post over in the Best of…
“My kind of guy!” That same day, I went out and bought your entire six-book Monster Hunter International Series, and despite still attending the entire 5-day Origins convention (yes, I went, but it was to hang out with friends and buy stuff from vendors), and also being responsible for work and family, I have managed to already read MHI and am a few chapters into Vendetta. The crazy part about it is, you are such a good story teller that I read THE ENTIRE BOOK – despite that fact that I thoroughly and unequivocally DESPISE first person perspective and will never get past page 1 of any book written that way. I even gave MHI to a co-worker and said “read this, this guy’s stuff is classic pulp fiction/fantasy”. I describe you as the “libertarian gun-toting Mormon from Utah”. The look on people’s faces is classic, as the majority of people that I work and play games with are either liberal attorneys, or liberal boardgamers.
So, yeah, now it’s all about spite. I will throw large sums of money at you because a.) you write really good stories, and b.) International Lord of Hate Spice Sauce tastes so, so good! Anything that I can do to help get your name on the NYT Bestseller list on a consistent basis, just to piss off the SJW gender studies whiners, makes me a happy reader, and by extension, a happy customer.
So, you keep doing you, keep writing awesome books, and keep telling it like it is!
You despise first person? That’s interesting, I’ve never heard that before. I can think of a few possible reasons – would you mind sharing yours if it won’t take us too far off topic?
Personally, I can’t stand books written in present tense. I don’t know why, but present tense almost always feels pretentious to me. It won’t keep me from reading the book if it’s otherwise good, but there’s always a moment of “Ugh, present tense,” when I pick it up.
And to go back on topic – Larry, is there a transcript of the podcast available? I’d love to read it.
My dislike for First-person I think stems from the fact that you only ever get one perspective of the entire story.
If a story is written as a “narrative” whereby the author spells out what is happening everywhere, I find it an easier read and feel as though I can enjoy the story better. First person limits it to the perspective of the primary protagonist, and so you only get to “see” what is happening if the protagonist actually participated in it.
But Larry avoids many of those pitfalls in his first person writing, which makes it easier to read because the compelling story overshadows any potential issues that I find in first-person perspective. His use of the “dream world” and Machado’s “memories” in an expository way I found to be a brilliant way to “cheat” the first-person limitation. Therefore, I was less bothered by it than I normally would be, and thus found the story compelling enough to want to finish.
Of course, maybe the simpler answer about me hating first-person perspective was because my first foray into it was having to consume the insufferable “The Catcher in the Rye” in one of my high school literature classes. Thanks, Holden!
I can understand your position. There are some one-time radio shows where the narrator uses second person, and it grates on me.
OMG, yes. Hate that book. Just nothing to it. But my lit teacher was a hippie in 74 so….loved him as a teacher, hated the books.
Dude, after Larry’s stuff look up the Dresden Files.
Doesn’t really have anything to do with topic but since its in Utah I thought you would want to know. https://www.chron.com/news/education/article/Utah-lawmakers-planning-new-effort-on-gun-control-13010833.php
Well done, and I believe that is like getting a one star review! People will cock their heads and go ‘Really?’ He can’t be that bad, and off they go, reading all the books…LOL
Just listened to the Tom Woods Show episode. Thanks for confirming what I always thought about the Hugo Awards. Every time I start to consider sending something to a traditional publisher, I hear something like this that reminds me why I went the self-publishing route in the first place. You know, apart from being an atrocious writer.
Jeez Larry, you seem so dangerous and threatening on that radio show. Like, barely under control and keeping the AIIIIEEEEEE!!!!11! down with heavy meditation and stuff. Suuuper scary, y’know? ~:D
[For any reading impaired types, that was humor, okay? Laugh, its funny!]
I want September to hurry up and get here so I can buy the next hardcover.
MHI Saints is out sooner than that, right? I’m chomping at the bit for Guardian. Startled my husband when I wailed in frustration that I hit the end of Siege and said “NOW I HAVE TO WAAAAAAAAAAAAIT!!!!!!”
Question for Larry: Are there going to be any more copies of The Monster Hunters out? I have a brother and mom asking.
I believe they are going to do another print run of the omnibus, but I’m not sure when.
Mr. Correia, this seems like an appropriate place to ask this question, and I hope I’m not out of line to ask it:
Is there anything that Theodore “Vox Day” Beale and/or John C. Wright have said or done that you disagree with?
I think I remember reading you say in one of Eric Flint’s essays on the Hugos that no one has ever even asked you whether or not you disagree with them, I don’t remember reading you expanding on that comment, and I think that Mr. Flint has expressed pointed curiosity on the subject when calling out Irene Gallo on her insult to the Sad Puppies.
In the interests of full disclosure, my views on the whole mess are mostly formed by Mr. Flint’s essays, wherein he managed to articulate his views as (paraphrased) “maybe they’re unfair, but the only way to make them fair would be more unfair.” He doesn’t draw the parallel himself, but I’m seeing the Sad Puppies’ aims as looking like . . . um . . . sorry for saying it . . . affirmativeaction. [Please don’t mock me too badly! : )]
Also worth noting, I’m saying “think” twice in this comment, so please feel free to correct me if I’m remembering anything wrong.
The thing is there are tons of examples where any of the SP people disagree on different things. And front page examples of Larry (& John) having very different opinions from Vox. For that matter, if SP was “Make the Hugo’s Great Again”, RP was #BTFSTTG.
What a lot of commenters on the main SP scandal year missed is that there was actually very few completely duplicated ballots (to check, go back and look up the lowest nominated category from Vox’s sample ballot), and eliminating all the pure copycats doesn’t change the nominations. Instead, what the voting patterns most strongly resemble is people with different tastes than the Typical Hugo Voter, often voting in categories (like novella) where the list of eligible stories they were familiar with was almost exclusively those suggested by Larry & co., because they normally didn’t seek out shorter works so they only knew what was recommended to them, and the THVs don’t do outreach outside their cliques.
That said, asking people to highlight their differences with other people is typically a malicious attempt to sow division, so don’t be surprised if you don’t get an “official” answer, whether or not that’s how you meant it…. there have been enough malicious people pretending to be honest first time commenters that they’ve poisoned the well for genuinely new people.
“I’m seeing the Sad Puppies’ aims as looking like . . . um . . . sorry for saying it . . . affirmativeaction.”
According to the Arizona Republic, the aim of Sad Puppies was to: “push out the voices, some of the underrepresented voices, from women of color, disabled voices, queer voices.”
phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2018/06/kickin-them-sad-puppies-again
The lie is two-fold. First, that Sad Puppies was an “organization.” The truth is that Sad Puppies was some posts on Larry’s blog. That is the entirety of the physical existence of Sad Puppies. Later on there was [gasp!] a web site that collected [horror!] recommendations. Sad Puppies is a herd of cats, all doing exactly what they feel like doing and nothing more.
The other lie is that Larry is this eeeevlie racist whose purpose was to “push people out” of… what, life? Anyway, he’s totally a bad guy for suggesting that people pay their own money to sign up for the Hugos and vote for stuff they like.
The sin of the Sad Puppies is that we didn’t like the flavor on offer from the Lefty authors like, in this example, Rebecca Roanhorse. She feels that her status as member of a politically protected group makes her more holy than a straight white man, and we are all nerd-racists for not instantly buying her book and showering her with money.
Because it isn’t about the quality of the book y’know, its about the “unique voice” she brings from her suuuuper special racial/cultural group.
Please note, I am not Larry Correia, nor do I work for him. I am telling you off on my own. I, like everyone else who call themselves Sad Puppies, participated in Sasquan on my own time with my own money.
And if you think Larry Correia tells me what to do, you are delusional.
I hadn’t thought Sad Puppies was any sort of organization. Nor would it make the aims and/or views thereof any less valid if it was.
To answer your question, yes.
Duh. 😀
What kind of clown ass, gotcha question, Kakfa trap nonsense was that? So you personally got issue with a couple dudes out of the thousand or so who nominally agreed on one other topic, so I need to ritually shun them to placate your angst? Fuck no. That’s some weak bullshit and you know it.
I like John Wright a lot, but we diverge on a lot of stuff because he’s Mr. Super Catholic, while I’m a Mormon libertarian. As for Vox, we disagree on a ton of things, and the only significant issue we’ve ever been on the same side of is that publishing is dominated by liberal bullshit.
As for Eric, he’s a friend of mine, but he came out all squishy during SP trying to placate both sides. The main difference is that my side isn’t the one who tries to ruin careers with lying press releases when you disagree with them.
Not to mention that I’ve written a ton of blog posts on this topic, all of which are searchable in the search bar of this very page, without me having to waste my time telling the story over and over, and answering the same questions in every unrelated post for the next five years.
My apologies for the neglect in not checking history. The search bar hadn’t occurred to me, but I had thought of just Googling the matter. I neglected to do that because it was late and I was tired.
My fault there, and I hope this teaches me to look before I leap in commenting for the future.
I would wish to be believed when I say that this was genuine curiosity and not “an attempt to sow division”, a “gotcha”, or a “Kafka trap”. Also that I wasn’t asking for “shunning”, or feeling any angst about it.
But someone who was genuinely trying to pull that would say the same thing, so that, too, is my own fault.
I don’t have an issue with Mr. Wright – I haven’t read enough of what he’s written or said to agree or disagree with him. (Although I’m also Catholic myself).
I’ve read and enjoyed the Monster Hunter series, and look forward to the next installments in the local Barnes & Noble. Thank you for writing them.
Less “Affirmative Action” and more “Anti-Discrimination”. No one is suggesting “let these books win because the authors are conservative” but “Let conservative authors compete”.
Many TruFans were suggesting that if SP wanted a “Best Conservative Novel” award they should go create one of their own. But that misses the entire point.
The purpose of SP was to say that deliberately excluding authors because of their politics devalues the award by reducing the talent pool. Including other authors only because of their politics further devalues the award by cheapening it. Creating a “Conservatives Only” award perpetuates the exact same problems, just in a different direction. It would be hypocritical.
Of course, calling it “Conservative Only” or “Make the Hugos Straight/White/Male Again” were lies, in and of themselves. Many of the recommended authors were liberals and/or minorities. If the purpose were to exclude them, SP sure did do a lousy job of it.
In fact, some of them even went so far as to reject their nomination to, in effect, make the statement “How dare you bigots be so inclusive!” Ummmm, oxymoron alert!
Have you considered that Flint, being a Trotskyite, might be strongly biased against some of the hard core anti-communists involved in Sad Puppies? Having someone of his religious preferences as a sole source on a matter involving anti-communists is somewhat similar to a sole Catholic source on a matter involving staunch anti-Catholics.
The Hugo has stopped really pretending to represent anything beyond a narrow clique of WorldCon voters, so it is no longer as effective an ad tool or as useful a club to hit conservative writers with for not having enough artistic merit.
If Roanhorse was engaged in any of the puppy matter when it was ongoing, I hadn’t heard. I’d be inclined to suspect she has no actual firsthand knowledge.
I had considered the possibility of Flint being biased. That’s why I wrote that entire paragraph in the first place – to invite commenters, including Mr. Correia, to educate me on the matter. And it’s definitely happened.
From the first hit on a search for “Vox Day”
https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/16/im-not-vox-day/
“Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.”
This is what those of us on the right call, not an endorsement. /understatement
“Free speech over social justice.”
One of the money quotes in the interview.
Here’s Professor Deirdre McCloskey, a tran who states the choice as free speech or force: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkyk7ncuxC4