The new Weird Tales is out

2012-08-20 03:32 pm (UTC)

Whew. Thank goodness they labeled it Thoroughly Non-racist. I might have been confused otherwise.

actsofminortreason.blogspot.nl

2012-08-20 03:47 pm (UTC)

I'd never heard about it before this minute, but from the bits and pieces I've found floating around the internet, it looks like the sort of thing John W. Campbell would have leapt at had it crossed his desk fifty or sixty years ago.

laetitia_apis

2012-08-20 04:43 pm (UTC)

The product description does make the work appear to be forty years past its best-by date.

The author must be very young, not to know that when the sarcasm-impaired read backward through a glare of hatred and then attack, it's polite to allow them the option of thinking that you never saw the message.

Well, she has to be young to think that an idea that was old and tired fifty years ago is fresh and startling.

ActsofAndrewB

2012-08-20 04:53 pm (UTC)

You would think so, but according to her Wikipedia page she was married in Florida in 1991, so at best she's in her late thirties. Even that, I would think, is old enough to recognize a stinker.

marydell

2012-08-20 04:53 pm (UTC)

Per her Wikipedia page, she's been married for 21 years and has 4 children. Maybe she's young in dystopia-years?

livia_llewellyn

2012-08-20 05:04 pm (UTC)

She's in her forties, she can't use age and lack of world experience as an excuse to self-pub this racist shit.

laetitia_apis

2012-08-21 03:20 am (UTC)

Ah, then you have read it -- synopsis?

theweaselking

2012-08-21 03:30 am (UTC)

"Mandingo crossbred with Twilight, as written by Leni Riefenstahl" is my favourite description by far, but that's too kind by half.

There's free copies available if you want 'em.

james_nicoll

2012-08-21 04:19 am (UTC)

Wasn't Riefenstahl, you know, actually talented?

theweaselking

2012-08-21 04:27 am (UTC)

I don't think she could save Mandingo vs Twilight. And also "too kind by half".

But very well - "Mandingo crossbred with Twilight, as written by Phyllis Schlafly".

Re:

bedii

2012-08-21 03:45 pm (UTC)

As an actress, pretty good. As a director, frigging brilliant--but considering what she was being brilliant in the service of, you want to take a shower with steel wool afterwards to get the psychic slime off.

viktor_haag

2012-08-20 04:40 pm (UTC)

"Calling the author racist when she has clearly stated that she is not ... that is bullying."

Ah. I see. Well, if she says she's not, that must be OK then.

Edited at 2012-08-20 04:42 pm (UTC)

ActsofAndrewB

2012-08-20 04:54 pm (UTC)

Just like how all we need is the word of a white guy to be assured that it's totally not racist, you guys.

viktor_haag

2012-08-20 05:13 pm (UTC)

Or, to be fair I suppose, that it totally is.

keithmm

2012-08-20 05:54 pm (UTC)

Yabbut, as one comment I saw pointed out, there's a difference. If even a straight white guy can point out that something seems to be racist/homophobic/sexist, well, odds are pretty good.

viktor_haag

2012-08-20 06:53 pm (UTC)

Fair enough. (Although, it occurs to me that it's possible that in either case, the actions of SWG-in-question could be perceived as "othering", no? It's still the SWG attempting to demarcate the community standards...)

Edited at 2012-08-20 07:10 pm (UTC)

Sean O'Hara

2012-08-20 05:22 pm (UTC)

That statement comes from a website that's been "outing" Goodreads "bullies" (reviewers who dare criticize authors for writing crap) by revealing their real names, addresses, phone numbers, favorite restaurants ... That's high quality analysis by their standards.

viktor_haag

2012-08-20 06:54 pm (UTC)

::marks the "Glad I'm not on Goodreads" box, right next to the "Doesn't bother writing reviews any more" box::

james_nicoll

2012-08-20 05:04 pm (UTC)

The author speaks!

I'm white, and except for our housekeeper, everyone I knew in my hometown in the Southeast was white. It was a white world with white actors on TV and white models and white teachers and a white president. There were a few Cuban kids in my private high school, but just a few.

It continues here.

viktor_haag

2012-08-20 05:13 pm (UTC)

except for our housekeeper

Oh. Dearie. Put down that shovel and move, very slowly, away from the hole...

viktor_haag

2012-08-20 05:15 pm (UTC)

Congratulations, Mr Nicoll! You seem to have slash-dotted goodreads!

marydell

2012-08-20 05:50 pm (UTC)

She just wants us to live in a world where we are slightly nicer to those fertile nonwhite people (who are not part of the "us" she is addressing of course) and value them for their inner beauty rather than minding that they aren't pretty! Is that so wrong? I know I tell my son every night while I'm reading Tikki-Tikki-Tembo to him, "your INNER beauty is what matters."

torrain

2012-08-20 05:52 pm (UTC)

The comment here was a relief, at least.

Seth Ellis

2012-08-20 05:08 pm (UTC)

Well, the title of Kaye's editorial might just as well be "I bought this magazine but now I'm having second thoughts, so let's just ram this sucker into the ground as fast as possible."

livia_llewellyn

2012-08-20 05:11 pm (UTC)

Or the title could be "Me and my older white male friends would really like to take back the club house and return to the Golden Age, so I'm just going to let this review jump-start the slush pile winnowing process for me".

(Anonymous)

2012-08-20 05:50 pm (UTC)

Golden age indeed.

"The black cannibal thick-lipped rapist savage hordes in my book aren't racist! They've got a third eye and a tail, so they're clearly not black people!"

Bruce

scentofviolets

2012-08-21 01:17 am (UTC)

Thinking of a recent topic, one wonders how well Farnham's Freehold would play today. Or the author's protestations that he's not racist, honest, he's just trying to get people to think ;-)

Target audience for this book:

michaelgr

2012-08-20 05:27 pm (UTC)

People who want to experience that nice cozy feeling of being wrongfully persecuted, but without having to sympathize with a non-white or - god forbid - a homosexual.

Re: Target audience for this book:

torrain

2012-08-20 05:50 pm (UTC)

Well, since racism and homophobia are just perfectly natural outgrowths of the existence of a social norm[1], how could there be anything wrong with imagining all those icky dark/gay people oppressing me? And it's so much easier this way! I get to see them as the horrible monsters everyone secretly knows they oh god I'm going to be sick on my keyboard.

*sigh*
---
[1] Because of course if X is the norm then therefore (inevitably following, as a result) Y is socially condemned. Right. Yes. And that means I don't need to worry about anything I might be doing to perpetuate it. Yessss. Right. It just happens all around me, poor little me.

Edited at 2012-08-20 06:15 pm (UTC)

anton_p_nym

2012-08-20 06:40 pm (UTC)

Twitter's abuzz with Ann VanderMeer's resignation over it: https://twitter.com/AnnVanderMeer/status/237611474233749505

-- Steve's just here in the corner, shaking his head and trying not to scream.

torrain

2012-08-20 07:01 pm (UTC)

*notes* Dammit.

-- am with you on that. (How are you managing? Me, I found out about this at work. I think my wanting to swear is being attributed to flooding at home, which helps.)

anton_p_nym

2012-08-20 07:11 pm (UTC)

Reasonably well, given that I'm also at work and don't want to distract my co-workers so lip-biting is quite effective. Also, this helps: https://twitter.com/kylecassidy/status/237625971090546688

-- Steve might just back that if it does come to fruition, even though he's no big fan of the horror genre.

torrain

2012-08-20 07:18 pm (UTC)

Heh. My failure of clarity--how are you coping, not how are you succeeding? (I'm not actually swearing. But I've been here long enough that they can tell when I'm stressed. So.) And the idea, at least, does help...

(I was at the WorldCon where she and Stephen won the award. It was really sort of a lovely thing to see.)

anton_p_nym

2012-08-20 07:42 pm (UTC)

Here's another palliative: https://twitter.com/WeightlessBooks/status/237628907564724224 Weightless Books will, upon request, transfer the remainder of any WT subscriptions to another of the magazines under their umbrella.

-- Steve's glad to see that this sort of thing is taken seriously these days.

agharta75

2012-08-20 10:13 pm (UTC)

Okay, who's keeping the WeirdTalesFail links?

burger_eater

2012-08-20 10:22 pm (UTC)

The WT editorial has been taken down.

burger_eater

2012-08-20 10:26 pm (UTC)

And an explanation of why:

http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/2012/08/20/a-message-from-the-publisher/

james_nicoll

2012-08-20 10:58 pm (UTC)

Oh, I just posted that. Well, if nothing else this whole will help people forget Kaye's role on publishing OSC's Bad Touch Hamlet.

rosefox

2012-08-21 04:52 am (UTC)

Ah right, I knew I'd heard his name being associated with something else reprehensible. Thanks for the memory-jog.

daev

2012-08-22 06:36 am (UTC)

On the other hand, he's also been the editor of a lot of good and popular anthologies of old-time ghost stories. (Ghosts and Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural seem to turn up on a lot of people's shelves.) When I heard he was taking over Weird Tales I was cautiously optimistic, as he does seem to have a good eye for spooky fiction.

james_nicoll

2012-08-20 11:00 pm (UTC)

Anyone get a screenshot before it came down?

livia_llewellyn

2012-08-20 11:04 pm (UTC)

Sean Wallace posted a link on Twitter to a jpeg of the entire thread:

https://twitter.com/oldcharliebrown/status/237683024031006720

theweaselking

2012-08-20 11:20 pm (UTC)

Awesome!

agharta75

2012-08-21 01:22 pm (UTC)

Reversed and apologized already? A good fail really should last at least a month ...

james_nicoll

2012-08-21 01:54 pm (UTC)

Cuing right wing bloggers' POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD! denunciations of the reaction to WT doing Save the White People and WT's reaction to the reactions in Three, Two, One.....

james_nicoll

More Words, Deeper Hole

Re:

Target audience for this book:

Re: Target audience for this book: