Hate Mail, Sanders, and Other Nonsense
Simon Owen’s of Bloggasm recently emailed me about his article discussing the broader subject of email privacy.I don’t think I’ll go into discussing all aspects of it here, because what would be the point of linking to the article if I were going to do that? I will say that my personal opinion in regards to emails is this:I think out of respect all emails should be kept at least somewhat private. I don’t necessarily have an issue with posting the contents of an email provided you remove important information regarding the sender. I think, in most cases, it is wrong to post something with the author’s name on it, unless there is a very good reason to do so. In the case of hate mail I have different opinions. When you send hate mail I see that as sacrificing your right to privacy. You’ve now gone from sending a simple email to sending something with the intention to scare and or hurt. If someone makes the decision to post that email with your general contact information, well, then you should probably accept the consequences of your actions. Sending death threats to someone is not something to be taken lightly. If you’re going to send hatemail, expect that it’s going to bite you in the *ss.Anyway, check out that link. It’s really interesting. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Wonderful
So, Sanders decides to be an *sshat and charge authors $40 to remove their stories from the Helix archives and now he’s apparently made the gloriously generous announcement that all bets are off: All right, that’s it. It’s been long enough; there’s been ample opportunityfor anyone else who felt soiled by the contact with Helix to step up and speakup and pay up. I don’t believe there are going to be any others (the imposition of cash chargesseems to have had a distinctly damping effect) but if there are, tough shit.You had your chance and you didn’t take it. Nasgi fucking nusdi. Because it never occurred to Mr. Sanders that being a douchenozzle in the first place by charging authors might have deterred them from asking to remove their work because, oh, just maybe such authors didn’t have $40 to spare. Not to mention that if the people who maintain Helix had built the site properly it wouldn’t take them an hour to remove the stories (maybe two minutes).This is all just more of Mr. Sanders shoving his foot into his mouth. I’m sure he’s up to his ankle at this point, maybe his calf. I wasn’t aware that someone could shove that much of their body down their own throat. Amazing. Perhaps we should nominate Mr. Sanders for the Guinness Book of World Records.If more of this moronic nonsense shows up, I won’t be the least bit surprised. I don’t think he’s truly finished proving himself to be the insensitive, bigoted nutjob that he is. He’s kind of like that drunk guy at a party who screams and insults people, only not nearly as entertaining.Anywho.
More Sanders Bologna
I’m just going to post links, because right now I’m getting exhausted by how far into the idiot hole this guy is going. Anyone still considering Helix for the publication of their work should probably get their head checked. So, here is what Sanders has been saying about the people wanting to have their work removed from Helix because he’s a bigoted wacko. Make sure to read through the replies by him too; they’re priceless. And if you want to see Tobias S. Buckell’s take, go here. Yeah. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Professionalism Out the Window
Not too long ago I talked about the explosion of crap that is Mr. Sanders’ rather bigoted and, well, disturbing rejection letter. Now it comes to my attention that Mr. Sanders is actually mentally handicapped in a way that most of us aren’t. We all have an inner editor, that little person that sometimes goes “yeah, you probably shouldn’t say that” or “that sentence looks like crap”. I have it (most of the time it works, though occasionally something moronic slips through, usually as a failed attempt at a joke). Well, Mr. Sanders doesn’t have an internal editor. Rather than attempting to do what any intelligent person would do at this point (what with bloggers and authors alike throwing the Book of Dumb*ss at him), he has made the glorious decision to open his big mouth once again and shove his foot all the way to the back. I’m surprised he hasn’t choked himself yet.Recently some authors have taken offense at his recent heavy-handed approach in a rejection letter and have since requested he remove their work from Helix’s archives. One such author is Yoon Ha Lee, someone that I’ve never heard of, but apparently is a good writer. She sent a notice to Mr. Sanders requesting that her work be removed from the archives. It’s a very professional letter and one I think anyone with some integrity might treat with some respect. Not Sanders. Oh no, professionalism and integrity have apparently left Mr. Sanders’ building. Here’s what Sanders should have said: Dear Ms. Lee,I have decided to remove your work from our archives per request and must give you my humble apology for my poor behavior. I have been a very bad boy and hope that we can move past this in a later date, and after some therapy. Sincerely,William Sanders And what Sanders actually wrote (this is taken from Lee’s post, so her writing is in here too): Sanders flounced off in a huff, stating that the story “never did make any sense” and that he only accepted it to “please those who admire your work”–what altruism!–“and also because (notorious bigot that I am) I was trying to get more work by non-Caucasian writers.” If I were a writer currently submitting to Helix, I would kind of worry about that bit–all things considered, if a story really does suck, I’d rather have it rejected so I can fix it. He then played psychic and claimed that I only asked for the story to be withdrawn “because, let’s get real here, you feel the need to distance yourself from someone who is in disfavor with the kind of babbling PC waterheads whose good opinion is so important to you, and whom you seem to be trying to impress with this little grandstand play.” He closed with: “There was a suggestion I was going to make, but it is probably not physically practicable.” A note here: just because you publish work by non-caucasian writers (which is interesting, because I wonder how he knows who is white and not and whether he was making a very general assertion that her name meant she was asian) doesn’t mean you can’t be a bigot. You know, when blacks started showing up on TV I bet a lot of the folks working for those stations didn’t like it one bit, but didn’t have much of a choice if they wanted to stay in the market.Just keep putting that foot in your mouth, Mr. Sanders. Seriously. You’re not making yourself look good one bit. I’d be surprised if any authors with any integrity are still sending you work. Look, it’s entirely possible that you didn’t mean what you said that way people are taking it, but right now it doesn’t look like it. All we see is an angry, grumpy old codger attempting to put people down for not wanting to work with someone who hasn’t done anything to prove they aren’t a bigoted nutjob in the first place.Sanders has also taken it a step further by posting on the Helix webpage for her story the following phrase: Story deleted at author’s pantiwadulous request. Really? This is the make of a professional quality magazine? Are you sure? Good luck with that buddy. Seriously. You’re going to need all the luck you can get, because at this point you’ve gone from trying to be the innocent victim of a misunderstanding to full-blown wacko with a grudge. For those who want to offer a little support to Lee you can find the story that she asked to be removed here as well as some other work here and here. Maybe another magazine will pick her up. I certainly hope so. Anywho.
The “Sheet Head” Fiasco
Before anyone throws a fit and thinks I’m going to go on an anti-Muslim rant: I’m not. This is in regards to the heated discussion that has sprung up around the posting of a rejection letter sent by William Sanders of Helix Magazine. The link in that sentence is not to the original post, but a different post where the whole letter appears. The original poster recanted and pulled the letter off after Sanders threw a fit and a half over what he considered private correspondence.Now Tobias S. Buckell has rung in here on the issue and it seems like things are getting even more heated after he posted this about some things said in the Asimov’s Magazine forums. It should be said at this point that any mention of the wrongs of Mr. Sanders has very little to do with being “P.C.” and a lot to do with the nature of being a bigoted idiot. Mr. Sanders clearly used language that is inappropriate. At this point it is irrelevant whether it was right or wrong to post the rejection notice (I think it was wrong to post it, just to weigh in on that). Sanders has said things that are essentially racial slurs, or at least akin to them. “Sheet head” is not some friendly nickname given to Muslim people and while Sanders claims he was speaking about fundamentalist Muslims (namely terrorists), his use of such language indicates not only a bias but a clear injection of personal bigotry on his part.Tobias S. Buckell has already weighed in on using phrases like “sheet head” and “those people” and even on the nature of the rather psychotic discussions in the forums that seem to center on this idea that pointing out bigotry and claiming it as unacceptable is akin to being a Nazi or some bra-burning hippy/America-hater. Certainly there will always be an aspect of the “P.C.” discussion, but here the focus is more on Sanders’ integrity as an editor and human being than on trying not to step on someone’s toes. No matter how you look at this, this is not good. And for those that think I’m just another liberal nutjob who wants to step on your freedom of speech, well, you’re wrong. I’m a moderate. I sit in the middle because I don’t subscribe to either heavy-handed approach to things. You have ever right to babble your nonsense, but guess what, I have every right to call you out on your bigoted, idiotic statements. That’s right. Free speech applies to everyone. Mr. Buckell can say you’re all a bunch of right-wing bigoted morons all he wants. Why? Because he has freedom of speech. I can say the same thing. So, if you don’t like it that you’re being called out for your transgressions, that’s just too bad. We’re not trying to stifle free speech. You can say that all you want, but screaming something at the top of your lungs doesn’t make it true. If that were the case then we could all just scream and pretend that oil isn’t disappearing…and it would be true real fast (or scream about something more important if you want). The argument that folks who are pointing out the wrongs of Mr. Sanders are stomping on civil rights by being P.C. liberal Nazis holds little water here. If you want to read more about this, there’s some here, here, here, here, and here. Yeah…
You’ve Got It, More Links For you Genre Folks! (Part Three)
And here is the last of them. Expect quite a lot more standard blogging from me for the next few months. I’m tired of putting links on here. It takes a long time. Enjoy! A huge assortment of worldbuilding links over at SpecFicWorld. Everything from websites to books. Universe Today has a great article about new research into that 1996 meteorite from Mars that shows that life may have started there during a cooling period of fluids, and another event from carbonate materials when the meteorite was chucked off of Mars to begin with. YouTube video of Isaac Asimov talking about the changes in SF after 1949. YouTube video of an H. P. Lovecraft newsreel. YouTube video of an interview with Frank Herbert on TV. YouTube video of a rare Philip K. Dick interview. Writing languages and systems of the world. Lots of stuff here that might help some of you in creating your own languages. Uncle Zip’s Window talks about worldbuilding. Yes, I have a lot of these links. They just pop up everywhere. Ten big myths about copyright revealed. Yup, you need this at some point I think. Apparently they are shutting down FUSE, a satellite used to search for planets and other such goodies out in space. It has outlived its three-year expected use and managed a total of eight. The thing that irritates me about this is that it’s just going to be shut down and in in several decades its orbit will decay and it’ll burn up in the atmosphere. Why can’t we make use of it for other purposes though? Right now it’s being used by a university. So, couldn’t we hand it off to another university, or to a collection of universities that would be willing to pay the upkeep? Just a waste of money to me. The Scots apparently have developed a robotic arm that is stronger than the real thing. It sounds cool, but I wonder if we’re one day going to have little contests where humans try to beat robots in strength contests…sort of like those guys who race monkeys to the tops of trees. And I’ll leave you with this amazing image from NASA. Beautiful.