Do you mean in print media, or will blogs do?
Anything. Thanks, this is excellent.
Let’s try that again, with fewer typos.
(By the way, Asimov’s recently discovered plot notes for The Big Foundation Theory show that Sheldon was planned to be one of Hari’s far-distant ancestors.)
Which was why I wrote, “I an NOT saying that there were not legitimate gripes…”
The new president was an obvious mistake, and should never have been in the line of succession. But that was post-debacle.
My question to you is whether you really want to argue that no extreme overreactions are ever taking place at all.
And also please to note that while I deplore extreme overreactions, I am also saying that they are inevitable and are an absolutely normal part of the process of suddenly being freed to speak out against previous injustices. America was founded on one. It would be quite amazing if the extremes didn’t occur. But I am too old and too cynical to believe for a second that could be true.
Another thing about discussing bad attitudes and behavior from authors is that you can keep it in mind when examining the author’s work. When I was a kid I read a LOT of Asimov, both fiction and non-fiction. And I definitely think I internalized some of his attitude towards women for a while, and didn’t really realize the ‘boys club’ type stuff doesn’t fly all that well until I got called out on some inappropriate behaviors. If I had a kid (especially a boy) who was reading a lot of Asimov now, I would make a point to talk about how Asimov’s attitudes and actions towards women are more than a little inappropriate in today’s world.
This is a complete and utter mischaracterization of what happened with the RWA. The leadership of the RWA went directly against their own policies and procedures in their censure of the ‘member of their board of ethics’ and issued contradictory stories. This brought not just a ‘few gripes’ but major complaints about a variety of bigoted actions from RWA to head, as well as ethical and fiscal misconduct by the board. Trying to put the blame on a person who called out another author for using racist stereotypes in a book instead of the huge pattern of gross misconduct in the leadership of the RWA is completely and utterly incorrect.
Here’s a timeline of all that has gone on: The Implosion of the RWA | Claire Ryan
There’s a whole history to their suicide pact that makes it clear she was waiting for him to want it. I’ve seen no indication in what I’ve read that she suddenly snapped instead.
Hey, if we’re expanding our horizons to talk about the failures of people other than Asimov, let’s expand our goddamned horizons.
Marion Zimmer Bradley was allegedly a kiddie-fucker:
She married Walter H. Breen, a convicted kiddie-fucker:
The SF community briefly blackballed Breen, but Bradley didn’t, and might have covered for him:
With Bradley and Breen it isn’t even ambiguous: They were unrepentant child molesters. So, how much of their work is tainted? Bradley helped found the SCA, for example, and then there’s Breen’s numismatic work. I’m sure more serious fans could go through and list things each of them did or even founded which didn’t make it into the briefish Wikipedia articles on each of them.
Again, I think you’re incredibly wrong, but the appropriate venue for this discussion ain’t this thread.
nm
Fifteen years ago, this thread appeared on the Dope.
It seems to me that the difference there is the absolutely horrid elements in the story, more than Silverburg’s personal life. Similarly, I find Heinlein extremely unpleasant to read, because he has certain themes around women and family that I find distasteful.
I think the MZB comes closer to an example of the type of quandry that is presented by “author (artist) doing bad things.”
I’ve been thinking about it some more, and I find that I am more willing to excuse older authors: go back 100 years or so, and I am much more understanding about “the mores of the times” as an excuse.
I’ve probably not read any SilverBob for 40 years. Somehow I don’t feel like re-reading the oeuvres of classic SF authors to find evidence of religious-sexual-ethnic-social intolerance. Thus I needn’t judge whether they wrote their own beliefs, or for the editors they sold to, or what they thought their audiences wanted and would pay to read. A great burden is lifted from my shoulders. I can return to news items of political leaders much worse than most SF authors. I can page back from the nastier bits but they don’t go away. It’s a horror-nightmare IRL. HP Lovecraft can’t compete with reality.
I wasn’t around for the early days of fandom, so somehow I haven’t been exposed to that side of things. It is disappointing to know that nor only were big names in the fieldv doing these things, but that the community was not only condoning but encouraging it. I know, mores of the times and all that blah blah.
But what’s more troubling is to see piss-poor reactions to contemporary events. We in Fandom have to be better at calling it out, and as leaders of groups in how we handle the situations.
As far as Asimov goes, he was not really a hero of mine, so it’s not really a fall from grace. More a case of someone I had reason to respect deserving less of it.
I think we can still look at an artist’s works for how they stand and what they mean without ignoring that the artist was a flawed human being.
That said, I do find myself less interested in hearing Michael Jackson on the radio.
There’s a book called “Astounding: John Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard” that serves as a history of the magazine and a group biography of Campbell and the others. While it was a good read, it kind of showed that you should never meet your heroes. Asimov was described as an awkward youth who discovered in middle age that his fame meant that all he had to do to get sex was ask- so he asked and asked and asked…
Campbell was a gullible racist, eternally disappointed that technological innovation didn’t actually work like it did in the stories he published, and we all know what became of L. Ron.
Good book, for all that.
That book is written by Alec Nevala-Lee, was the author of the article linked in the OP.
Well, the Tiptree murder-suicide AFAICT had jack-shit to do with the “Me Too”/“Time’s Up”/etc. movement that I was talking about.
Other posters have already pointed out your mischaracterization of this issue, to which I’ll just add that it likewise doesn’t involve sexual assault/harassment and thus is, again, unrelated to the movement I was talking about.
Neither of which was related to the current “Me Too”/“Time’s Up”/etc. movement against sexually harassing/assaulting nonconsenting people, which was the subject of my posts.
Coming from somebody who apparently can’t come up with even one example of “counterproductive extremism” that’s actually relevant to the claims I was questioning, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in your ability to evaluate the usefulness of other people’s opinions.
Yeah, the ones who think MeToo is going too far are the ones who feel it breathing a bit too closely:
It’s hard to admit your own group has predators.
**Kimstu **, I agree with your reply above. Neither of the examples provided seem relevant to Me Too.
**Johnny Ecks **, unfortunately, Asimov did more than just ask repeatedly.
To be fair, if Exapno Mapcase wants to talk about “counterproductive extremism” in other contexts besides the MeToo movement, he’s certainly free to do so. But the MeToo movement is specifically and explicitly what I was talking about.
And I’ve still seen no evidence thus far that it’s led to any “counterproductive extremism” about combating sexual harassment (as compared to occasional individual unjustified accusations of sexual harassment).