Did anyone read the complaint in that lawsuit from the first link? You don’t need legal training to tell the plaintiff was a crack-pot. And, indeed, it was swiftly dismissed.
The other two links have some valid complaints, the third particularly, but it’s pretty small potatoes by the standards of late-stage capitalism. I don’t blame anyone (particularly in Australia) for not wanting to buy from GW because of them, but they’re not exactly using child labor to make iPhones.
I was wondering what ground the plaintiff had to sue for fraud over GW stealing ideas in the 80s (WHAT?! Warhammer, not original? I am SHOCKED!) but figured it wasn’t worth delving into
Yes, but those were only the first three I could find in a few minutes of googling. GW is well known in the business for being unethical and unscrupulous.
Games workshop is suing SF writers who use the term “Space Marines” even tho that term predates the companies existance.
As many folks pointed out, “space marine” dates back to at least the 1930s, appearing in a variety of science fiction including works by Robert Heinlein. It is a science fiction icon. So the notion that any single entity, much less a gaming company, could have broad rights in the “space marine” is outrageous.
You’ve got a verb tense problem there. That article is seven years old. The lawsuit is long dead.
They continue to sue over that issue, afaik.
But it shows the kind of business they are, anyway.
No one is forcing you to shop there. Just go lose at Warhammer somewhere else.
I have never played the game.
Neither have I, but the way they’ve handled the Fantasy and 40k licenses is masterful - I must be actively playing a half dozen Warhammer games this year.
I have to say, I went and grabbed this book from the library on the strength of this one sentence, and I was not disappointed. I know she’s done some writing before, but it’s amazing that it’s her first book. The wisecracks and interactions, and the expansion on a mythological structure, reminded me somewhat of Roger Zelazny…good stuff.
The alternative view was that the Hugo Awards Process was destroying the larger market for Science Fiction, contrary to its original aim. And needed to be rescued from minority capture.
Apart from the politics, it’s an interesting question in marketing. Is there a real decline in SF readership? Is there a relative decline in SF readership? If so can it be fixed by different marketing? Are the awards promoting a minority interest, and if so, is that in conflict with a majority target?
I didn’t have any opinion on the substantive issues, so I never formed an opinion on the Sad Puppies, but their hankering for the good old days was centered on a hankering for a large and wide SF readership.
Glad you liked it! I’m reading the sequel now, and having a harder time getting into it, but that may be because I just got a great computer game and it’s distracting me :).
Well…that’s debatable. Certainly that matches with their claims. But SF stories (if not books) are more popular than ever now, through movies and games; and I’ve seen no evidence that SF books are less read today as a subsection of all reading.
Instead, I think they believe that everyone is, like them, a kind of racist white dude, and that just as they don’t like reading about protagonists who aren’t white dudes, neither does anyone else.
For my money, recent winners like NK Jemisin’s three-year sweep are incredibly exciting and are rejuvenating the field. The Sad Puppies are the equivalent of someone who hated The Sopranos and The Good Place and wants to return TV to the golden era of Dragnet and I Love Lucy.
Their hankering was for Nutty Nuggets.
Their hankering wasn’t just for Nutty Nuggets: it was for Nutty Nuggets to win Michelin Stars.
Look, there are still people writing tired-ass cliche fantasy and genre-bound space opera. Those things haven’t gone away. And I read them sometimes too, because they can be fun. But I, and a lot of fans, have decided that we like stuff that switches things up.
And even that’s not new. Those things that were classics in their day–Dune, Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer–were classics because they were doing something new. They were decidedly NOT the Nutty Nuggets of their day.
That dude is complaining all about how modern SF is all about transgender issues or colonialism or capitalism or war or environmentalism or whatever, unlike, what, past Hugo winners like:
1970: The Left Hand of Darkness
1966: Dune
1975: The Dispossessed
1986: Ender’s Game (and yeah, I know Card is a hot fucking mess, but this novel works well as a rebuttal of Starship Troopers)
1994: Green Mars
He’s vastly misunderstanding the history of science fiction. True, there’s always been the fascist leanings of people like Heinlein and Campbell and Burroughs and Lovecraft; but they’ve been working alongside your Le Guins and Delaneys and Robinsons all along.
I know about Lovecrafts racism, but fascism?
And, going by that article, for Nutty Nuggets to be the only thing in the cereal aisle.
According to Wikipedia, Lovecraft supported FDR, had strong socialist leanings and didn’t think the New Deal went far enough, and spoke out against fascism. I think this thread might be the first time I’ve heard anyone claim he had fascist leanings.
I know you can get a fascist bent from Starship Troopers, but that was it’s entirely made up milieu. Sixth Column was pretty racist sure, but that is one book out of dozens, and that is really Campbell, RAH hated that book. And that article doesnt in any way call RAH or Burroughs or Lovecraft fascist, in fact that last two arent even mentioned. Now those last two were written by men of their time in a racist time. You have to take them with that in mind. Yeah, there’s too much racism in Lovecraft, but he aint no fascist.
I cant really defend Campbell as a racist, sorry to say. But you got only two people calling Campbell a fascist- they are using that word to stir up controversy - which we call here 'trolling". Yes, Ng and Cory were trolling. Campbell was weird, outre and quite possibly a racist. He pushed RAH into writing a really bad racist book. But Campbell loved controversy, he’d say things in his editorial just to stir people up… yep, Campbell was indeed a troll. Maybe a racist. Fascist? 
or did he just say those things to be controversial?
But racist does not= fascist. Fascist are indeed racists, but not all racists are fascists. Thinking they are is a really bad error in elementary logic.
Here is the counter article:
Arguments were made that Campbell might not be appropriate to represent contemporary writers, but no one addressed whether we should want a community where we call each other “fascist,” or why it was reasonable to treat being male and white (or, oddly, exalting in industry) as deplorable.