Transcript - Starship Fonzie #37

Greetings, all my fellow Milwookies, homo-sapiens, and all other sentient lifeforms of the Planet Earth. This is Starship Fonzie, the official podcast of the Milwaukee Science Fiction and Fantasy League. I’m your host, Eric J. Hildeman, and we’re going to let you know what’s going on in the world of sci fi in Milwaukee, and in the SFF world generally.

This podcast is being pre-recorded live from the Imperial Palace on Arrakis, where Paul Atreides is about to face off with Feyd Rautha in a duel.

Actually, it's coming to you from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or as the rest of the world knows it, the site of the Republican National Convention this summer.

That’s going to be a big event. Disastrous, but a big event. I think overall, this will be good for Milwaukee’s economy, and bad for its overall mental health. There’s going to be protests, there are going to be counter-protests, its gonna be a lot.

But have you seen Dune Part 2? If not, go see it. It’s time VERY well spent.

Welcome to the 37th episode of Starship Fonzie. Episode #4 in our fourth year of existence. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and I want to start off with a YouTube segment I did recently. Here it is:

I want to talk a little bit about the scandal pertaining to the Hugo Awards in Chengdu, China, and I decided to do this as a lead-off YouTube video, because I’m speaking from the heart and I want you to see me. If you get a chance, head over to Hildy’s MKE Videos and you can see how I look in person when I’m in front of the microphone. On the other hand, if you’re already there, thank you.

For the sake of those who don’t know, here’s a quick recap: The Hugo Awards are science fiction’s oldest and most prestigious award. It’s done for fans, by fans, making it something like the People’s Choice Awards, but with way more clout in the SFF community. The Nebula Awards are also out there, but this is more of a juried award, akin to the Oscars, but has less clout among fans. There are others, like the Saturn Awards or the Dragon Awards, but none of those has the age or prestige of a Hugo.

In 2021, Chengdu, China won the right to host Worldcon, the grandaddy of all the fan conventions, and the place where the Hugo Awards are held. There was some trepidation regarding having a Worldcon there, as various censorship laws in that country might disrupt things. There were also concerns regarding human rights violations over there. But China has a HUGE number of science fiction and fantasy fans! China is absolutely wild about sci fi, and that love is infectious. So, while some writers decided to boycott on the grounds of the plight of the Uhigurs, or the protesters in Hong Kong, others, like me, decided China deserved a chance to prove itself.

The Worldcon was held last October, and it was spectacular! (If you were there in person, that is. The online experience was notably absent.) But months later, when all the festivities were over, the Hugo voting statistics were finally released, the horrible truth became known. Certain nominees, such as Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Paul Weimer, and Xiran Jay Zhao, were deemed ineligible for no immediately apparent reason. All fans got was a cryptic statement from the Hugo Administration co-Chair, “After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.”

Fans were outraged, but left without answers. And it slowly became obvious that Chinese censorship laws DID, in fact interfere with the Hugo Award nominating process.

Then, the other shoe fell. Emails were leaked which definitively prove that certain works were deemed ineligible for a Hugo Award, not because of WSFS rules, but because of concerns over Chinese law. Those emails were handed over to Chris Barkley at Capricon in Chicago. He teamed up with Jason Sanford to write up a report on it, and that report landed like an absolute bombshell on the SFF community. And the proof of Chinese law censorship interference, and more importantly, the Western contingent of the Hugo Award Committee’s complicity in it, has left fans absolutely white-hot with rage.

I think Jason Sanford himself, who was the subject of some of this censorship, summarized it best. He said, “This really just cut to the core of the awards. For a genre that believes so deeply in free speech to willingly take part in doing research on political issues of awards finalists, knowing that it’s going to be used to eliminate some of those finalists, it’s outrageous.”

And it is outrageous. SFF fans have every right to be pissed off. But I’m going to give you my working hypothesis as to what happened (for those who haven’t heard it yet), and then give you a different perspective.

It’s quite obvious at this point that Hugo nominees were vetted in such a way as to look for any potential issues where those nominees ran afoul of Chinese censorship law. And that’s horrifying, to say the least. But WSFS rules only apply to the Worldcon. They will always, as a matter of course, be subject to the laws of whatever country happens to be hosting the Worldcon at the time. And China was the first instance when such a nation had laws which oppress freedom of speech. The Hugos had no built-in defenses against something like this. As soon as Chengdu, China won the bid, it became inevitable that Chinese law would override WSFS rules in some way. The legal realities were set in stone. 

The Hugo Award Administration therefore had to deal with an incredibly thorny problem. If they included all nominees regardless of political opinion, they ran the real risk of offending the Chinese government and seeing their fellow fans in China, who are, let’s remember, our potential (and likely actual) pro-democracy allies, thrown in jail. There may even have been an outside chance that many of the guests they brought in from the U.S. and Canada (meaning they, themselves!) would also have been jailed. Did they know this with absolute certainty? Probably not. But they knew the threat was absolutely real. No matter what, someone was going to be offended. So, their choice was, do they offend the Chinese government, which has teeth, or do they offend fandom, which, let’s be honest, has no teeth at all?

At some point, those insiders must have sat down in a private room and just hashed it out. “My god, what are we going to do about Chinese censorship laws?” someone must have asked. “This is threatening to ruin the entire thing!” This probably happened long before the time period the leaked emails cover.

In the end, they made the only choice they could. 

But they needed a legal loophole: and here’s my working hypothesis. Maybe I’m wrong, but this holds water. The Chengdu Worldcon’s Code of Conduct clearly stipulates that all participants at the Worldcon must obey local laws. A similar statement was made in one of the Progress Reports the Chengdu Committee published. So, since the Code of Conduct clearly states that one cannot participate in Worldcon if they’re in violation, those nominees who were deemed to be offensive to Chinese censorship laws were ruled ineligible on the grounds of violations pertaining to the Code of Conduct.

That at least, in my opinion, was the legal loophole which allowed the Hugo Administraion to do what it did.

The reason they couldn’t outright say this afterward was obvious. Nobody wants to be declared in violation of Worldcon’s Code of Conduct through no fault of their own. And fans don’t want to see nominees excluded because of Chinese law, that’s not fucking fair! And they’re right! It’s not fair! But that’s what the laws dictated. So, the tactic chosen afterwards was to delay releasing the Hugo voting statistics until the last possible minute, and then issue a deliberately coded statement saying that nominees were eliminated based on the WSFS Constitution “and the rules we must follow,” wait for the hammer to fall and hope it blows over.

Well, as we all know, it hasn’t blown over, and likely never will.

When I gave my initial outline regarding my working hypothesis, I said that if it were admitted that Chinese laws interfered with the Hugos, the debate would immediately shift over to which Chinese laws were violated, and whether deeming those works as ineligible was fair. I predicted that it would result in a huge kerfuffle. Well, that’s exactly what happened. The leaked emails reveal that candidates had to be ruled out if they could be seen as defamatory towards China, or sympathizing towards Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Tibet. And sure enough, the debate is now over whether the candidates were truly in violation of Chinese law. Paul Weimer, for example was flagged for possibly having visited Tibet. And there’s a big difference between visiting Tibet and sympathizing with the Dalai Lama. But as it turns out, Paul didn’t even visit Tibet! He visited Nepal!

People are debating about R.F. Kuang’s book, Babel. It was excluded for having things which might be defamatory towards China. I’ve read this book, now. It doesn’t really have things in it which are defamatory towards China. It does have a lot of Occidental ethnocentrism. The book depicts, very bluntly, the attitude of superiority of Great Britain over China – without endorsing that attitude, mind you, quite the opposite. But certain anti-Chinese ethnic slurs were to be found in that book, uttered by British characters. I think it was likely that overall tone which disqualified it. And now most fans are arguing that this judgment was wrong, especially since the book was published in China without incident.

I predict that these leaked emails will not be the last big revelation about this event. Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford may yet have another bombshell article to publish. I think, now that these emails are out there, that someone else a little bit closer to the incident will have a crisis of conscience and come forward. 

But for the most part, people are coming to the conclusion that there was no justification for this. Just some of what I’ve been hearing includes this statement, and I’ll do this person a favor by not naming him, “I condemn all involved in this. They chose this willingly when they had the ability and option to walk away. Instead, they destroyed the Hugo and did potentially irreparable damage to Chinese fandom. They deserve no quarter.”

Someone else told me on Facebook, “Even if we accept the premise that there was no way to do the awards in a fair manner, and I’m not conceding that, none of the Americans, Canadians or Europeans involved were forced to comply by force. They did so of their own volition.”

Did they, though? 

You see, these were not just any fans. These were not just any Hugo administrators. These were the best and the brightest among fandom in the Western hemisphere. The Chengdu Committee brought them over at no small expense to themselves because they were the best. They were the ones with the most experience on how to run a Worldcon. The ones with the highest levels of integrity and knowledge. They wouldn’t have suddenly broken bad en masse this way, and it’s absurd of people to think so! People right now are hell bent on assuming the worst, but when giving the benefit of the doubt makes so much logical sense, it’s hard to justify bringing out the pitchforks and torches this soon!

We weren’t there. We didn’t set foot in China, most of us. We didn’t have to look one of our, new friends, one of our Chinese hosts, one of our likely pro-democracy allies, who paid for our airfare, room and board, straight in the eye and explain to that person, face-to-face, why they should have to risk prison to ensure the integrity of a trophy, and that for only one year. It’s so easy to blame the Hugo Administrators from the safety of our First Amendment privilege and insist that a plastic rocket is worth more than someone’s freedom!

The hatred and the vitriol that people are spitting out is getting way out of hand. I’m seeing people’s lives ruined over this, and THAT MUST STOP!

We’re blaming the wrong people!

In our rush to find someone to blame we blame those Westerners who we feel should have known better. Except of course they knew better! We already know who the people who didn’t know better are, and they are the oppressors! The Chinese government! They, and their stupid, vague, ambiguous and oppressive laws are what ruined the Hugo Awards in 2023. Deep down, we already knew this! They are to blame. The Hugo Administrators were bound by the Code of Conduct to obey local laws. Their hands were tied. I can’t prove it definitively, because nobody’s talking, but it’s right there in black and white in the rules. So do the math. I think the evidence is pretty clear that the Hugo Committee simply had no other choice.

Yet over and over, I hear people on social media saying things like, “Well then, why didn’t they simply resign?” But it’s not that simple! Even if everyone from the U.S., Canada, and Europe all resigned in protest, Chengdu had still won the right to host the Worldcon, and it simply would have gone on without them. Either that or a whole new slate of Westerners would be brought in to provide the appearance of cohesion among global fandom, and exactly the same outcome would have happened. Besides, the Hugo Administrators couldn’t resign in protest! Because that would have grabbed the attention of the Chinese government more loudly than anything! Some of the sponsors may even have decided to complain to the government directly, and don’t think they wouldn’t!

In fact, if another Worldcon were ever held in China (and I think that’s highly unlikely at this point), exactly the same sort of thing would happen again. Even if you had an entirely new Hugo Administrative team comprised of nothing but Dave McCarty’s harshest critics, the outcome would be the same. Why? Because Chinese laws make it inevitable. If a Worldcon is held in China, Chinese law will always override WSFS rules.

So let’s openly blame China’s government, already!

Does the Western contingent of the Hugo Administration have some blame here? Absolutely. They mis-handled it. There was clearly some bugling of the vote counting process, too. Especially something which they mistook for a slate of nominees, and there may have been some things literally lost in translation which led to that. And I think it’s fair to say at this point that putting out a single, coded statement and then clamming up about it hasn’t been an effective tactic. But right now, fans are assuming that anyone involved with Chengdu in any way is somehow automatically dirty. But that is bullshit! How dare we assume the worst about our own, when we all along we knew the correct answer. We knew that China’s laws were to blame. We knew that the vast majority of the blame needs to be dumped at the feet of the Chinese government and the fuckery their laws cause everyone over there. The blame falls, primarily, on Chairman Xi.

I’ve had a chance to volunteer with those involved in this at other conventions. During that time, nobody shared any secrets with me. But one thing was overtly obvious and that was the love the Hugo Committee has towards Chinese fandom. They were motivated by a position of love. They chose to participate in running Worldcon over there because they opposed bigotry. They chose inclusiveness. They stood for Worldcon being a global community! And it is is stupidly wrong-headed to automatically assume the worst about such people.

It makes no logical sense!

Yes, they were treated like rock stars, yes, their airfare and hotel was covered by China, and yes that might go to someone’s head, but these fans in China LOVE science fiction and fantasy with a passion so infectious that you can’t help but fall in love with it yourself if you encounter it. That love is genuine, and it’s worth fighting for!

The people who respected that love, and wanted those people protected, don’t deserve the hatred that’s going on right now.

Those fans in China are just as pissed off as anyone about this, and rightly so. But unlike us, they’re not blaming their own. They know who’s really to blame, the CCP.

I was once a fundamentalist Christian, the child prodigy of Lutheran upbringing and Pentecostal conversion who spent his entire teenage years gung-ho for God. My high school years were spent with me reading a Gideon New Testament in study hall, wearing Stryper t-shirts, and condemning Dungeons & Dragons as demonic during the Satanic Panic. I know what a fundamentalist witch hunt looks like. And that feels like what this is devolving into.

I’ve made many of the points I just made on social media leading up to this, and for this I’ve been called a bootlicker, a toadie, and much worse. I’ve had people yell at me that I have no proof that the Hugo Administrators were trying to keep our Chinese friends out of jail, even though any alternative possibility is absurd beyond lunacy. I’ve had people lose their temper and block me. But I know that standing up to irrational hatred is the right thing to do, here.

And in that vein, let me just disqualify myself from ever being considered for a Hugo Award administered within China: Fuck Chairman Xi! Free Hong Kong, Free Tibet, vive le Uhigurs, and Taiwan IS free and should always remain so!

It’s time to focus our blame where it belongs: the CCP. As such, we also need to stand up to other things here at home. We need to stand up to pro-Russian and therefore Pro-CCP bullshit from the Right-Wing Media Cult right here in America. At long last, do SOMETHING about those lies! We need to support Ukraine to send a clear and unambiguous message to China than an invasion of another country will NOT be tolerated! We need to make sure that a certain orange autocrat doesn’t come within a country mile of ever becoming President again. And we need to stand with our fellow SFF fans in China WHEN, not if, they eventually decide to make their move to make China into a democracy.

And that may be sooner than we expect. In large part, I believe, because Worldcon was held in Chengdu, and this sad, stupid outcome left a bad taste in their mouths.

They will remember.

Thanks for watching.

It’s time for some news!

So, it seems Wil Wheaton - everyone's favorite sci fi pal, Wil Wheaton - has ripped comedian Larry David a new one. In case you're not aware of what happened, Larry David, the producer behind Seinfeld and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO, caused a bit of a stir on the Today show back on February the 1st. He was backstage waiting to be interviewed regarding Curb Your Enthusiasm's final season, and being interviewed before him was Elmo from Sesame Street. And Elmo was talking in his usual, annoying voice about mental health. Well, Larry David finally had enough, came out on the set, and throttled Elmo in front of the cameras! And he got scolded for it, even as some people in the studio laughed, but it has caused a stir. Well, Wil saw that, and he let loose on Larry with a lengthy post to his Facebook account. And he's been jawing with people about it on other social media platforms, too. Keep in mind, Wil came from an abusive background as a kid, and seeing that was really triggering for him. He frequently got grabbed and yelled at by his dad, just like Larry David did with Elmo, and he found that unacceptable. And I know what you’re thinking, I get it, the guy didn't attack a person, it's a puppet. It's cloth and armature with someone's hand up its ass. And I get that comedians sometimes go too far because they're comedians and that therefore we should just let comics be comics and lighten the fuck up. I get those arguments. But the millions of kids aged between 3 and 6 simply do not care! And will NOT understand! This wasn't on some late-night talk show for adults, this was on during daytime TV often watched by both parents and kids before school. That's why Elmo was on there in the first place. So yeah, I think Wil has a legitimate gripe. And he's not the only one who thinks so. Larry David gave a remarkably insincere apology later on, and laughed it off as he did so, but he also said on late night TV that he would "do it again." And hey, I'm a guy who HATES children's programming. I flee the room whenever somebody turns on Dora the Explorer or Blues Clues. I understand why Larry David did what he did because I hate that annoying voice, too. But we put up with it for the sake of the kids, and much more besides. Larry's a grown-assed adult, he should have known better.

Hell, I never liked Curb Your Enthusiasm anyway.

The big projects being done by AppleTV are continuing. Now they’re working on a series based on Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries, and what an excellent idea that is! It looks like the dominance of AppleTV will continue for science fiction in the near future.

And now news has broken that they’re also producing Neuromancer based on the novel by the cyberpunk master William Gibson. That would take AppleTV from being the unquestioned king of sci fi television to an unprecedented height. I don’t mind saying, I can’t wait to see what these new shows turn out like.

Well, it seems there is only one legitimate bidder for Worldcon in 2026, and that’s Los Angeles. In a way, that makes sense because nobody wants to take L.A. on. They’ve got too broad of a fan base to be challenged. Still the Los Angeles Science Fiction & Fantasy Association has a long history of doing Worldcon right, so I’m not too worried.

What has me a bit more concerned is subsequent years. 2027 features a bid from Tel Aviv, Israel, and I can think of any number of reasons why that’s an unsuitable site given current events over there. But Montreal, Quebec has also emerged with a bid. So that’s outstanding. In 2028, there are two bids, one for Uganda, and the other for Brisbane, Australia. In 2029, Dublin, Ireland is the only bidder so far.

There is no bidder currently for 2030.

2031 shows a bid for Texas, and nobody is saying exactly where in Texas at this point.

After that, is Minneapolis in 2073, and the “Minneapolis in ‘73” gag has been around for generations. But it’s a good bed that whenever that eventually rolls around, assuming Worldcon still exists then, that it will eventually be a viable bid.

Still, no bidders yet for 2030. Huh. Maybe Milwaukee should do it. I don’t know if we’d be ready by then, but it’s certainly a thought. Still, most people are of the opinion that Milwaukee’s proximity to Chicago creates a problem. Those same people are also of the opinion that Milwaukee would make a good site for a NASFiC. And maybe it would. But the status of NASFiC might radically alter after the business meetings in Glasgow later this year. Who knows?

Oh, not another awards controversy! Yes, it is. This time it comes from the Stoker Awards, given to the best nominees in the Horror genre. This year's slate of finalists had a mistake on it. Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle was not actually a YA novel, but ended up a YA finalist anyway. Well, to deal with this situation, the Stokers did something odd. They moved Tingle's book over to the adult category, making the total number of finalists in that category six instead of the usual five. Then they promoted You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron to be one of the new YA finalists.

Well, wouldn't you know it, some people have taken to social media to yell at Kalynn Bayron on the somewhat silly grounds that she somehow "stole" the nomination from Chuck Tingle. I think that view is crazy, but it's social media, so there is no bottom to which depths can sink.

Brian Keene the Horror Writers Association trustee of the awards has stepped in urging people to yell at him if they're to yell at anybody.

Well, I thought I would include a positive awards story, so here it is: I got my Hugo nomination votes in last week, and I was congratulating myself on doing such a find job of that. Except shortly thereafter, I got an email from the Glasgow Hugo Award administration informing me that I made a mistake on my ballots, and urged me to correct them before March 9th.

Well, I took a look, and sure enough, I made a silly mistake. I don’t even want to tell you what the mistake was, because it’s embarrassing. But it was there, and I was able to fix it and re-submit my nomination votes with no further problems.

The part about all this that you might find interesting is who the person was that contacted me. It was none other than Nicholas Whyte, THE Hugo Awards administrator this year. One might expect to receive an email from somebody if there is a mistake on a ballot, but it’s amazing to me that the Head Honcho actually reached out to me personally regarding a ballot irregularity. That’s how committed Glasgow is to making sure that this year’s Hugo Awards don’t go south the way last year’s Hugo Awards did. They’re so worried that the lead guy is taking point on dealing with any problems. That’s reassuring.

So, everybody in fandom, relax. We’re going to be just fine. We’re in good hands.

Well, the great British sci fi author Christopher Priest passed away on February 2nd at the age of 80. We should give him a nice, Milwaukee send-off, let’s Pour Him A Cold One!

[Beer Pour Sound Effect]

A favorite among sci fi insiders, Christopher Mackenzie Priest (1943 – 2024) achieved high acclaim for his writing in Britain, winning the BSFA Award five times, the Ditmar Award twice, The John W. Campbell Award once, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award once. Translations of his works have won him the Kurd Lasswitz Prize and the Imaginaire. He never became a finalist for a Hugo or Nebula, however, though that may possibly change this year if Hugo voters bear him in mind.

Priest began as an accountant and audit clerk before breaking into writing in 1966 with his first published story, The Run. By 1968, he’d left bookkeeping and become a full-time writer.

He embraced the New Wave writing style, depicting dream-like and delusional worlds, often set in pseudo-realities. For example, The Affirmation (1981) depicts a traumatized man who copes by building a delusional world, one in which he travels to an exotic island archipelago. This “Dream Archipelago” would be a recurring theme in many of Priest’s later novels, including The Glamour (1984).

  As he rose in prominence as a writer, he was tapped to do writing for others. He was tapped to write episodes for Doctor Who during the Tom Baker era, on a project commissioned by Douglas Adams. His first submission was called “Sealed Orders,” but the script was incompatible with the desired storyline and eventually abandoned. His second was called “The Enemy Within,” but this too was eventually abandoned due to storyline issues, which Priest found as insulting. He was paid for his work, despite it not being used.

In 1999 he wrote the tie-in novel to the 1999 David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ. He used a pseudonym, but the work incorporated elements from A Dream of Wessex and The Extremes. He also novelized the films Short Circuit (1986) and Mona Lisa (1986).

  His novel The Prestige (1995) was made into a film in 2006. It was directed by Christopher Nolan and featured the all-star cast of Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, and Michael Caine. It received positive, yet reserved, reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars. It currently sits at a 73% Fresh Tomatometer rating.

For all this and more, Christopher Priest, YOU deserve a Cold One!

[Beer Pour Sound Effect, plus “Beer!” clip from the movie, Willow.]

Let’s talk about the sci fi stuff that’s happening in Milwaukee:

This from The Shepherd Express: (More of a Wisconsin story than a Milwaukee story.) Action! Wisconsin, a statewide coalition advocating for filmmakers, producers, industry partners and supporters of film and television projects throughout Wisconsin, announced its endorsement for a bill proposing the establishment of a State Film Office and tax incentives for film and television production in the state. The bill, authored by Representatives David Armstrong (R - Rice Lake) and Calvin Callahan (R - Tomahawk), along with Senator Julian Bradley (R - Franklin), has garnered support from an additional fifteen legislators from both political parties.

If you're a stranger to Wisconsin politics, it might sound strange that three local Republicans are trying to lure the mostly liberal film industry to Wisconsin. But money has no political affiliation and they all know which side of the bread their butter is on. Wisconsin has formerly been heavily gerrymandered, which forces the Wisconsin populace, which consistently votes 55% Democratic, into having 2/3rds Republican representation. So, the Republicans in power happen to be, on occasion, a little bit more centrist than the average conservative these days.

The article goes on to say: Wisconsin presently stands as one of only five states lacking a dedicated film office and one of 10 without any production incentives. [Holy cats! Really?] The absence of these essential resources has deprived communities across the state of significant economic opportunities. If enacted, these initiatives would empower Wisconsin to tap into the thriving entertainment production market, showcasing the state's assets to enhance tourism, attract and retain businesses and skilled labor and invigorate the economy.

I mean, come on, why wouldn't you want to make a movie up here. Wisconsin is gorgeous! It would make the perfect setting for a movie.

The proposed bill aims to position Wisconsin as a competitive destination for film and television production. Neighboring states such as Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Minnesota have been investing in their film, TV and advertising industries, attracting substantial outside investment through state production incentives.

Well, yeah. You know what most of those other states also have? Legalized weed. Yeah. Wisconsin can be so backward sometimes.

If the bill becomes law, its expected impact includes economic development, business retention and attraction, increased competitiveness and enhanced visibility for Wisconsin both nationally and internationally.

Action! Wisconsin urges arts advocates to express their support for the bill by contacting their elected representatives. Imagine MKE, a nonprofit arts advocacy and media organization based in Milwaukee, serves as the umbrella organization for Action! Wisconsin.

To learn more about Action! Wisconsin and its advocacy efforts, visit actionwi.org.

It’s time for an episode of The Stupid Files!

This week Detective Monday delves into an international spy ring! Or so claims the right-wing sci fi provocateur Jon Del Arroz. According to him, the recent scandal involving Worldcon in Chengdu, constitutes an example of American citizens spying for the Chinese government.

[Dum Dum]

Speaking about the apology letter written by Diane Lacey for her role in the Chengdu affair, Del Arroz says that "it revealed several American members of the committee spying on the personal lives and online postings of several Hugo Award nominees on behalf of the Chinese communist government to censor what the Chinese considered inappropriate for their Worldcon and Hugo Awards." Del Arroz apparently cannot tell the difference between collating data which is publicly available to anyone, and actual spying.

[Dum Dum]

At the heart of Del Arroz' complaint is his claim that conservative writers such as himself have been wrongly deemed ineligible for years. He doesn't seem to see the similarity in forcing candidates onto a ballot through slate voting (as the Sad & Rabid Puppies did in 2015), and having candidates forced off a ballot due to Chinese censorship law, which Worldcon could do nothing about. In both cases, the true will of the voters was thwarted. But Del Arroz approves of the Puppies tactics, while hypocritically disapproving of the realities on the ground when doing a Worldcon within the borders of China. In short, Del Arroz is just fine with censorship, so long as it takes the form of forcing conservative writers upon liberal Hugo voters.

[Dum Dum]

Del Arroz continues to insult the intelligence of the general public by insisting not only that his works are better than anything the Hugos have nominated in recent years, but also by billing himself as "the leading Hispanic voice in science fiction," which is a blatant insult to the REAL leading Hispanic voice in science fiction, Ty Franck.

[Dum Dum]

Del Arroz continues to believe that his works are ostracized "just because of my conservative views." But in truth, many conservative-leaning writers have been embraced by the sci fi community, such as Gene Wolfe or Vernor Vinge. The part where they differ from Jon Del Arroz, is that they recognized the fascism of Donald Trump and rejected it. They, unlike Del Arroz, know when things have gone too far and exercised restraint. Del Arroz knows no such limitations. In the end, he is ostracized, not because of his so-called conservative views (though there is nothing conservative about Donald Trump), but because of his constant imitation of Joseph Goebbels.

And that concludes this episode of The Stupid Files.

[Dum Dum Dum Dumb, Duuuuuummmb]

It’s almost time for our interview segment, and this time I had the pleasure of speaking with…

Oh, no, not again. My past self is calling me with some sort of theology vs. sci fi bullshit again.

EH: Hello, you’re on Starship Fonzie.

PE: Hello, Eric! You sinner.

EH: And proud. What is it this time?

PE: Well, I have an important question to ask you.

EH: Look, if this is about any intersections between Christianity and a T.V. show, motion picture, novel, or video game, I’m not interested!”

PE: Why, Eric, I would never dream about talking with you about such mundane topics on such a beautiful day as this!

EH: Ohhhhkayyyy?

PE: Instead, I want to talk to you about comic books.

EH: Comic books?! That’s a little juvenile for you, don’t you think?

PE: Shows what you know. Comic books have been an esoteric and high-brow form of fiction ever since the Golden Age.

EH: Hey, you don’t need to sell me. But I remember what my attitude was like regarding comic books back when I was as religious as you, and I don’t recall having a favorable opinion.

PE: Parallel universe, remember?

EH: Yeah, yeah.

PE: Things are slightly different along my timeline.

EH: Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with. What’s gotten stuck in your craw this time?

PE: The two-part, Holy War.

EH: The two part what?

PE: I said, the two-part Holy War.

EH: No, I understood what you said, I just don’t understand what you mean.

PE: Oh. Uncanny X-Men, issues 423 and 424.

EH: Oh, yeah, yeah. I think I read those years ago.

PE: I mean, right away you have several main-character superheroes killed off – nailed to crosses in a direct mockery of the Christian faith, with signs hung on their chests which say, ‘Evolution is not the will of God.’

EH: So, this gets under your skin because it condemns evolution?

PE: No, it endorses evolution. It’s openly endorsed in the comic book world. The super-heroes of the X-Men are considered to be the next phase of human evolution. They are even referred to as homo superior.

EH: Okay…

PE: In most fiction which features alternate or future-realities, religion is scarcely dealt with. It’s endorsement of atheism by silence. It’s simply assumed by the scriptwriters that agnosticism is so prevalent that religion never crops up. But comic books are one very special exception to that rule. When religion frequently crops up in that area, it’s always in the form of religious contradiction or philosophical angst which mocks faith in general, and Christianity in particular. I’m telling you, the popular media, and the pseudo-reality media in particular, give important insights into how culture is being indoctrinated by an ivory-tower, anti-Christian cabal which is out to permeate our society with their humanistic crap. Sci-fi may be geeky, but it’s the canary in the mineshaft, and if you’d just open your eyes, you’d see…”

EH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Is there a question in any of this?

PE: Don’t you see the connection? The obviousness of the comic book conspiracy? Do you think that it’s really at all a coincidence that Wonder Woman is none other than Princess Diana, probably the very Diana worshipped by the Ephesians?

EH: Ummm…

PE: Or that her mother is the goddess, Hera? Oh, they’ll readily endorse the reality of the old Pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans in the comic book universe, and even the Norse God, Thor, has his own comic, but do they ever acknowledge Jehovah? Nohooo.

EH: Look, none of this is obvious. The writers of comic books are largely Jewish anyway. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that they take a skeptical view of religion. You say the conspiracy is obvious. I think it’s simply obvious that most belief systems are bullshit.

PE: That your hyper-materialistic world view talking. You ignore how frequently Jehovah is attacked yet never wonder why it’s always Jehovah and not Buddah or Krishna.

EH: Because America is a Western culture and therefore Christianity, the dominant religion is the main focus of all the criticism?

PE: Because comic books are part of the overall attempt at forcing all society to embrace Secular Humanism. The largely Jewish comic book cabal is out to promote the Antichrist through the use of Superman.

EH: That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Superman is not a promotion of the Antichrist!

PE: Says you. But think about it more carefully, first. One of the few, lone survivors of a distant, celestial planet, shot down to earth from his ‘heavenly father.’ Superman is a kind of ‘fallen angel’ from the very beginning. And his quasi-messianic status is impossible to deny. And did you know that Clark Kent’s real name, Kal-El, means, ‘destruction of God’ in Hebrew?

EH: No, it doesn’t! Oh, wait, yeah, maybe it does. 

PE: It does. I know you studied Hebrew. 

EH: Even so, so what? None of this is overt. How can something so subtle be said to influence young people into accepting anything like an Antichrist?

PE: What isn’t so subtle is the fact that Clark Kent practices no religion in particular. Do we even know the faith of the people of Krypton? I don’t think so! He’s a messiah without a God, and therein lies the anti-Christian element. Don’t think that it’s any coincidence that the corners of the five-pointed shield-symbol on his chest can trace out an upside-down pentagram! 

EH: Oh, come on…!

PE: And the “S” can clearly mean ‘Satan!’ Well, or ‘Savior,’ depending on your flavoring.

EH: The “S” is the Kryptonian symbol for hope. It just happens to look like an “S” in the English language.

PE: Yeah, retrodiction. Writers will come up with all sorts of excuses given enough time and motivation.

EH: All right, look, you’ve tried convincing me of the obviousness of Christianity through comic book conspiracies. But, seriously, not all comics are anti-Christian. Did you know there’s a graphic novel version of the Bible?

PE: I… Wait, really?

EH: Really. It’s on my bookshelf right now.

PE: Well, that’s… I think I might want to check that out.

EH: Yeah, please do. I think you’ll enjoy it. I certainly have.

PE: Okay. I’ll give it a look.

EH: Okay.

PE: I’ll call you again sometime later, okay?

EH: No, please don’t bother…

Crap. He hung up again.

Well, anyway, back to our real interview segment. This time I had the pleasure of speaking with Lynne Shaner. I was approached by her agent late last year, and she let me know that her client was interested in being on the show. I responded that I would like to read some of her work first before I made a decision, and was graciously given a .pdf file with her draft of the novel, Journey to Everland Bay. Well, I got about one-quarter of the way through before I realized that, yes, this is definitely a book worth promoting. So here she is, enjoy!

EH: I'm here with Lynn Shaner, the author of Journey to Eveline Bay, which is going to be coming out on April the 25th. She's a Milwaukee writer with two creative writing degrees to her credit, and has published some short fiction in the past, and her book features interesting fantasy ideas. Lynn Shaner, Welcome to Starship Fonzie. 

LS: Thank you. It's great to be here. Appreciate you having me on. 

EH: All right. Uh, now, the thing I found so intriguing about your particular fantasy was, uh, that it's basically kind of another version of the United States. You know, you've got the verandah lands, which is basically everything more or less south of the northern border of Virginia, if I get it right. Mhm. Um, possibly analogous to the Confederacy. Um, the Great Waters region is their name for the Great Lakes. And the city of Washington, D.C. has the same name in both universes. So the northern regions are kind of the more magical ones. And so with that in mind, I kind of have to ask, Is Eveline Bay analogous to green Bay, or is it more Milwaukee? 

LS: Avalon Bay is, um. It's like a combo or a mash up of the east coast of Wisconsin, starting from Milwaukee, going up the coast and then into green Bay and Door County. I love all of those. I really love all of Wisconsin, so I'm a little biased, but I love those areas of those beautiful coastal areas. And, um, so it's that whole region. 

EH: That makes perfect sense. I've been up there in, uh, especially in Door County myself, and it feels like a very magical place. I don't blame you in the least for making that the the epicenter of the of the magic in your world. In in your book, there's also this deep prejudice against magic that is taking root, particularly in the verandah lands and growing more popular by the day. It's an old trope, but it works. So what I was kind of wondering, is, is the bias against magic a symbol for something deeper? Maybe that you were trying to express or, you know, maybe something like racial prejudice or political extremism, or is there something else to it entirely? 

LS: I think that there is, that understanding is a valid one. And the verandah lands concept is really the American Confederacy or the American South, which we know that there's a lot of. There remains a lot of beauty in that region and a lot of, um, cultural expansion in that region. And yet there is a there has been over the years, um, some difficulty in racism that resides there. And Washington, D.C., it straddles that, that area from the the northern verandah lands to the, the southern Evelin Bay or the southern magical lands. And the idea in the book was that once magic was celebrated there and elsewhere throughout the world, magic was celebrated. But then in darker times, magic was considered, um, transgressive or evil. And there were um, there was a desire to hold it down. And so it can be read as racism, it can be read as ignorance, it can be read also as misogyny. Some of those fear based thought patterns. 

EH: Yeah. Your main character, Gemma, she has a mixed background being a bunch of things. She's part fey, she's part elf, she's part human, part dragon, and that gives her magical abilities and insights that others don't have or might not have it. It almost looks like you were really going out of your way, driving to make a character who was on the cusp of a lot of many different worlds, so that she had the strengths of each and the advantages and some of the detriments of each two. Is, is that what you're going for, or is there something deeper there? 

LS: I think the the notion I was going for was trying to make a Heinz 57 creature that then had, as a result, a mosaic of powers. 

EH: There's a great way of describing it. Yeah. 

LS: More like, Gemma really is like so many of us, we have a whole mix of things in our background. And and she is the unlikely product of, of of a part dragon and human mixed father and a fey elf human mixed mother. And so they were an unlikely love story that resulted in, in Gemma. And she does then have powers that draw from these various heritages and is finding her way into them because she hasn't had the path of traditional magic schooling. So. 

EH: Okay, I wanted to ask about, the father. Maybe you can help the father in this family dynamic make a little more sense to me. The father of your main character is part dragon. I think he's half dragon or quarter dragon. Something like that. 

LS: He's part part sort of. We leave it a little misty. 

EH: Sure. Um, and as such, he's got a love for gold and gets into the good graces with the bankers in the DC area, which makes sense. You know, he seems... yet he seems absolutely kind of oblivious to the harm that his anti magical sentiments cause his, his wife and daughter, his his wife passes away. And the cause seems obvious to us, the readers, but to him, he barely sees it as all it does. Is it his dragon-ish love for gold that makes him blind to it? 

LS: Yes. Yeah. His love, his dragonish love for, for for gold and really all the shininess of gold and the. Really. He would not. He would not want me to say it this way. But his love of power that ensues from the love of gold as well, and the love of prestige, and he became really, um. Enthralled by his by his love of gold, and as a result, his connection and attachment to Elise, his wife, Gemma's mother and Gemma began to fade. When Elise in fact physically faded as a part of her, the loss of her magic and the draining away of her strength he, not unlike some very negative partners, is oblivious to their partner, who they expect to always be there, always happy, always there for them. And sometimes people don't realize we don't know what we've lost. We've got till it's gone. You know that concept of not not really fully understanding that she was being subsumed and drained out by, by this place and, and by his, by his ignoring her. So it was it was a heartbreaking thing. And and he becomes heartbroken. Mhm. Um, he is in fact heartbroken later on. So it was uh he didn't he didn't expect it. He was oblivious to it. Um, and yet he should have been paying of course attention. Mhm. 

EH: Yeah. Um there's a legal aspect to the story as well. Um, for example, when the new director to Evelyn Bay. Evelyn Bay, excuse me, was being confirmed into her position, there were some legal stipulations that had to be met as to who could perform the ceremony. There had to be a certain number of mages. And because Gemma met all these requirements, she was rushed into the role. But the requirements included not only mage ability, but also lineage, which she also had. Um, what made you think of those types of legal strictures? Because I always find it intriguing when even magic is bound by the rules of law. 

LS: Mhm. I think that often the construct of magic allows us to go in a lot of different ways, and concept of fantasy allows us to go in many different ways. And, um. My sense was that this world is a world of of of magic and whimsy and a lot of great beauty, but it is a world of structure as well. And it's an old world. It's a world that goes back many generations. So it made sense to me that there would be careful consideration and rules around who could be in charge of the the sort of the anointment, the anointing of the next director. And so it, it made sense to also counter any, any sense of things being too facile, um, or too convenient. So it was, I felt it was helpful to have this confrontation and question and needing to run it by legal and see if we were okay. And they were working on the fly to, to confer from this director formally. 

EH: I like that aspect a lot. Um, if someone were interested in your book, how might they go about getting it? And you said it's coming out in April 25th. Um, will it be available April 25th? 

LS: You know, it will be available right now. It is available for preorder. You can go to Amazon and type in my name or type in Journey to Neverland Bay. You can go to my website LynnShaner.com, or you can go to black Rose writing who is my publisher. All of those ways are are sure to have it at your fingertips. Um, it will also be available at many different bookstores. I'll be signing books at blue House Books in Kenosha later on in June, and up in green Bay at Lion's Mouth. Okay. So I'll be around a little bit. Those events are also listed on my on my website, of course. 

EH: Okay. That was actually my next question. I was asking if there were any book fairs or conventions that you'll be going to. And I know Blue Moon books, uh, fairly well. Are you at all interested in maybe joining one of the events at studio Moonfall? I'll bet they'd love to have you down in Kenosha. 

LS: Yes. I don't know them. I would love to find out about them. 

EH: Yeah. Donovan Scheer is, uh, quite a character, and he's got a good thing going right there with, you know, his some of his own artistic children's book coloring book publications. And he's got a good store down there. So when he does these book fairs, you know, I'm sure he'd love to have you. 

LS: Oh, wonderful. Yes. I'll send a note to you and make sure that I have his contact information. Yes. I'll be I'll be over at Lake Fly and some other book conventions or literary fairs. Over the next several months. 

EH: Perfect. This book is again called Journey to Everland Bay. Available soon via Amazon. Lynn Scherer, thank you so much for joining me. 

LS: It's great to be with you. Thanks for having me on. 

EH: Thank you. 

That’s our show, thanks for listening!