Stop the literary vampires from sucking the lifeblood out of readers

I've been avoiding the Stop the Goodreads Bullies (STGRB) controversy for a while. Hell, I thought the whole thing would blow over. I mean, seriously — authors hunting down and exposing readers who dislike their books? How can any author see that as a good career move?

But I've been wrong before and I was wrong about this blowing over. In fact, now that Anne Rice has joined in the campaign there's a chance this could snowball into a larger "reader versus author" fight. Which would be a true shame because most authors are disgusted by the actions of Rice and her fellow STGRBers.

In case you haven't heard of STGRB, a few authors have long complained that receiving large numbers of bad reviews on literary social media sites like Goodreads is equivalent to being bullied. As a result they started a campaign to punish readers who post multiple "bad" reviews. For more on this, I suggest reading Foz Meadows' analysis from several years ago, or this Dear Author post. 

But since Anne Rice joined the campaign the controversy has dialed itself up to 11. For example, when author Jenny Trout recently protested the campaign on Rice's Facebook fan page, Trout and others were blocked, with Rice calling them "gangster bullies."

Really? Fellow authors disagreeing with how Rice and others are acting makes them gangsters and bullies? 

The only bullying going on here is how these supposedly aggrieved authors are bullying their readers. The truth about being an author is that not everyone will like your stories. It's that simple. If you can't handle that truth then don't write fiction.

What really disgusts me about STGRB is how these authors are using their power and large fanbases against individual readers. In this I'm in total agreement with what Cyndy Aleo said in her amazing post "When good authors go to the dark side": 

So there are a few things I can't deal with online. I can't tolerate people who go off half-cocked without doing research. I can't tolerate people who have a huge online following who pick on smaller people. And I especially lose it when I see a combination of the two.

Aleo is absolutely right.

There's also another problem — the STGRB campaign has the potential to hurt all authors. If readers are afraid to voice their opinion online, they'll eventually avoid making any online comments about fiction, no matter if those comments are positive or negative. There's already a trend of businesses suing people for negative reviews on Yelp. Do we really want to expand censorship tactics like these to Goodreads? 

So what's an author to do if they receive a bad Goodreads review? Well, in Cyndy Aleo's essay she gives a great hint on how to handle that very situation — by remembering that Goodreads isn't for authors! It's for readers. For reviewers.

But I suspect the authors behind the STGRB campaign don't want reviewers — they want cheerleaders. 

As an author, I won't lie and say I enjoy negative reviews. But I also like having readers. And you can't have readers without also having some people who don't like your fiction.

So to every reader who has commented about fiction on Goodreads or Amazon or anywhere else — thank you. Please also know that Anne Rice and the other bullies behind the STGRB campaign don't speak for all authors.

My novella "Sublimation Angels" to be reprinted in the Polish SF magazine Nowa Fantastyka

The Jan. 2014 issue of Nowa Fantastyka, which features my story "Monday's Monk."

My novella "Sublimation Angels," which was a finalist for the Nebula Award a few years ago, will be translated and reprinted in an upcoming special issue of the Polish SF magazine Nowa Fantastyka.

The magazine has already translated two of my stories — "Heaven's Touch" and "Monday's Monk," both of which were originally published in Asimov's and were named to the annual Locus Recommended Reading List.

"Sublimation Angels" was originally published in the British magazine Interzone.

Nowa Fantastyka is a beautiful 8.5 x 11 inch magazine with about half its 80 pages printed on full-color glossy stock and the rest on black and white newsprint. The issue at right is from January 2014 and contains my story "Monday's Monk." The issue also features three original stories by Polish authors along with translated stories by Sean McMullen and Keffy R. M. Kehrli. 

"Paprika" to be podcast on Escape Pod

My SF novelette "Paprika," published late last year in the British magazine Interzone, will be reprinted and podcast in Escape Pod later this month.

This will be my first appearance in Escape Pod. Many thanks to editor Norm Sherman for accepting the story.

The story is set in the far future and involves an artificial construct designed to preserve copies of human lives. Here's my post-script to the story as it appeared in Interzone (who also comissioned the amazing artwork at right by Ben Baldwin).

"Paprika" was inspired by the life of acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 46. In addition to animating the award-winning film which lent this story its title, Kon also directed several other influential anime films including Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. His final film, Dreaming Machine, was incomplete at the time of his death. His fellow animators have been attempting to complete the film based on his script and designs, but funding remains an issue and no release date has been announced.

SF/F good person of the day: Jim C. Hines

I'm continuing my fight against the hate swirling through the SF/F world by highlighting the good people who give me optimism for the future of our genre. The other day I started with K. Tempest Bradford. My good person pick for today? Jim C. Hines.

I first met Jim back in 2007 at the Context convention in Columbus, Ohio. That was the first SF convention I'd ever attended and Jim was nice enough to both sign a copy of his novel Goblin Quest and to talk with me a bit. I later interviewed him for Monsters and Critics, where he was nice enough to sit through far more inane questions than he likely wanted to answer.

You may have noticed I used the word nice two separate times to describe Jim. Well, there's a reason for that — he's one of the nicest people I've met in our genre. But he also has a strong sense of justice, meaning he'll engage on the tough issues affecting both our genre and the world. The stereotype of the nice guy who keeps his opinions to himself for fear of offending people definitely doesn't apply to Jim.

I urge people to go check out Jim's books and his must-read blog. And if you see him at a convention, go up and say hello. I, for one, will always appreciate how years ago he took the time to make this unknown, first-time convention goer feel welcome in our genre. 

I also want to note that not everyone will agree with the people I'm selecting as good people of our genre. Obviously my selections are highly personal and opinionated. But the point I'm trying to make is to show how many positive people exist in our genre. To show that no matter how much wrongness pulses through the SF/F world, in the long run the good people will outshine the haters.

So please consider making your own list of good genre people and sharing it with the world.

SF/F good person of the day: K. Tempest Bradford

The science fiction and fantasy haters have definitely been out of late.

First a certain writer turned the Hugo ballot into a political statement then complained when everyone calling him a racist — including me — wouldn't debate his racist hateful spewings. And today a SF writer known for starting hateful political fights decided to take his SF toys and go home because it turns out he hates losing said political fights.

There so much hate swirling around in the SF/F world that it's easy to forget all the good people in our genre. So I've decided to respond to this hate by highlighting the good people who give me optimism for the future of our genre.

My first SF/F good person of the day is K. Tempest Bradford.

Tempest is known both for her short story writing — with her fiction published in magazines such as Strange Horizons and Electric Velocipede, and anthologies like Federations and Dark Faith: Invocations  — and for her tech writing and blogging. I love Tempest for writing short stories because I freakin love the short-form fiction and her stories are always fun to read. And I worship her as a tech writer because she cuts through the clutter and inside-baseball-itis which infects so many techies. 

Tempest is also a tireless advocate for improving our genre, such as with her recent essay "Getting More Writers of Color to Workshops: A Modest Proposal" and her work for the Carl Brandon Society and on Con or Bust. Tempest is passionate about social justice and passionate about the SF/F genre and rightfully refuses to accept why these two passions can't co-exist and improve all our lives.

As with many people in the genre, I've known Tempest for a long time online. I met her for the first time in the physical world at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. And I was thrilled to discover that Tempest in person turned out to be as amazing a person as Tempest online. 

Thank you, Tempest, for all you do and for being a friend.

If you don't know Tempest, go a read her blog and her fiction and her writings. And if you want to fight all the hate in our genre, consider mentioning your own SF/F good person of the day.