Roz Kaveney's Blog, page 15
April 11, 2015
My view on what should happen about the Hugos.
I know some goog people are upset by my view of this.
There is a story we all love - probably too much because it has become a cliche; the bad person over-reaches and falls down as a result. This sometimes actually happens - they invade Russia, they forge the One Ring, they start believing Austerity works.
We may be at that moment.There appears - I so hope that it's not the case, somehow - that fixing the Hugo nominations with slates was legal in the sense that no one ever thought of making a rule about it. However, even in private organizations that have their own rules and never thought to make certain things illegal, it seems to me that there are some things which no court would disagree with even if they are formally absent from the articles of incorporation, association and what not.
If something is voted for by an organization's membership, the organization has a duty of care to ensure that the ballot box is not stuffed, that the voters are not personated and so on; that's kind of implicit to the process of voting.
It seems to me that threatening that if the vote does not go the way you want, or goes a way you do not want, you will engage in a conspiracy to ensure that all future votes are subverted, is an attempt to fix the vote to menaces. Anyone who does that should not just be disqualified from voting - they should have their candidature disallowed. Theodore Beale has threatened that, should No Award win in a serious number of categories against his candidates, he will ensure that all future Hugo votes are subverted by Gamergate, the Rabids and any other Nazis he finds hanging around on street corners.
That is, it strikes me, an attempt to influence how the Hugo vote comes out, by menaces.
His nominations should be accordingly disqualified as should any nomination in which he has a financial interest. Anything published by Castalia, which he owns and edits, for one thing. And a look should be taken at other small presses on the ballot.
This does nothing about the Sads - thus far they have not broken, though they have bent, the rules.
I would suggest that the Con Committee pay atention to this suggestion.
April 8, 2015
In spite of con crud
Sometimes they whisper when I'm half asleep
secrets. I know they're gone beyond recall
yet drowsing...It coheres, I see it all.
The high empyrean, the abyss deep,
reasons for death and sin and love and pain
why angel snores break crystals into dust
why we should never question only trust.
My foot cramps slightly, I awake again
My dead and all that certainty is grit
corner of eye that finger pokes. It stings.
Sleep flees, takes with it all dream's wonder things
Mind like the body needs a daily shit.
Visions are heaven poison in our food
fast us to fever, tears and sweat of blood.
April 7, 2015
This is turning into yet another sequence
Either know one vast maker. All that is,
Might be, formed in an instant of fierce will.
Light, words expanding ever or until
Limit. A thought that's Theirs or Hers or His
An Aleph greater than our mind could hold
to try would blast. So never think you can.
know laid down laws. With which our world began
Coded in flesh. And constellations cold
have not the shape we think. Perception made
dragon crabclaw, sketched on dark field of sky.
We make things, think them real, consoling lie.
Or look on empty space and be afraid
either a fiction or so vast a mind.
We cannot think. There are no words to find.
Another poem of cosmic pessimism
Joy is a moment. Every moment ends.
Time flickers past and most of it we waste.
Nor can remember every peach's taste.
Death takes away the laughter of our friends.
Last more than bronze? Perhaps, but art will die
all tongues are stilled last speaker in their grave.
When houses burn, it is our child we save.
Perhaps some years, but deathless is a lie.
God too, but if there is, they do not care.
Sparrows are just as precious as your verse.
For conquerors oblivion is worse
than losing. No one knows that they were there.
These perect instants fragments of some whole
that never came together to console.
April 6, 2015
A sort of response to John C Wright's description of his vision of God
No thing, or place, or time. Spark flickers dies.
Gone universe. It lasted all our years
comets fucks symphonies. Ended in tears.
That end. Or aren't. We're dust, but dust that lies
better than hopeless truth. Blood from a scratch
chili on tongue. A single perfect line.
Better than gods. One moment you were mine
Live die. To live is dying – that's the catch,
Contractual. Joy costs. These are the facts.
No gods but those we made up in our head
helped us to kill or love. They're just as dead.
We will not be remembered for our acts.
Stumble for meaning. If it's there, we're blind.
A second's light. Make art and love. Be kind.
April 5, 2015
Not a post about the Hugos
Further " I entered the mind of God and saw the indescribable simplicity and complexity, love, humor and majesty of His thought, and I understood the joy beyond understanding and comprehended the underlying unity of all things, and the paradox of determinism and free will was made clear to me, as was the symphonic nature of prophecy. I was shown the structure of time and space."
Now, that's a deal more of a vision than was vouchsafed to most of the great mystics - it leaves Julian of Norwich and Thomas Aquinas in the dust.
I think we can assume that John C. Wright believes himself to be a bit special. Which the Jesuits who taught me taught me to consider spiritual pride.
Apart from the question - why, if you have seen all this, would you want to be complicit in fixing the Hugos? - I am left with the snide mockery of atheists, and the following remark of Christ 'whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.'
I just try to be polite, but then I am just an agnostic. Wright is supposed to be judging himself by a higher standard.
His first couple of books were sort of promising but I didn't take to his later ones.
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