RTS 05: H.P. Lovecraft’s Racism

The Strangeville train just keeps on a-rollin, gang! New month, new serialized audio book and NEW controversial topic to discuss! Since February is black history month, the boys could think of no better topic to put in the forefront than the new whipping boy of the social justice literary community: H.P. Lovecraft.

In this episode, Kevin and Jeremy discuss Lovecraft’s racist views, how they affected his fiction, and whether or not his influence and works should be banned from public consumption.

But first they introduce this week’s reading! This week on RTS, we debut Kevin Strange’s Lovecraftian novella MCHUMANS. Ricky, Chef, and the rest of the gang are tasked with providing Lord Cthulhu with catering for his big ritual ceremony wherein he intends to bring the rest of the Elder Gods back to this plane!

The boys finish the episode by prepping fans for next week’s episode: The internet’s racist smear campaign against Lovecraft!

*RTS: BizarroCon Special Report*


The thing about social justice warriors is, they ALWAYS double down. So when you catch them lying, even when you provide irrefutable facts, they continue to lie and make themselves look ever more foolish and irrational.

And so, Kevin and Jeremy bring to you this BizarroCon Special Report. It’s only just been made clear to us that the actual private messages between the male and female authors from the BizarroCon 2016 controversy have been made public by the male author accused of the harassment and stalking of the female author. Since he chose to make the conversation public, we feel comfortable sharing it here, with his and the female author’s identities hidden as per the RTS policy.

Below, we have provided screenshots of those conversations, plus famous author Brian Keene’s public assertions that he witnessed the alleged harassment of the female author at the convention.

This special edition of the READING TO STRANGERS podcast goes into further detail about the controversy and our guesses as to why the SJWs in the Bizarro community would call on Brian Keene to misinterpret the incident. And further, why he would choose to go along with the lie.

The screenshots:

Bizarrocon 2016 was held from November 17th-20th 2016.

As you can see from the screenshot below of the private conversation between the male and the female authors at the center of the controversy, they were STILL on pleasant speaking terms on November 24th, FOUR DAYS after the convention ended. The female author even agreed to meet the male author again at a future public event. There was no stalking nor any harassment at the convention. This is painfully clear.

And yet here, Brian Keene maintains that he witnessed harassment at the BizarroCon event held from 11/17/16-11/20/16, which clearly had yet to occur as the entirety of the female author’s complaints come AFTER 11/24/2016 once the male author began to post public blogs confessing his crush on her and the interactions they’d had at the convention.

The controversy erupted after the male author first refused to remove the blogs, then eventually did so and apologized for any embarrassment caused. As with all instances of social justice witch hunting, this apology did NOT remove his ban from the convention, nor did it stop accusations of harassment and stalking.

With the proof and facts clear as day, the only remaining question is, why is Brian Keene lying?

RTS Bonus Ep: Banned From The Horror Show With Brian Keene

Well, gang. This one was hard to record. But it had to be done. In this awkward “special” episode of READING TO STRANGERS I respond to the news that I’ve been publicly banned from THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE podcast (which I predicted would happen, here.)

Apparently the correct way to prove that censorship and witch hunting isn’t present in your literary community is to witch hunt and censor any voice of dissent.

If you know me at all, then you know I can’t just let something like that hang in the air.

So, reluctantly, I recorded a podcast as my end of what should have been a phone conversation between Brian and I to discuss our differing points of view on publicly calling out authors accused of crimes before they’ve had a chance to go before our justice system (or more often without any attempt to have them arrested at all.)

But instead of calling me on the phone like an adult, Brian chose to do this. So yeah. Here’s my response. Enjoy, I guess.