While many authors have thrown their proverbial hats in the ring on social media to call me a loser, a whiner, a failure and other ad hominem attacks and insults meant to discredit me as a person while ignoring the concerns I’ve raised about social media witch hunting and the social justice narrative that’s become so pervasive in small press genre fiction as to be seen as a perfectly normal response to the issues and problems that arise in our communities—not a single solitary person has come forward, acknowledged my concerns as legitimate, or asked me how to fix the problem.
But that’s OK. Because I’m going to tell you anyway.
1. Dare to be offensive again
Political correctness has ravaged western culture. Thought police are everywhere online, in our workplaces, our social groups, our hobbies and even in our homes. Wrongthink and wrongspeak are very real offenses with very real consequences in today’s world. You will have your phone number, address, workplace and personal relationship information spread all over the entire internet for saying or doing the wrong thing.
This is not hyperbole. This is reality. The time for denying the existence of cultural Marxism is over. It’s here. You’re not allowed to have an opinion on a myriad of subjects that strays from the social justice narrative without dire consequences. Period.
Let’s move on.
It’s time to not give a fuck anymore. Love or hate Donald Trump, this election has taught us a lot of things. One of those things is that endlessly branding people as racist bigot homophobes has lost its luster and dare I say it’s losing its power.
The more we stand, unflinching in the face of these attacks, living our lives and creating our art unfazed, the more we show the public at large that we are in fact not the evil, lecherous villains that the social justice warriors have painted us as.
So it’s time to push back. It’s time to get offensive again. Authors come to me in private all the time and tell me they’d love to satirize social justice in their fiction, to satirize feminism, black lives matter, and many other topics that are considered out of bounds not only by liberal culture at large, but specifically by the bizarro fiction gate keepers.
And by gate keepers, I do not mean the head editors of the biggest bizarro publishers. I mean the social media zealots calling themselves the genre fiction police preoccupied with what we do in our romantic lives and what we choose to talk about on our social media. THEY attack us. THEY prevent us from even getting far enough to submit manuscripts to the publishers.
Science fiction authors have long since cut ties with not only legacy publishers but small press publishers as well. There is MUCH success to be found in the independent, self-publishing sci-fi scene. I believe we can replicate that kind of individual success in the bizarro fiction market as well.
If the gate keepers will not back down and leave their politics to voting booths, then to hell with the gate keepers and to hell with the publishers. We have the publishing and advertising tools at our fingertips to be, on an individual level, even more successful than any small press published author or publisher. The only thing preventing us from wholesale abandoning the small press is the social stigma attached to it. To hell with the stigma, and to hell with the publishers if they’re not willing to publish controversial fiction that challenges the pervasive liberal political agenda.
2. Strengthen the BWA
That being said, we DO have a tool that should be working for us. We have the Bizarro Writers Association. But in its current form, it serves very few individuals who happen to be living in one region in one country. That should not be the case.
I say we strengthen the BWA by adding board members from every bizarro publisher and self-published bizarro writers as well. I say we hold elections just like the HWA and the science fiction and fantasy associations.
Sure, the very first thing that will happen is the social justice warriors who already hold influence over the BWA will try to secure all of the seats and then just push their narrative from a bureaucratic position. But I think, with public voting, you’d be surprised how many people would reject the gate keepers who have taunted and harassed us on social media for so long.
I think you’d see a whole new crop of voice pushing for an end to the political correctness and liberal stronghold on our beloved genre. I think you’d see major changes.
With a strengthened, politically and socially diverse board, I see the BWA as a tool that can help to end social media witch hunting. It can act as a protective force for REAL victims of harassment and would move bizarro to being a much more inclusive genre.
Imagine a bizarro fiction where authors had to bring their complaints about a publisher or an individual in front of a board that doesn’t only consist of friends who live in the same city. Imagine a bizarro fiction where a person being accused of any of the various offenses that would traditionally see them tarred, feathered and banished from the community suddenly shielded from this punishment until a politically diverse group had the chance to look over the actual FACTS in the situation before deciding upon his or her guilt or innocence.
THAT is the bizarro fiction community I want to be a part of.
3. Reject the SJW narrative
Simply put, as individual members of the community, the only way to end the parasitic social justice infection is to burn it out of bizarro. Every day, every single time we see some bullshit SJW post or link or opinion on social media, it is our duty to attack it.
By remaining silent and fearful for so long, we’ve allowed this politically correct cancer to rob our literary community of its vital essence. Its bite. Its offensive nature. And I do truly believe that this one single factor above all others has helped to trigger a wholesale decline in bizarro fiction interest over the last 5 years.
Only by rooting it out, shining the brightest light on it possible, and calling it what it is in the light of day will we rid bizarro fiction of political correctness. Call your friends out when they post PC crap on social media. When you see a witch hunt start, don’t take the side of the victim of the hunt, just take the side of common sense. Tell anyone you know who participates in the online dogpile to knock it the fuck off. Do so privately. Call your friend. Tell them they wouldn’t be so fucking cocky if they themselves were the victim of a hysterical mob of strangers systematically destroying their reputation.
Like it or not, if we want things to get better, if we want to grow our readership and get us back to a point of relevance in the larger literary community, we have to be active in taking back the thing we love so much.
We have to fight for it or it will die.
Hmmnn. Yes, sir. ……………….. However, it does seem that Bizarro is in fact dying; but only sees that as an “adaptation” ostensibly to market conditions.
So, to me the bottom line question is “Do the Bizarro commandants want to be an art; a voice?” or “Do they seek to be a more profitable business, the day to day decisions perhaps contradictory to their goal?”
The answer involves clairvoyance and I’m not so adept.
Odds are strongly in favor of the latter.
It may be hard to step away from the friends you spent so much hopeful time with. To offer a solution which is a part of the system which has obviously failed on all levels is like attempting to re-program a reticent demon. Maybe you can; but if you do you’ll be the first; and no investor with any sense would bet a nickel on it.
The best system I know of is administered by a kind-hearrted and wise King Arthur; knowing that they will find Mordred or concoct him as they choose. Yeah; I’m that much fun to talk to.
I looked at a few of your recent interviews this AM and my long ass thoughts are duplicated here.
“Jeez, Kevin. I never thought I’d write anything like this. I watched 90 minutes of your interviews and will go back later. I do not disagree with one thing you said. That would take on greater meaning if you knew that I always find some point to debate.
So, where do I go from here? Maybe recognizing our personal belief that the Libertarian philosophy is the fairest one, is also juxtaposed with the practical reality that it is not electable beyond a small town level.
I guess I should back up. Since starting to write, I’ve had this periodic fantasy about being interviewed. Version A is that I just refuse. Version B is that I go on the show and kind of goof on the interviewer. At some point he asks me something like what do I think of the US educational system. I say; “I just wrote a story about a hit man falling in love. What the fuck am I supposed to know about the education system?”
That’s not conducive to a writer’s income; but at this age I generally don’t care. The whole thing strikes me as absurd. A writer writes a book about some shit; maybe it even has the opposite of his real POV in it. But, if it is noticed he is then required to tell everyone what he thinks about things he may not even think about. I saw a Nabokov interview where a critic was asking him loads of annoying questions; too which he finally said; “Look. When I put my pencil to paper I am creating art. THAT’S ALL.”
That’s not to knock your agenda. I admire it. But, having lived through the 60’s when all the shit was almost turned on its head, to be resurrected in a Satanic ritual makes me less disposed to believe a second time. Call that cowardice. Call that rationality. Call it disrespect for a large segment of the human race. Whatever. I’ll agree with you.
On a larger level the agendas I’ve seen are not only political, though that might be the most important one. They’re also perpetrated by very tiny people who revel in their miniscule “power.” One part of my Goodreads banishment came right after I had five days straight gotten an unsolicited review of five stars. I was being trailed around by this bitch-dog-sockpuppet-librarian who was making comments indirectly asking for money which I answered in insulting ways. Mt wife is a social worker and sometimes tells me of the never forgotten horrors which happen to orphaned children. I think pedophiles are the lowest of the low and have no inclinations in that direction. Yet this b-d-s librarian, without any evidence, publicly accused me of being a pedophile. The only reason I remember this particular libelous GR statement is that it was about something I find completely abhorrent. I don’t give the least bit of a shit about other criticisms.
Regarding “equal results” versus “equal opportunity” I share your opinions. Perhaps coming from a longer view, I can say that I supported EEOC considerations way back when. However, even at the time, I didn’t think special considerations should be granted in perpetuity. A generation, two; maybe three; but now we are up to 5 or 6. As one example many blacks have used the opportunities created to have a white bourgeois life; fine. Others have hung out on the corner opting to be “cool” gangstas, rappers, or whatever else a “badass” of 2017 may be. Fine again as I don’t care and don’t tell people what to do. However, if they demand “equal results” with their brothers who took a different route, I say “Fuck you.” And you know, the ones I’ve said this to in real life give me more respect than they do the pussy ass neo-liberals.
Back to books; Bizarro in particular. For whatever the little it’s worth, I can go with it when they do the Marx Brothers. When it gets to Three Stooges I lose interest. In book form I’ve previously written some stuff which was meant to be chiding; and has been viewed as critical. Like what I criticize carries a whole lot of weight in the literary world; I still regret doing something which could be so interpreted. Bizarro is getting its ass handed to it by every purposely misinformed asshole who thinks they know grammar. These are the exact people the genre has disdained from the get go. These are the exact people who David Foster Wallace disdained; people who write very un-entertaining books used by Ph D candidates for the period in which they were trying to get the professor’s approval. Given a choice between them and the Three Stooges I’d opt for the Stooges. I have a small inadequate excuse. At the time I was getting a very jaundiced viewpoint from someone who is still bitter that the Bizarro world rejected him from the beginning.
IDK; Kevin. Your philosophy is refreshing; your chosen genre is your chosen genre. Your thoughts do coincide with the little I’ve seen of high end literary; but with all the crap out there they are difficult to reach from here.
Cheers.”
“Or it will die,” you said. Momentarily sad I guess, if you ignore the fact that everythjing does.
In what was perhaps a more insightful time it was said;
“Wooden ships on the water very free and easy
Easy, you know the way it’s supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline let us be
Talkin’ ’bout very free and easy
Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die
We are leaving, you don’t need us
Aaaah …
Go take your sister then by the hand
Lead her away from this foreign land
Far away where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don’t need us
And it’s a fair wind
Blowin’ warm out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I’ll set a course and go”
In the irreality of cyberspace, the scumbags thought that they had caught up. I think that’s the humorous part.
3) Kill all the current, politically correct practitioners.