The Science Fiction community is populated with engaged authors and fans many of whom have strong and varied opinions on many subjects. Tor supports that diversity of viewpoints by publishing a widely varied group of authors and books through Tor/Forge and by posting a variety of material and reader comment on Tor.com.
Last month, Irene Gallo, a member of Tor’s staff, posted comments about two groups of science fiction writers, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, and about the quality of some of the 2015 Hugo Award nominees, on her personal Facebook page. Ms. Gallo is identified on her page as working for Tor. She did not make it clear that her comments were hers alone. They do not reflect Tor’s views or mine. She has since clarified that her personal views are just that and apologized to anyone her comments may have hurt or offended.
The Puppies groups were organized to support a slate of authors for the Hugo Awards, given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. Media coverage of the two groups initially suggested that they were organized simply to promote white men, which was not correct. Each Puppies’ slate of authors and editors included some women and writers of color, including Rajnar Vajra, Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Ann Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Sanderson and Amanda Green. Some of the authors on the Sad Puppy slate have been published by Tor and Tor.com, including Kevin J. Anderson, John C. Wright, Ed Lerner and Michael F. Flynn. Many, many Hugo Award nominees and winners are our authors too, including Kevin J. Anderson, John C. Wright and Katherine Addison this year and John Chu, John Scalzi, Cherie Priest and Jo Walton in past years, just to mention a few.
In short, we seek out and publish a diverse and wide ranging group of books. We are in the business of finding great stories and promoting literature and are not about promoting a political agenda
Tor employees, including Ms. Gallo, have been reminded that they are required to clarify when they are speaking for Tor and when they are speaking for themselves. We apologize for any confusion Ms. Gallo’s comments may have caused. Let me reiterate: the views expressed by Ms. Gallo are not those of Tor as an organization and are not my own views. Rest assured, Tor remains committed to bringing readers the finest in science fiction – on a broad range of topics, from a broad range of authors.
The problem with saying “her comments were hers alone” and separate from the company’s is that 1- she was promoting a Tor product while making those statements and using the “anti-sad puppy” message to promote said product which conflates her opinions with Tor/Forge and Pan MacMillan, and 2- Her actions are neither the first, nor the most egregious for Tor…There have been other Tor associates who have made similar statements on various places scattered around the web. Heck in the past few weeks you have had a Tor editor promoting voting Tor books below “Noah Ward” on the Hugo ballot simply because they may have been associated with the “puppies”.
What an employee, especially a seemingly high ranking employee, does “in the wild” reflects back upon the company even if it is not on official stationary.
I’m more curious to see what it is she said that prompted this.
I’ve made several attempts to comment on this in a way that stands no chance of running afoul of the moderation policy, so I will refrain from commenting at length. I will say simply that I like Tor. I like the Web content. I like the books Tor publishes.
I don’t like… whatever is going on here. I understand the need for a message like this one, which addresses the weekend’s controversy in even and neutral tones, but I don’t think this is that message. The last paragraph in particular goes out of its way to publicly shame Irene Gallo, and that just makes me very, very sad.
We can acknowledge that Irene’s comments on Facebook do not represent the company’s without implicitly defending the nastiness of the Puppy campaigns, and we can do the same without resorting to public shame.
That’s all. I apologize if I’ve overstepped my bounds as a commenter here. I’m just saddened, is all.
I agree with Garrett. If we’re talking about the FB post here (http://file770.com/?p=23024) everything Ms. Gallo said was true–we’ve all seen the vile things Vox Day has said, for YEARS, and others on his slate aren’t far behind. I’m very disappointed in Mr. Doherty for throwing Ms. Gallo under the bus.
What Irene Gallo said was far nastier than the Puppy campaigns. She was unprofessional and actively damaged Tor brands with her untrue and rude comments.
I really appreciate this message. Thank you for making the official position clear. :-)
We do have to understand that individuals, however highly they stand in a company – and however careful we think they ought to be – are nonetheless individuals with their own opinions. I have not read Irene’s comments, though from what is indicated here, I suspect I would disagree wholeheartedly with much of what she said. That doesn’t change the fact that she is an excellent art director, and provides great value to the company as such.
As noted in the post, Tor as a company has specifically refrained from taking a position; various products may be on – or not on – the short list due to the Puppy nominations. Individuals within the company, on the other hand, have generally very strong opinions on the subject. I also have strong opinions on the same subject, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people who frequent this website would be… vehement in their disagreement, should I express them.
In any event, perhaps it would be worthwhile to consider that we all let our feelings get the best of us sometimes, and extend a certain amount of grace to one another. And that should go all ways.
@@.-@ TexAnne, thanks for posting that. I am also in complete agreement. Ms. Gallo’s comment didn’t even make the assertions Mr. Doherty’s post brings up that, that the two slates only pursued white male authors. And evidence of the behavior of the people pushing the two slates is easily found. I can respect that as a industry association that pursues it’s own slate of nominees, in the spirit of the award voting process the slates in question have corrupted to pursue their own agenda(one which they are very open about), Tor.com cannot and should not comment on the process so as not to appear to unduly influence the process, but Ms. Gallo’s comments are nothing but truth, and no one should be rebuked for speaking truth.
I have never seen any nastiness from people associated with the Sad Puppies campaign. Vox Day is not associated with Sad Puppies but the people attacking the Sad Puppies campaign have shown the sort of bigotry that they accuse Vox Day of supporting.
I do not defend Vox Day here but the people who expect the Sad Puppies people to bash Vox Day should be expected to bash the bigotry & hatred expressed toward the people associated with the Sad Puppies campaign.
People who believe that Vox Day is a bigot should look at themselves.
Are they supporting the unreasonable bigotry that is going on against the people associated with the Sad Puppies campaign.
Mr. Doherty is correct about the Sad Puppies campaign.
Vox Day is another matter.
I’m not sure how Gallo, Associate Publisher and Creative Director, can distance herself from Tor. Even if the reprehensible things she said were as a private individual you still employ her at Tor Books. She insulted Tor customers. She insulted Tor authors. And she put Tor in a bad light. You shouldn’t put someone like in charge of making coffee let alone as a publisher or director. And your statement falls short when we see many other Tor employees in top positions making similar unprofessional statements. Mr. Doherty it is clear that many top level employees at Tor have a hatred for certain writers and certain fans. And until those people are fired all we can assume is that Tor stands by that prejudice. Until then I will not purchase any Tor books. I will not purchase any Macmillan books. And I am not alone. As a long time fan and customer of Tor I hope you take the appropriate measures.
Invoking the name of Vox Day to forgive calling the likes of John C. Wright, Brad Torgeson, Larry Correia, Sara Hoyt, Jim Butcher, and Peter Grant, among others, “unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic” is indeed saddening. The screencaps of the quotes can be found here, along with other writer’s responses to this issue. This remark from Gallo was in answer to an innocent questioner wanting to know who the “puppies” were. Rather than a non-political response encouraging the person to google the term and make up their own mind we are treated to a near libelous response of a group that includes Tor’s own authors. One of those has Ms. Gallo for an editor.
This is a serious matter that in other firms has led to resignations.
Aeryl, her comments are provably false (for example, Gamergate was not involved at all in the Puppies groups, the proof is on reddit, timestamped and everything). She lied very rudely about a diverse (ethnically, religiously, and sexually) group of people getting together to support a wider range of authors than the very narrow pool that is usually logrolled into Hugo nominations. She is also lying about the quality of the nominated works. At a minimum, those works are all professionally copyedited and have valid English grammar. They are not “terrible” or “bad” at a basic, entry level.
And GamerGate is actually about ethics in gaming journalism.
@mcwetboy–
That’s true. Gamergate was and is about ethics in journalism. They are not involved in the Puppies campaigns.
I can also say that the nastiness surrounding the Hugo Awards has not come from the puppies, but from their detractors.
The Puppy gaslighting is strong in this thread.
When even an anti-puppy thinks you’ve gone way way too far.
http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2015/06/08/in-defense-of-the-sad-puppies/
Where is her apology posted?
I have to question Mr. Docherty cowering in fear of a piece of sub-human filth like Vox Day. It appears as though nobody could defame him as he is already an object of ridicule.
Tor ought to be ashamed of throwing Ms. Gallo under the bus to satisfy either flavour of puppies.
Dear Tor,
As an executive at a 12B company, I would be fired had I posted insulting (and untrue) comments to a group who made up part of my consumer base. Is Tor’s profit margins really so wide that it can afford to employ individuals who feel superior to the people who are not only buying their products, but developing them?
Oh for God’s sake. There has been nastiness all over the place from both sides.
However, whilst it might not have been politic for Gallo to let loose even on her personal FB page, it is understandable. TOR staff are being accused of being in an evil cabal who secretly run the Hugos. Vox Day deliberately sits on Gallo’s post, not commenting on it until the Nebula Awards weekend to give it more impact. I understand why Tom would want to make a comment on this, but am surprised how equivocal he is about the situation.
No, Irene Gallo’s comments do not represent official TOR policies. Neither do Moshe Feder’s, Patrick Hayden’s, or Teresa Hayden’s.
It’s merely coincidence that every TOR editor who has weighed in on this issue is rabidly anti-Puppy.
Sorry Mr Doherty…this is far too little too late. If you’d fired her it might mean something but her, moshe feder and others within your company have made provably false libelious statements. Frankly not buying any Tor books for me isn’t that big an issue since nothing you’ve published in either sci fi has peaked my interest in recent years.
@18 Jonathan Baird: Ms Gallo’s apology is in a response to to her Facebook comment, at https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts/10152728739637461?comment_id=10152796098467461, saying:
So basically a non-apology apology.
Yep isn’t it funny though Mr Salomon, that she didn’t issue that apology until AFTER someone mentioned the words “libel”, “slander”, and “lawsuit” Also though I don’t have the sceenshots to show it…and after deleting somewhere around 100 comments from the thread. including one from what I’ve been told by Jim Butcher.
Yep Preeettty much Jonathan Baird
Just to note, if the GamerGate crew has taken notice it is because they’ve been invoked like Emmanuel Goldstein so often by the anti-puppy crowd, they’ve taken notice. It is the Internet equivalent of chanting ‘Scary Mary’ in the mirror.
Mr. Doherty, thank for your your comments. I appreciate that you continue to be the inspiration I met over 20 years ago as a young science fiction fan at NASFIC in Austin. While I thank you for the clarification on Ms. Gallo’s comments, I continue to be concerned by the general vitriol expressed by your staff–the Neilsen-Haydens, Mr. Feder, and now Ms. Gallo to the public. It’s obvious that they all fall into a particular political persuasion, and feel very strongly that it’s the “correct” way to be….however, when your sales are to a public that fully 50% of are *not* that persuasion, the level of alienation of customers present in their commentaries should be troubling to *any* business owner. I’m not liberal..nor am I particularly conservative. However, I *am* a book buyer. And when I see this many people in the senior staff of a publisher being so…awful to anyone with a differing opinion? It’s clear it’s the culture of the company that allows it. As a business owner, if I found my company faced with this situation, I would *immediately* insist on real, comprehensive diversity training (NOT the left-wing-all-other-is-evil type, but REAL diversity training) for all my staff. I would also be *very* concerned about their work habits and how, in such a subjective business as yours, it might be affecting their day-to-day decision processes. John Wright has expressed his utter dismay about discovering how…hateful Ms. Gallo is, having worked with her closely on his projects at your company. How, in good faith, can he *ever* feel comfortable working with her now? She’s shown her true beliefs, and they’re..ugly. Authors in your stable must take pause now, wondering if they must pass a litmus test, less they be placed in a working relationship with people who have stated publicly their hatred of all beliefs other than their own. Up and coming talent can see plainly what they may face if they espouse different beliefs. Your statement is, as always, elegant and inclusive. The actions of your staff, unfortunately, do not reflect your philosophy.
JA Wolf. I’d have gone with Beetlejuice but then..I love that movie
If Ms. Gallo’s comments had been an isolated incident, then they wouldn’t matter very much. Unfortunately, they appear to be part of a pattern of deliberate(?) mischaracterization and prejudice against certain types of writers by a number of Tor employees. It seems to me that Tor is in need of a culture change.
12: According to that quote you posted, she didn’t call the nominees racist, mysogynistic, and homophobic, she called the puppies themselves that, which could be interpreted as the people who put forth the slate called “The Sad Puppies Slate” (or similarly the Rabid Puppies). Unless you’re suggesting that the nominees are themselves the organizers? In which case my respect for them goes down even more, which I didn’t think was possible.
Now, with what she said, I still think she’s painting with too broad a brush (as ridiculous as they are, I don’t think they’re ALL racist, homophobic, and misogynist… she is conflating the Sad and Rabid Puppies, but to be fair, they did the conflating first, and all evidence I’ve seen suggests that Vox Day IS part of the small group that chose the Sad Puppies noms, even if he went farther on his own site), but if she’s going to be damned, damn her for what she actually did.
As an aside, I can’t speak to all of the others you listed, but John C. Wright IS unrepentantly homophobic. He’s said some truly vile things on that front.
@19, Tom Doherty doesn’t “cower in fear” to anyone. He’s simply a decent human being who had to draw a line. Irene Gallo was given much notice that her words were inappropriate, and responded by posting pictures of cats. That appears to have been a mistake on her part.
If you are a friend of Irene Gallo, you will not continue to defend her words, which have brought her no joy.
@Bluntojb, You have invoked the names of authors who have been put forward, many without their permission, as part of the SP slates, not the supporters of the campaign, which is two totally different groups of people.
@DrakBibliophile, Well, then obviously the enormous threats full of hateful trolls that can be found at my link doesn’t exist, if you can say you never saw it happen.
@NFG As a frequent visitor to a site commonly targeted by GG, I beg to differ. If nothing else, GG has demonstrated an amazing ability to change identities and logins at the drop of a hat. So your claim is that they had nothing to do with one another, while technically true, doesn’t account for the fact that there is a significant overlap in ideology between the two groups.
Apology not accepted. This statement is way too late, and is a bandaid on a gushing wound at best. TOR and Macmillian are dead to me. If you chose to sow the wind by alienating your customers, you reap the whirlwind. If you allow major figures in your publishing houses to do so, I see little reason to continue sending my hard earned dollars, some $100 a month or so between the wife and I, your direction. There are too many other enterprises out there with more honor, self-respect, and frankly, logical awareness, that I can count on not to antagonize their own customer base.
Thank you for your comments, Tom. I have read your statement and that of Irene Gallo. I appreciate yours. Hers is not an apology. Fine. I think you need to understand that her comments that caused this brew up were not made in a vacuum. Your editors, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Moshe Feder have made statements that align closely with Ms. Gallo’s. Once is an individual. Twice is a coincidence. Three times and I think we can say that is the editorial culture Tor has allowed to grow. You may be sincere in what you have expressed. I do not think your senior staff agrees with you. I am not going to boycott your company. But, until I see something more substantial than the non-apology we saw from Ms. Gallo, when funds are tight and I have to choose between books to purchase, the Tor book will probably be left on the shelf.
Tom Doherty;
Thank you for this. I am afraid that you and I come from a different time and place when fairness mattered and SF was a haven, not a battleground. I appreciate your attempt to disassociate yourself and your publishing company from the bitterness and calumny that seem to be the order of the day when it comes to dealing with the Hugo nominations.
I urge you to ignore as best you can those SPs and those anti-puppies who took this opportunity to display their nastiness.
I am unable to find any apology from Ms Gallo. Please post a link.
I came across Ms. Gallo’s facebook as a screenshot on twitter. One of the people I follow had retweeted Vox Day’s post about that Facebook thread into my timeline. I was skeptical that it was real. I asked for a link. Mr. Day responded, and sure enough it was real. The lesson I’m taking away from this is to trust Vox Day a bit more and Tor a bit less.
On the other hand, I believe Ms. Gallo has a right to say whatever she wants to (though she may be brushing up against the border of libel), and have no intention of boycotting books I like by authors who publish with Tor. Ms. Gallo’s remarks are not going to stop me from buying a new book by Steven Brust or Paul Cornell. And as a person who believes in free speech, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of people being fired for expressing opinions that their employers find embarrassing. I’m also quite capable of separating the opinions of a publisher from those of a writer, and even those of a writer from his or her work. Though I can imagine that Tor authors who’s politics differs from Ms. Gallo’s might be querying their agents about other publishing alternatives, out a real worry that they might get less-than-professional treatment from her in the future.
As for any connection between Gamergate and Sad Puppies, I support both, but never saw anything more than incidental overlap between those groups until opponents of Sad Puppies starting shouting “Gamergate! Evil!” I think this cartoon best sums up that situation: https://goo.gl/eoesZ6
An interesting statement from a company with so many gates kept by the extreme left.
Funny, too, how that entrenched political element poo-poos it’s own vitriol/hate-speech and blatant nepotism.
Irene Gallo acts like she’s in junior high school. I do appreciate that she finally apologized, however, it’s sad that it required pressure from her employer for her to do so. It would have been much more professional had she done so on her own instead of posting cat photos. I imagine this will help her on her way to adulthood.
1) There are a lot of similar pro-puppy sentiments here. Curious.
2) As someone who is fairly removed from organized fandom, this pos was the first I’ve heard of this newest fracas. And even in this apology—and its somewhat insulting tone towards Ms. Gallo—I feel kind of disappointed in Tor for what seems a de facto apology to the Puppies.
3) The idea that employees should declare whether every statement they make is either representing the company’s views or not is plainly ludicrous. The idea that any person of good faith would read a person’s communication from a private Facebook account, or anything else that is not either from an official company organ or directly in the course of doing their job, and think that the person is representing the company is laughable.
This pandering to the Puppies—and halfway giving them a scalp—is disappointing and leaves a bad taste in my mouth for Tor, which has felt as close to home for me as a publisher and arm of of a giant multinational corporation could.
Interesting that you should feel compelled to release this statement. Can we therefore assume that Jim Frenkel was acting as a representative of Tor when he engaged in serial harassment of women at conventions over the course of several years? And that Tor’s policies are therefore a reflection of his?
Until Tor as a company denounces the various “Puppy” groups, I will not read aNY book published by TOR. I will also ask everyone I know to refrain from giving money to the company as well.
Xaaronx,
If you visit her Facebook page you’ll see that most of her posts are marketing for Tor. Her FB page may as well be a Tor FB page.
I’m glad Tor as responded this way. Gallo’s comments were harsh and brutal, more damaging than anything the Sad Puppies have done (no, I do not include Vox Day in that). To be clear, I am not a support of either campaign, but the claim that the SP’s sole purpose is to promote white, straight men is absolutely ludicrous. There were some truly spiteful, slanderous things between sent out to the likes of Mr. Butcher and Mr. Anderson. Jennifer Brozek has actually served as my editor in the past and I was shocked to see the slander being hurled her way. She should know better, especially when promoting a Tor product.
I think we also need to point out Irene’s responses when confronted with the accusations. I saw the whole thing unfold, and I was gobsmacked how immature and juvenile she behaved. She could have had the opportunity to back-peddle her slanderous statements, but she just posted pictures of cats. People asked her to explain herself, and she posted more cats. In my view, that’s just another nail in the coffin. It’s not apologetic in the slightest, and it’s a horrific stain on Tor, a place I have a lot of respect for.
My fiction has been published by the Macmillan/Tor family, and after seeing this behavior, I’m starting to think just how I’m represented if this is the sort of stuff that’s allowed to be throw around. It’s venomous and toxic. Mr. Doherty has the class and decency to refuse any of this sort of thing going on, but from what I’ve seen it’s quite common, and I’m very, very disappointed in it.
My two cents.
Wow, an apology to an organization dedicated to racism. What a way to take a stand.
How can any author possibly trust Ms. Gallo to decently handle his or her work after an incontinent outburst like this? Her unrepentant “apology” does not even retract her assertions about Tor’s own published authors, merely inviting the reader to guess which of them were unjustly covered by the “too broad a brush” she wielded. Will she specifically say that John C. Wright and Kevin J. Anderson are not “bad-to-reprehensible” authors, or are we to simply infer that? She has irreparably damaged the relationship of trust with her internal clients. I do not see how she can continue to be employed by Tor, nor how any author can possibly trust her to handle their books in a professional manner.
Is this what authors are to expect from Tor’s own senior staff?
Mr Doherty, that was a beautiful CYA statement. Just the right tone of regret for a misunderstanding, disavowal of an employee making a “personal” mistake, and mild depreciation of the matter as inconsequential.
Some minor quibbles… you now have award winning authors who have been grievously insulted by this employee, I can’t see that improving the teamwork between them in the future.
Quite a few Tor customers of decades are now dissatisfied with their perception of Tor’s ‘corporate’ policies, standards, and philosophy…
Ms Gallo has not, to my knowledge, apologized, disclaimed, or in any way backed off her flat statement…
In my opinion that would have been the minimal necessary action for her to take BEFORE you came to her rescue (and yours)
I’m afraid that your semi-apology doesn’t ring true, nor does it, at least in my case, make up for her libelous rant.
I’m sure that I’m not alone in saying that until she is removed from Tor’s staff we’ll be asking authors who we wish to read to move to another imprint.
Ted C Hall
I appreciate Tom’s statement. It’s good to see, though expected, that Ms. Gallo doesn’t speak for Tor and is, of course, allowed her personal opinions.
But this is an issue of professionalism. For a senior executive of Tor books, whether in a personal or professional capacity, to call writers who are published by Tor “Neo-Nazis” who write “reprehensible works” is entirely unprofessional. Ms. Gallo’s “apology” buried in the same Facebook comment thread is no apology at all, since she never retracts her words, only “apologizes” for anyone hurt they might have caused.
I would hope that Tor, Mr. Doherty (who I greatly respect), and Pan Macmillian would have a bit stronger response to an egregious violation of professional ethics by one of their senior executives.
Mr. Doherty, Thank you for that sir, you are a gentleman. Although we have differences, I am an unrepentant Puppy, I think in some ways this controversy has been badly handled on both sides at times. Eric Flint displays an attitude in his latest Puppies post I think we could all take as an example. Thanks again and thanks for all the good books you publish that have brought me such pleasure.
The outrage over this is manufactured. The comment in question is nearly a month old and generated little to no organic response on its own; it was only when Vox Day got around to tweeting the screencap last Saturday, for whatever were his reasons (he was so affronted that he … sat on it for 26 days), that his minions were unleashed, a number of whom apparently in this direction. (Hello, minions! And well done following Master’s instructions. Have a biscuit.)
This was planned, and timed, and not at all in good faith.
You do understand that the Sad Puppies organizers come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and backed authors of a variety of ethnic backgrounds as well, right?
Or are you just continuing to riff on Gallo’s defamation?
Apology not accepted.
You need to terminate the employment of this truly despicable person, not provide cover for her outrageous insults to authors OF WHOM SOME ARE PUBLISHED BY YOUR OWN COMPANY.
No Tor books for me, since their editorial staff hate and despise me.
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-tom-doherty-of-tor.html
Of course her apology isn’t accepted. An apology isn’t what Master wants. Master expects a resignation, so keep yipping until he gets it, minions.
I am SO DONE with Tor. What a bunch of spoiled, douchebag crybabies. Keep on pandering to your Puppies and enjoy fading into paranoid right-wing irrelevance with the rest of the old white guys.
Tell it to Brandon Eich, Tom.
I’ve heard that Vox Day considers himself a genius. Any number of his proclamations tries to make us all believe it.
This time though is seems to be true. He scours the net looking for mentions of his vile self. Yes I said vile. Then waits until he can make the biggest splash.
He just played you all.
I’m still voting all slate nominees below “No Award” because manipulating the outcome of a honor system of voting is below civilized. Heck, I’m not even mad at the sad puppies anymore. They got played also, but can’t backtrack at this point.
Just a quick note to say that anyone who, at this point in time, is still trying to sell the notion that Gamergate was ever about “ethics in journalism” deserves to be taken about as seriously as Jenny McCarthy talking about vaccines, or those cranks who insist Stanley Kubrick faked the Apollo landings on a sound stage.
Irene Gallo is one of the finest talents in SFF and she’s entitled to her opinions in her personal online spaces. Don’t be so craven, Doherty. This entire “controversy” was machinated by the most reviled bigot in the genre’s fringes, who posted a month-old screencap for the sheer trollery of it. He did something similar last year in an attempt to defame SFWA: posting an old screencap of convicted pedophile Ed Kramer’s membership listing and then tweeting it long after Kramer’s conviction, claiming to have taken it only that morning. This cretinous insect is simply motivated by destructiveness, rancor and hate and you shouldn’t fall for it, nor for the feigned outrage his obedient sycophants have been sent here to display.
As for whether any of the Pups are Neo-Nazis, well, that may seem harsh. But Tom Kratman did write a whole novel that was a big Nazi apologia, and has commented online that America would be a better place if it genocided 40 million of its own citizens in death camps. So where at least one guy is concerned, Irene got it right.
Thanks for the apology and clarification, Mr. Doherty. There are honest arguments to be about the Sad Puppies’ methods and claims, but often those who disagree with them just hurl out groundless and offensive accusations (Neo-Nazis, really?).
I would have kept reading TOR books by authors that I like regardless, but it was nice to see a post like this.
@@@@@52, The outrage also continues to be fueled by the continued inflation of the authors of SP slate with the vitriolic supporters the slate. This very statement has popped up in the thread multiple times by this point.
@@@@@ 61 anyone who, at this point in time, is still trying to sell the notion that Gamergate was ever about “ethics in journalism” deserves to be taken about as seriously as Jenny McCarthy talking about vaccines, or those cranks who insist Stanley Kubrick faked the Apollo landings on a sound stage.
I’m glad you said that, because it does need to be said.
I have enjoyed Ms. Gallo’s work here on Tor.com, her artwork round-ups on various topics and postings on the creation of covers and designs for books. I hope that she may be allowed to continue to present her work in the future.
This disavowal simply isn’t good enough. The public actions of not just one, but four employees tells me it is an endemic problem, and this passive agressive “not our fault” response is a sop, not an actual attempt at corrective action. Regardless of my personal feelings about any one author on either side of the camp, slamming every author currently in the running is utterly unprofessional. I’m only out to read books, and leave politics out of it. All you’ve managed to do here is completely alienate the average readers like me who do not like to be told who they’re supposed enjoy based on politics.
Tl;dr: I’ll be noticing Tor imprints and putting the books back down unpurchased for a long time to come.
Let me see if I understand the talking points now:
1) What Gallo said doesn’t really matter, because no one would have ever heard of it, except that Vox Day (who is Evil) pointed out to people. Therefore any criticism of her is invalid.
2) Anyone who disagrees with the above is a dupe of Vox Day (who is Evil) and unable to come to their own conclusions after reading Gallo’s post, but instead has been programmed to spout out what Vox Day desires.
3) What Gallo said is actually not that bad, because everyone knows “those people” really are racists, neo-nazi, misogynist, etc., anyway.
4) Gamergate, therefore ________________.
I’m extremely disappointed that Tor has not only left the door open for an employee to be ridiculed publicly with no recourse and no defense, but that the site moderators have done so little about the vicious attacks on her livelihood and the thinly veiled sexist rhetoric throughout. This is a terrible, terrible shame.
Irene Gallo? Yes. She makes my books look good. I like that. We’ve never discussed politics, but I’ll bet next year’s royalties we don’t agree on much of anything. Can’t say as I care. I’ve heard from what I consider reliable sources that Tom Doherty and I would disagree even more should we ever talk politics. Can’t say as I care about that, either. They, along with many others at Tor with whom my political principles have little or nothing in common, make my books better. I like that.
Make the point that she was speaking for herself, not for the company? All right, sure, I guess. But I would be very sad if Tom, or Irene, or anyone else in publishing felt unable to express a personal opinion for fear of being fired. That would make the world uglier indeed, and would do nothing to contribute to there being better stories out there for me to read.
AP poll: U.S. majority have prejudice against blacks
AP 8:37 a.m. EDT October 27, 2012
“…In all, 51% of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48% in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56%, up from 49% during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/27/poll-black-prejudice-america/1662067/
Half of Americans admitted to AP pollster they are prejudiced against blacks. That’s means it’s statistical certainty that some of the #rabidpuppies/#sadpuppies who claim to bigotry-free are bald-face liars.
@34, 63; Aeryl:
You are quite wrong about Gallo’s remarks and who they refer to. I hesitate to link it here, but perhaps you should read John C. Wright’s thoughts about Ms. Gallo’s remarks.
Then perhaps there’s Mr. Grant’s thoughts.
The others I mentioned, including Brad Torgeson, Larry Correia, and Sara Hoyt are all puppy supporters, and were tarred with the same hateful brush.
Aeryl, then there’s me, and many others who support Sad Puppies. We are ordinary people and SF fans. You casually flicked the tar of Ms. Gallo’s comments all over us. You took it upon yourself to casually do something in a forum post that you would not dare do in public, just as Ms. Gallo insulted a man over facebook that she has personally worked with and would probably not dare say to him over the phone or in a meeting due to its rudeness and incivility.
@66, Carl:
Well summarized.
While Ms. Gallo may well be a skilled and talented author, her lack of professionalism which she demonstrated by making such an outrageously insulting public statement regarding several well respected and highly successful authors, some of who are TOR clients surely puts her professional judgement in question. For her simply to make such a statement in a public forum is highly questionable but for her to do so in such a manner that it gives the appearance of reflecting the opinion of her employer, TOR Books, is inexcusable. I do not understand why she is not busy seeking new employment.
@66: Oh, anyone can criticize Irene Gallo’s statements on any subject, if they feel they’re worthy of criticism. This does not alter the fact that none of this would have been a public manufactroversy, culminating in Doherty’s chastisement above, but for Vox’s trolling. Despite Gallo’s Facebook post being a month old, no one was expressing outrage at her *horrible libel* of so many authors until just now. Which doesn’t do much to invalidate the thought that Vox’s readers are very like trained howler monkeys who screech upon command. (That his readers do as they’re told and don’t think much for themselves ought to have been proved, I would think, by the success of the Rabid Puppy Hugo slate, very little of which, I am sure, was actually read by those who nominated its choices.)
I personally don’t believe even Vox is as offended as he claims to be. Why sit on the screencap for a month? This is all just his usual pissing-in-the-cornflakes sociopathic lulz. It must be a endless source of amusement to him, how easily he can play so many people.
I would also just briefly add that people who resent being tarred with the brush of bigotry have a simple solution to their problem: don’t associate with or support bigots. You are the company you keep. Choose your company wisely.
After all, I have a hard time feeling sorry for the upset Bluntobj @70 feels over being tarred with a “hateful brush,” just after recommending the blog of a man notorious for losing his mind over an anime featuring two women holding hands, and publicly expressing his desire to beat gay men to death with a tire iron.
As long as Tom Doherty continues to defend Vox Day and his homophobia, I will not buy from his company. It is that simple.
#72 TMW
There was no outrage because it had not been brought to anyone’s attention. Is an insult any less insulting because it took time for word of it to get to you?
@74, Doherty never defended Vox Day. He simply stated the facts, which is that several of the authors/editors on the SP list, including Kevin J. Anderson, are Tor authors, and that the SP not are just about white, straight men, which he backed up with evidence. Not once, I repeat, NOT ONCE did he mention Vox Day or the rabid puppies, let alone defend their actions.
The Puppies (of all stripes) should be publicly ignored. (And privately shunned, if you feel so inclined.) They (as a group) are only interested in crapping all over SF, because most SF readers don’t agree with them on a wide variety of things. They are purveyors of fractal wrongness, and engaging them (as Mr. Doherty regretably has done) is like wrestling with pigs, playing chess with pigeons, or arguing with an idiots.
This non apology is not accepted. Tor is dead to me whilst this woman remains an employee.
Ms. Gallo and all of us should always take care to never unintentionally represent our companies in a way that may harm their reputation. Because of that, Mr. Doherty’s letter was appropriate to a point
But let us not forget that free speech was given to everyone as a right not so that we could discuss the inane and uncontroversial such as the weather, but so that all opinions could be heard.
There is an almost frightening amount of talk to silence this side or that side.
We are readers. And it is because we are readers that we should all be the guardians of the free and open communication of thought.
I don’t care if you agree or disagree with Ms. Gallo or Tom Doherty or Vox Day or ::insert random figure on virtually any topic here::, censoring the opinions of others, no matter how vile you may perceive them is just plain dangerous.
Likewise saying that someone should be summarily fired or publicly shamed for having an opinion has a chilling effect on all free speech (NOTE: exceptions such as terroristic threats do not constitute free speech under the law.).
Always remember, if you can take away someone else’s right to an opinion, then others will eventually ensure that you have absolutely no right to one either. That’s not a world worth living in.
We’re not safe until she’s gone
She’ll come stalking us at night
Set to sacrifice our scifi to her PC appetite
She’ll wreak havoc on her Facebook if we let her wander free
So it’s time to take some action, Tom
It’s time to fire Ireeeeeeeeene.
The abridged version of most of the comments thus far. (My, what a guy, that Vox Day.)
I don’t read Facebook. I refuse to twit. And I’m far from the only one who believes these platforms bring out the worst in people, and avoid them. So I generally don’t know what people are saying on these fora until they percolate onto the blogs I follow. Just because I am late to the party, however, doesn’t mean that the party didn’t happen, or that Irene Gallo didn’t set fire to the draperies and piss on the carpet. Or that as a late-comer, I should somehow be happy about the smoldering, stinking mess.
The fact that it took Vox Day of all people, to point out the incontinent pyromaniac should be an embarrassment to everyone who couldn’t be bothered to let Ms. Gallo know that her anti-social behavior is unacceptable.
I appreciate Mr. Doherty’s response, and wish him luck in putting his house in order, whatever form that may take.
Dear Tom,
As one of your authors, I want to say openly that I find this apology upsetting. In a large part because I was directly harassed by a Tor employee and received no apology from the company. From the employee? Yes. But from Tor? No.
The fact that you are now defending the Sad Puppies campaign, even implicitly, and apologizing to them for being offended is really distressing. It implies things about the priorities of Tor that I find uncomfortable and would very much like to be wrong about. At the moment though, I feel as though the safety of women authors, and authors of color is less important to the company than the feelings of those who attack them.
While I understand that the Sad Puppies list did, indeed, include women and writers of colour, the works that made the ballot are largely from the Rabid Puppies list. One category is made up largely of a single author’s work, which seems like the very opposite of diversity. While I recognize that the two groups are separate, they are so interconnected that it is hard to view them individually, particularly when the Sad Puppies claim the Rabid Puppies slate as their own victory.
So when you feel the need to apologize to people who have said that they want to see the Hugos destroyed, and emphasize that Irene’s views are not your own, I can’t help but wonder what your views are. All of which leaves me confused and distressed.
Sincerely yours,
Mary Robinette Kowal
There is a reason most of us do not libel people in public on the internet. I hope Irene knows how lucky she is to work a liberal employer that allows such behavior. If I or any other employee were to make such statements about any of my employers clients I would be done, period. Most people are held to pretty high standards of professionalism by their employers especially if they are in management. I guess Tor is the exception.
Dear Peter D, and all of you who claim Irene Gallo’s statement was true–
You are saying things you know or should know to be untrue, and you should be deeply ashamed for letting your emotions out of control, tempt you to dishonesty, and for yielding to that temptation.
I am not unrepentantly homophobic. I am nothing of the kind. It is a lie.
I follow the Catholic teaching on same sex attraction and how one deals with it. In public, I have heaped scorn on those who use a children’s cartoon, one I loved, to insinuate their pro-perversion propaganda in a cowardly and craven way.
I have no hate, no fear, nothing but respect for homosexuals.
You and people like you who use the false cloak of compassion for homosexual to lure them into ruining their lives, you are the ones for whom I have no respect. You are the ones who hate them; you are the one who urge them down ever darker paths.
One of my family members committed suicide because he pursued the homosexual lifestyle you and yours continually urge him and poor souls like him to pursue.
You are the ones who offer a drunk a drink before he gets behind the wheel of a car, and when Christian urge sobriety, you claim our motive is fear and hatred for the drunk, not prudence and compassion.
He abandoned my stepsister when she was six years old, and my step brother when he was four.
Your evil, vile, repulsive philosophy of pure selfishness is what I hate, not the homosexuals you use as a shield for that philosophy.
As for the other lunatic assertions of Irene Gallo that you now leap to claim are true — misogynist? neo-nazi? I wonder what St Mary and St Maximillian Kolbe would say if either thought me their enemy.
Racist?I wonder what my daughter, who was born in Chinese to parents who abandoned her, would say if I were racist.
Another one of my family members was wounded in World War Two, awarded a Purple Heart for his efforts in liberating a Nazi death camp.
You know nothing of me, nothing of my life, nothing of what I have known or suffered. Irene Gallo make statements beyond false: they were reckless with hatred, whereas I have ever spoken of her with gratitude and respect for the wonderful illustrations and compositions with which her department adorns the books she and I sell.
I am only the writer. The book is a team effort. Irene Gallo is a member of the team. She has apologized for her lies, and I accept her apology.
I would like you, sir, to do the same, and never dare to libel me again. When you do not know whereof you speak, close your mouth.
John C Wright
Mr. Doherty, I certainly hope you ignore the screeching vitriol of Vox Day and his minions. He directed them to Ms. Gallo’s post because he wanted to overshadow the Nebula Awards (given by the SFWA, an organization that banned him). The people screaming for Irene Gallo’s blood do not represent the science fiction and fantasy community, and I sincerely hope that Tor stands behind Ms. Gallo during this difficult time.
This message is both disappointing and terrifying.
Cowardly and egregious, Tom Doherty, shame on you.
I wish I wasn’t shocked by this disgusting, patronising, humiliating and totally out of order put-down of Irene Gallo. She posted something on her personal Facebook page. She shouldn’t have to apologise for doing so, but of course this is the internet, so anything and everything is fodder for outrage, hyperbole and fury. All that was required, if anything, was for Tor to post a simple statement saying ‘views of employees are not views of us, and we do not tolerate harassment of our employees’. But no. Ms Gallo is being savaged by people who should know better, and to cap it off, her own employer joins in the bloodbath, holding the coats of those who want her gone. This is disgusting.
Tor.com has always been my go-to website for intelligent, powerful science fiction and fantasy. I have submitted stories here and been delighted to receive a thoughtful rejection letter. I look forward to the posts Ms. Gallo puts up here. I have participated in rereads, in discussions on recaps and fan meta. I have purposefully looked for books with the Tor logo because I expected them to be of a high quality and thoughtful, inclusive tone. Now I know how Tor treats their staff, I am no longer spending my time or my money here, and I will not be submitting my work again. This defense of people who have deliberately sought to create outrage and get an employee sacked is sickening and I’m not sticking around to see how much worse it gets.
This is the dumbest thing ever, totally unnecessary. It was her personal blog. She’s a lowly Tor employee, practically at the bottom. No one would think she was speaking for all of Tor. Get real. As in: real life.
Well, that’s 10 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
I assure you all, most people in the reading world don’t know or care about Puppygate.
I do think it’s pretty weak to force people to differentiate between their views and the company’s views when they’re posting on their own name from a non-company site. She didn’t say “we here at Tor think” or anything like that. If she caused an actual problem (ie, your authors are upset and it’s causing harm to your company) let her go; otherwise, I don’t see the point in making this dishwater-grey non-apologetic CYA statement. “Our employees are individuals and don’t always speak for the company as a whole”–well, you don’t say!
You are their leader! Irene Gallo needs your support not for you to put her at a careful distance just because a group of homophobic, misogynistic trolls are upset. By trying to appease a hateful mob, you’ve disappointed and enraged The Other.
All I plan to say is that I think Eric Flint was right.
She said something that wasn’t true – in that it was an exaggeration of the facts and a deliberate attempt to marry the two groups in the eyes of the public. She needed to apologise for that. She has made a token gesture of apology – in the same venue as the offence – which basically says I’m sorry I tarred some of the wrong people. That doesn’t quite go far enough, but is no reason to throw her under a bus. Also, we only have a screencap of the question and response, not the context.
The underlying point is that for many high profile individuals, emotions are running very high on this issue. Some see the situation as one which is in need of a good kicking to enact change. Others see it as a deeply personal attack on something they hold dear. The prominent people on both sides are not coming out of this well. However I don’t know if it is possible for anyone who works for a significant publishing house to make throwaway statements that can be separated from the company they work for – the partisans of either side will not permit it. If that statement is made on a promotional venue, then any statement will be judged.
As for the conspiracy ideas … people who work for the same company in an office talk to each other. Frequently they will be friends. Friends tend to support each other about something that some feel strongly about. No conspiracy needed.
tl/dr:
She was wrong. Bad Irene. She was probably angry about the situation so being overly provocative. Don’t throw her under a bus. Will keep buying from Tor.
Mr Doherty, I was planning to leave this alone, as Mary said what needs to be said much better than myself, but, after John Wright’s hateful hate-the-sin, love-the-sinner comment up thread, I have to ask, as he is a Tor writer, and I am a trans woman, will you apologize for his words, too?
I don’t blame him every time a child is raped by someone in the name of religion and Christianity. I don’t blame him for every time someone in the LGBT spectrum is attacked and murdered in the name of their god. He, though, is more than willing to name everyone not as him and his as some great destroyer of self and society. He’s one of your writers, and this is your site, so shouldn’t you apologize for him as well?
I say that, well aware that the idea is silly, as silly as you apologizing for what one of your staff might say on their own page on personal social media. If you began policing and apologizing for every political opinion from people employed by you, then you will soon not have time to do the work you set for yourself to do, and Tor will be less for it.
Tom, have you read AARGH? It was a self published anthology by Alan Moore back in the late 80s, with a purpose to raise awareness of and money to fight a clause that would permit the censorship of even the hint of LGBT in entertainment in the UK. It’s good stuff with work from people as diverse politically as Alan himself, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Dave Sim, and Roz Kaveney. Check it out.
I bring it up because there’s a strip by Brian Bolland where he places himself in his pages and talks about what he might illustrate to make the point. He vetoes the idea of a same sex couple kissing because then people might think he’s gay. he decides against showing a violent protest, police kettling the crowd because he doesn’t like violence, no. And he really shouldn’t offend people because then he might no longer receive work and he has kids to feed, so *quick doodle* he draws a pretty flower.
Tom, you can either apologize for everyone associated with you who do things on their own time or none. By doing this, you’re starting down the path of telling everyone who works for you that Tor only publishes pretty flowers.
Tor has long been my favorite publisher. Right now, I’m ashamed of that and you.
To whom it may concern,
I find myself troubled and distressed that the hurt feelings of a handful of people, led by vocal and proud bigots, are being treated with such careful public consideration. Why is Irene Gallo, speaking as a private individual, someone to apologize for? Why is Tor concerned with reassuring bigots that they are welcome?
What manner of hold do the Rabid Puppies have over Tor, to garner such consideration? Or, distressingly, is it merely that management at Tor shares some of the bigots’ views?
I had never thought that was the case. Now I am worried it might be.
I hope that a clarification is forthcoming. I look forward to the same sort of apology and reassurance that Tor has given the Rabid Puppies campaign, as Tor is, apparently, for everyone.
Thank you.
Wow. This situation continues to spiral down into darkness. Not unlike – unsurprisingly – GamerGate. I never imagined – naively, I think, in retrospect – that these situations (not sure what else to call them) would go on so long, or metastasize to the extent that they have. It was naive because they reflect and are part of larger divides in our society – divides which on the surface seem to be about race, gender, sexuality, but which in fact are wider and deeper. Old ways, structures of beliefs, expectations, and privileges are being threatened. People feel their lives – in a figurative sense – are being threatened.
And they are not wrong.
It would be wrong to call those threatened values and ways of life outmoded. Because it suggests that the problem is in a way just one of time lag, people who haven’t quite caught up to the present. Those values were always wrong.
I see nothing wrong with Irene Gallo’s remarks in the slightest. We are in a time of flux and the rules and etiquette governing divisions between people’s professional lives and private lives – as enacted digitally – are still being figured out. But anyone looking at someone’s personal Facebook page and assuming that comments there reflect the views of that person’s place of employment is simply being… simple.
There may be some confusion – confusion which Facebook has helped foster by linking personal pages so much to universities of attendance and places of employment. But there’s not much. If someone is riding the bus home from work, still wearing their name badge, and makes some remarks, no one would interpret them as reflecting the views of the company on that name badge.
As for the specific content of those remarks, they seem to me to fall within the accepted range of usage for invective on social media, and are no more – and in fact less – inaccurate than claims one sees every seven minutes on commercial TV. Just as we all have a decent sense of what is strictly factual in ads, we know how to read such criticisms and labels in social media. Again, it’s an area in flux, but to claim that the terms used constitute libel is ridiculous.
The people complaining about Gallo’s remarks and saying they reflect on Tor, that Tor should be boycotted for them or that Gallo should be punished for them, know – I think – that their claims are meritless, are I think being mendacious. They know these are claims without merit, but are trying to leverage them for more mileage for their sorry schemes, to punish Gallo in particular and anyone who stands up for her, and to threaten Tor.
It’s a classic move, straight out of the GamerGate playbook – right down to the fact that the target is a woman.
I’m angry with Tor for not backing Gallo, but I also get it. The situation is so ugly and messy at this point, and the bad guys so unscrupulous, that it’s not surprising for a company to want to steer clear of it. But at some point, as with all bullies, this crowd much be faced up to.
It’s disgusting that Tor would choose to support Neo-nazism over standing by an employee.
While Irene Gallo may have fallen foul of a corporate social media policy, I find it distasteful at the very least that she is being thrown to the howler monkeys over it to satisfy the “righteous” indignation of someone who lives for intolerance, racism, sexism, and full-on hatred. If Tor is diverse and open-minded enough to welcome John C Wright’s Catholic-fuelled homophobia (because that’s what it is), it can certainly be diverse and open-minded enough to welcome and stand up for an editor who feels passionately that such intolerance is wrong.
So tell us what the views of Tor as an organization and the views of its founder might be?
Dear Mr Doherty
I am very disappointed. I’ve been buying TOR books and following the tor.com blog for years and always enjoyed the diversity of the works and topics discussed. I’m a European and have a very different idea of politics.
Your desire to pander to a small minority of ideologically driven fanatics is incomprehensible, and sacrificing Mrs Gallo to a mob that is known to harass people online is very unsettling. I hope you will reconsider your decision or clarify your statement.
Yours sincerely
Frank Shandy
Most people, when they overstate themselves, do not have to worry about their boss getting up in front of all of Fandom and excoriating them for it. It’s pretty sad that Tor employees do not have the same assurances. And for what? A man who is a well known troll? Who peddles in naked bigotry? Whose undeserved sense of aggrievement will never, ever, ever be satisfied?
Shame on you, Tom. You should be better than this. You owe it to the community that people like Irene have built–hell, you owe it to Irene!–to be better than this.
The name Tor has always had very positive connotations for me. Tor has done great things for the SF/F community, and I enjoy many of their books. But if this is the new face of Tor, the face of Tor going forward, then I think I will not be alone in reconsidering where I spend my reading dollars.
Beale is indeed not a Neo-nazi: he doesn’t hold any anti-semitic views. He is, however, undeniably to anyone who read at least some of his rantings, a white supremacist. A meaningless distinction to some maybe, but it is there.
Other than that I fail to see any factual errors in miss Gallo’s post. Sad Puppies mostly consists of people on the political right. The Sad Puppies goal is to fight “SJW influence”. That is clearly stated in Torgersson’s blogposts. Rabid Puppies are lead by a neo-nazi white supremacist, a misogynist and homophobe. The Puppy slates are filled with racists (Kratman) and homophobes (Wright). Beale is an open supporter of Gamergate, so are a good deal of his cronies. Beale was brought into this whole mess by Larry Correia, who started the Puppy campaigns. Even at the start of this year’s campaign Correia and Torgersson were openly chummy with Beale and the Sad Puppies can’t get away from that connection no matter how much backpedaling they do now.
In a way I feel sorry for them, the Sad Puppies. Their Rabid offspring have totally outstripped them in effectiveness and media attention.
I fully support Ms. Irene Gallo. She did nothing wrong.
I fully agree with all of those standing with Irene Gallo. Terrible how she’s being thrown under the bus like this for personal comments she made to try and appease people who will never be appeased until they’ve destroyed everything they want.
And horrified by John C. Wright’s post showing his true views on homosexuality, is that the kind of author Tor want to be publishing?
Mary Robinette Kowal has already replied better than I ever could, but I’m dumbfounded that, while you stayed silent on so many controversial topics and opinions, you felt the need to throw Irene Gallo under the bus to try to appeal to Vox Day and his zealots. Especially since it was clear from her start that it was only her opinions, and she wasn’t talking for Tor or as Tor. I’m really disappointed.
For what it may be worth, I know very little about all this, but I’m proud to be published by my old friend Tom Doherty. He has supported my stuff since the early eighties and still does.
The calls to fire Gallo are pants on head ridiculous.
And horrified by John C. Wright’s post showing his true views on homosexuality, is that the kind of author Tor want to be publishing?
Depends. Does he write good books? Do they sell well?
Why should the personal views of an author have any interplay with the product they produce? Unless the work has become a diatribe in favour of a particular worldview, which is an editing problem, then I see no issues.
Look at Baen – they publish Tom Kratman and Eric Flint – both sell well, but one is a highly conservative right wing former soldier and the other is a lifelong left wing socialist and union activist. Should they stop marketing either? Does it matter? Tor is in the business of publishing books, not promoting a particular way of life.
Let their works stand for them, not their opinions. There is nothing wrong with disliking a particular person, or work, but equally it should not be a crime for someone else to enjoy it.
Vox Day however can crawl back into his rathole and take his cesspit with him as far as I am concerned – he is a small bitter angry man who wants his 15 minutes of fame. There are ways and means to make your point and he missed all of them.
Mr. Doherty,
I’m very disappointed in your lack of principle here. What your employee said on her own page is, bluntly, none of your damned business. When you tell us that John Scalzi, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen-Hayden have expressed views which do not represent your organization, I’ll believe you – and be disappointed in you. Until then, this is clearly nothing but a transparent and insincere CYA.
If you’re going to pander, I wish you’d chose the targets of your pandering more wisely. As Mary Robinette Kowal has pointed out, this action is not only ill-considered, but inconsistent and insensitive. I hope you think better of it in time to regain the good opinion of your own employees, sir.
However, as long as you choose to continue to publish good books, regardless of agenda, that is all I need to know to be your loyal customer. And I hope, one day, one of your authors.
-Matt Doyle
Sorry, not good enough. I am not a neo-nazi. I identify with the sad puppies slate. When I was much younger, I bought the Hugo Winners anthologies from the Science Fiction Book Club. I found one from the 80s after Asimov was no longer the editor and commentator. The stories frankly left me feeling robbed and empty. I want action, adventure, new frontiers, and new worlds. Not bitter preaching on how everything wrong in the world is somehow my fault. If I don’t get a real apology from Ms Gallo and the corporation that nurtures her hate, I will not buy another TOR product ever!
Kudos to Ms Gallo for realising that her words were hyperbolic and apologising, which is far more than what some of her critics have done. and to Tor for taking appropriate action, which is far more than other publishing houses I could name have done.
Anything further than this would just be giving into the baying crowds.
@John Bradley
You should read Ancillary Justice. It has all of those things you want.
For those of you upset with Tom Doherty’s statement:
1: It was a comment on a work related article on her FB page titled “Tor to Publish The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley | Tor.com” with the caption “Making Sad Puppies Sadder”. In the commentary someone asked what the Sad Puppies were. Her response was “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.” Not exactly appropriate for commentary on a work related article (which many of her posts seem to be). If you disbelieve me ask your HR department at work. Ask them if it is ok to put an article up about work on your facebook then use the commentary Ms Gallo used. I already have asked two HR Managers and have been told by both that if someone in their company did such they would be terminated. Honestly she is extremely lucky she hasnt been.
2. Tom Doherty stated above “Each Puppies’ slate of authors and editors included some women and writers of color, including Rajnar Vajra, Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Ann Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Sanderson and Amanda Green. Some of the authors on the Sad Puppy slate have been published by Tor and Tor.com, including Kevin J. Anderson, John C. Wright, Ed Lerner and Michael F. Flynn. Many, many Hugo Award nominees and winners are our authors too, including Kevin J. Anderson, John C. Wright and Katherine Addison this year and John Chu, John Scalzi, Cherie Priest and Jo Walton in past years, just to mention a few.” This is not the first time this has had to be pointed out to people in order to clear up misconceptions. Entertainment Weekly had to do 3 different retraction updates after this was pointed out when they first wrote their article back in April.
3.I find it distinctly odd that people who will continue to push the racist,bigoted,misogynist etc commentary after the above statement. Neo Nazi’s would not nominate people of color.Misogynists would not nominate women. People also forget the about the author is after the end of the story. If that is a new author most folks look at the back of the book to see what it is about,they do not check the authors politics,religion,gender identity,race or sexual preference.
If Irene did anything wrong, it was making a minor categorical error in labeling the Rabid Puppies, as led by Beale as neo-nazi. The statements and views espoused by Theodore Beale are, if not neo-nazi by the strictest sense of the word, are at the very least racist, ultra-right nationalist and white supremacist.
I fully support her.
I’m a long-standing SFF fan and frequent purchaser of books published by Tor. Frankly, I’m disappointed that Tor has now chosen to pander to what is effectively a coordinated harassment campaign and its manufactured and insincere outrage.
Clearly the views of professional trolls like Vox Day and his small cohort of followers (who it seems are in many cases neither fans of SFF in general or customers of yours) are more important than the views of your actual loyal customers.
No, sir! When an employee uses her very public social media page to promote Tor’s product and then libels an entire group with reprehensible, offensive, disgusting rhetoric in that same thread, that’s not a personal opinion. That’s speaking on behalf of the publishing house.
Ms. Gallo also needs to learn the difference between “I’m sorry your feelings were hurt by my statements” and “I’m sorry I made those statements.” Integrity counts. She has none. It is beginning to appear that Tor doesn’t either.
And so it goes on.
Well done, Vox. Last weekend’s mission (to overshadow the Nebula Awards) accomplished.
Slow handclap.
She did not in fact apologize. She issued a non-apology. I bought dozens of Tor books in the last few years alone and I expect to continue to do so. However this kind of insulting behaviour calls my further patronization of Tor into question.
This thread is comedy gold. The Puppies supporters have really been off the charts hilarious throughout.
Bwahaha! Please tell m you are trolling, because otherwise you are about as clueless as it gets.
Gallo is a great at her job and if she wants to strike back at a bunch of people who had relentlessly insulted and libeled her company and her friends for months, she is more than welcome to it as far as I am concerned.
And all the righteous anger of the puppies would’ve been a hell of a lot more convincing if the same people weren’t also customers of Vox Day’s publishing house, and he posts way worse stuff than this pretty much daily, or buyers of the books of Wright, Hoyt, Kratman, Ringo and all the other rude jerks on the Puppies side who say much worse than Gallo regularly.
While it’s nice to see an apology from Tor, I am also in the position where if I disparage my company or customers on social media, it is a firing offense. I signed up to vote for the Hugos because of the Sad Puppies campaign, after the nominations were closed. I did it based on the spirit of what the Sad Puppies have publicly stated: nominate books you feel are worthy, read all of the nominations, then vote for the one you feel is best.
I’m currently reading the fourth of the novel entries. So far my favorite is a book published by Tor. I don’t know if it was on the Sad Puppies slate – I don’t keep a list of their nominations to check and see if the books I like are SP approved. However, with the spirit of the anti-puppy campaign which is being led by employees of Tor, I am starting to feel that maybe I should vote a slate instead of following my heart. And maybe I should stick to spending the majority of my reading money on Indie books. There are a lot of great authors out there who are self publishing. So I really want to support a company who’s employees are saying that I am racist, misogynist, and so on? And it’s so sad, because with the Sad Puppies campaign, I have found new-to-me authors published by Tor whose books I wouldn’t have read if they hadn’t been nominated for Hugos.
This mealy-mouthed reply is hardly a sufficient response to her disgusting comments. She insulted Tor’s own authors. She insulted Tor customers (of which I am one). She called me, a Jew who lost a great many relatives in the Holocause, a neo-nazi! Are you seriously going to excuse this kind of appalling behavior?! If so, I will have to complain to your boss, and your boss’ boss, and so on, until she is tossed out like she so rightly deserves.
I think you’ll find he *is* the boss, Scott.
I recently became familiar with John C. Wright’s work via Castalia House, and I love it. However, I will not be buying any of John’s Tor books until Tor fires Gallo and offers a real apology. John may be willing to accept your “apology”, but he’s still under contract to work with you. I am not. I’ll be enjoying John’s Castalia works in the meantime.
A lot of the offended people in this comment thread are either trolling or really bad at reading comprehension. The Rabid Puppies (as in Vox Day and the fools who read and agree with his idiotic, racist and sexist screeds on his blog and voted for the Hugos as he ordered them) are the Neo-Nazis. Not the Sad Puppies and their supporters.
Wow, ODG@122, I hope for the sake of your sensibilities that you never find out what some senior employees of Castalia have been saying!
@123, That’s because if they were honest, they’d have nothing to complain about.
ODG – don’t feel as quite the hypocrite buying from Castalia House yet boycotting tor over this since the owner of Castalia has said way worse than Mrs Gallo numerous times? Or do you agree with his views? Just curious.
Please include me in those that believe that what Irene Gallo said was absolutely correct and she had no need to apologise. I don’t for a moment believe that she will lose her job over this, but I feel the need to declare my solidarity to her, and applaud her for the concise and correct characterisation she gave of the Rabid Puppies, whose leader cheered on Anders Breivik.
To all the puppies of any health and mood who feel offended: unfortunately you chose to ally yourself to a bunch of misogynistic, homophobic, racist, violent people of no talent who had no hope of winning a Hugo on merit and therefore chose to game the system. There are textual supports for all of these assertions, you can easily find them in File770. We are talking about people who think that calling somebody “pussy” is an insult, and who threatens physical violence to those he disagrees with; people who called a black author “half-savage” and subhuman; and so on and so forth.
This should hurt your feelings, not the fact that Irene Gallo called you for what you are.
I see the Puppies have woken up. Now don’t forget your talking points!
1. Declare that the apology isn’t accepted, or acceptable, or otherwise sufficient.
2. Torque the comments into the most horrible thing a human being could ever say to another human being. (Remember kids, the real N-word is neo-Nazi!)
3. Mutter darkly about unprofessional behavior, wonder aloud how authors can work with the target, and declare that the target would by all rights be fired in most workplaces. (At least, from what you’ve been told about workplaces.)
4. Feel personally affronted by general statements. Remember, if I say “Republicans are evil” and you vote Republican, I am calling you, specifically and individually, a tax-paying Rotarian whose great-grandfather died at the Somme, evil! Appalling! Defamatory!
5. Declare that you won’t be buying Tor books again. Emphasize how much money you spend on books each month. (Remember, they’re close to bankruptcy: they can’t afford any lost customers!)
Rinse, repeat, and don’t forget to spoof your IP address!
John C Wright claiming “I am not unrepentantly homophobic. I am nothing of the kind. It is a lie.” gave me the biggest laugh of the day. Wright’s own words in the past paint him as such. Despite his attempts to scrub the record of his hateful screeds they are all out there for people to read. Such as his rant about The Legend Of Korra http://archive.is/9E3my His head is sure one twisted place if he doesn’t think that is homophobia.
I had the misfortune to read his dreck along with the illiterate scribbling of his fellow nominees in the short story categories in order to vote for the 2015 Hugo’s and I am glad to say they will deservedly all be going below No Award.
As to Tom Dorothy you are a apologizing to group which basically lacks any modicum of respect towards anyone but like minded individuals. For example here is Brad R. Torgersen one of the Sad Puppy leaders and very definition of mediocrity in writing spewing verbal diatribes about one of your employees http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/04/13/nostradumbass-and-madame-bugblatterfatski/#comment-55499 “Nielsen-Haydens, your fellow travelers, and media goombahs . . . I MOCK YOU! I MOCK YOUR ASININE INCESTUOUS CLUSTERFUCKED LITTLE CULTURE OF DOCTRINAIRE PROGRESSOSEXUAL MEDIOCRITY MASKED AS SUPERIORITY! You are all dolts. You are moral and physical cowards. You are without ethics, without scruples, and if you weren’t so patently pathetic, I’d say you might be dangerous.
Fuck you. Fuck you all. The forces of the progressive pink and poofy Xerxes were met at the Hugo Hot Gates, and repelled by a few brave dudes and dudettes with the stones to stand up to your bullshit.”
You are also essentially apologizing to Vox Day who wants the destruction of your business and what you stand for. You are making it to easy for him.
As for the puppies they love name calling but when they are on the receiving end they are remarkable thin skinned.
Now that I’ve had a chance to think about this situation more fully, I have a few more comments.
1. What Gallo wrote was not an apology. An actual apology consists of “I’m sorry, this is what I did, and this is what I’m doing to correct it.” Gallo only got as far as the first part, and it is important to note that she did not apologize for her actions, she only “apologized” for how those actions were received.
“Oh, I’m sorry you didn’t like being maligned and libeled,” is not an apology.
2. I presently work for a major, international retailer. If I,in my capacity as an employee, had referred to my coworkers, customers, and vendors in the same terms that Gallo,in her capacity as an employee*, referred to her coworkers, customers, and writers, then I would have unquestionably been fired as soon as the incident came to my manager’s attention.
As I should be.
Alienating both the people who give you products that you then turn around and sell, and the people who give you the money for the products, is a mind-bogglingly idiotic business maneuver, and one that a rational company would not permit. If Tor is sanguine with employees publicly debasing other employees… well, that’s an internal problem that they can address, or not, depending on whether they want to keep their current batch of employees.
(* – And, yes, given that the “neo-Nazi” comment occurred on a post wherein Gallo was publicizing a Tor project that she “had a part in”, she was posting as a Tor employee, not just a private citizen.)
3. At the very least, I strongly recommend that you read the open letter penned by Peter Grant here: http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-tom-doherty-of-tor.html . He both accurately notes the pattern of misconduct that has been exhibited by Tor employees, as well as the gravity of the allegations leveled by Gallo, and explains how neither Gallo’s non-apology nor this mealy-mouthed post constitute sufficient response. It’s worth your time.
As for me, I’ve quietly observed this pattern of misconduct from the sidelines, without a dog in the fight on either side. Given Mr. Doherty’s non-handling of the situation, I’m in the same boat Mr. Grant is – either more than apparently meaningless words are offered, or Tor products are off my reading lists.
Vox Day is quite open about why he and his keep calling for Ms Gallo’s ouster: They see this incident as part of the Culture Wars, and are therefore determined to use the Alinskyite tactic of “Make the enemy live up to his own rules.” They’re not (quite) wrong on the Culture Wars aspect. But I would much rather have the “He’s racist-communist-fascist-conservative-liberal-sexist-homophobic-sinful; get him fired!” tactic taken off the table entirely.
To Tor: please do not fire Ms Gallo over this. (I wouldn’t mind an apology from her with fewer qualifications, but that’s up to her conscience.)
To everyone who’s called for the firing of someone because of a personal opinion she holds, or a comment he’s made on his own time (and yes, I do mean that incident, and also that one, however vile the opinions and comments were): You furshlugginer idiots, do you really want to travel that path? There’s nothing good in that direction, not for anyone.
@ODG
Strange that you’re so principled over this issue but that you continue to support Wright. A man who says stuff like “Men abhor homosexuals on a visceral level.” and that “the instinctive reaction of men towards fags is to beat them to death with tire irons.” Or who calls people “disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth” for the heinous crime of displaying a same sex relationship in a cartoon show.
Seems more than a little bit hypocritical, no?
Ms Gallo’s comments seemed fair enough to me. All these people who’re appalled by someone pointing out that they’re supporting a monster. “How very dare you say that we stand arm in arm with monsters? Like this person I’m standing arm in arm with.”
A lot of boycotters appeared suddenly after Vox summoned his troops. I wonder how many of them have actually bought a Tor book in the last 10 years since Tor is supposed to be the house of horrible talentless progressive writers who only write superboring message fiction according to their glorious leader which they follow like obedient sheep. OK, they have probably bought a few John C. Wright books, of course, but they won’t boycott him, no, sir, he’s just so nice all the time unlike the horrible Mrs Gallo.
I don’t see much that is specifically objectionable in Tor’s post, aside from the background objection to banal, corporate legalese. As I understand it, Tor *has* to make clear that Ms. Gallo’s views do not speak for the company, in much the same way all DVD commentary tracks begin with the same disclaimer.
In other words, I find this utterly unsurprising
There *is* the troubling and somewhat surprising specter of paragraph 3, which implicitly legitimizes SP/RP trolling. This is exactly what trolls seek: recognition and legitimacy. It’s the ultimate failure of cable news shows which give equal time to scientists and science deniers, as if they exist on an equal field and represent two halves of an issue. SP/RP does not represent half, or even a plurality, of SFF fans; their tactics have been petulant, and the tenor of their comments–particularly of the RP flavor–has largely been more objectionable than anything Ms. Gallo penned–which she later apologized for.
For example, see John C. Wright’s despicable comment above, wherein he compares homosexuality to alcoholism, and labels as enablers those of us who see everyone as human beings deserving of love. If he weren’t projecting such views from behind the smokey screen of religion, no humane person would tolerate them. I see a double standard when we must bear his disgust as his right, but our disgust of his views is something to be apologized for.
I have no problems with Tor publishing whomever they choose: this is a house that seeks diverse views (and diverse revenue streams), and I wish them continued success. But let’s be realistic about what happens when you feed trolls.
I find it interesting how the people being unpersoned are the bigots and not the ones declaring they are beyond the pale.
For those saying this is all about Vox Day, note that Irene specifically calls both Rabid Puppies and Sad Puppies, Neo-Nazis, and this was on a post discussing Tor publishing actions.
“There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic. A noisy few, but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.” — Irene Gallo https://www.facebook.com/igallo/posts/10152728739637461?hc_location=ufi
John C Wright, you are a homophobe.
I appreciate that you don’t understand that you are, that you feel there is some important distinction between making the statements you do out of religious duty rather than hate or fear, but that distinction is a false one. You say homosexuals ruin their lives, are perverts, that they must be brought away from their sexuality, that their lives go down dark paths, that it leads them to suicide. You believe people are homosexual because they have been urged to be, not because they quite simply, naturally, are.
I know you see that as right and true, but it is not. You are treating homosexuals as less than yourself because you truly, genuinely believe that they are. That is homophobia. You are a homophobe.
Another reading comprehension fail. You guys are quite persistent.
Please open a dictionary and check what the word “respectively” means.
And thinking about this, I contemplate sadly how much of a mistake this message has been. If Tom Doherty thought he could set the record straight and appease the Puppies, he was mistaken. There is not appeasing them. Rage is their way of life. It did, however, not only show disloyalty to an employee, but also call attention to the non-incident.
Really, what does TOR care about the rants of a failed writer absconding from the law in Switzerland?
Somebody who said this:
I… predicted that Breivik’s action would eventually be seen as a harbinger of Norway’s belated move towards the ethnic nationalism that is sweeping across most of Europe…. it will not be terribly surprising if Anders Breivik is one day revered by Norwegians for his murderous stand against the invaders and quislings of his homeland.
Nearly every historical national hero murdered more children than Breivik did. More importantly, the “children” were political enemies working towards the destruction of Breivik’s nation, they weren’t innocent little kids.
I have far more sympathy for the bureaucrats he blew up in Oslo than the Quisling Youth he shot on the island camp.
He also has this to say on the general topic of women:
I don’t believe I could recommend this as a strategy for most men, but it is surely educational to learn that raping and killing a woman is demonstrably more attractive to women than behaving like a gentleman. …there is absolutely nothing to argue about here. It is an established empirical fact.
I would go so far to argue that if you are being introduced to a woman you find attractive, she will be more attracted to you if you slap her in the face without warning and walk away without explanation than if you smile and tell her that you are very pleased to meet her. Now this, being a mere hypothesis, can be argued. And tested, if you’re feeling especially scientificthis weekend.
And of marital rape:
…That the “marital rape” concept is not only legally oxymoronic, but deeply undesirable for both sexes, is exemplified by its implications for sex that by definition precludes consent.
Let’s face it, any man or woman who believes in the criminalization of wake-me-up sex is not an individual with whom any decently hedonistic being would want to be saddled for a lifetime.
and of throwing acid in the face of women:
Because female independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability.
I could go on.
There are also other nice characters in the camp that is all offended, including the lovely gentleman who threatens physical violence to people who question his “integrity”, who thinks the Waffen SS were the best warriors who ever lived, who calls people who disagree with him “cockroaches” (evoking ominous echoes of the way the Interahamwe referred to Tutsi during the Rwanda genocide), and who taunts people who disagree with him by calling them “pussy…pussy…pussy”.
Now, I understand that the US has become let’s say immunised, or habituated, to the far right, but on this side of the pond, these kind of opinions are not the mainstream, and personally I have no problem with characterising them as neo-nazi, or in the words of Nicholas Whyte, so close to neo-nazism that you can’t shine a light in the gap.
As a longtime science fiction reader, I’ve gotta say that the Hugo award, at least to me, hasn’t been relevant for many, many years. This just underlines that fact. If any group can cry and wave their stinky diapers around and make this much of an impact, then whatever institution is being impacted is weak-willed and pointless.
Also, a big middle finger to these people for tainting every single one of my interests. Seriously, can’t you go to the ballet and complain about how there’s not enough white males there or something? You are very annoying.
Irene Gallo had the misfortune to offhandedly label the Rabid Puppies, as led by Vox Dei (Beale), neo-Nazis rather than simply white supremacist ultra-nationalists. But when the leader of the Rabid Puppies labels a mass-murderer of children like Anders-Breivik a likely future George Washington, well, I fail to see the importance of the fine distinction given the ugliness of the sentiment in question. Mr. Beale noted: “As I said not long after the [Norway]shootings, I will not be in the least bit surprised if Anders Breivik is one day regarded as a national hero in Norway, much like George Washington and William Tell, two men who also offered murderous resistance to their own governments.”
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/09/breivik-sets-political-trend.html
I will happily stand with Ms. Gallo against those who align with a leader that sees the murderer of 69 people, most of them children aged 14-18, as a future George Washington..
You’re not getting a dime from me while the Haydens, Feder, and Gallo work there.
That is all.
We know that prominent employees at Tor Books believe their clients and authors are “neo-nazis” and you still want us to buy your books.
Personally, I find it kind of hilarious when people who identify themselves as supporters of a movement who’s philosophy is supposedly, in part, built upon “I don’t care about the author’s personal views or politics, the story is the only thing that matters” are suddenly willing to boycott a whole slew of authors just because of the PUBLISHER’S views or politics.
Almost as hilarious as John C. Wright calling me for a liar about him being a homophobe followed by a completely bigoted homophobic rant that speaks for itself.
Again, I do believe Gallo made a mistake and went too far in her statements, but, with the Puppies being made of people with such incoherent and fickle moral principles, it’s hard to blame people who get confused on what they’re about… they don’t even seem to know themselves!
Given similar statements and behavior by other Tor officials such as the Nielsen Haydens and Mr. Feder, it seems quite clear to me that Ms. Gallo’s comments were not hers alone, and do indeed reflect the current culture at Tor.
Tom, I have been a SF/F fan since the 70s and appreciate everything you have done for the SF/F community and publishing, but all I’m seeing is words with no actions. I am very sorry to say that I can no longer support Tor until there is a serious house cleaning.
136. “For those saying this is all about Vox Day, note that Irene specifically calls both Rabid Puppies and Sad Puppies, Neo-Nazis…”
None of this is about Gallo. It is about Vox Day’s campaign in the US culture wars to do as much damage to liberal sf (and now Tor in particular) as he can. Vox sat on a screen cap of Gallo’s comments for a month and released them when they could do most damage (in his terms): the Nebula Awards weekend. (One has to remember that he was kicked out of the SFWA for being a racist homophobe.)
Which is why I’m slightly surprised at the tone of Tom Doherty’s post.
Tor editors/employees attacking other authors are not new. Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s wife has practically made a sport of it for at least a decade. Such vile people should not be in charge of the largest house in the SF genre. No wonder the genre is in the toilet.
‘We know that prominent employees at Tor Books believe their clients and authors are “neo-nazis” and you still want us to buy your books.’ I really don’t think anyone believes that of either me or my readers.
What world do you guys live in where it’s ok for a representative of a company I patronize to libel me just because I disagree with her about what makes a story award-worthy? I and some others didn’t like the direction of the Hugos and paid $40 / year to have a vote, so Ms. Gallo publicly calls us racists, homophobes, misogynists and “extreme right-wing to neo-nazi,” and that’s ok? I am none of these things but as a person of Jewish descent and a US Army veteran, I especially do not appreciate that last bit.
I am also saddened that Mr. Doherty apparently thinks maliciously lieing about Tor fans and authors is appropriate behavior from Tor employees so long as they disclaim it as not coming from Tor itself. This is disgraceful.
It is a pro forma apology from MS Gallo. Completely inadequate.
With Wrights homophobic rant above, Beales thoughts of homosexuality as a disease and Torgersens talk about his “pink and poofy” enemies, I think we have the homophobia of the puppy leaders covered.
I wonder if there is any way to moderate this thread without making this situation worse than it already is. Considering the levels of some of the comments (on both sides, and there are also genuinely constructive comments from people aligning with the Sad Puppies or opposing them), I’m guessing this post is not moderated for once. That’s probably better in fact.
Aola, in comment #129 above, linked to an archived copy of John Wright’s original (and infamous) post regarding the tv show LEGEND OF KORRA’s final-episode suggestion that two female characters were sexually attracted to each other. His concluding statement was this:
“Time to exterminate them”?
Sounds like Irene Gallo had it right.
John Wright doesn’t need an apology. Or a Hugo. He needs therapy. (Psychopharmacology also has some pretty effective meds available nowadays, too.)
If Gallo’s comments aren’t enough to get her fired, then what would be?
Insults her customers? Check.
Insults her authors? Check.
Drags her company into a contentious, controversial issue in a way that can only do harm to it? Check.
Was what she said even true? Demonstrably, no.
Her comments should be contextualised alongside those of other Tor editors, who at least had the sense to make their own remarks in a private capacity. Funny also how all those press articles appeared smearing Torgersen’s campaign in similar terms, and how most of them with any standards had to retract and update their pieces to avoid legal action. Is this generally how Tor editors operate?
People associated with the Sad Puppies and/or the Rabid Puppies, which took as their original cause celebre the notion that publishers like Tor were not publishing books that they read or wanted to read — that, in fact, were nothing but political jeremiads — now hope to force Tor to fire an excellent, talented employee based on her personal observations about their political leanings. Do they not see their own hypocrisy? Do they really expect anyone to believe that they have been a source of revenue for Tor in any event, so that their threats of a boycott have any force?
This sort of conduct is of a piece with the more general political actions and speech of the ringleaders of the two Puppy groups. It is often profane; it is nearly always misogynistic; and it is offensive in every sense of that word. Furthermore, the Puppies don’t seem to have any real understanding of what the word “libel” means, but fling it about as if lawyers are chomping at the bit to sue Ms. Gallo and Tor based on her personal opinions. I’d be astonished if that were the case, particularly as the expression of an opinion is not libel. I am put in mind of Inigo Montoya’s deathless words from “The Princess Bride”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
You know a topic is hot when it fills the entire “Recent Comments” sections. This one did that several times last night. Much better when GoT or the other serial posts fill our time.
I’d not heard about this “controversy” until now. Yes, I’d heard about the Sad Puppies campaign for the Hugo nominations. It made me sad and made me wish I had nominated. Yet, since I didn’t read enough new fiction for 2014, I didn’t feel right in voting.
Maybe next year I’ll organize my own campaign to nominate the people and stories I like. Wonder if anyone would call me out on it. I’m a Native American mom who supports the gay community being treated like humans.
I don’t understand what the big deal is … I thought the Sad Puppies movement was pretty much overall racist, homophobic & misogynistic? And isn’t Vox Day at least kind of a fascist white supremacist? I mean you can split hairs or whatever, but I don’t get what’s so weird about what she said? This can’t all just be because people don’t understand the word “respectively,” I must be not getting something :/
I just wonder why this response came now, after Irene Gallo spoke up? Patrick Nielsen Hayden has been saying similar things for a long time and somehow he never got raked over the coals publicly in a deluded attempt to appease biggots. Why the double standards by Tom Doherty?
As for those saying they won’t buy Tor because of Irene Gallo’s statements. That’s rather lame. Until about 6 months of being on this page often, I didn’t know who she was.
I can’t name any other art director for a publishing house I like. Can you?
The art director picks book covers (in brief, yes they do more).
An artist creates the cover.
You read a story written by an author and edited by other people.
After reading a story, you can be impressed with how well the cover art matches the book or annoyed at the differences. That’s as close as the art director gets to directly impacting your life.
When you look at every employee of the companies that provided you with a service you enjoy, you will find people with beliefs you don’t like. Enjoy living in a cave if you want to avoid them all.
Last year, I read the Vox Day Hugo nominated story. Meh… it was noting special and I felt like I read something similar in high school. I enjoy my life not giving him a passing thought.
Seriously, Irene Gallo said something on her private Facebook page. Her private page. Not a public Tor Facebook page, or on Tor.com. There are in fact employers who require a gag order on employees. There are employers who require employees to sign agreements curtailing personal and social media behavior. But honestly, I didn’t think that Tor was among them.
For the life of me, I can’t imagine why it was necessary to publicly reprimand Irene Gallo. For the life of me, I can’t imagine any person sophisticated enough to get on social media in the first instance failing to understand that a statement on a private Facebook page is just that. I can’t understand requiring employees to preface their statements as not reflecting their employer and I certainly can’t understand why Ms. Gallo’s statements are any different from the dozens, hundreds of others in agreement with hers that have been publicly made by members of this community.
As a former employee of Tor Books, I’m just baffled. Also, supremely irritated and sad.
Irene Gallo spoke the truth and Tom Doherty throws her under the bus with weasel words. I’ve lost respect for TOR.
You’ve just thrown your employee under the bus, publicly, for expressing an opinion on her own personal social media page.
I’d say *slow hand clap* if it wasn’t such a crushingly inadequate way of expressing how I feel about this.
‘Welcome to Tor, where we are all-inlcusive and respect the right of everyone to their opinions, however controversial or repulsive others may find them, unless you work for us in which case you’d damn-well better toe whatever arbitrary line we elect to draw in the sand based on the latest bout of internet outrage, lest we decided to publicly slap you in the face and tell the internet that you basically did wrong by HAVING AN OPINION THAT WASN’T OURS.
Classy work there, guys. Real classy.
I’m just going to go out on a limb here, but if John C. Wright had a gay relative who committed suicide, it’s far less likely it was because the man pursued a “lifestyle choice,” and vastly more likely because he was viciously persecuted for it. After all, this guy had a relative who fantasizes about beating people like him to death with a tire iron.
You know what a lifestyle choice is? Wearing Hawaiian shirts or listening to nu-metal. If neither of those bring you happiness, you can just ditch them and get into new things. You don’t, you know, KILL yourself when they don’t work out.
That’s the difference between something you can CHOOSE, and something you CAN’T. Relentlessly being made to feel like worthless filth for something you cannot change often leads to suicide.
So yeah, eat shit, John Wright, for hounding your relative to his death and then passing the blame onto those who would have made him feel accepted, understood, and whole. You’ve got no business even uttering words the meaning of which you have no concept, like “compassion.”
One thing in particular stands out in this whole mess: The use of the word “homophobe”. As though any dislike or disagreement with the homosexual lifestyle/agenda stems from an illogical, possibly irrational “fear” of homosexuality. This term is used as a slander and as a means of silencing any opposition. It’s cheap, childish, and naturally, dishonest to the core. Irene Gallo is someone (along with many commenters here) that seems to think they’re immune from any criticism regarding their choice of ad hominem attacks……they’re not. Neither is Tor. Like it of not she represents your organization, “personal opinion” backpedaling notwithstanding. Her outrageous name-calling and slander should not be tolerated in the publishing business or any other.
Tor – demonstrate the conviction of your stated principles and remove Irene Gallo.
Private comments and opinions are just that, private.
What Gallo said: 1) was in the context of her work *as a publisher* at Tor; 2) directed at Tor authors specifically; and 3) was obviously on its face wildly untrue and indictivive of an extreme partisan.
That’s not private. That is directly connected to Tor, its authors and its audience.
What is private is her long-standing record of posting items indicating her extreme hatred of men. Of course, when one becomes aware of this, one must decide whether or not you wish to do business with a company that supports people who espouse hatred on the basis of gender, and it calls into question the atmosphere of this workplace, but if, as many commentators here believe, the issue is her private speech, than one would expect this to have been dragged into it. As it has not, that is highly instructive.
Look, here is the botttom line: You people on the left are victorious, you represent the winning faction in a long-running cultural battle, you have the government, the media (including publishers), academia and pop culture clearly on your side. Yet when we on the other side ask that a company NOT INSULT ITS OWN AUTHORS AND CALL THEM NEO-NAZIS, you find that flatly unacceptable.
I ask you to think about that.
As for Doherty’s statement and the hilarious modern American “un-apology” from this Gallo, it’s so far from being adequate that it’s an embarrassment. I will not buy Tor and I will encourage every fan I know to not buy Tor. And I know I’m not alone.
You can only piss on people for so long before they start taking offense.
Was John C Wright speaking as a Tor author when he made blatantly homophobic remarks just now? He certainly failed to make clear what capacity he was commentating in, despite his ultimate paymaster having just said it was very important to do so when only speaking personally.
While there is some distinction between employee and author, when he posts on Tor.com, a forum moderated by Tor staff, on a post by the man whose name is on the door, I think Tor should insist on him making the distinction, lest his words be taken as speaking for Tor.
I was unaware of any culture war in the SF/F industry until April of this year. Since then, I have read every blog post from every major puppy and anti-puppy proponent in an attempt to understand this. Before, I had read Jordan, B Sanderson, Scalzi, Correia and Butcher and enjoyed them all. I never heard of authors like Torgersen, Hoyt and Vox Day. I knew about but had not read any J C Wright. I will now being purchasing their books.
I have found the statements of various Tor senior employees and authors offensive. Ms. Gallo’s statement is just one more offensive and false statement. It is the last straw for me. I have unsubscribed from the Tor newsletter and will not purchase any more books from Tor/Forge publishing. Yes, I know that Wright and others have books published by Tor, but I will pick those up used or from the library. I will also explain my position to all of my SF/F loving friends and associates.
Mr. Wright,
Your argument is that you’re not homophobic, but you make that argument by redefining homophobia until it’s utterly unrecognizable to most users of the term.
In your comment, you once again refer to homosexuality as perversion.
You claim that homosexuality ruins lives.
You blame the suicide of a family member on their homosexuality.
You liken homosexuality to drunk driving.
These are the attitudes of a homophobe, sir. Attitudes unsupported by fact or research.
I am truly sorry for the loss of your family member. But while you claim their suicide was due to their homosexuality, perhaps you should try looking into the actual factors behind the high rate of LGBT suicide.
“The reasons that suicide is a lifelong concern for many LGBT people are complex and dynamic. These risk factors include family rejection, lack of social support, lack of access to culturally competent healthcare providers, and the stress of living with discrimination and prejudice.” (Source)
“the gay, lesbian and bisexual young adults and teens at the highest risk of attempting suicide and having some other health problems are ones who reported a high level of rejection by their families as a result of their sexual orientation.” (Source)
“Living in states with discriminatory policies may have pernicious consequences for the mental health of LGB populations.” (Source)
Not only are attitudes and prejudices like yours homophobic, they are actively harmful to the people you claim to respect.
Nice, however, useless. Until Gallo is fired, I will not purchase any TOR materials. She went beyond unprofessional in her rant on her pages witch identify her as a TOR employee.
Merely an aspiring author here, an avid SF fan & buyer of plenty of TOR books. And after following all this for years, I can only conclude that I’m far better off to attempt to publish in genres other than my favorite one. Because what I see is that the culture is toxic. I’ll probably keep buying TOR books until David Hartwell retires. But while I respect Tom Doherty a great deal, I have no reason to think the corporate culture of his company -nor the industry- will produce another like him.
Trust me, John C. Wright. If I ever commit suicide, it’ll be a public self-immolation in protest of balderdash and piffle like yours.
THE…. Sodomite Hal Duncan!! (sic)
What are the odds that nearly all of these new posters who suddenly appeared and have never commented before hasn’t bought a tor book in the last 5 years and/or don’t intend to boycott the company at all but are only here to make it seem as if there’s mass outrage instead of the trolling campaign organised by their glorious leader Vox Day? Very high, I’d say. Funny how all these supposed non-racists has never ever called out Vox Day and has supported him strongly from Day 1 of this whole Puppy mess (or from earlier). Why is the brave anti-racist hero Peter Grant not organising petitions against Vox Day, a guy who is about as racist as it gets?
Тор, you shouldn’t fire someone great at her job just because she called out a big time asshole and his minions swarmed in attack at his command like the obedient drones they are. if nothing else, consider this – you’d lose a lot more customers these ways, Actual customers, not sockpuppets and people who haven’t bought a Tor book in years because “It only publishes SJW propaganda”.
Tom Dorothy if you thought any sort of apology would be acceptable to the Sad/Rabid Puppy camp you are sadly deluded. This is just the start of constant harassment that your firm will be going through. Keep in mind the Sad/Rabid puppies believe that your firm has been gaming the Hugo for years. That you are the enemy that needs to be defeated. You seem to be missing the fact that they are at war with you and your firm even if you aren’t. Read the comments section and see how many people are not only calling for the dismissal of Irene Gallo but others that actually didn’t feature in your apology. Do so and they’ll latch on to something else and request further apologies and acts of contrition’s. The Sad/Rabid puppies are essential Science Fictions representation of Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart demographic. Reason and logic along with compassion and nuance is entirely lost on them.
I feel for you because you stepped in it big time.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’m just not okay with it. The petty back and forth bickering in the SF/F community is one thing, but the fact that it’s coming from high up the chain at Tor is another. Irene’s comments were made while she was promoting a Tor product. That’s as close to speaking for the company as an employee can get
I don’t know another business where employees can get away with insulting customers this way. And I was insulted. In fact, a lot of good people I know where insulted. I’m tired of feeling like I’m paying your company to verbally antagonize and abuse me.
I read roughly one book a week on average, and I have for years. I only read SF/F because it’s my escape; it’s something I need. No matter what happens, I will continue to read roughly one book a week
But not from Tor.
Boycotts are not something I typically enjoy or appreciate. Nevertheless. Your own authors were insulted and disparaged. My friends were insulted. I was insulted. Irene’s apology wasn’t an actual apology; we both know that. It also wasn’t enough. Sadly, it comes down to this: either Irene leaves the company or a large group of your customers leave the company.
Something also needs to be done about the Nielsen Haydens. It’s a madhouse filled with bullies and spite and snark over there. It’s not professional, and I urge you to please get it under control. I sincerely look forward to the day when I can read Tor novels again.
Thank you,
D’oh!!! That should be **Doherty** of course.
Let’s be clear about this proposed ‘boycott’ of Tor Books: there are evidently less than 300 members of the combined Sad/Rabid Puppies. Many of whom profess to never read books published by Tor as it doesn’t suit their tastes.
Think about the dramatic impact that will have on the bottom line of a company with tens of millions of dollars in annual sales.
Maybe Tor needs to institute political and ideological diversity training for its editors and other staff.
Gallo called Tor customers and Tor author Nazis. By doing so she clearly violated Macmillan’s Code of Conduct for employees. She offered a non-apology apology. Doherty issues a CYA apology. Clearly it didn’t work judging by the comments here. Many of those attacked by the Haydens, Feder, and now Gallo see Doherty’s inaction as acceptance of these unprofessional and biased actions. And those who agree with Gallo’s worldview continue to support attacking Tor customers and Tor authors even after Doherty says it’s wrong and will not happen again. This includes Mary Robinette Kowal, a Tor author. Gallo’s lapse in judgement now has Tor authors openly praising attacks against other Tor authors. Doherty needs to fire any employee who has contributed to this toxic environment. Otherwise Macmillan needs to clean house. These sort of antics have no place in a corporate climate. And if Doherty can’t or won’t enforce professionalism among his own employees he needs to go too.
This discussion shows that the effort to demand an apology from Irene Gallo and Tor was not genuine. It has sprung from a cynical campaign by a small SF publisher and Internet provocateur who has admitted that he sat on her Facebook comment for a month so he could time its release. We’re talking about this now because he wanted it to coincide with the Nebula Awards weekend. The complaints claiming the most outrage are coming from people who are quite obviously his followers and have little to no interest in Tor books or authors.
They were never going to accept an apology. It was always going to embolden them to demand Gallo’s job termination and other gestures from Tor.
As a fan of Tor, I am disappointed that Tom Doherty decided to make this statement. Gallo’s comment was posted to her personal social media account and quite obviously an expression of her opinion and no one else’s. She made it a month ago during a moment of great tumult about the Hugo Awards, when many other pros and fans were engaging in similar hyperbole.
The popular science fiction author Jim Butcher has responded to this statement and Gallo’s apology on her Facebook wall. He wrote, “She said sorry. Leave it, guys.” He later added, “She’s clearly said what she’s going to say. What is the point of hanging on to it? How does it profit anyone? How does it improve things for anyone? It’s nothing but vicious Facebook commenting at this point.”
An online mob of people who are being vicious do not deserve conciliatory gestures. Doherty’s statement and Gallo’s compelled apology make people who value Tor upset while doing nothing to placate the angry opportunists who have made this an issue.
I hope in the future that Tor and other publishers in the field don’t fall for stunts like this.
It seems that the Sad Puppies lack reading comprehension skills and how sad it that? Honestly, it boils down to that. The Sad Puppies really object to being considered right wing conservatives? Really?
So much righteous indignation… go back to school, people, so you’ll know when you’ve really been insulted. Tor, continue to publish books I can put in libraries for people to read, enjoy and hopefully their reading will improve, too.
Why am I supporting the boycott of Tor? All Mr. Doherty did was distance himself from those comments and nothing more. This is one in a long line of bigoted, hatred filled diatribes by Tor employees targeted at their ideological opponents. Tor employees lie and Tor does nothing.
I am tired of the constant venom filled garbage coming out of the mouth of Tor employees. Therefore, I will not purchase any other books by Tor AND I will socialize my reasons to all my friends. Tor needs to get its act together quickly before permanent damage is done to their brand. All employees involved in these venom, hate filled conversations need to resign or be fired.
I don’t understand the public reprimand for a privately-expressed opinion. It’s ridiculous to suggest that every time an employee speaks they have to include the words “speaking for myself and not my employer,” when they are speaking in a private forum such as their personal social media account. It is disingenuous to suggest that it was unclear whether she was speaking for Tor or not, to the original audience of her comments (people with access to her private FB account). It’s only when it gets screen-capped and shared with a suggestive narrative that the waters begin to look muddy.
That this post goes beyond the public reprimand, and includes clear support for the Sad Puppy campaign is very repugnant. It clearly attempts to lend it legitimacy by calling out one particular aspect of critique against the SP (that they are largely pro-white male) and saying it’s not true. Since the door was opened to official Tor opinion on the SP, I would like to see a fully detailed opinion of the whole campaign, including their methods and aims.
(Also, I find the argument that the SP are not largely pro-white men because the slates included some women and POC to not be compelling. Not when the numbers a looked at and it’s clear that the nominee list has gone from near gender-parity to highly skewed male this year.)
Yes Library Acquisitions. The Sad Puppies who were called “Extreme Right Wing to Neo-Nazis” are objecting to being called Right Wing alone. And *they’re* the ones who lack reading comprehension.
If you go back to that school you mention try and learn about the holocaust so you can see why Jewish Sad Puppies might object to such a craqss and disrespectful slander. And why your dishonest lying* doesn’t seem to cover up anything.
*Eliding of the truth so as to obscure it. If you prefer. Either way.
I only have a very peripheral awareness of Sad Puppies, but it has been clear to me since I started reading and commenting on Tor.com that the editors, contributors and commenters overwhelmingly adhere to a particular narrow left-wing or progressive social and political agenda. (If there are conservatives, they seem to have learned to keep their opinions to themselves.)
Every once in a while there will be a new piece of dystopian fiction where the precipitating event is global warming or religious conservatism, and it turns me off, not simply because I disagree with the politics, but because it is lazy pandering to half the potential audience while writing off or actively insulting the other half. (And, if we are honest, the US right now is a lot closer to Harrison Bergeron than to The Handmaid’s Tale.) I sometimes read comments in which the commenter tosses in an off-hand (and always pejorative) reference to conservatives or the tea party and it makes me a little sadder because it reinforces that I am an outsider here.
I’m not sure what kind of consultations Mr Doherty did before posting this but giving up to the hateful vocal minority is never the solution and the fact that they are so motivated in getting someone fired over a Facebook comment, demonstrates what people have been saying about the puppies for weeks.
Sometime you have to make a stand and putting your head in the sand and hoping things quiet down is not the solution.
Just wanted to let the folks of Tor know that as a courtesy I will no longer be trading with them since I am sure they would not wish to do commerce with someone they feel is a Nazi.
This would seem to me to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. I spend my money with merchants that don’t think I am a Nazi (or at least don’t call me one) and Tor no longer has to suffer the indignity of taking money from a Nazi.
Good luck and God’s Peace
To all the Sad Puppies who consider this apology/disassociation from her views to not be enough: What would be enough? Are you expecting them to fire her for having a shitty view? How would you feel if someone was fired for making horrible pro-puppy statements? Some of the people who’ve called the Anti-puppies Stalin, or proto-commies instead of Neo-Nazi or etc? They’ve disassociated themselves from what she said and that should be enough. If you have problems with other statements or other actions of Tor employees then that’s a seperate issue, and you can boycott or complain or not about that, but this issue is DONE re: Tor. They have no responsibility for her, they have distanced themselves from her nonsense and there is no basis for a boycott *about this issue*
For those questioning whether or not those of us protesting Gallo’s actions were actual Tor customers – yes, yes I was. I have 3 on my TBR shelf and roughly 33 in my keeper pile. I can’t guess at how many others have passed through my hands. No longer. The fact is, some situations just push one into taking action where none was called for previously, and I am wholly opposed to a supposedly professional company involving themselves at all in culture wars. That involvement is by having their employees post rhetoric calling good authors Neo-Nazis (does anyone understand reductio ad Hitlerium?) or by the actual publisher not taking to task said employees from making these public insults in the first place. By implication, I’m now one of these wrong fans and I can reassure you, my family fought in WW2 for the correct side. I’m tired of hearing how terrible a fan I am for actually enjoying Larry Correia and Jim Butcher before I even knew they had politics.
Mr. Doherty,
The simple fact of the matter is that Irene Gallo chose to libel not only several well-known and widely-read sci-fi authors, but also every customer that buys science fiction published by Tor. THAT is a serious problem, and one that cannot be fixed merely by an apology issued by yourself. Ms. Gallo has been unrepentant in her disdain for Tor’s readership and its authors. She is certainly free to have her own personal opinions. But when those opinions reflect upon Tor as a business entity as a whole (and they do, regardless of how much she protests otherwise), then this becomes Tor’s problem. I have serious qualms now with buying any more books with Tor’s imprint on them. There are many, many, many other people out there who do likewise.
Ms. Gallo is not a good fit for the science fiction community – a group of people who value freedom of thought and freedom of expression. When she knowingly libels a whole community because of her own peculiar political beliefs, she is demonstrating that she should probably be employed somewhere else, some place where she can enjoy a “safe space” apart from big meanies who have the gall to express their opinions without first filtering them through her information gate.
“[H]er long-standing record of posting items indicating her extreme hatred of men.”
Congratulations, Kevin — you seem to have finally figured out what “libel” means after all, and are libeling up a storm as proof!
@@@@@ at all who do not understand economics.
Businesses are not cash cows. If Pan McMillan is similar to other publishers, their margins are in the 8-10% range. This boycott of Tor will not need every consumer to turn it’s back on Tor and other Pan McMillan authors, just enough to shrink the margins. Moreover there is one other issue a boycotted company needs to think of…it’s reputation. This issue is getting wide spread media attention and social media attention. It will not take long before Tor and Pan McMillan are synonymous with Social Justice Warriors/Liberal/Bigots/Hatred filled diatribes etc… The longer Tor and Pan McMillan delay in taking action the more severe the damage to their reputation. Some damage is irreparable and have forced companies to divest and create anew damaged business units.
I hate to throw data around and research at the commentators on this site and considering how anti science many of the SJW’s and Tor employees are but someone needs to bring some sanity to this discussion.
Apologies for any grammatical errors as English is one of three languages I speak and it was not my birth language.
http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/why_boycotts_succeed_and_fail
His findings confirm his hypothesis with respect to the importance of the media, but with a surprising twist. As predicted, boycotts are indeed more likely to exert influence when they receive a great deal of media attention. Interestingly though, his results indicate that even with media coverage, previous sales declines have statistically insignificant bearing on whether a boycott will ultimately bear fruit for activists. Instead, the real power of a boycott lies in its ability to inflict damage to corporate reputation. King observes that corporations that struggle with their public image are more likely to take boycott demands seriously, whereas corporations with strong reputations feel more impervious to such demands and are more likely to “stick to their guns” regardless of sales levels. Thus, he calls it “reasonable to assume that corporate decision makers viewed boycotts as a more serious threat to their reputation than to their sales revenue.” This finding, he continues, “helps make sense of previous studies that have questioned why boycotts are ever effective, given that most boycotts do not involve large numbers of participants and do not usually have a large impact on the sales of the corporate target.”
“Boycotts may not need to affect sales at all in order to be effective,” he writes. “Rather, boycotters’ influence stems from their ability to make negative claims about the corporation that generate negative public perceptions of the corporation. Hence, corporations that are already struggling to maintain their previously positive reputations will be more likely to concede to boycotts and quell any further damage the boycott may do to their reputation.”
So many experts on corporate standards of acceptable behaviour in the comments here, all posting from new accounts or without registration. All calling for Gallo’s firing as well as the firing of the other “enemies” of Vox Day working for Tor. Quite the coincidence.
I would love to hear an explanation about this claim. “Every customer of Tor”? Because I don’t see it at all.
Way to throw your employee under the bus. What an exercise in cowardice.
I can’t believe Tor is empowering and pandering to the Puppies and their allies. I guess I’m done with this publishing house and this site. There was no need for this “apology”, and all it has done is give some very nasty people with very nasty views publicity and a veneer of legitimacy for their illegitimate views. A grown up publishing house should not have fallen into such an easy trap, especially in this day and age when a statement like this can be paraded amongst the pits of sexism and racism that is the Puppies’ supporting sites as a victory for their cause. Although I rather think this comments section speaks for itself in the folly of that.
I fully support Irene Gallo. She does a fantastic job here.
Anyone who hasn’t seen vitirol from the puppies hasn’t been looking very hard.
Looking at the reaction this has caused, I need to rethink my earlier response.
From a purely professional standpoint, Gallo was gonna have to deliver an apology and indemnify her employer in some way. Any decent HR would have done that at the bare minimum. Kudos for her doing that, and for giving a proper apology where she 1. Took responsibility, 2. Indemnified her employers, 3. Acknowledged her mistake, 4. Apologized to those she hurt.
But this statement on Tor.com…I can see why that was done, but this was a mistake. The tweet “Happy Monday! We appreciate your comments & would like to remind you that the views of our employees do not reflect those of the publisher.” and Gallo’s apology should have been it.
Given that no such public statement was released with regards to Jim Frenkel, or to the harassment incident mentioned by Mary Robinette Kowal above, such inconsistency will, and has, been noticed.
Again, releasing this statement was a mistake.
“I have 3 on my TBR shelf and roughly 33 in my keeper pile.”
Fairly sure that my library of more than 1000 Tor titles (and more every month) will make up for the loss of your huge amount of business. I’m also curious about how old those 36 books are, given the oft-stated detestation of any books not published by Baen or Casalia you and other Puppies shout from the rooftops.
“I’m tired of hearing how terrible a fan I am for actually enjoying Larry Correia and Jim Butcher before I even knew they had politics.”
NO ONE has ever said this. NO ONE. EVER.
*
@@@@@ to the Irene Gallo supporters who are continuously hurling hatred filled slurs at Tor authors and others who they disagree ideologically, you provide ammunition to your opponents. Get off the Haterade and try milk for it does a body good.
To Mr. Dohoerty: Please review the comments and decide for yourself, do you/Tor/Pan McMillan really want to be associated with Ms. Gallo and her hate filled friends?
I tried commenting before, since that comment hasn’t appeared after approximately 100 new comments I will assume something went wrong at either end and repost:
Thanks for the clarification Mr. Doherty. However, it isn’t enough. As a conservative science fiction fan and puppy sympathizer I am deeply tired of being maligned as a racist, nazi, homophobe, fascist or whatever insult *your* staff has come up with this week. Irene Gallo’s comments and subsequent non-apology was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. From now on I will consider Tor a company that supports libel about me and people like me either until some tangible action is taken or the involved individuals shows genuine remorse and insight that it is not acceptable to spread malicious lies about fans and authors for their political or religious beliefs. Merely saying “I am sorry your feelings got hurt” just adds insult.
I will also do my best to inform my friends that Tor considers them nazis and fascists and therefore do not want their business. This comment thread is itself evidence that Gallo’s statements, which you yourself appear to disagree with, were not outliers, but common sentiments. A large portion of your staff and most of your vocal authors really do think being conservative is equivalent with being a nazi and are happy to say so right here in this comment thread.
All any of this does is make me disgusted. With the Hugos. With the Puppies, and with Tor for even issuing a public statement. When will publishing realize these tiny, tiny little dramatic fights never impact anyone outside of that publishing bubble? Most fans wouldn’t have known about any of this or had to feel icky about it until Tor posted this ridiculous message. You’ll lose more real fans with participating in the drama and giving your very talented employee over to the wolves. I am deeply disgusted by every aspect of this. This is all ruining my favorite genre.
Dear Sarah,
The trick to reading comprehension is to actually understand what you are reading. The Sad Puppies were never called Neo-Nazis. The Rabid Puppies were.
I’m sorry that you were offended by something that wasn’t said.
See how ridiculous that is?
I had posted earlier yesterday but it appears my post did not make it.
I enjoy the work Tor publishes and I enjoy the ideas and conversations that the Tor website provides. People are interesting.
I do have an issue with people thinking that any employee of a company speaks for the company. A company is not just one person.
I have read lots of things by Ms Gallo. Some I agree with, some I think she could have said differently and some I am not so fond of but I would never suggest that she could not say what she thinks. How else would I know the information she has?
It is my job as a thinking individual to cross check any information that may seem questionable and come up with my own ideas. Other peoples ideas or opinions are just touchpoints not destinations.
I absolutely oppose removing or demoting or actively threatening Ms Gallo just because she says what she says. On her own Facebook page or even here on a website of ideas and conversations.
No person should feel that their economic survival depends on saying only safe, neutral and bland things. That is not how ideas happen.
As for John C Wright he can just fuck off. He is not homophobic because he is not afraid of homosexual behavior. He is just a hateful and oppressive asshole.
I was raised by Catholics. I went to Catholic school. All of my relatives are Spanish and Irish Catholics. They know me. They know my boyfriend. We have been together for 15 years and have gone to many family functions where no one said we had made a choice they would not support.
Mr. Wright is just a hateful asshole who found an idea that he could mangle into a noose to choke out those ideas he did not like. good for him.
Does anyone here think that libraries should base their book buying on the opinions of publisher employees, the opinions of authors of books or the opinions of some of their patrons?
Nope, all us librarians care about is well written books that check out.
Strange isn’t it?
“The Sad Puppies were never called Neo-Nazis. The Rabid Puppies were. “
Oh well, then that’s OK then. Thanks for the clarification.
Oh, wait a minute, that doesn’t make it OK at all! Calling people Nazis (or neo-Nazis) because you disagree with their politics isn’t right. Nor is denigrating the writing of your own publishing house’s authors. In fact, the professional thing to do would be to not make statements concerning controversial subjects that could reflect badly on your company and alienate current and possible future customers.
You know, a lot of companies mandate annual training for their employees on use of social media in order to avoid this sort of situation. Perhaps McMillan should look into that.
Well gosh, Brad Torgersen writes yellow peril stories about how awesome it would be to kill a bunch of Chinese … but don’t you dare call that racist.
And John C. Wright claims that all straight men have an instinctual desire to violently murder homosexuals … but don’t you dare call that homophobic.
And Vox Day talks about how the Taliban was right to murder feminists … but don’t you dare call that misogynistic.
It’s like this is 1948 and Tor’s a movie studio that’s falling all over itself to kiss the ass of the Motion Picture Alliance after one of their employees called John Wayne a fascist. It’s disgusting.
If you guys feel the need to disassociate yourself from Gallo’s comments, how about similar statements for all the authors in your stable who’ve said far, far worse things, starting with Wright.
I see why my son wanted me to stop buying Tor books(I am a big Sci Fi fan). What is up with all this hatred?
This will be my only comment, since I have more valuable projects to work on, but if I may offer a word of advice to Tor. As a manager in a Fortune 100 company, controversy is bad for business. To anger segments of your market is plain idiotic and suicidal. We have and will continue to sever any ties with employees posting comments that are contrary to our company values. I would suggest doing the same for Tor. Each employee is a representative of your company and any employee who does not understand this simple fact, should not be employed.
“No person should feel that their economic survival depends on saying only safe, neutral and bland things. That is not how ideas happen.”
Tell that to Brendan Eich.
I’m cynically amused when I read a series of comments like this, with each side accusing the other of “vitriol”. Folks, there’s so much verbal vitriol flying in all directions here, if it was the real thing we’d all be scarred for life.
Please note that I am speaking here to the hordes, not the organizers. It’s become obvious that there are pro-puppy and anti-puppy legions, none of whom are willing to listen to anything the other side might have to say. Heaven forbid, they might hear some truth! Both sides are horribly wrong in the way they are treating the other, and to make matters worse, any possible reasonable ground in between is merely attacked by both.
Way to go scorched-earth, everyone. Congratulations. The Hugo is dead. Long live the Hugo. ~`
There are some few who are able to see the valid points on both sides of the debate. Actually, I suspect there are a LOT of folks who could see both sides, if they wanted to bother wading through all the excrement-flinging. Y’all are making that very, very difficult, because if anyone doesn’t agree with you 100%, under the bus they go! And that goes for both sides. You’re all doing your best to destroy the Hugo award. Not SFF, because that will stand on its own regardless of awards, but the Hugo, already nearly irrelevant, is rapidly becoming completely hollow.
If you ever, ever want the Hugo awards to be worth anything ever again, your best bet is to SHUT UP NOW.
Stop the bickering, stop being defensive, stop being offensive. Just stop. Listen to yourself for a minute, and realize that you sound like a hundred cats in a box. Shrill, angry, not willing to listen to anyone but yourself. Shut. Up. Then start looking for ways the other side might just possibly be right about something, and take a small step towards… not agreement, but perhaps something resembling tolerance for a viewpoint not your own.
@Paul Oldroyd
“I think you’ll find he *is* the boss, Scott.”
Wrong Paul. Tor is owned by Macmillan US. Which is owned by Pan Macmillan. He has *several* layers of bosses above him.
Mr. Doherty will find himself in increasingly hot water until he acts appropriately when someone speaks as unprofessionally as Ms. Gallo did. He might even find his own job in danger.
Dear Mr. Doherty, et al,
I’m really disappointed to see you trying to appease Mr. Day and his cronies in this manner.
I say “trying to appease” because nothing you do will be enough for Mr. Day. You had Ms. Gallo apologize, and it wasn’t enough. So you posted to distance her from the company. As you can see by the comments, it’s not enough; they want Ms. Gallo fired.
If you do fire her, it still won’t be enough. They’ll just move the goalposts, (demanding the heads of Patrick and Teresa Neilsen Hayden, perhaps?) as long as you show that you are willing to try to appease them.
I’m also disappointed that this was the incident that was considered worthy of your intervention. As Ms. Kowal pointed out above, this was not the first time that Tor employees have behaved badly on social media. So why was this instance considered so egregious when the previous instances were not?
I’m not going to threaten to boycott you over it; if nothing else, there’s the eventual sequel to Lock In on the way. But I would like to register my disappointment with this decision.
Thank you for your time, and for providing this forum.
Sincerely,
Kit
You know, if you guys want to disprove the idea that you are neo nazi, then hitching your wagon to a comment thread where all the dirty laundry in the Puppies’ closet is aired once again might not be the best way to do it.
@Scott – ooops. Well, there you go.
Yeah, sure, the big bosses of McMillan will fire Tom Doherty, the boss of one of the major imprints, because a few dozens whiners on the Internet (half of which are probably sockpuppet accounts) are pissed off at him. Stop dreaming, Puppies.
@Ron Winkleheimer
People aren’t calling the Rabid Puppies “neo-nazis” because they disagree with their politics. People are calling them neo-nazis because Teddy boy does his utmost best to convince everyone that he is just that.
I know I know, they’re wrong. Teddy’s just a plain old ultra right wing white supremacist, not a neo-nazi. But I’m sure you can understand why people are confused?
Personally, I grew up as a crime fiction fan. But when I noticed the need for diversity in the SFF genre, I switched over to see what it was really about. This is a genre of possibilities. As a black male, to see all the hatred, and sexism is a shame. And yes. I support Irene Gallo. Because one, she had a right to her own opinions. And two, I support her because she is an advocate for diversity. Compared to these comments, I see the world has a way to go before getting to the point where diversity is not an issue. Those of us who are rooting for Mrs. Gallo are not hate-filled, but tired. Tired of all this nonsense. Tired of all this foolishness. Tired of trying to silence those of us who want to see change in this monotonous genre. So, if you ask me, some of these people commenting are no better than Mr. Doherty for throwing his employee under the bus. That’s why it’s time for a new breed of writers. POC who have different viewpoints. Different opinions rather than having the normal. I’ve gotten tired of that and I haven’t even been in the genre very long.
Speaking of reading comprehension failures, it doesn’t surprise me, but it does disappoint me, how many people are laboring under the mistaken belief that what Gallo wrote was an apology. It was not.
“I’m sorry you’re upset that I falsely called you racist/misogynistic/homophobic/etc.” is not an apology.
“I’m sorry I falsely you called you racist/misogynistic/homophobic/etc.” is an apology.
Do you see the difference? If anything, the former is victim-blaming (after all, it’s *your* fault that you’re upset), and I could have sworn that was something social justice supporters were adamantly against.
OK people, this is a crazy idea so buckle your seat belts and hang on.
YOU ARE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
THE PEOPLE YOU DISAGREE WITH ARE NOT ALWAYS WRONG.
The above statements are true for everyone in this debate, whichever side you agree with. We are so quick to take sides that we get way too wrapped up in being right. And we’re not always right.
Confirmation bias is a easy trap to fall in to for everyone. Everyone. We trust what we agree with and ignore what we don’t. But when we do this we NEVER allow ourselves to consider the possibility that we’re wrong. We force ourselves to the extremes and away from the truth. Any movement towards the center is seen as a betrayal.
There are people in this thread who think Mr. Doherty’s statement is a completely meaningless statement that implicitly backs what Irene Gallo said. There are people in this thread who think the statement is a complete capitulation to the Puppies and throws Irene Gallo under the bus. It can’t be both; there is no way to reconcile those positions. It CAN be neither. The two extremes are not the only options.
Similarly, there is no objective definition of what a “good” story is. The stories I like will be considered bad by someone else. This is a difference of opinion. Respect it and move on. It says NOTHING about the other person. Good people can like bad stories. Bad people can like good stories. We live in a complex world. Deal with it.
Let’s try something new: let’s be nice to each other and act yourself like you hope your opponents would act towards you. (Sound golden?) Enough with the insults and name calling. No more guilt by association. Accept that if someone says they’re not homophobic/racist/misogynistic when you think they are, that maybe you just have a different definition of what the words mean. Stop treating opinions as facts. Accept what someone says (including an apology) in the spirit in which it was given. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Stop assuming malice when it might be ignorance or just a difference of opinion. And most of all, remember that the people on the other side ARE NOT EVIL. They are people. No person on Earth is perfect; we all have failings and yet we are all still capable of amazing and wonderful good.
Thank you.
Dear Sarah,
So we finally get to your real complaint. You don’t think that individuals should not have the right to state their own opinions of people or groups who are or may be in some way associated with a public business. You should have said that and left it there.
She was reprimanded for it and now all the people who just can’t let it go are saying a lot about themselves (vindictive grudge keepers) rather than this situation.
“You know, if you guys want to disprove the idea that you are neo nazi, then hitching your wagon to a comment thread where all the dirty laundry in the Puppies’ closet is aired once again might not be the best way to do it.”
It isn’t generally considered a customer’s responsibility to prove that they are not a Nazi, neo or otherwise.
In a well run business the employees generally know this and try to avoid offending customers.
In badly run businesses employees consider it their duty to police the politics of their customers and instead of engaging with them they denigrate them in public as a social signalizing mechanism to like minded individuals.
I’ve been n a fan of SF since childhood in the 60s. I’ve never paid attention to the politics of fandom until recently. Nor did I pay much attention to the publisher of a work, choosing books based on everything from the recommendation of a friend to the cover artwork. But now I pay attention to the politics and the publisher. And I find the comments of Ms Gallo interesting because they reveal the worldview of the publisher. If Ms Gallo continues in the employ of Tor then I have no desire to purchase Tor books.
Alas, the great Hugo Wars of 2015 continue. There will be sagas written about this, mark my words.
I’ll be buying more TOR books, having read what the senior editors have to say about the Sad/Rabid Puppies. Thanks for the apology, Mr. Doherty, but I don’t really think it was necessary. Truth is truth and when it hurts, maybe the people who were hurt will look at their behavior and amend it. (Given the comments here, I’m betting not.) I sincerely hope you continue to employ your editors.
“You know, if you guys want to disprove the idea that you are neo nazi, then hitching your wagon to a comment thread where all the dirty laundry in the Puppies’ closet is aired once again might not be the best way to do it.”
It isn’t generally considered a customer’s responsibility to prove that they are not a Nazi, neo or otherwise.
You are not customer of mine, mate. I know that you extreme right winger can’t understand anything apart from monetary transactions, but there you go – my only relationship to you rests on the opinion I form based on what you write and who you support.
But anyway – it’s you who are making all this ridiculous song and dance because a woman dared to speak up to you. You moan and whinge and whine because you say she is wrong. Well, prove it, because from where I’m sitting, she said the absolute total truth.
“my only relationship to you rests on the opinion I form based on what you write and who you support.”
I don’t care what you think about me.
If Tor’s management wants to denigrate its own authors and alienate its customers and potential customers by calling people neo-Nazis that’s their call.
I am simply doing them the courtesy of not having to trade with someone they consider reprehensible. I’m doing them a kindness really.
After reading more of the comments, I see that @Wetlandernw has made similar comments to mine, but much more eloquently. And she brings up an important point: this is killing the Hugo. If people don’t take a step back and settle down, none of this will matter. No one outside a few tiny groups will care.
The discussion has gotten totally out of hand. It’s all personal now. So here’s two bits of reality for you. One: there are a lot of people on the puppy side that have never paid the slightest bit of attention to Vox Day. It’s not all about him or even a little bit about him for most people involved. Two: Tom Doherty has made a gracious statement that people on both sides are complaining about. That says to me that he probably got it just right. Take it for what it says and move on. Enough with the demands to get Irene Gallo fired or threats to boycott Tor. If you want to personally stop reading their authors then be my guest. I’ll still be buying and reading their books for the simple reason that I enjoy them. You know, the story? The part of all this that is supposed to matter?
I see a Ron Winkleheimer hangs out at Vox Days site. Is that you? If so doth protest too much, methinks.
“my only relationship to you rests on the opinion I form based on what you write and who you support.”
I don’t care what you think about me.
I’m just trying to do Tor a kindness by not forcing it to take money from someone it considers reprehensible. Extending them a courtesy if you will.
@Nicki31 – That’s two of the best posts I’ve read here today.
@227 Nick31,
there are a lot of people on the puppy side that have never paid the slightest bit of attention to Vox Day.
That’s a Puppy problem. They should be aware of who exactly they are allying themselves with. Do you really want to be the one who wasn’t aware that you joined the side with the skulls on their hats?
It’s not all about him or even a little bit about him for most people involved.
Beale is doing this to promote an agenda. If you ally yourself with him, you are supporting his agenda. That makes those who support culpable. If they didn’t want to be associated with that reprehensible excuse for a human being, they should not have stood to be counted with him.
The key question is:
Does a narrative matter more than the evidence?
Because right now, Gallo’s strident defenders seem to be saying, “Yes!”
I want to say, “No!”
I am sure Mr. Anderson and Mr. Wright were not happy to discover that a TOR employee, who ought to be working to promote them, was instead blanket-categorizing their works as “bad-to-reprehensible” in a message which also blanket-categorized the supporters of Wright and Anderson as “racist” and “neo nazi.”
There’s simply no evidence to indicate that Wright’s or Anderson’s fans are either of these things. And even if you’re not a Wright nor an Anderson fan, calling their work “bad-to-reprehensible” is also a groundless accusation.
Facts still matter, people.
Hyperbole’s effectiveness (as a rhetorical tool) tends to have a steep drop-off, once you take the volume beyond a certain point. Irene Gallo seems to have dialed the knob all the way up, and then broken the knob off. If I were in Tom’s shoes, I’d have been concerned about that too. Especially since entertainment companies cannot afford to have their employees making public statements like this; no matter the forum.
Gallo was promoting TOR product, and using that promotion to make outlandish and (if you’re a Puppy person, or especially a Wright or Anderson fan) slanderous claims.
Defamation is a thing. Libel is a thing. Entertainment companies have lawyers (“Risk Management”) who are dedicated to mitigating the effects of such things. Tom Doherty’s obligated to safeguard his company as a result. If you’d worked as hard as Tom has, to build TOR, and keep it alive all these years, you’d want to safeguard it too.
Gallo (whether she’s right or she’s wrong) is expendable. In fact, no editor or other functionary at TOR, is going to be worth Pan Macmillan’s time; assuming said employee is burning up the airwaves with narratives that cannot be substantiated in a legal sense.
Some of you who’ve never done time in the corporate sector, working among the suits, need to throttle back and pay attention to the bigger picture.
I can’t believe anyone is defending Gallo’s statements.
I don’t think she should get fired because she made a stupid comment on her facebook page. I think she should get fired because when people pointed out to her it was a stupid comment insulting a very large group of people including the customers and authors of her employer she was too stupid to reply with anything other than cat photos.
She is an unprofessional idiot. Her apology doesn’t pass the sniff test. I appreciate Tor trying to distance themselves but the fact is Gallo was posting about her work as a Tor employee. She also turned vile and nasty without any provocation. The puppies had nothing to do with her post, SHE was the one who brought them up.
For anyone who thinks Gallo had the right to call a very large group of people Neo-Nazis and other hateful names because you don’t like their politics, their religion (In the case of Wright) or their mascot…be careful. Your true colors are showing and they are ugly.
Tor……please step up to the plate and deal with your very unprofessional employee. So long as she is your employee, I will not longer be your customer.
This is a very disappointing development, Tor.
@Aola
What am I protesting?
I have stated that I am doing Tor the courtesy of not forcing them to take money from someone they disdain and that Gallo’s posting on social media was unprofessional behavior that would not be tolerated in a well run business.
I don’t see how you can argue with either of those statements.
It’s clear both sides are talking past one another, but in the interests of helping people on the other side of the divide out, let me just point out that:
— Using *slow clap* rather than the moronic *lol* to mock people doesn’t make you seem any more intellectual or mature.
— Throwing around legal terms like “libel” and “slander” that make it abundantly clear you don’t have “J.D.” after your name also doesn’t make you seem any more intellectual or mature.
— Apologizing to “anyone hurt by my comments” is not an apology.
— Regarding your anger over what we want, let me just say: We don’t care. You SJWs told us what the rules are, how this fight would be conducted and under what circumstances. All this rage is just a pity party that instead of being good wittle conservatives like the Washington Generals/Republican Party and being useless and surrendering, we’ve insisted on existing and treating you according to the same rules.
@KevinV – Nice post. After acknowledging that people are now talking past each other, off you go and do exactly the same. Classy.
It would be one thing if this was an isolated incident. But given the behavior of the NeilsenHaydens, among others…
Tor delenda est.
Dear Mr. Doherty,
I can only sympathize with the quandry you find yourself in. If you have read even a smattering of the previous posts, you must realize that there is no way for Tor to move forward without a significant risk of material damage. In this context, it would be professionally responsible for Ms. Gallo to bite the bullet; resign and ask her supporters not to hold Tor responsible for her actions.
Don’t be disingenuous, Ron. If you were “simply doing them a courtesy to not force them to take money from someone they disdain” you wouldn’t also be taking up time and bandwidth on their site repeatedly informing everyone who will listen of this decision.
You’re not some humble citizen deciding they were offended, or to spare poor Tor your money, you’re deliberately lending your efforts towards the same goals as Vox Day. You might be allied with a bigot, but you could at least have the dignity of being honest about it.
Honestly, the best thing Tor could do right now is close the comments, delete all the ones already here, and delete any on any other thread that address this issue. Those who are offended can be offended on their own sites, there’s no need to allow them the space to do so here, all it does is detract from the actual discussion. Which is probably what Vox Day wants.
I’ve been following this with a lot of sadness. I’m commenting mainly for my own cathartic reasons. I had never even really heard of the “Sad Puppies” (except a few off hand references) until this, and I only really know Irene as the person who posts the lovely art round ups here. (Gamergate on the other hand….ugh. No sympathy for people who stalk and harass to make their point.)
For me Tor and the SFF community in general have been a more or less safe space to meet and talk about all sorts of different things and perspectives and the potential of our future, and I’ve learned tons from my involvement in it over the years. I know I am a bit of an outlier in that I’m not particularly liberal (or conservative) and I am friends with many educated and loving non-extreme people on both sides of that spectrum that I truly respect. I’m a more or less traditional Catholic (the definition of which probably has as many definitions as there are people who identify as such) – but I’m very much a live and let live type of person who is more than willing to let God sort it all out (and without having to kill them) in the end and meet us where we’re at. I enjoy the freedom to express my own beliefs, and to also hear others’ beliefs. What an effing novel concept. (I am not even sure what to say about the stuff above written by other self professed Catholics…).
Irene’s comment and its context was a bit unprofessional; especially the bit about the books being reprehensible. But it’s her Facebook, she has the right to hold that opinion and express it. I certainly don’t want to see her fired over it. The Doherty statement was a typical CYA statement that I’m fairly used to seeing from leadership; if it wasn’t so sad and divisive it would be kind of funny how both sides seem so enraged and convinced that it means he is supporting the other side. And in all honesty, based on some of the rhetoric I’ve seen, things I’ve read and the fruit it has borne, even if the Sad Puppies had some legitimate point or perspective worth considering at the start of all of this (very possible they did)…they’ve lost credibility at this point.
It’s absolutely sickening the number of people in this thread trying to get Ms. Gallo fired for speaking her mind. From everything I have seen of the Puppies she speaks nothing but the absolute truth. It’s horrifying that Tor has chosen to knuckle under this far-rightwing assault upon Ms. Gallo. I’m sickened by it. Irene Gallo you have my full support.
Until real accountability has been brought to bear on Irene Gallo, I will no longer be purchasing anything from this publisher. A false apology and a statement distancing the publisher from the person is insufficient. Irene Gallo should either be fired, or made to publicly recant her false and damaging statements. The fact that they are “personal” does not excuse them. Neither does it keep them from reflecting on her employer.
I am very disappointed that this is Tor’s only reaction to an ideological campaign to take over the science fiction field’s oldest major award. I would have hoped for a principled stand. Tor should pay attention to the businesses that reacted to recent events in Indiana and Arkansas.
“repeatedly informing everyone who will listen of this decision.”
Responding to comments that are directed to you is generally categorized as dialog.
Considering the final paragraph in your post I am not surprised you were not aware of that.
Thank you for your measured words. I am not hoping for either a boycott or–heaven forbid–a firing, but I was very disturbed by Irene Gallo’s unprofessional comments on her almost-all-about-Tor Facebook page. This made me feel better about the stance of your company. You noted that her characterization of Sad Puppies 3 was factually incorrect and since I have friends on both sides of the issue, I appreciated a call to return to calmness and facts. We are all readers, and we are all fans. Tor has something for everyone.
I note that many of the commenters here from either side of the issue are still spewing bile. I am not one of those people, as you were always wonderful to talk to at conventions and genre events. Thank you for being a sane voice in a sea of rhetoric.
@210, Wetlandernw – once again your eloquence is great.
And your advise could be used to apply to many problems in the USA. Not just the Hugo Awards.
Do I think Irene was too off the cuff and broad-based on her comment? Yes. Am I shocked a Facebook post (a Facebook post, people) was off the cuff or imprecise? Please. Am I shocked a group of people who already feel aggrieved and put upon, and who tend toward self-important and overly-florid defenses/attacks latched upon a triviality (again, Facebook) to once more trumpet their, well, whatever it is? Please.
Anyone who thinks Irene’s comments on a Facebook post, regardless of whether or not it was dealing with Tor, reflects the official position of Tor is either an idiot or is simply looking for an artificial reason for “outrage” (the two are also not mutually exclusive). It’s as ludicrous as arguing that had she, while have a beer or three with friends, showed a table of bar-mates a new sketch for an upcoming book and called the author a “jerk”, that this was somehow Tor’s “official” view of this author. and no, it doesn’t matter that many of her posts deal with Tor; most of us talk about work when we’re out that pub too. It still doesn’t lend it some stamp of “official work” to those comments. Do some SP/RP have reason to be personally affronted by Irene’s personal view of them? Sure, if they want to be offended by a Facebook post. If you’re not a homophobe, then yeah, I get being labeled one is justifiably offensive (thinking you’re not one and not being one are not the same however. See J. Wright above), and you can decided on your own adult self whether or not to insulted by someone’s Facebook post and how to respond accordingly (with the reminder, again, Facebook)
Should Tor police its employees’ private statements on Facebook, Twitter, at the local pub, in their living room chatting with friends? Obviously not.
Should Tor fire Irene for her private opinion stated publically (i.e. for saying something out loud)? Obviously not (even ignoring how great she is at her job).
Should Tor have gotten involved in this at all? Yes, if one of its authors took offense (real or not) and then communicated privately with Tor, then Tor should have communicated privately with Irene with a simple “Hey, you might want to be a bit more careful when you talk about our authors and you should probably contact Author X and resolve this with him somehow)” Easy enough. Adult enough. There was no reason at all to publically admonish her for a private opinion. Or to demand a public apology. If that same offended author though decided to deal with it publically, then no. At that point, Tor should stay out and leave it to Irene to decide how to go forward if at all. Because again, only an idiot or someone seeking an excuse for false outrage could think it was Tor’s official position, and so Tor stepping into it at that point just feeds the beast.
Do I support Irene’s original post? No, even though I totally get where she’s coming from, it was a little silly and over the top and not well thought out and impulsive and personal and blew up a kernel of truth into too much too fast. In short, it was a social media post (note the difference between that and the calculated response, which doesn’t have that excuse). Do I support Irene in this ridiculousness? All the way, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. Do I find all this exhausting and depressing? God yes.
I’ll buy more books, to make up for some of whatever you won’t sell to people who weren’t going to buy them anyway.
I must say I am surprised. It never occurred to me that those who make Tor’s books might be seen as speaking for the company rather than for themselves alone.
The problem with messages like Mr. Doherty’s is that he now seems to have committed himself to either admonishing everyone who performs work for Tor whenever they write something that does not include “speaking for myself and not for Tor” or to endorsing the opinions of those people who work for Tor when he does not so admonish.
For example, I have never seen any message from Mr. Doherty admonishing John C. Wright for not making it clear that he is not speaking for Tor. May I request such a declaration, to clarify that John C. Wright speaks for himself only and not for Tor?
Yours,
Brad DeLong
Tor is a cowardly organization. The #1 feature of a good leader is to put the interests of their underlings above themselves. Doherty threw his employee under the bus, in a misguided attempt to cover his own butt. Even the <1% chance that his butt was on the line was enough to cause him to scurry to save it. And it was <1%: no one — NO ONE — honestly thought that what Gallo said (and already apologized for!) on her personal blog had anything to do with Tor!
Doherty deserves every piece of scorn he gets. The coward.
Having been in customer service for many years, I cannot fathom any business that allows its employees to insult and defame its customers and potential customers. Being called a racist, sexist neo-Nazi would certainly guarantee I would never purchase another product from Tor, unless the person doing the name calling was fired and an apology was issued.
Ms. Gallo’s “apology” is laughable. Saying I’m sorry you were offended while not retracting the statements themselves is a slap in the face. Tor seems to have no use for my family’s yearly book purchasing money which is a shame. You do have some good authors who will pay the price for a few employees reckless comments.
Ugh.
I had no idea what Sad Puppies or whatever was before this, and I honestly still don’t. I also didn’t even know who Gallo was. All I can say is that this entire mess (I was only able to read about half the comments) makes me want to take a shower or ten. It’s rather disappointing being reminded how awful humanity still is.
To the people saying Tor should support Gallo in her quest against what she (and you) perceive as racist-bigots: You are no better than the people you fight against if you think it is okay to slander people who are simply voicing their own opinions. It’s disgusting that people can, in the same breath, claim that they are upstanding moral citizens against homophobia/bigotry and then turn around and scream insults at people because they are of a different mindset. And so often these claims of bigotry are unfounded or tenuous at best, seeing the vitriol regurgitated so easily just wearies me.
Things will never improve if the only language you use to communicate is hate and vitriol.
@73:
So your answer for having a fringe element in any group is to simply disband that group? It’s ridiculous to allow your enemies to label you, and then abandon your ideals because said enemies then say that you shouldn’t associate with that “evil” group. Funny too how so often it is the left-wing element labeling the right-wing elements and expecting them to abandon their ideals because they’re all crazy (Christianity, Tea Party, etc etc).
I hesitate to even bring up Gamergate because of the absurd fiasco it is, but I watched it unfold from the start and it was the same deal–it did start out as an ethics in journalism expose–but the gaming media had to nip that in the bud so they created this whole “sexist gamers” thing to detract from the real issue. And how quickly everyone jumped on that bandwagon! So much easier to hate bigots than to try and understand the real underlying issue. As far as all these death threats and rape threats that happened–personally I never saw any, but assuming they do exist and that the majority of them weren’t just manufactured by the gaming media themselves, I would also say that this is a fringe element and doesn’t represent the whole of what gamergate started out to be.(It might have been in the end only because everyone of sane mind had to abandon ship because of the absurdity of it all).
Again–Gamergate supporters got labeled by the “enemy” (in this case, gaming media) as being bigoted sexists, and poof! You were immediately a raging bigot if you even so much as mentioned you kinda maybe think Gamergate had a point. Easiest way to kill your opponent is to strawman him into oblivion.
Overall I don’t really care who said what or why, I’m just disgusted at being reminded how small-minded people are when faced with such issues. Hardly anyone ever makes an attempt to even understand what it is they’re fighting against and would much rather stick a label on it and yell at it until it goes away.
Faith in humanity lost for now. I think I need a break from the internet for a while.
Don’t know much about ‘Sad Puppies’ or ‘Rabid Puppies’ or even ‘Gamergate.’ If the goal of these groups, however, is to ensure that the ‘right minded thinking SFF books’ are the ones nominated for Hugo or Nebula or Milo Bloom’s best read list in the Bloom County Picayune I have no time for you. For you have already decided what I should & should not read. What should and should not be published.
I don’t know, either personally or professionally, Mr. Doherty or Ms. Gallo. I’ve enjoyed Ms. Gallo’s art work posts over the years on this website. I do not think she has even ‘liked’ or replied to one of my amazingly clever, deep, insightful, & funny comments (yes, I am that good) – actually, that kinda hurts Ms. Gallo. ;-)
I do have, however, a childhood friend who has worked with Ms. Gallo on a number of occasions. My friend has done very well for herself in comics, the trading card games industry, and SFF art work; areas that can often be very tough places to work for women and has commented a number of times on Ms. Gallo’s professionalism and helpfulness.
Ms. Gallo obviously made a mistake that we all have made, whether we will admit it or not, and that is she posted in anger. Happens all the time every single day. Hell! Not a week goes by where some professional athlete has to ‘retract’ something he/she posted/said. So she offered an apology for causing offense but it isn’t enough for you? That’s too bad; that’s the apology she went with.
Mr. Doherty’s letter may not have been what I would’ve wrote, but then I am not in his position. Neither are you for that matter. People make mistakes, apologize for them, and then move on. Ms. Gallo did it on her personal Facebook page but we live in a time where people demand that you type ‘IMO/IMHO/IMNSHO’ with everything you post as they cannot seem to tell the difference between personal opinions and statements of fact.
So I won’t be boycotting Tor any time soon nor will I stop buying my $100/month worth of books – well, sorry, that is a lot less actually as I have kids in high school & college – Go Libraries! I like Tor & like this website. I like how people of incredibly varied POVs can debate like adults and express their opinions without fear of censorship or abuse – as long as you post in accordance with very reasonable moderation policies. As long as that remains true, I’m all set.
Kato
Gallo’s supporters are confirming my opinion of her and them. I enjoy David Weber’s Safehold series and will be continuing to purchase the ebooks.
However, I believe that Tom Doherty should clean out his house.
@John C. Wright
Hi!
I was wondering, maybe you should explain a bit more what you mean by “I am not unrepentantly homophobic. I am nothing of the kind” & especially what meaning the word homophobic holds for you? Because it sounds like maybe people are using that word in different ways.
Thank you
I saw no apology. Saying you are sorry because I was offended is not an apology.
Calling me racist and a Nazi because I think Kevin Anderson and Jim Butcher deserve a chance at a Hugo is not a minor offense.
Saying that she wasn’t representing TOR doesn’t change the fact that she was representing TOR.
@253, it did start out as an ethics in journalism expose
Um, no it didn’t. It started because a man decided to air his relationship’s alleged dirty laundry that had absolutely nothing to do with journalistic ethics. It was literally coined in a tweet by Adam Baldwin, linking to a video that cast all sorts of aspersions about a game creator(not journalists) and what that creator did in her private time.
from the real issue.
Ah, yes, the “real issue” of Zoe Quinn’s sex life.
Overall I don’t really care who said what or why
If you can’t be bothered to ascertain the facts about a situation, why are you talking about it?
@naupathia: The hashtag #gamergate was coined in a tweet sharing and endorsing a video that falsely accused a woman of sleeping around to advance her career, after that woman had been subjected to weeks of online harassment, 3am phone calls to her and her family, her nude photos being sent to her father, death threats, stalking,and more. “Ethics” was the veil drawn across Gamergate after it had already entrenched as a misogynist harassment campaign.
There is no reason not to know this at this point, but it is possible you missed the memo; I will not assume you’re deliberately spreading DARVO-style misinformation.
Irene Gallo has been a part of the Tor books I’ve enjoyed reading. I stand with her.
@jer7my: Please stop spreading misinformation and claiming others are, that’s the whole reason things like #GamerGate and #SadPuppies exist in the first place. People had valid concerns, they were brushed off, silences, slandered, libeled and had a whole slew of accusations and names tossed at them for what was likely 3rd party trolls. Trolls that have existed since the internet’s inception. Continuing spreading that misinformation is only going to continue to escalate the situation as Ms. Gallo’s comments have demonstrated.
We’re all fans of our respective hobbies and we all want what’s best for our hobbies while not to be called bigoted racists sexists right-wing misogynists neo-nazis in the process. Let’s just try to respect we’re all going to have differing opinions and maybe people that have differing opinions are not monsters because they don’t agree with us 100% of the time.
@261, People had valid concerns,
Why did anyone have valid concerns about a woman’s sex life?
Let’s just try to respect we’re all going to have differing opinions
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. They are not entitled to their own facts.
maybe people that have differing opinions are not monsters because they don’t agree with us 100% of the time.
Nobody is being told they are a monster because they don’t agree. They are being told they are providing cover to monster engaged in atrocious behavior. The BEHAVIOR is the problem, the harassment that is evident with Gamergate, SP & RP, not the opinions that drive it.
I don’t know a sad puppy from a rabid puppy. A friend pointed me to this thread to see for myself how SF has become infected with politics. As an outsider I have observed that defenders of Ms Gallo employ invective and hurl insults and accuse Ms Gallo’s critics of all kinds of vile things, whereas Ms Gallo’s critics (mostly) employ common sense, logic, evidence, and reason. Thus, if the argumentation of her supporters is indicative of her own worldview I can only surmise that the same holds true for Tor management given that she is still employed by Tor. This would not stand in virtually any other company. Having made the mistake of stepping into this mess myself I shall attempt to extricate myself now. All I can say is “Wow, when did SF become about one’s political viewpoint rather than a good story?”
@263 I bet 100 quatloos that you’ve just started a fresh round of “Well, he/she started it!”
Madness. Sheer, utter madness, all of this. How can so many adult people hiss and scream at each other for behaving exactly the same way they behave themselves?
Oh dear.
Does that mean another Tor employee will have to come out and denounce Doherty later?
@265 Welcome to the internet.
Also, a number of people aren’t even espousing/defending views they hold, they just want to argue.
A few thoughts from someone who does not identify with the Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, or those opposing them.
I did not know about this movement until learning about it here some time back. I then spent multiple weeks researching the topic in question, the people in question, the debates, and the responses all over the internet. After all of that, I have come to the conclusion that most people who are commenting on the matter and taking one side or the other are well past the point where they can even hear any rational argument. They will not hear any evidence against their side and will engage in the most heinous, rancorous dialogue imaginable, regardless of the facts. I usually do not even bother to the look at the comments section anymore whenever this topic is discussed. Because it’s pathetic. Neither side can see or acknowledge that both are partly right and both partly wrong. It’s frankly ridiculous, so I have tried to refrain from engaging in the debate at all. Because no one will win this fight. Ever.
But then I saw the post from Mr. Doherty and I arrived to see all of this garbage drug out again, on the Tor.com page and including some of its own authors for goodness sake! For the Irene Gallo issue specifically, then, here are my comments:
1.) It was foolish to leave this post open for comment. As we see, nothing good could possibly have come of it and now this foolish debate pointlessly rages again.
2.) In any other company that I am familiar with and in any similar circumstance, anyone putting such a comment into public circulation (and that is “social media” is for) would already have been fired. There is no way to refute this. Those comments above mine who have defended it are tragically out of touch. It doesn’t even matter if you agree with Ms. Gallo or not. It doesn’t matter if it was her “personal” FB page. She used derogative and inflammatory terms against those employed by her very own employer. She offended consumers of the product that she herself helps to publish. It was beyond foolish and shows a tragic lack of forethought that should be required of any adult working in a professional environment.
3.) That said, I am not advocating her firing. I am shocked that she hasn’t already been fired, but I am not going to pressure Tor to fire her or threaten a boycott or any such nonsense. I don’t know Irene personally and I bear her no personal ill will, though her comments were horribly inconsiderate and inaccurate.
4.) I believe that Vox Day, according to all I have seen of what he puts out for public consumption, loves to stir the pot. He really seems to get off on it. This makes me absolutely distrust anything he says. I have a healthy distrust of those who love to stir the pot for their own enjoyment, and who seem to truly not care about the impact it has on other people’s lives. This isn’t fiction. These aren’t villains. These are REAL PEOPLE. Anyone who truly doesn’t care if others live or die is a danger to themselves and others and I want to be as far away from them as possible. That includes those on the other side of the aisle saying reprehensible things about Vox Day as well. They fail to see their own hypocrisy.
5.) I am not going to stop reading all books put out by Tor. Because you don’t have to believe a certain way to be published by Tor, as this issue clearly has demonstrated. Now, one’s views may or may not be advantageous to one’s career and may or may not have benefit when it comes to winning awards. That’s just natural bias at work and it affects everyone. I’ll read what I like and I won’t read what I don’t like, just like everyone else. And anyone who wants to scream at me for reading something because they personally don’t like what the author thinks about controversial topics can get lost. I don’t like the thought police and I don’t recognize their jurisdiction in my life at any point.
6.) I’m disappointed that some authors published by Tor have joined the fray in these comments because I think it’s incredibly foolish of them to engage Mr. Doherty in this forum and even the ones addressing only their detractors fail to see that this type of dialogue is never going to further their particular cause no matter what it is. You are shooting yourselves in the foot.
7.) People who are calling others names and cursing them for their beliefs should be cautious. They are displaying the same type of boorish and inexcusable behavior that they are condemning others for. Some of you consider yourselves in the right and yet fight with the most dastardly and vicious tactics imaginable. That which you are sending out will come back to you. As my grandfather used to say, “You can have anything you want. Just be careful what you want.”
Hi @ColePram! I recognize your name from Twitter, where you’ve spent nine months claiming what you’re claiming here while reposting attacks from the stalker and harasser Ralph Retort and claiming Zoe Quinn brought the threats on herself—which you also claim she made up—because she’s a “terrible person.” You are a self-professed crusader against the “wrong kind” of feminism, which you believe is exemplified by Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. (I’m only going by your own words here.)
Everything I said is a matter of public record; it can be looked up. There were no “legitimate concerns”. The one journalist Ms. Quinn allegedly slept with wrote exactly one line about her game, in line with other press coverage at the time, in a roundup of fifty games that had been released on Steam—and he wrote it three months before they allegedly slept together. If there was an ethical violation, it was his, and it was minuscule, yet the torrent of filth fell almost entirely on her head, and continues to fall today. The hashtag was indeed coined in a tweet by Adam Baldwin sharing the “Five Guys Burgers and Fries” slut-shaming video. Everyone who had been harassing Zoe Quinn under that banner did indeed jump ship to the Gamergate hashtag as soon as it became available. This is the internet. You can look up the primary sources. This is the bedrock of Gamergate.
The disinformation here is being spread by you, the Gamergater. I for one am shocked, shocked I say. And that is all the time you, or Gamergate, have earned from me; this is my last post on this subject
I am saddened I am no longer able to purchase TOR products until such time as they cease to punish opposition to hate groups.
@258Aeryl, really? That’s the whole point of ‘gamergate?’
I read an article in the Bostonian recently about that. It depressed me so much that I had to put it down for a time before I could finish it.
As a father of a very strong willed, minded, opinionated, self-directed 19 daughter – my wife says she has no idea where she gets it from – I found what Ms. Quinn has had to deal with both utterly terrifying & reprehensible.
Kato
I’ve been a reader and a (admittedly irregular) commenter here for several years, and I’ve always found it to be a place of interesting, thoughtful discourse. I’ve NEVER been more disappointed with the ownership and some of the commenters than I am right now. Shame on you for catering to people who have proudly shown themselves to be all sorts of unsavory things (homophobic, racist, and the like) and those who have implicitly supported that unsavoriness by standing with them in pursuit of their own goals.
I’m sure that for business reasons you’ll never retract this statement, but I hope you have the good grace to be privately ashamed of yourself.
To be completely honest, if Irene Gallo was fired for her obviously private comments, which are actually TRUE ones, then that would do much more damage to the Tor brand in my eyes.
Why in the HELL would anyone at Tor feel the need to respond politely to these Puppies fools and throw a senior and extremely well-respected member of staff under the bus is BEYOND ME. Let’s see: We can placate the Puppies and hope they buy books, whilst enraging the majority of our customers who are actually decent human beings, or we can just ignore their nonsense. Don’t give acknowledgement or reaction to morons like these, and certainly don’t allow them to shame someone like Irene-freaking-Gallo!
Mr. Doherty,
Clearly Tor does not have an adequate or possibly existing electronic device policy. Several companies have them, as the words of each employee do reflect on the company, especially high ranking employees such as Creative Directors and Associate Publishers. You apparently still have in your employ Ms. Irene Gallo, who violated what would be ANY electronic device policy. They are generally conditional to employment, and any company with one would have fired her a month ago for libel, defamation of character, and damages to the company and some of your authors.
Now, due to your inaction, you appear to be facing boycotts coming from both sides. On the side of the puppy factions, many will feel your actions inadequate, and they are, considering the unprofessional behavior. On the anti-puppy side, they believe you are caving in to people they believe to be hateful and intolerant(there is a vast culture difference), when you are attempting damage control. Your attempt does not appear to be succeeding professionally, I cannot say about individuals.
When the puppies fans start to realize that the most likely outcome of them boycotting Tor books is going to be Tor books publishing less puppie friendly books ( like those by Kevin J Anderson or John C. Wright. which would be the most hurt by a puppie boycott), maybe they will rethink their campaign because right now I am not sure what they are trying to achieve. Do they seriously believe that by boycotting Tor they will hurt the sales of N.K. Jemisin or others ? I seriously doubt it.
If you think otherwise, you are seriously mistaken….
All this sturm und drang over Irene Gallo’s Facebook comment–really? Is it not obvious that you’re all being trolled?
Let’s think about this a second: Vox Day got his feelings hurt in an exchange with the Nielsen-Haydens many years ago. Vox Day has been complaining about Tor books and their so-called political message-fiction for ages–one wonders whether they may have rejected his own political message-fiction a few times. Vox Day finds an arguably damaging post by an editor and sits on it until Nebula weekend.
This is not about Irene Gallo, not about a bunch of supposedly affronted dipshits who don’t understand the general principle that if it walks like a neo-nazi and talks like a neo-nazi, well, maybe it’s a freaking neo-nazi. This is about Vox Day trying to embarrass Tor. Oh, and maybe draw some attention to his sad little publishing venture.
And here’s Tom Doherty with the assist. Good one, Tom.
I thought the whole point of the Sad Puppies slate was to nominate people who were Brad Torgerson’s friends. Nothing to do with their politics or their ethnicity or their gender or the quality of their work – just pure nepotism.
It’s like how the whole point of the Rabid Puppies slate was to advertise Beale’s micro-press.
@Bryon Grimes
Exactly. There is no win in this situation. The outcome is going to be to upset customers and potential customers and make authors wary of being published by Tor, no matter what they do.
That is why the professional course of action would be to simply not comment on social media concerning controversial subjects.
As I said earlier in the thread, I have been taking mandated courses on how to conduct myself on social media before they coined the term. Admittedly, my first one was how to ask questions on Usenet concerning OS problems without giving away info to hackers such as organization, IP, passwords, etc.
But for the last few years the classes have included sections on “not saying things that could upset customers or cause bad publicity.”
As so many pointed out when Brendan Eich was fired, opinions have consequences.
Tor published a book by an actual Holocaust denier (Outward Bound, by James P. Hogan), so they should feel quite comfortable publishing books by racists, homophobes, and misogynists as long as the books are good reads and sell well.
As for the Miserable Curs, just as with GamerGaters and truthers of all stripes, there comes a point where arguing with the other side is pointless, because they are evil and stupid and talking with them will not change anything. At that point you stop talking to them but continue talking to those who have not yet chosen a side.
Trying to get Irene Gallo fired is a pretty disgusting move, folks. And let me tell you, those of you pushing the “ignorant fan” narrative in an attempt to further that goal are really just scum. Ah, but I suppose there may actually be some fans who have somehow wandered into this toxic hellhole ignorant of the overarching controversy. If you are one of them, I apologize for calling you scum and suggest that you back away slowly and go back to whatever cave you have been living in for the last several months because there is no happiness to be found here. If you have decided to stay, don’t rely on this discussion to form an opinion.
I would not have assumed Irene Gallo’s personal post to represent Tor. She apologized for over-broad generalization, and that should be enough.
It is cowardly and disloyal for Tom Doherty to treat a valued employee this way. Should i take that to be representative of Tor? Is that what Tor stands for?
Regardless of the implications of any presumed boycott of the product, as a potential contributor to the publishing house, I have serious doubts about whether to ever submit to Tor now. And I say this as someone who normally posts everything under his own name, because I believed that if everyone was required to do that and be held accountable for it, about 40% of the lousy behavior on the internet would disappear overnight. People do not behave like this when they talk to each other face to face most of the time. But I am not comfortable posting under my own name here, because, frankly, as one of the few potential markets left, Tor holds a great deal of power over me as someone whose name is not huge.
But that leaves me with a problem. Irene Gallo worked closely with people whose works she then publicly decried as ‘bad to reprehensible.’ In fact, just a month ago, one of those people publicly praised her before she called his work that. As an aspirant, what am I supposed to make of that? There are plenty of people who have said that Irene Gallo’s attitude mirrors the attitude of the senior editorship of the publishing house. So, as an aspirant, can I really trust that these are the people who are going to put their best effort into furthering my career? Can I even trust them to give me an honest opinion to my face?
I am relatively apolitical. This current bruhaha will shake itself out one way or another like all political brushfires do, but what she did is going to have repercussions in the future. If we, as aspirants, don’t think we can trust you from the start, then how are we ever supposed to believe that you are going to keep your word about anything?
Wow – I hope the Sad and Rabid Puppies have a good supply of smelling salts and pearls to clutch, with all their faux outrage.
@ColePram: Oh, hey, less than 24 hours ago you accused a trans woman you don’t like of “diddling her toddler nephew.” But yes; let’s just “try to respect we’re all going to have differing opinions” and blame the harassment on “3rd party trolls.”
It is telling that you can say something like that on Twitter and then turn around and make a bald-faced plea for moderation here. Your words are public. Gamergate’s actions are public. It is not a conspiracy of the press or a campaign of misinformation that has led to Gamergate’s universally poor reputation; it is your long history of doing exactly this, preaching fair play and ethics out of one side of your mouth while accusing your enemies of child abuse fro the other. It is, I am saying, earned.
Okay. NOW I’m done.
Alene (and others doing the same thing here, which are legion)
Alleging that someone is lying about their motivations is useless. It only helps those who already believe as you do. Those on the fence tend to think you are plugging your ears and shouting “lalalalala” rather than addressing the issue. Do you have anything of actual substance to add? Because I do not give a fig for the Sad or Rabid Puppies and disagree with their little crusade. That said, I think what Irene Gallo said is wrong and that Mr. Doherty was right to reprimand her (and honestly, it was fairly weak as reprimands go).
So are you going to convince me that I’m wrong or call me a liar?
Fascinating to see which group are shouting “I’ll never buy your books again!” and which are addressing the actual situation. I know which sort of group I would rather do business with and have for customers. No one ever went out of business by refusing to cater to screaming tantrum-throwers. Those may shout loudest, but civilized people do, in fact, outnumber them.
Shame on you, Mr. Doherty. I don’t know what sort of working relationship you and Ms. Gallo had up to now, and I don’t actually care. Whether she said something foul (she didn’t) that reflected badly on Tor (it didn’t) is immaterial. You publicly threw one of your high-level staff under a bus. That is FAR more unprofessional than anything Ms. Gallo may have done.
“That is FAR more unprofessional than anything Ms. Gallo may have done.”
More unprofessional than publicly insulting people that you work with on a regular basis and potentially all of your customers who buy their books? And again, Mr. Doherty’s “reprimand” was extremely mild, considering. Most people in corporations that I work with would have fired her immediately and HR would not have lifted a finger to defend her. I’m usually opposed to public reprimands myself, but Ms. Gallo’s comments frankly demanded it, especially when her co-workers took umbrage.
I’m not going to yell or swear or promise vengeance in the form of boycotts or anything of the sort. But Mr. Doherty please note that I am gravely disappointed in your public response. If any reaction was warranted it should have been an internal discussion instead of this public shaming. Your explanation and apology are neither convincing nor warranted. It’s cheap CYA maneuvering and you’re harming a valued employee in the process. The fact that she is also a female does look suspicious when Tor’s official response to worse actions by male staff has been a big old zero.
I appreciate good books, stories and articles so I will continue to read freely. But I would not be surprised if you find it difficult to gain and hold the trust of your staff in future. Nor do you particularly deserve to do so, apparently.
Irene Gallo has done so much good for the scifi/fantasy community, I am incredibly dismayed by Tor’s lack of support for her. Tor was the one place we could go to look for inclusiveness, brilliance and daring. Now? I fear for its future. The wailings of a few loud, bitter individuals–calling for Irene’s firing–do not even come close to representing the whole of Tor’s readership. They are a pocket of noisy, vitriolic malcontents. And Tor is catering to them.
Irene voiced her opinion on her PERSONAL journal. If she continues to do a good job at Tor, her personal life should remain her personal life and be of no concern to Tor, especially since we are not talking illegal, punishable acts. I will support Irene and her right to speak her own opinions on her own journal to the end of days.
The customer will vote with their dollar. If someone doesn’t like the personal opinions of one of the company’s many employees, they are free to take their money elsewhere. This goes doubly for public, official statements, since they are decidedly representations of Tor as a company. Mr. Doherty, your statement is far more offensive to me than Ms. Gallo’s. And it is the public face of your company. This makes me very disappointed.
@287 More unprofessional than publicly insulting people that you work with on a regular basis and potentially all of your customers who buy their books?
Except she didn’t. She said nothing about the authors, and she certainly didn’t speak for ALL the people who buy their books. She spoke to a very narrow subset of SF/F fans that have openly admitted to their agenda getting marginalized people out of “their” genre, and who has demonstrated the vile acts they will take to achieve that.
You are using hyperbole to exaggerate Ms. Gallo’s statements here, in an attempt to play a “both sides are just as bad” card.
No. One side is willing to have all voices represented in SF/F. One side is not, and is willing to ally with hatemongerers like Vox Day to achieve it.
Tom Doherty, clownshoes.
Not have been on the internet much, huh? If the purpose of this was to “limit damage” to a commercial company with a cold statement written by a lawyer, you just blew it up to unprecedented levels just by posting this.
If there’s something awfully terrible about this whole deal, it was that statement. Maybe next time be more aware about what you’re talking about. You’ve just proven how detached you are from your fandom.
Now I’m going to offend everyone. I’m good at that. As I said upthread, I’m a supporter of both Sad Puppies and Gamergate. And I’m a supporter of free speech (which ideally extends beyond the 1st Amendment protections against Government interference or suppression of speech).
Ms Gallo should not be fired. While her original Facebook remarks were mean-spirited and showed contempt for Tor readers and Tor authors, employers should not purge employees for having unpopular views. They may have a legal right to (depending on state laws and contracts), but they should not because: 1) the organization becomes captive to the loudest and most easily offended of their stakeholders, and 2) free speech is an objective good that writers and publishers should support, even when that speech is unpopular, or even considered hateful.
I read about 100 books per year. I never used to pay attention to the publisher. Now I’ll make sure to avoid Tor books. Go to hell Tor!
Btw, there’s a HUGE logical fallacy in that statement:
“We are in the business of finding great stories and promoting literature and are not about promoting a political agenda”
Guess what? Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies exist BECAUSE of a political agenda. So taking their defense you’ve actively entered the political debate they tried to force.
One must be completely clueless to not be aware of that.
“She said nothing about the authors, and she certainly didn’t speak for ALL the people who buy their books.”
She called their work ‘bad to reprehensible.’ She didn’t differentiate. ‘Bad’ is one thing. Presumably, an author could tolerate a co-worker think his/her work to be sub-standard. ‘Reprehensible’ implies something else altogether, something far worse. It at the very least implies that finds some of the work of the authors she is supposed to be supporting morally repugnant. That is a far cry from saying ‘nothing’ about the authors.
So did Tor ever apologise for continuing to employ serial harasser Jim Frenkel? Or publically address his harassment as a Tor employee other than in Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Twitter feed?
Why is being accused of racism worse than this?
These comments are not “civil and respectful.” Please either moderate this as promised, or close this thread.
@292
“should not purge employees for having unpopular views”
Man… Unpopular views? I’m not sure you have even the slightest idea of how unpopular are Sad Puppies, Vox Day and all that mess.
Beside the merit of the discussion, you don’t even IMAGINE how this statement by Tor is going to hurt their reputation.
The idea that Vox Day’s position is “popular” amuses me. Again, whether you agree or not is beside the point, but believing his views are POPULAR? Come on.
Sure they aren’t racists or misogynists
‘Head puppy Brad Torgersen and his supporters bashed previous Hugo winners as beneficiaries of “tokenism and affirmative action, for the sake of the sexuality, gender, and ethnicity of the authors themselves.”.’
I can only assume that you have posted this apology based on the belief that without it, your base of white, male readers will walk away from Tor and shop elsewhere.
How very sad. How very wrong.
The Puppies and their supporters are a vocal minority, even among white male SF&F readers. And then you are forgetting about the rest of us. Because Ms. Gallo wasn’t wrong. Perhaps she could have phrased her description more politely but it was essentially accurate. But take my husband and me, for example. True, we’re white, but we are liberal, we have a broad range of tastes in the science fiction and fantasy we read – sure, some of it is pot boiler-y space opera, some of it is literary, some of it has social justice themes or a mixture of all of the above. And we buy a HUGE number of books every year. But I am furious that Tor would stand with the Sad/Rabid Puppies, who perverted the Hugo nomination process. Is this really what you stand for?
If Ms. Gallo is fired for stating the truth, I will be getting a library card and any Tor books we wish to read will be borrowed rather than purchased.
Though in this case the problem wasn’t “bad publicity”, but rather recent comments by a neo-nazi that he might consider maybe starting the process of maybe sueing anyone who called him, or his neo-nazi buddies, “neo-nazis”. What especially galled (or should that be “Gallo-d”?) the neo-nazis in this case was that it happened almost two weeks ago and was designed to mock their deeply held political views that a whites vs. everyone else race-war is going to happen any day now and that they would totally be able to establish a dominionist/fascist state in the new whiter and brighter US that would emerge from that conflagration.
Consider for instance that the weirdo in question whose mutterings about legal action caused this considers Anders Brievik a “hero” and don’t consider the children Brievik slaughtered in cold blood to be “innocent”. Gallo wasn’t using the term “neo-nazi” as hyperbole.
Legally I could see one post being needed to legally distance Tor from comments that might justify being sued by the neo-nazis, because who wants to deal with nuisance legal actions? And I could see another post being needed to make the case, in reaction to legally actionable slander by the neo-nazis, who’ve returned to repeating their old lie about how Tor is controlled by a cabal of left-wing jewish academics and hates right-wing writers, that Tor publishes a very broad range of people with a broad range of political views, from Orson Scott Card all the way to Charlie Stross.
Tom Doherty however is no man to do merely what is needed. So like Big Guy he is, he stepped up to the plate and tried to do a single post that combined both statements, and thereby achieving the wonderful feat of annoying literally EVERYONE, unifying neo-nazis and normal folk in mutual annoyance at Tom Doherty.
And then he sat back after it was written, put a set of mirror shades on, took a cigar from his pocket, didn’t cut the end off because he’s a pleb who doesn’t usually smoke cigars, took a puff, choked up, and when his lungs stopped spasming, he finally said what this incredibly long run-on descriptive sentence was building towards:
“You’re welcome, internet.”
This is absurd on so many levels. I am deleting tor.com from my bookmarks. I will miss it but I will not regret the decision.
There’s one principle everyone has to know regarding employment: Don’t poo where you eat.
Had Gallo simply said she found the Puppies themselves objectionable – even using false and slanderous terms as she did – this would not have been much of a problem for Tor. Yes, her use of her personal FB account to boost Tor would have probably led to a disclaimer and an end to that practice. Might have caused extreme discomfort should Tor ever seek to publish Torgersen or Correia, but that would be a future issue.
The problem occurred when she took it upon herself to denigrate Tor authors (i.e., people she has to work with) and Tor-published works. You don’t do that if you have a scintilla of common sense and professionalism. Ever. It’s at this point it becomes a problem for her employer to address.
I’m not in favor of people losing their job for having opinions, nor for expressing them, whether that be Brendan Eich or Irene Gallo. However, when your public expression of your opinions includes direct disdain for co-workers or denigration of your company’s product, you risk your employment. Simple as that.
I am disappointed by Gallo’s non-apology and Doherty apparently choosing to overlook what appears to be an institutional issue, however. True diversity includes diversity of opinion; too many authors today couldn’t write a good faith conflict in politics if their lives depended on it. I’ll continue to buy a few Tor series (Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive and Mistborn books, Weber’s Safehold, mostly), but I can’t say the Tor label will be a positive in evaluating future purchases.
Tor books were so good during the 70’s and 80’s . However in the last 10 years or so I could not count on the consistency of quality and entertainment.
Having read Ms Gallo bigoted and libelous statement I am not surprised at Tom’s statement. However any employee that in explanation callously libels an entire group of writers and readers is beyond reason. That is such a bad business practice. The extreme emotion from some Tor editors seems to validate that they felt the Hugos was theirs and how dare another barbarian group come and take them. Though the outcome is still up in the air. Voting is still going on
It is bad business to trash talk their customers and call the readers homophobic, sexist and racist and neo- nazis. I am not surprised so much as to lazy tinkers far right and Nazism are the same.
Understand to call people names is basically being bigoted . No different that calling feminists feminazis as Rush Limbaugh used to do. To discriminate based on political though is not liberal or tolerant. It is very anti tolerant.
295: Bad-to-reprehensible does not equal “bad and reprehensible,” so you can’t actually say which she was referring to – maybe none of the authors she was working with qualify. Maybe some do, and it’s her personal opinion. Who knows. You certainly don’t. But she didn’t name names. If I work for a company and deal with a lot of people, am I not ever allowed to say, “I work with a few real jerks,” in the general sense, even on my own Facebook page while off work? Refusing to allow THAT seems to be “political correctness gone mad” or “unreasonable burdens on speech”, things that the even the slightly more reasonable wing of SP supporters seem to believe is a problem. Where is there problem with it now? Again, why is it supposedly horrible to react to a work based on something other than the quality of the work, like an author’s own particularly repellant views, but it’s okay to treat a whole slate of artists differently and reject them wholesale based on the comments of one employee of the publisher? Where are your calls for Vox Day to retract his comments that insult many members of his author’s potential readership, or they won’t support any of the authors in his publishing house?
Gallo also, btw, doesn’t specifically say ALL of the Sad Puppies nominees are bad-to-reprehensible (you could interpret it that way, and it’s a legitimate interpretation that doesn’t require any stretching, but that’s still what it is, an interpretation… remember, this isn’t an official, carefully worded statement, it was a comment on her own Facebook page, and she was speaking off the cuff)… maybe she was using the word “slate” and only referring to a few works on that particular, larger slate, of bad-to-reprehensible works. The word “slate” isn’t unique to SP and inexorably MUST refer to the entire list… I just used “slate” in the previous paragraph to refer to all the authors under Tor’s publishing arm.
“Though in this case the problem wasn’t “bad publicity””
Yes it is. If she hadn’t made the statement on social media that started this brouhaha then this whole situation would not be happening. She opened a can of worms and dumped it in her boss’ lap.
That is a fact regardless of whether the “weirdo” is the master manipulator you and others deem him to be.
Gallo may as well as handed Vox Day a pistol and politely asked him, “please kind sir, shoot my boss in the foot.”
306. Ron Winkleheimer Vox Day is a white supremacist. Perhaps this isn’t technically neo-Nazi but I’m not sure that it isn’t; I’m not familiar with exactly how those lines are drawn. I do believe that anyone supporting him deserves to be treated like a rabid badger that might bite. Sure, they could be fine, but who knows? Better to be safe than sorry.
@TomDoherty
Mr. Doherty this is not about ‘diversity of viewpoints’, this is about Tor’s Company policy for it’s Creative Director Ms. Irene Gallo to make derogatory public statements about Tor’s Authors and Customers.
IS IT?
While John C Wright (one of Tor’s Authors) has accepted Ms. Gallo’s apology (I am assuming their was one), Ms. Gallo benefits from Mr. Wrights Christian belief to turn the other cheek. If he was a sword carrying Muslim I think Ms. Gallo might not be so quick to offend. Most Christens have changed in the last thousand years, perhaps she should remember the Crusades.
I find Tor’s Crusade against it’s own authors|customers offensive and I am not so inclined to forgive.
I sincerely hope that it is NOT Tor’s Policy to have its Managers/Directors degrade and slander their Authors and Customers.
If Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich can lose his job for donating to a years past successful political campaign (even though he did nothing wrong), why shouldn’t Irene Gallo Tor’s Art Director and Associate Publisher lose her job for attacking her publishing house’s own authors and customers?
Actions speak louder than words – and so does Tor’s absence of meaningful action.
Unless Tor’s policy is for it’s staff to degrade and slander their Authors and Customers then it is obvious that Tor must disassociate itself from Ms. Irene Gallo as did Mozilla did with CEO Brendan Eich as soon as possible.
It’s time to give another talented Artist an opportunity at Tor, how about Boris Vallejo!
Talent and Experience runs strong in the Vallejo Family.
When other Tor editors have been commenting publicly online about this miserable situation and Mr. TD thinks this is a bad thing, WHY then does he slap only this one single woman?\
Disappointed to see Tor has become a Vox Day apologist. Won’t be buying Tor for the foreseeable future, nor voting for any Tor authors.
With respect, Tom, Irene’s post was corporate, NOT personal.
1. She was promoting a forthcoming Tor book as the core topic of the thread.
2. She is not a random employee, she has been given a position of responsibility and authority over Tor’s creative work. “Personal” statements *about the firm, its authors, and its customers* are not personal when coming from her.
3. Within the thread, not only did she refuse to apologize when called on obvious lies and lack of professionalism, she doubled down AS A MARKETING TACTIC:
To review: This is a manager in a position of trust, posting on corporate topics in a public forum, who used it to slander Tor’s authors and Tor’s customers. Who refused to retract the statement when issued, as a self-admitted way of promoting Tor’s products. And who has issued a non-apology here, with your collusion.
The Girl Genius affair made me question Tor’s management. This post makes me wonder if there *is* any management at Tor. I can’t imagine many professional organizations that would tolerate such conduct – as you clearly have, and do.
First, I’d like to point out that the word “respectively” in Irene’s post is not being used properly to differentiate between the two descriptions she used. Her words:
There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy.
Respectively doesn’t work to separate here, because she used the word “to” in the first part of a sentence, indicating a range of qualities for both named groups. To mean that they not a range but are distinct behaviors respectively indicated by names, she should have used the word “and”, and she should have placed the word “groups” with comma following, after the word “two”. However, because “respectively” is included we can guess that she may have meant that even though she didn’t say it correctly. But that’s only a guess.
It is a poorly constructed sentence that can be manipulated by either side to support either point of view. So really, please stop using this as an argument either way.
Regarding the whole situation above, my company has a policy that you don’t post about business on your personal social accounts, ever. It’s unprofessional. And if you on any account where you’re identified as an employee of said company, insult company members or clients, you’re fired. That’s it. Most companies have this policy. Most employees understand that it’s part of being a professional. There’s nothing wrong with an employee being taken to task for this, and she’s lucky she still has a job.
However, professionalism also means that any reprimand occur in private, with public posting of general policies and an apology from the employee in question to those she insulted, on the same forum where the offense occurred. The above post should not have called out the employee by name. TD should apologize to her for that. IG’s apology to those she insulted was a juvenile attempt to evade responsibility (“I’m sorry if you’re mad ’cause I said you stink.”), and she should be made to redo it properly.
TOR seriously needs to hire an HR manager (or get a new one) if management and employees don’t understand that much.
She said that the Sad Puppies were generally right-wing to extreme right-wing, and the Rabid Puppies included neo-Nazis.
Could someone clarify for me which part of that is false? The whole POINT of the Sad Puppies thing is to give representation to more conservative voices in SF&F, and the whole Rabid Puppies is Vox Day’s baby, and Vox Day is a neo-Nazi.
So what is the part that she said that isn’t true?
Did I miss the public apology from Doherty and Tor to the women subject to Frenkel’s behavior and to the attendees and organizers of the cons where it happened?
Or is that as non-existent as the apology to Kowal?
Is there a reason Gallo is being thrown under the bus when Frenkle wasn’t for over a decade?
My gut tells me that Tom agrees with her rant and this is the corporate culture at Tor Books. So why publicly admonish Ms Gallo? I think it was in the hope of staying McMillan’s hand. Unfortunately for Tom, he didn’t go far enough, which could cost him dearly.
Okay, I’m forced to throw in my two cents. Vox Day is an A-hole. As a Sad Puppy, I had to look him up on Google. He doesn’t participate in our day to day discussions(although I later saw him on some Facebook threads before he was blocked for being a creep). None of the Sad Puppies that I know online or IRL meet the descriptions that I’m reading on here. I can’t say I’m very impressed with John C. Wright’s comments, I know many religious people find homosexuality to be sinful, but his comments seemed extreme (do Catholics really believe that?) But, I haven’t seen him in any of the threads that I’ve participated in either.
I think if the anti-puppies would dial back the outrage machine and actually have a discussion, you could empathize a bit. As far as Irene Gallo’s statement; she was wrong.
You don’t denigrate your own authors in public whether or not it’s your private page. When you promote your work related items on your private page on a regular basis, it it de facto, no longer a private page. That is not even taking into account your own customers, those of you who bet that Puppies haven’t bought any Tor books in the last five years would have lost your shirts.
The people complaining about reading comprehension vis-à-vis respectively, should perhaps complain more about Ms. Gallo’s clumsy writing and use of the word. Respectively is one of those words that is seldom necessary, requires interpretation and/or mental gymnastics, and often causes confusion because it forces the reader to go back and match up what belongs to what. You should at least use it in a more concise form than what she posted. There were so many commas and segments in that sentence the adverb at the end became lost.
There is an awful lot of “we are so much smarter/better than you obvious idiots.” going on from both directions. Can we not just read and enjoy ourselves?
To clarify what SP stands for, at least from my perspective, I would point to some of the things I’ve read on this thread. One poster claims to be a writer who is tired of the “monotonous” (I guess he means white people?) viewpoint and that is why he, a black man, is now writing Sci/Fi. He says that POC have “differing” viewpoints. That may very well be true, but keep in mind that you need to write a good story. THIS is the sort of thing that we were complaining about. Diversity of the author is becoming more important than the actual story. That, in a nutshell is the SP platform. Story first, feel good stuff later. If writers of color are putting out the best work, then that’s what we will be reading, if women are (look out guys, a lot of my favs are from females) then we will be reading them. But, by the same token, if the best stories are being written by straight, white males, that doesn’t make us racist, sexist homophobes for wanting to read them! That, however, is what the hating opposition seems to be putting forth as our guiding principle.
Faux outrage? Well, I’m not really “outraged,” but I am a bit pissed off. I also don’t think that Irene Gallo and other Tor employees making objectionable commentary should be fired, but they should be disciplined. Just like I would be, had I done similar. It’s time to have civil discussions about this sort of thing like civilized people. With a nice pot of tea perhaps.
When I first heard women’s activists begin to say that other people’s speech endangered their safety directly, I was appalled. I can’t think of anything that more comfortably fits in with negative female stereotypes than the sentiment expressed by such rantings.
But the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to say: say it louder.
The opposition argued that SF/F was captured by a small cadre of leftists who view everything from a tribal perspective, who support and advance each other, even to the point of not speaking of *actual* physical harm perpetrated by their favorites.
So, yes: say it louder.
Let your hysterical, unreasonable, laughable statements be read by all. You strengthen us with every word, just as this episode–proving once again the opposition’s point that the SF/F publishing gatekeepers were a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leftism, Inc. was spot on.
Irene Gallo proves the Sad Puppy point that the left are bigots and crazed SJW idiots.
Alrighty then.
– I’ve been a longtime, active poster on this site virtually from its inception. I view Irene as an asset to Tor and I support her. I also support Tom Doherty’s ability to make the point to Tor readers that he believed she went too far in some respects.
– No need to fire Irene and the repeated efforts to push that effort, using what I would view as excessive hyperbole, are not persuasive.
– The level of vituperation on this thread is too high. I appreciate the reasoned insights of many on the thread, and will ignore the less measured ones.
Speaking as a reader of Tor Books (and thus an intended recipient of this message from Tom Doherty) I’d like to say that this post makes Tor look WAY worse than anything an employee might say on their personal Facebook page. I guess this is the 2015 Hugos version of Intel & Adobe being gulled into pulling advertising from publications that were critical of Gamergate. I expect Tor will get as much mileage out of throwing Ms. Gallo under the bus as those companies did out of their gormless actions.
For the record, I will continue buying Tor-published books regardless, because I am a grown-ass adult.
It’s pretty funny to call Vox Day a white supremacist, considering his japanese, mexican, and Indian heritage (feather not dot).
If you’re referring to his comments on intelligence, then Vox Day is clearly a Han Chinese supremacist as he routinely refers to their topping the charts in average population IQ scores. After that he is clearly a Jewish supremacist as he lists them next, and only after that a white supremacist, as they are third.
He’s also a well-known Zionist, as he states that Jews should have a land of their own in Israel just like the Japanese should have a land of their own in Japan, Chinese in China, French in France, and so on.
These are very strange opinions for a white supremacist to have. And yet they are easily googleable as he’s made them many times.
luagha – you’re using racial generalizations as proof that someone isn’t racist?
thanks for the laugh.
@@@@@ Bemused
luagha didn’t say that Vox wasn’t a racist. He said he wasn’t a white supremacist. Vox is prejudiced against all races, including his own,
I would think that after comment (84) it would be especially important for Mr. Doherty to make it clear and explicit that those working for Tor like John C. Wright and others who think as he does in comment (84) are not speaking for Tor Books…
@@@@@ Brad Delong
John C. Wright does not work for Tor. He is an author who has books published by Tor which is not an employee/employer relationship.
Shame on you.
@@@@@ George Cotronis
Shame on who?
I find it disturbing that Jim Frenkel’s and Sean P. Fodera’s actions went unremarked, while Irene Gallo gets thrown under the bus.
Also, forgive me if I find it hard to believe the puppies’ new-found interest in publishers and authors treating each other with ~professional courtesy~.
Mr. Doherty, you must know that this is not going to end well if you keep Ms. Gallo.
A couple points…
When I come to your page, I find someone talking about ‘getting girl cooties on’ Lovecraft in one of your articles. This supports the theory that Tor has a cultural problem.
One of the commenters has claimed Ms. Gallo is a great talent. Perhaps. Did John Campbell go out of his way to insult his customers and authors? Did he say ‘oh that Asimov is such a jerk’ in a public forum without it being a joke?
I have a Kindle. I can get a wide variety of good to middling books for very cheap, and at great ease. I’ve read about fifteen books in the last month or so. Boycotting Tor Books is trivially easy for me.
How delightful that Mr. Doherty has clarified Tor’s position on Ms Gallo. It is wrong to call mean people mean.
Mr. Doherty did NOT publicly apologize for Jim Frenkel’s decades of hostility to fans and writers, general incompetence in working with Tor writers, and sexual harassment of numerous women. So that’s ok with Tom, he didn’t even fire Frenkel, but let him resign.
So let me get this right. A woman who once calls mean men “mean” has to be publicly shamed. A man who behaves in a demeaning and legally actionable way in performance of his job for decades is fine with the boss.
Thanks, Tom, for reminding us it’s still a Mad Men world.
I have nothing new to add that hasn’t already been said by hundreds of people before me, but I feel the more people who say that this was a disappointing move from Tor the better. It was badly handled and reflects more than the company than is does on Ms Gallo.
I’ve read a lot of Tor books. In fact I’m reading the latest of a series of three right now. I won’t stop reading them but I do want to express a bit of sadness and bewilderment at Tor’s “corporate” apology as an African American reader of SF&F for the past 40 years. I can’t say I’ve much sympathy with “the puppies” since the Hugos have stopped being relevant to me and I haven’t voted for one in years but I have even less feeling for their sympathizers who open their mouths and remove all doubt regarding their true natures. Irene Gallo seems to have experienced a “teaching moment.” She should be allowed to learn from it, keep her job, and move on. No more, no less.
Well, this is disappointing. I support Irene Gallo.
I hope Tor will honour Ms Gallo’s rights and not give in to these fascist bloodhounds.
Regarda,
Hakan
Ms. Gallo’s remarks were ill advised and poorly worded, not suitable for a professional in a public forum, and probably written in anger, which always leads to trouble. But she has apologized for them, and her publisher has disciplined her as he deemed appropriate. And the publisher states that he has discussed this with all Tor employees, who like many in the field, have been drawn into a bitter fight that, regardless of who started it, reflects poorly on the entire world of SF. She is extremely talented at her job as an art director, and her efforts give Tor books a polished and compelling appearance. I have always enjoyed her contributions to this website. And I look forward to seeing more of her work in the future. Which ends this incident as far as I am concerned.
I miss the old days, when the toxic soup of heated political bickering between SF authors and fandom was contained in SFWA periodicals and mimeographed fanzines, shared only by a few, and not plastered across the internet to embarrass us all.
I agree with this blogpost completely. You didn’t just throw Ms. Gallo under the bus, you backed it up and ran her over repeatedly, and you know what? That still won’t be enough to appease the Puppy Mob, nothing short of firing her will do that. As of now, I’m done with Tor.
I don’t quite understand how Tom Doherty, speaking for Tor Books, can publicly defend and apologize to a known group of racists and outspoken sexists that, among other things, advocate rape to ‘control’ women.
Was Tom Doherty duped? Or badly consulted? This statement here feels like The Onion and I almost can’t believe it. Am I taking crazy pills?
Despicable, Mr. Doherty. Kowtowing to a group like the Puppies and to known harassers like the Gamergate people is despicable. Gallo’s post was on a personal FB page which should make it apparent to anyone with half a brain that it was a personal statement. Was it mean to them? Perhaps. So what? Are we so gutless that we cannot tolerate pointed opinions? Do your employees need to preface every statement with “I’m not speaking for Tor?” no matter where they are? They’re in a bar, someone asks about something in publishing and they disclaim their answer or else?
I wish you had a backbone and would simply tell these people the obvious – it was Gallo’s personal opinion and being a publisher you’re one of the last people to curtail the speech of your employees. But then that would require guts which sadly seem lacking in the Tor upper management offices.
I’m disappointed by your statement. Irene Gallo does not deserve to be publicly berated and thrown under the bus.
Gosh all the up and down back and forth, seems like some of you guys have never heard of libel laws… fact remains that last year 2900 supporting memberships were sold compared to 5300 and counting for this year… no insults or talking down or epithets will make that go away. That increase might or might not be due to Puppy activity, but I have a suspicion it is. Just think, thousands of new voters, READERS, some of them even Southerners maybe, move their lips when they read even… all voting this year and nominating next. Good night Mr. Doherty, you do NOT deserve all of this crap.
“Vox Day is an A-hole. As a Sad Puppy, I had to look him up on Google.”
The fact that you joined a movement without adequately understanding what its leaders stood for, compounded by the fact that you continue to identify with that movement AFTER you’ve seen ample evidence of what they stand for, inclines me to give you zero credibility on this issue.
The Puppies are teaching me a lot about themselves in these comments.
Tom,
Just a point of clarification…..
Irene said “About my Sad/Rabid Puppies comments: They were solely mine. This is my personal page; I do not speak on behalf of Tor Books or Tor.com. I realize I painted too broad a brush and hurt some individuals, some of whom are published by Tor Books and some of whom are Hugo Award winners. I apologize to anyone hurt by my comments.“
You said ” She has since clarified that her personal views are just that and apologized to anyone her comments may have hurt or offended.”
She did not apologize to anyone she offended and she has not retracted her statement. It is still out their and still a libelous slander of your authors and their fans.
The retraction is what people have asked her to do. So I have to ask you Tom, how does it feel knowing that your Creative Director feels she is working on projects for people she claims ” are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic”. I imagine she must find it hard to be impartial and give her best work to these people.
Lame, Tom.
please stop …. #WeAreALLSF
No. 292: bravo. Mr. Henderson. I agree completely.
I also hope that people are taking screen-shots of these comments pages, as we have hundreds of progressive voices loudly proclaiming that the private views expressed on public social media fora ought not EVER be grounds for boycott, employer censure or loss of employment. Not even if what was written is (to any extent) mistaken, intemperate, or wrong. Because that sort of thing is pure wrong-headed foolishness.
It’s about time, people. I intend to hold you to it.
I had to google Vox Day too (this is the first I’ve heard of him) and eventually I found this lovely screed:
http://www.wnd.com/2005/08/31677/
Apparently women voting and having rights and stuff is the cause of the downfall of society or something. And also sex-selection based abortion/infanticide. And apparently women have never worked until recently (uh, St. Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun and PhD from the 1940s who wrote extensively on the the vocation of women and mothers in the professional world, would love to disgaree with you). Honestly, the language seemed deliberately crafted to be incendiary it’s almost hard to believe people non-ironically believe this stuff.
While I think it is still a bit disengenous to consider a thread specifically promoting a Tor product a ‘personal’ statement, I can’t help but think sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. I can certainly understand there is a fine line between being a member of a group that has flawed members or have done terrible things…but…some things just can’t bear good fruit.
Another thought: it would be kind of nice if this thread could be closed. It keeps clogging the recent comments box and since we no longer have conversation tracking (hint hint) it makes it hard to keep up on the other lovely conversations going on here.
Unrelated: the references to Frenkel are kind of blowing my mind here! In 2008 we (my husband and I) went to OddCon in Madison and met him there as well as attended some of the panels he moderated/sat on. It’s still very memorable because he was actually pretty hysterical. I’d had no idea of his more unsavory qualities! In fact, at one point he had approached us and we conversed a bit. I (at the time) enjoyed the conversation and thought it was kinda neat that the high level guests were so accessible (we also got to hang out with GRRM at the convention…) but I remember feeling a bit blindsided by him; he said some borderline rude/audacious things about the company I had just started working for, and was prone to making rather authoritative assertions of opinion, but I remember just thinking, “Well, I guess New York people are like that…”. Now I’m thinking I dodged a bullet!
working on projects for people she claims ” are unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic”
People who “are unrepentantly racist misogynist and homophobic” make up about 30-40% percent of America’s workforce. If you don’t have to maintain a professional and cordial relationship with coworkers who are “unrepentant racist, misogynistic, and homophobic” to maintain a steady paycheck, that’s because the “unrepentant racist misogynistic and homophobic” one is you.
That’s a reality, and without further evidence to the contrary it’s supremely unfair to challenge her professional reputation in such a manner.
Gallo called Jews neo-nazis and her own publishing house the promoter of award-nominated “bad to reprehensible” books. The only good business move is to fire her.
Hey Tom,
Stop trying to pander to bigots. They’re not the ones buying Tor books, and even if they were I’d hope you’d sleep well at night knowing you’re making a living without their money.
Everything Irene Gallo said in her (personal FB page) post is, in fact, defensible. You don’t have to defend her characterization of the Puppies, but it’s not exactly a radical stand and to say “racists, sexists, and homophobics are not our target demographic; if you don’t think of yourself in that way then I welcome you to continue buying our books”.
Instead, what I read in your post here is “I’m throwing this woman under the bus and distancing myself – and my company – from any appearance that I may suspect that the people shouting hateful racism, sexism, and homophobia may in fact be hateful racists, sexists, and homophobics. Please, hateful racists/sexists/homophobics: continue giving us your dirty, dirty money.”
…and that’s a shame, because I really liked some of the stuff coming out lately. I hope you reconsider this stance and statement. Otherwise, I’ll end up buying books from whomever Irene Gallo ends up working for, and whoever ends up publishing Scalzi’s and Anderson’s work in the future.
(And, just a note: you’ve got John C Wright here in this very comment thread saying “I don’t hate gays; I just hate that they do gay things because that’s perverted and I believe that they will go to Hell for that. If you let them actually express their sexuality then you’re the hateful ones, because you’re causing more people to go to Hell.” That’s some seriously bad stuff there, and if any statement deserves a strong distancing from a publisher – if not an outright separation – then that’s the one.)
Great Flame war (mostly) anonymous internet users. I’m going to post this on reddit and other forums and reap the upvotes.
Resolve nothing. Just keep at it.
Supplemental to mine @319.
Upon reflection, I believe strongly that it was a really, really poor decision to open the thread to comments. A plain post would have served the intended information/clarification purpose. The overwhelming volume of attacks we have seen, and the responses and counter-attacks, through the comments was predictable and hurtful individually and collectively to the Tor employee at the center of it, even if not intended.
Honestly, you are the home of many of my favorite authors, but I am hugely disappointed in you guys right now.
The movement that you’re giving credence and credibility to objects, at it’s core, to the number of minorities and diverse viewpoints that are being found in modern science fiction and fantasy. Specifically, they have called out the Hugo awards for tokenism, etc, as being the only requirement for consideration.
Their position, essentially, is ‘Won’t someone please think of the white men!?’
I know that you’re the representative of a company, and that you can’t afford to alienate part of your audience. But as long as you’re willing to beat down your own employees on behalf of a thinly-veiled hate group… you are part of the problem.
I will miss reading the worlds of Brandon Sanderson and your other authors, but I find it difficult to support a company that supports those who hate me.
If you feel you must address an employee’s behavior, so be it. But to do it so publicly, allowing people to abuse your employee? That is far, far more disturbing and unprofessional than someone’s personal Facebook comments. You really should talk to an HR person to learn how to correctly address grievances against an employee, because this is not the way to do it.
I was going to respond here, but decided to do it on my personal blog.
http://www.devinonearth.com/2015/06/an-open-letter-to-tom-doherty/
Dear Tom Doherty:
I’d like to call your attention to homophobic comments made by one of your writers, John C. Wright:
As a bisexual trans person I find it deeply upsetting that one of your authors is able to publicly represent Tor on Tor.com by suggesting that homsexuality inevitably ruins lives, and that supporting friends and loved ones is false compassion, and that love is really hate.
The equation of homosexuality with mental health issues leading to suicide is also problematic. Being gay is not in itself depressing. Being bullied because you’re gay can aggravate any underlying mental health issues you may have.
While you are lashing people to the mast, Mr. Doherty, let’s see some action on this.
Actually, I want to give Tor credit for allowing comments on this and keeping it open and running. Not doing so would compound this issue by treating the people here with a lack of trust in their integrity, wisdom, and maturity by presuming we can’t hold a civil debate on the matter. So big kudos to Tor and Tom for that.
This entire episode was enough to get my attention as an avid reader of sci-fi (who has a generally favorable impression of Tor). I’ve been hearing about the Hugo awards for several weeks but wasn’t interested enough to figure out what was going on until today when I saw that Mr. Doherty had made a statement on the matter. I’ve respected and trusted what he has put together at Tor for many years and this got my attention.
I’ve spent most of the afternoon following various threads of this discussion.
What is clear to me is that Tor has hired a significant contingent of talented editors and creative people who politically lean left and have driven some of their agenda into the books published by Tor. I can only assume Mr. Doherty approved of this since it is his company.
A contingent of people who lean right may or may not have radically overreacted to this by putting forth a slate of authors they felt were more representative of their beliefs. This action has been taken before by Tor authors who lean left, but they claim they did so on the merits of the story. Those stories all appear to have a left leaning philosophy. Many of them have won awards.
An employee of Tor who used her Facebook account to advertise Tor efforts said some dismissive and negative things about people she disagreed with politically. Those people have responded. There is an epic amount of insults and mischaracterization of both sides going on here.
What is my conclusion? Tor drove leftist ideology into their books over the last decade. They hired editors to do exactly this. Mr. Doherty then states above that he just wants to put out good stories with no political content. He also indicates that his left leaning employee was using her personal account to advertise for his company and disavows her.
My take away? I was holding Mr. Doherty in too high a regard and I’ll be buying indie pub books from Amazon moving forward. He should back his employee because it’s pretty clear from the whole picture that she was marching to the music he wanted played in a company he founded and ran. And he should stand behind his politics – not run and hide when the heat gets turned up. Or maybe he shouldn’t have used his company to inject politics into science fiction in the first place if he wasn’t willing to back his play. I’m betting he’d like a do over at this point.
@350, ironically, the way you paraphrase it is much less objectionable (in my mind) than what he actually said here and in other places. I don’t think somebody should be distanced from/separated from because they believe certain actions are wrong or sinful or not the intended order of things, or even for thinking/fearing a person may be going to Hell* (I am sure some fundamentalist acquaintances of mine who suspect that of me), any more than Irene should be punished for what she said.(*Since the person in question is Catholic, I feel obliged to point out that it’s wrong to declare any specific person in Hell).
That said, there is a significant difference between that and calling people soulless filth or fantasizing about beating them to death, or taking a reductionist view of a person due to it, etc…so your ultimate point still stands. But I am a little uncomfortable with the assertion that even a statement reflecting a person’s beliefs/philsophy/views on morality is something that is worthy of professional distancing (naturally, I don’t assume his comments are associated with Tor any more than I do Irene’s so I really don’t think ANY of this is necessary.)
Hi Tom,
Long time reader of “Tom Doherty Associates” books. I believe that you don’t agree with what Irene wrote.
But I don’t believe that Irene has apologized, and I do believe that she should either apologize, or be fired as a corporate disgrace.
Here’s what an apology would look like:
“I’m sorry I accused the Sad and Rabid Puppies of being racist, homophobic, sexist, and neo-Nazis. Those statements were false, I never should ahve wrote them, and I should have apologized and retracted them days ago.”
Nothing short of that counts as an apology. And nothing short of that qualifies as a truthful statement. If protecting her feelings is more important than honesty, and than your customers, I will take note of that when I’m out buying books.
Calling Irene Gallo’s statement to make herself look less bad an apology is a bit much. Sorry you were offended isn’t an apology.
Isn’t it curious how people have shown up in droves repaeting the same things over and over and over again? “I didn’t know anything about the Sad puppies”… And then a strng of Pure Puppies Talking Points.
So, another problem with the new tor.com. Huge chunks of comments on here are getting placed out of numerical order. I also noticed this happening with the “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” Game of Thrones episode review, which also had a large number of comments.
Ok, so as soon as I posted that and the page reloaded, the problem seems to have fixed itself. But I saw this behavior occurring at least twice on the other thread I mentioned. So it is probably still something to look into.
So you are saying you don’t want my money? Noted.
Ms Gallo owes no one an apology. The sad/rabid puppies movement (its founders and supporters) have demonstrated through the actions, statements and behaviour that they are homophobic, sexist and racist. Anyone who voices support for sad/rabid puppies supports that ideology by association. This ideology also makes the neo-Nazi label a fair and accurate one.
It’s curious that many comments have referred to Tor as being left-leaning. That may well be, but compared to people like Vox Day and John C Wright, any half decent human being would be considered left leaning. Being left-leaning these days really just means that you’re not into treating other human beings like excrement, or that you’re not into exerting control over choices people might make that have absolutely no impact upon you whatsoever.
There’s also irony that less than 24 hours after Tor apologizes for hurting the feelings of a bunch of bigots, that it offers us another post about the positive developments towards diversity in comic books – http://www.tor.com/2015/06/09/special-edition-nyc-diversity-panels/ – exactly the sort of thing which the sad/rabid puppies are actively trying to shut down.
That’s a cowardly and foolish statement. Gallo has nothing to apologize for. Everything she said in that statement is obviously true on its face except for the bit about “neo-nazis,” and Day is near enough to a neo-nazi that that’s fair comment.
If you don’t have the strength of character to do the right thing because it’s right, you might at least have enough sense to do the smart thing because it’s smart–you’re trying to appease people who cannot be appeased. It won’t satisfy them, and it’ll enrage any decent folk who still thought well of you.
I’ve been reading SF for as long as I remember. I worked through pretty much the entirety of the town library’s SF collection as a kid, and have bought and read many Tor books since. Until a few years ago, when I found you publishing less and less that I wanted to read.
At the time, I thought perhaps I was just getting old, or it was a phase the genre was going through. Now, seeing the public attitude of one of your company’s employees to some of SF’s fans and writers, it seems to make more sense.
I’m trying to imagine what would happen to me if I posted publicly on the Internet, insulting some of my employer’s customers and contractors. Oh, yeah, I’d find my keycard didn’t work the next morning, and a man would be waiting with a box holding the contents of what used to be my desk, ready to escort me off the property. No company I’ve worked for would tolerate such behaviour toward our most important assets, nor would a customer accept the company saying the employee just thinks they’re neo-Nazis personally, not as part of company policy.
Anyway, unlike some other posters here, I’m not going to threaten to boycott Tor books until you resolve this satisfactorily, firstly because I’ll continue buying books that interest me regardless of who publishes them, and, secondly, because you don’t really seem interested in publishing books that interest me any more. I’ll just have to go buy some more indie SF, and shake my head sadly at the sight of a company that contributed so much to my childhood, and whose stories gave that boy so much to look forward to in his future, apparently self-destructing over something as sad and lame as… politics.
I think that @358 has hit on Mr. Doherty’s dilemma. Mr. Doherty has allowed a powerful left leaning political culture to take root at Tor. The puppies appear to be a reaction to that political culture’s influence on the Hugo awards. Ms. Gallo has exposed that political culture to the world through her ill-advised comments and gotten two sets of customers angry enough to both start screaming ‘Boycott!’
Now Mr. Doherty has a problem with the corporate owners. Corporate owners tend to really dislike this kind of mess, especially when it is caused by the guy who is responsible for looking after their interests.
If Tor is wildly profitable, and continues to be so, the corporate owners may move slowly. In any case, expect a reorganization, probably with Mr. Doherty as one of the first casualties.
Ms. Gallo? By most corporate rules, she should already have fallen on her sword, but because of the delicate political situation, she will probably suddenly find that she is moving on to pursue other interests.
I find this message by Mr. Doherty totally appalling.
In times when vocal groups of all sorts, bearing an agenda of their own, regularly hijack public events (like the Hugo awards) in their strive to spread discrimination and hatred, I am extremely disappointed to see big industry players like Tor adopt a “run-for-cover” strategy, going as far as blaming an employee for voicing her opinion against such a group.
The reaction of Mr. Doherty to Irene Gallo’s message reflect poorly on Tor in two ways:
First, it implies that Tor as an institution endorses the extreme opinions of the groups she referred to. Make no mistake: Bowing to any vocal discriminatory group is not a demonstration of “tolerance towards the opinion of others”. It is sheer cowardice driven by the fear to lose a few sales.
Second, it suggests that Tor as a business player does not know where its own interest lies: The groups in question do not represent the Sci-Fi community as a whole, and their stance is generally met with disapproval by a large (but silent) majority of Sci-Fi lovers. Yielding to them while bashing the employee who called them out can only make Tor’s base readership feel misrepresented.
I hope that Mr. Doherty soon realizes that his stance on the issue so far has placed Tor in the unpleasant position of fighting on the wrong side.
ImRhoven at #101 says that Beale does not hold any antisemitic views, but he is wrong. Theodore Beale used to write for WorldNetDaily and in May, 2006, found himself in hot water over an article called “Against the fence,” in which he made clear antisemitic remarks. WorldNetDaily had to remove some of his article. I submit to you that if WND finds what you’ve written to be too antisemitic, then you have indeed crossed a line.
Vox defended himself in a blog post titled “Did he just deny the Holocaust?”, where he refers to his post of January, 2005 entitled “The merits of anti-semitism.” Huge surprise: both those posts contain antisemitic comments.
More recently, a 2014 post entitled “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Wye” was antisemitic enough that a white supremacist blog called The Daily Stormer quoted it in its entirety, linking back to Vox Day’s blog, and he said nothing about it, implying his consent for this crosspost. (In fact, now that I look, I see several of Vox Day’s posts crossposted on numerous white supremacist sites, with multiple commenters recommending him as a good white supremacist blog.)
While I’m sure Puppies will consider this to all be circumstantial and will argue about whether each specific example was “really” antisemitic or not, the point stands that for anyone doing online research on Vox Day, it is reasonable for them to conclude (a) he is antisemitic and (b) associated with neo-Nazis to the point of very likely being a neo-Nazi himself.
It makes all the sense in the world for someone to colloquially mention on their own personal Facebook page that he is “neo-nazi,” and that his followers — i.e. those who recommend him on white supremacist sites — are as well.
My apologies to ImRhoven, who I referenced at #371 in a way that sounds like I was arguing with them, but I wasn’t intending to. My comments were directed toward the Rabid Puppies who say that it’s a travesty of epic proportions to call Vox Day antisemitic, but I wasn’t clear. Sorry, ImRhoven!
I am deeply disappointed by Mr Doherty’s statement, and, by association, by Tor itself, a publishing house that I have generally admired over the years. The Puppies have clearly associated themselves with racist, sexist, and homophobic leaders (especially, but not limited to, Theodore Beale), and thus are justifiably accused of furthering an intolerant agenda. In disavowing Gallo’s statements that are a) clearly a matter of personal opinion from the start, and b) generally accurate, Mr. Doherty has not only sided with the genuinely intolerant side of this latest skirmish in the on-going culture wars (initiated, ironically, by those who insist on calling everyone else “social justice warriors”), but has done so in the name of tolerance and inclusion–thus adding hypocrisy to an already cowardly and unnecessary capitulation.
@374 dan_h
I think you accidentally double posted your comment. That or the site’s glitched and it’s showing it twice (since they are both somehow numbered 374 and there is no “373”). Either way I flagged it for the moderators to check out to see if it needs fixing.
So, your employes prohibited from speaking up against misogyny, homophobia and racism online? A comment on her personal facebook page is very cleary marked as a “private opinion”, there is no need to further demand a separation.
this letter of yours, however, reflects very badly on Tor and the “wide range” of people it aims to represent (as long as women keep their mough shut).
I understand some of the responses on the current thread to state in no uncertain terms that the above quoted statement is nothing to apologize for. Further that the above statement and the full context is precisely and completely true and so beyond most any criticism at all. Off thread I’ve seen the above described as
Just possibly the descriptions quoted are not a self evident truth.
To the extent that responses on this thread affirm the above statement each of the given posts equally affirms that Mr. Peter Grant say is racist. Further that others unnamed here are also racist, misogynist, and homophobic. That strikes me as absurd given my own understanding of what the words mean in context applied to the people I associate with the sad puppy movement. I wonder how the words are intended by the folks repeating them as properly descriptive of others more or less in or associated with the sad puppy movement.
The crusade against racism and all the rest can be characterized as a noble crusade. I see the current struggle over the rocket statue as one of sordid commerce.
I’d characterize the current disagreement in economic terms as a struggle between folk of the fringe and folk of the center over the Hugo as a marketing tool – the folks with Indie publishing associations and their friends want access to the tool. This for whatever appeal the Hugo adds to a particular book and for whatever power the Hugo award winning works have to attract new readers and viewers to the SFF genre market.
The folks from New York, especially the Flat Iron building, and their friends from the traveling World Con volunteer community, quite correctly in recent years, thought of the Hugo as a thing of their select group. Folks who worked very hard and volunteered most years to make World Con a success quite honestly felt entitled to make an award by consensus of the World Con regulars.
Folks making money with independent efforts, and folks who might make money with independent efforts sought to wrest control of the tool.
To the extent that analysis has any validity there is neither right nor wrong. Sadly just dirty politics.
Billcap – I’d normally agree with you except that this debate over an issue of importance to the SFF community is focused on an individual who is bearing the brunt of a large number of very personal attacks made possible through enabling the comment feature.
Rob
262. Aeryl: Why focus on the developer? You do realize the issue is with the journalists not disclosing their relationships. Monsters don’t need me to cover for them, they’ve been here long before GamerGate was a thing and they’ll be here long after GamerGate is gone. We can only control our own actions, but I’m not here for to have a GamerGate debate, feel free to contact me on twitter @colepram if you’d like to discuss further.
269. jere7my: Yes, I use the same name across all my media accounts so people can see I have nothing to hide. I try to conduct myself respectfully and I invite anyone that wants to to read my twitter, Disqus or G+ history to do so.
I’m advocating for tolerance and understanding. We all need to stop blaming and pointing fingers.
Actually, what’s funny is that the puppies are also strong supporters of the entirely traditional publishing house Baen Books – Baen of course being a friendly rival to Tor, but also more importantly being a publisher that Tom Doherty is a part owner of.
Not that that slight conflict of interest might be relevent to this post and something Tom Doherty should have declared at some point. Let’s not make this about ethics in science fiction publishing or anything.
Beale has stated that he thinks the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn is the best alternative for greece. For me, together with his white supremacist comments, it is enough to call him a neo-nazi.
I’m done with Tor now.
@379, Why focus on the developer? That’s a good question, you should ask your fellows that. Quinn’s behavior was never the issue, yet she’s the one who can’t return to her home.
We all need to stop blaming and pointing fingers. No, some people need to stop excusing harmful and destructive behaviors by creating an obfuscating facade of ETHICS.
As Michael Jordan might have said in an alternate universe “Conservatives buy books, too.”
@382, and other “Tor boycotters”:
We’ll somehow find a way to struggle along without you.
Much support to Ms. Gallo!
zdrakec
@383: “That’s a good question, you should ask your fellows that. Quinn’s behavior was never the issue, yet she’s the one who can’t return to her home.
No, some people need to stop excusing harmful and destructive behaviors by creating an obfuscating facade of ETHICS.”
I’m not excusing harmful behaviours, which is why we should move on from discussing her. That’s well over a year ago and the only time Quinn comes up is when someone tries to pin her harassment on us. I don’t think you realize that’s the reason she keeps getting dragged back into this mess. I, and MANY others, have no desire to continue talking about her. I never cared about Quinn’s involvement beyond her being the common element in several ethical breaches involved in multiple events leading up to the “Gamers are Dead” articles.
But PLEASE, let’s not turn this into a GamerGate debate.
I’m actually here to defined Ms. Gallo right to comment. I don’t agree with her, she was misinformed and said some nasty things, but I don’t believe in anyway that should be reason for her dismissal. She has as much right to voice an opinion as everyone else. Others do have the right to correct the information, but again, with in reason, we should be tolerant of other peoples points of view. Especially when that point of view is based on incorrect information.
I’m assuming we’re all adults here, I’m sure we can act as such.
#jesuisgallo
@386, I have no interest whatsoever in trying to resurrect a Gamergate debate in this article, if you didn’t, you should have just allowed the perfectly factually correct information about the origins of Gamergate stand, instead of challenging it as “misinformation”. It’s apparent that since you now realize your own misinformation, like the ludicrous assertion that the “Gamers are dead” articles were in any way derogatory towards gamers and that Gamergate was justified in it’s outrage, will not stand, why you no longer want to have this debate.
she was misinformed
No, she wasn’t. Your multiple attempts to obfuscate this aside, she was not misinformed, her statements about the Sad and Rabid Puppies were factually accurate. SP & RP, as with Gamergate, are voluntary associations. When you make the choice to associate with people who express racist, homophobic and misogynistic sentiments, you are also choosing to be associated with those sentiments.
Note: Agree or disagree, like them or hate them, the Puppies groups represent an influential part of the market AND the authorship. Dumping all over them in public is wildly unprofessional: in any other business, it is grounds for immediate dismissal, or at least a real apology for the content of the criticism, and not just for hurt feelings. You see, it isn’t just that her remarks were unkind: it is that she addressed them to an objectively relevant market group.
There is clearly some degree of tribalism at work in the discussion here, which speaks to the vitality of the social and cultural divisions. Discussants should note, however, that when the depth and breadth of the disagreements is sufficient to distort objective reality for both sides, it is likely that neither side is wholly in the right.
Disclosure: I am not affiliated in any way with the Puppies, or GamerGate, or any such thing, though I do think the sad Puppies have a point.
I was blissfully unaware of this situation and the parties involved until I stumbling across a random tweet last night, and decided to investigate further. I’ve spent a couple of hours digging into who some of these people are, reading their blogs, and of course this thread.
John C – who claims in this very thread not to be homophobic, then spends several paragraphs proving that he most definitely is.
Theodore Beale – who spouts nonsense such as “White American men simply don’t rape these days. At this point, unless a woman claims it was committed by a black or Hispanic man…” So misogynistic and racist.
Brad Torgenson, and his charming opinions. Etc.
The more I’ve read, the more factually correct Irene’s comments appear to be. I’m left wondering at the glaring double standard where you’ve scrambled to apologize for the (actually totally understandable) opinions of one person, yet haven’t lifted a finger to address several other much more hateful opinions of others?
Tom Doherty , you are both inconsistent and hypocritical with the public face of your company. You shame one employee for comments made in her private media and apologize to those she insulted but when you had to get rid of a serial harasser from your midst? Not a word on Tor’s pages and you certainly didn’t publicly apologize to all the women he harassed. If this is the public face of how Tor treats women, I shudder to think what it must be like working for them behind closed doors.
You threw your employee under the bus to appease a self proclaimed white supremacist whose only goal in making noise was .. to make noise. Well, congratulations, you helped by making more noise to make sure his little feelings weren’t hurt and sacrificed one of the best in the industry while doing it.
@Tmw #73 Can you hop into a TARDIS and go to some poor schmo in front of the HUAC and say, “I would also just briefly add that people who resent being tarred with the brush of Communism have a simple solution to their problem: don’t associate with or support Communists. You are the company you keep. Choose your company wisely.”
Too often self-styled ‘progressives’ damn as bigots anyone who disagrees with them- regardless of the validity of their opinions.
I kind of hope Mr.Doherty prints out the comments here (or just takes John C. Wright’s comment above), posts it near his desk, and uses it to remind himself that there’s not really any point in apologizing to puppies. They don’t want your apologies, they want blood and tears.
@392, regardless of the validity of their opinions.
So, you are stating that racism, sexism and homophobia are “valid opinions” now? Because those are the opinions being espoused that TMW is warning against associating with, NOT a perfectly valid political affiliation.
@392: Seems to be the exact issue that’s going on here. Anyone that tries to inject some moderate sanity is automatically a bigot. I’ve never been so disappointed in people, ON BOTH SIDES.
I came here to disagree with Ms. Gallo comments, point out the issues, say we should be tolerant of her views and she shouldn’t be dismissed from her job.
For some reason I’m a bigot supporting people harassing women. What the heck is wrong with people? Enough with the guilt by association, “if you don’t agree with me you’re one of them”, It’s only making everything worse for everyone.
@395, For some reason I’m a bigot supporting people harassing women.
Oh really? Some reason?
less than 24 hours ago you accused a trans woman you don’t like of “diddling her toddler nephew
What’s the over/under on Tor closing down comments on this post and/or deleting it? I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this post remains open 3 days from now.
I’m horrified by the statement by Tom Doherty, particularly his claim that both Sad and Rabid Puppy slates were pro-diversity. It has been clear from the outset that what the Puppy camps feel threatened by is increased diversity in the pages of SF/F, and particularly the success of that diversity in winning awards. For some the threat is simply that the pro-diversity position is traditionally associated with the Left, and that they are unable to separate their personal politics from their reading, to the point that the mere presence of a diverse character becomes an existential threat to America and Mom’s Apple pie. For others it is because they are openly bigots, as demonstrated by one of your own authors in these comments (will you similarly castigate him for his open homophobia I wonder?) and by the instigator of the Rabid Puppies, who rejoices in the death of 77 people at the hands of Anders Breivik, 49 of them children, a man expelled from SFWA for using the organisation to direct open bigotry at a noted Afro-American author for her race. A man determined to cause as much damage to SF/F as he can, for the sin of having called him on his bigotry. It is abundantly clear that Beale is a neo-Nazi, that his Rabid Puppy slate is the product of neo-Nazis, and that the Sad Puppies have chosen to associate with neo-Nazis. If you lie down with bigots, if you celebrate their success, do not be surprised when you are called a bigot.
Do I really have to explain sub-text to the publisher of Tor? When he defends the Puppies as pro-diversity it appears I do. When the Sad Puppies rant against ‘Social Justice Warriors’, that is an attack on diversity. As a disability rights activist, it is an attack on people like me, it is an attack on people like me campaigning for equal access, it is an attack on people like me appearing in empowered roles in the books produced by publishers like Tor. The Puppy slates were superficially dressed with a handful of diverse authors, with the clear intention of making it appear as though they were pro-diversity, but talk to the Puppies and the truth soon comes out, that’s assuming they even realise diversity applies to more than just race, which seems a distressingly common misconception. If they were truly interested in diversity, why wasn’t Scalzi’s ‘Lock In’, possibly the most important SF text to deal with the lived experience of disability in the past decade at the head of their slates? Oh, yes, that’s it, they hate Scalzi, because he was the one who called Beale on his racism.
My view of Tor has indeed been sadly damaged by this affair, not by Irene Gallo, but by you, Mr Doherty, and by your defence of neo-Nazis and those who choose to side with them and not condemn them.
@396 That link just leads to another post stating Cole Pram made that comment, not the actual comment
And dear God, but could you have a more inaccessible CAPTCHA? I’ve seem bad ones before, but this one takes the biscuit. How on earth is someone with a visual impairment supposed to navigate an array of out of focus images? Yes, there’s an audio workaround, but it’s hidden at the bottom of the pop-up (and still excludes anyone who is deaf-blind).
(OMG, I’m Social Justice Warrioring in a thread about the Puppies – see children, it isn’t a scary bogeyman, it’s just people trying to ensure everyone gets to play).
I understand that a corporation can’t have it’s employees privately blogging comments that can be associated with the corporation and that the corporation can’t necessarily support.
However, to say more than “Irene Gallo does not speak for Tor” is shameful. To publicly oppose Ms. Gallo’s statements is more so.
@399, I’m aware of that, the commenter in question can challenge the accuracy of that statement at any time, yet hasn’t, but wants to wonder WHY people have regarded them as a bigot.
377 @@@@@ ClarkEMyers Thank you for for getting to the real heart of the Puppy matter. It is not about politics, ultimately- though politics is a marker of the tribes involved, or at least a fetish of one. It is about being insiders and outsiders. It’s not about conspiracies. It is about gentleman’s agreements and saying someone’s ‘Not quite in our class, dear.’ It’s about saying certain authors have had enough bites of the apple and maybe we need to look at some fresh faces, or at least faces who have not been considered previously, though they have paid their metaphorical dues.
@403. Straight White Males aren’t outsiders to any industry, so that assertion is ludicrous on it’s face.
I don’t think we give Tom Doherty enough credit. Tor employee Irene Gallo called customers and contractors Nazis. Any sane manger would have fired her immediately. Not Tom Doherty. No, Doherty had the keen business acumen to offer a bland form letter apology that managed to offend the people Gallo libeled and Gallo’s supporters. 3 days and roughly 400 comments later a competent manager would have fired Gallo. But Doherty doesn’t settle for competence. He wants to impress his bosses at Macmillan with his keen ability to do nothing while both sides form boycotts. Most managers wouldn’t have the true grit to waffle. Tom Doherty does. And don’t think Gallo’s outburst was an isolated spot of genius from Doherty. Tom Doherty had the keen foresight to allow his employees like Gallo, Feder, and the Haydens to bash a large section of their customer base for years. And if the environment wasn’t toxic enough Tom Doherty gave a huge deal to Scalzi, an author who has attacked Tor customers for years. And Tom Doherty has done nothing about Tor author Mary Robinette Kowal’s overt Hugo vote buying scheme. Because Tom Doherty doesn’t believe in silly things like ethics, neutrality, or profits. Tom Doherty is a man of vision. A true champion of ideology. And I’m sure the bosses at Macmillan are okay with losing money so Doherty’s employees can continue to attack customers and authors for years to come.
What the h-e-double hockey sticks, Tor. I’m incredibly disappointed to see you trying to defend this group of bigots.
https://twitter.com/colepram/status/608013377642852352
Srsly, if you’re going to cast doubt on someone’s claim, just look it up yourself.
Count me in as a new supporter of the puppies. Larry Correia originally founded Sad Puppies to prove a point. Seeing the comments here and elsewhere, his point has been proven many times over.
How long does Tor expect the majority of SFF fans to put up with being insulted, smeared, and marginalized by its entire executive team? Screw them.
@396: Have you read that twitter thread or aware of the context of that comment?
SrhButts is a *self* admitted pedophile who is constantly using out of context comments to attack other people and sic twitter mobs on them. I’m not ashamed of that comment, which was only made to point out the hypocrisy of her attacking people.
Anyone willing to dismiss any argument, stoop to any depth, and ignore any fact simply because someone has been labeled as a “bigot” is someone who deserves no more time or attention. That is what is most disappointing about Tor (not uniquely Tor, of course, but that is what is in question). It isn’t that authors examine diverse viewpoints in their writing (which is laudable), but that so many here are eager to viciously attack those who disagree with their “enlightened, diverse” viewpoint. They take it as given that their point of view is the right one and everyone who believes otherwise is beneath contempt and should not be considered or treated with any kind of decency. For people who supposedly want to embrace all types of people, the sheer animosity toward others is staggering. And amazingly, they don’t see the irony.
No argument can compel them, no reason can sway them, and no compassion will overcome their intolerance. Because they are right, they must be right, because they are the sentinels of tolerance, and the supreme arbiters of righteousness, and so they are honor bound to unleash total, unrelenting war upon their enemies, until all they who think incorrect thoughts lie utterly defeated and all who remain think the exact same way that they do. Congratulations. You have become your own enemy.
@404 Straight white men with the correct politics, you mean. Straight white men who are part of the insider cliques.
Dear Lord, is this still going on? It seems clear that whatever my old friend Tom Doherty did, one half of the people posting here would condemn him for it. I don’t. But let me be clear on another matter: Irene Gallo should keep her job. Maybe some of her words were intemperate, though I’m less sure about calling them inaccurate, but by heaven, there had already been plenty of intemperateness on both sides of this whole business.
@411, That is hilarious.
@410 Jtown
On initially reading your comment I thought you were talking about the puppy side. *That’s* true irony.
Sorry TOR – not good enough. Fire the Neilsen-Haydens and the Gallos and maybe I’ll buy your books again.
clifhiker ,
It can apply to EITHER side. Thus, becoming your own enemies. It’s just that so many people railing against the puppies seem completely unaware that they are mirroring what they supposedly hate most about them.
@407 Colin R.: Thank you. It’s amazing how people will spend hours digging through other people’s comments to find one thing to attack them with, but then will take it out of context and only use part of the comment without linking the source. I tried not to address it directly because it was a personal attack on me rather than my statement, but I did address @jer7my when I said:
“I’m advocating for tolerance and understanding. We ***all*** need to stop blaming and pointing fingers.”
**all** referring to myself as well.
Am I perfect? No, but I’m trying, it’s been a long 10 months for me.
@417, It’s been a longer 10 months for Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.
Majority. That is a good one. Since when are Vox’s several dozen goons and the similar number of people who read and comment at the Sad Puppies blogs the majority of anything? No matter how many sockpuppets account you make to whine here, you aren’t fooling anyone
See what your statement buys you? Nothing and less than nothing. The bigots smell blood and demand more. Censure Gallo and they demand that you fire her. Fire her and they’ll demand other editors as well. Fire PNH to appease the puppies and they’ll start telling you which writers you can and can’t publish.
Feed hate and all you get is more hate. You’ve done terrible damage already. Are you going to do more?
@418. Aeryl: As a feminist and a gamer I have an interest in Anita’s position, work and methods, I’ve even agreed with her on a few occasions, but I’m not sure why that’s relevant here.
It’d be a lot easier for Quinn if people stopped trying to drag her back into things as a martyr, don’t you think she’s suffered enough?
Move on already and please stop trying to pick a fight.
Move on already and please stop trying to pick a fight.
I am not picking a fight. I am pushing back against your oft repeated false assertions and false equivalencies. You want me stop pointing those out, stop making them.
You want sympathy for having a rough time on the internet, when neither of those women can return to their homes. You were the one who drug Quinn into this, when you tried to claim the coordinated campaign to harass had nothing to do with the origins of Gamergate. You whitewashing history here isn’t “protecting” Quinn, it’s protecting those who abused her. My demand that the truth be told here isn’t making her a martyr, it’s protecting her from erasure.
Mr. Doherty,
I have been a long-time Tor reader and I must say, I’m deeply disappointed by the way you threw Ms. Gallo under the bus, and the way you simply caved to the pressures from the puppy slates. I don’t see you clarifying that the bigotry some of the Puppies sprout as not being connect to Tor.
I’m definitely reconsidering spending any more money on Tor books, much as I love some of its authors.
@422. Aeryl: So what you’re saying is you’d like us to ONLY talk about this one person, even if we do have interest in other relevant topics that just happens to tangentially involve that person. We can NEVER have a conversation because one person, on the internet, was harassed by anonymous trolls. Something that happens every day to thousands, if not millions, of people.
It doesn’t matter that journalists are being caught with their pants down left and right, not just in the gaming media (CBC just let another journalists go for a conflict of interest, that’s 3 in the last 10 months), but we can’t talk about that.
Here I am saying I think Ms. Gallo’s comment were out of line, but she’s within her rights to make them and we should all step back from the extremes, and all you want to do is attack me and make it about someone, unrelated, who received harassment… on the internet.
Seriously, on the internet
Ok, I’ve spent far too much time reading this thread for my own sanity.
Nevertheless, I’ve learned something in doing so.
Based on the data analysis here it is clear that over the last decade, there has been a shift in award winners from the books considered most popular of the nominees in a given year to less popular works.
Now the reasons for that are hard to determine, but it means the Sad Puppies have a certain validity of point – less popular works are winning the award. The harder question is are less *worthy* winners coming through? I personally think no, but I haven’t read all of the ones nominated in past years. But based on Jo Walton’s work here the general Hugo strikerate should be around 70% at picking the best of the year, and a quick glance through the last decade shows the nominees are frequently titles I know, so that probably still holds true.
I do think there is a slight skew towards male authors – based on submission statistics from Tor, I would expect a 70/30 split rather than an 80/20 split in winners, all things being equal. But it isn’t the triumph by the Social Justice League it is portrayed as.
I actually have quite a bit of sympathy towards the Sad Puppies view – if you read Brad’s Why Do It article here you can understand the logic. The key point though looks to be this – Since the turn of the century, though, SF/F has slowly been splitting from the audience it attracted — people who picked SF/F up from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s.
Yes. Exactly as the SF/F field in the 80s differed from that of the 50s and 60s. You’re now 41. The world moves on. Deal with it. And not being from North America, I for one am gratified to see the rise in alternative viewpoints.
But the biggest thing I see is that the Sad Puppy group has been substantially maligned unfairly. Although they originally created the slate, it is very clear from the data that the Sad Puppies did not have the power or the reach that they are accused of – Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies are the ones who really took the voting away from everyone else. And they did it with less than 200 people (leading nominations in most categories were ~190-267 votes).
And the Rabid Puppies are not nice people. Not on the internet anyway.
So no, the Sad Puppies aren’t neo-nazis, and they didn’t only promote bad to reprehensible works – some are rather good. But it doesn’t really matter – the problem is that whether intentionally or not, they empowered an angry little man to crap all over everyone else’s playset.
And that was wrong.
Now, Ms. Gallo is most certainly entitled to her opinions, but as an employee who professionally represents the Tor organization, she should demonstrate the professional judgment to know when to restrain herself and to express her personal views in other, less public venues.
As a Jew and an ordained rabbi, I found her comments, insinuating that I am part of a group of “neonazis,” particularly repugnant and unacceptable. I also work as a professional in a professional environment as the financial controller of a large engineering firm and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I were to post similar comments in a public forum, comments which vilified our client base or otherwise put my company in a negative light, I would be sent packing and rightly so.
To date, Ms. Gallo, has only been “reminded” to be more careful to make sure people understand that her personal views do not represent the views of Tor. However, her position within the company does not afford her this luxury. Whether her views are representative of Tor or not is not something the general public will try to sort out for themselves, and the public is generally pretty unforgiving when it comes to extending the benefit of the doubt.
Ms. Gallo’s public comments, positive or negative, will inherently represent and reflect upon Tor as long as Ms. Gallo is with the company. There is simply no way around that fact, and as a seasoned professional, Ms. Gallo would do well to remember that fact if she ever finds someone who is willing to employ her somewhere else in the future. In my experience, even bad-mouthing a former employer in a job interview will almost always guarantee that you will not be hired. When we professionals find ourselves in positions of great responsibility, we forfeit certain privileges that those in subordinate positions may otherwise enjoy.
Why should Tor ever be placed in a position where they are forced to publicly clarify their views just because one of their employees refuses to demonstrate even a modicum of professionalism that is expected from a reputable publishing company such as Tor? Surely they have more productive ways of expending their time, energy, and valuable resources. As an associate publisher and creative director for a number of years within the organization, should Ms. Gallo not have known better and have taken every precaution to avoid misrepresenting the organization which writes her paycheck?
If that means avoiding the temptation to express her personal views (especially expressions which cast aspersions upon their own customer base and authors) in a public forum, so be it. No one is asking Ms. Gallo to apologize for her views or to disavow them, but simply to comport herself in a manner that is professional and which does not eclipse the financial and business interests of Tor with her own personal agenda.
There is also Ms. Gallo’s recent unwillingness to take responsibility for her actions as expressed in her non-apology that I think merits Tor’s serious attention and consideration. Hopefully, the executives at Tor are perceptive enough to see through all of this and will resolve to put the best interests of their customers and authors first (something Ms. Gallo has failed to do), to do the honorable thing, and to hold Ms. Gallo accountable for her actions of late. This would go a long way in restoring my faith in the organization as a reputable publishing company that is worthy of my business.
I truly believe that if the executives at Tor can bring themselves to make a principled decision in this matter, Tor will enjoy matchless success which they never before dreamed possible. At my company, the client is always our number one priority, and that is not some meaningless business philosophy, but a maxim which drives every aspect of our business and cultivates success.
Hopefully, the executives at Tor are business-minded enough to seize on this opportunity to strengthen and protect their organization. I am not against Ms. Gallo, but I can say that I am for Tor and Macmillan and that I have their best and long-term interests in mind. On the other hand, Ms. Gallo’s comments strongly indicate that her primary concern is herself and her interests. She is a liability.
This is an opportunity for the execs at Tor to address the question of the type of corporate culture and image they want to promote for the future. They would do well to keep in mind that the customer is always right and to insure that their employees are committed to their mission and to promoting an image that positively reflects that mission at all times and in all places.
For me it’s easy. I’m never going to buy another Tor book while this woman is an employee there. She’s even an executive! Why would I buy books from a publishing house with leadership that holds me in contempt, and apparently hates the kind of science fiction I like? She even smeared her own authors, John Wright and Kevin Anderson.
No more buying Tor books. Period.
Screaming mighty Jesus in a hot rod, conservatives such as the ones who have posted in this thread are the biggest WATBs in existence. You pretty much run the country and the media. Your agenda has had massive success over the last 40 years, to the gross detriment of the United States. Yet your constant sneering about “victim culture” is sheer projection, as is everything else about you: you are, eternally, the “real” victims. None of you would last a minute as the oppressed minorities you regularly sneer at.
Indeed, some of you are not neo-Nazis. However, you have hitched your wagon to one, the loathsome Vox Day. And that goes for the Sad as well as the Rabid Carpet-Wetters. Lie down with pups, get up with fleas. Deal with it.
Doherty, you are a coward and a weasel and pretty damned misogynist as well. You don’t give a damn if your employees sexually or racially harass others or if they post hideously bigoted screeds, but you’re willing to dance as soon as Vox Day tattles on one of your employees for saying something in a private forum that, while unflattering about him and his cohorts, is not at all untrue. And, as Jessica L. Price has pointed out, you have also painted an enormous target on Gallo’s back.
I hope Gallo walks out the door within the week and takes a ton of contacts with her. I also hope every other female employee and/or employee of color in your organization finds greener pastures.
@Tom Comment 408
Larry founded the Sad Puppies because he is a sore loser. Hel lost to Lev Grossman for the Campbell Award for best new Science Fiction writer to Lev Grossman. Instead of thinking that the public that voted on the Campbell’s preferred Grossman to him and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. He invents an unsupported paranoid nefarious plot to prevent him from winning because of course he DESERVED it.
Same thing for Torgersen who lost to E. Lily Wu and then goes on railing against affirmative action benefiting, women and minorities . In addition he rails against “literate” fiction invading the genre pushing aside the good old fashion stuff. Gee that sounds pretty much like E. Lily Wu and the stuff she writes. They are pathetic little men with insecurities so big that they need to crush anyone else in order to feel better. Let’s repeat it again the sad puppies started because the two of main instigators’ can’t accept losing gracefully and believe that there some unproven plot specifically working to prevent them winning awards.
No, I am trying to get to stop lying about and minimizing what happened to Zoe Quinn. You stop doing that, you can talk about what you want. Unless it too contains a bunch of misleading information and obfuscation, because I’ll point that out as well. For example:
It doesn’t matter that journalists are being caught with their pants down left and right, not just in the gaming media (CBC just let another journalists go for a conflict of interest, that’s 3 in the last 10 months), but we can’t talk about that.
Yet, none of that has anything to do with Gamergate. You wanna know how many journalists were let go in the 10 months prior to that? About the same, the media just didn’t post anything about it, now they do, because it allows you all to break your arms patting yourselves on the back, and gets you off their case for awhile.
If the Sad Puppies (3) had actually been about getting people to go nominate the works that they liked then that would have been fine. That’s what the Hugo’s are about. Join in and vote for the works YOU think deserve Hugo’s. It is an extremely open system. There aren’t secret cabals controlling the process. It is clearly defined in the WSFS constitution.
Unfortunately, the SP3 was actually about nominating the specific works that Brad Torgersen picked. (Yes, he asked for suggestions, but he then picked as he desired.) It was a slate and that is distinctly the opposite of the open process that the Hugo awards actually are.
The SP’s then compounded this problem by being aligned with the RP’s and by attempting attempting to recruit the gamergate people.
“Indeed, some of you are not neo-Nazis. However, you have hitched your wagon to one, the loathsome Vox Day.”
How do you REALLY know? Can you provide any real evidence to support this claim?
” . . . you have also painted an enormous target on Gallo’s back.”
No. Ms. Gallo accomplished that Herculean feat all by herself. Why do you hate women so much?
Rabbib:
Victim blaming, I see. Another beloved tactic of wingnuts.
You’ve already had copious proof posted in this thread that the SPs and RPs are closely linked and that VD is a neo-Nazi. Go read them. If you want me to do more research for you, you can pay me by the hour.
“I hope Gallo walks out the door within the week and takes a ton of contacts with her. I also hope every other female employee and/or employee of color in your organization finds greener pastures.”
We can always dream. May it be so, may it be so. From your lips to G-d’s ears.
“You’ve already had copious proof posted in this thread that the SPs and RPs are closely linked and that VD is a neo-Nazi.’
Perhaps. But I didn’t ask them, I asked you.
Sea lioning, too. Why don’t you balance a ball on your nose for me, Rabbib, so long as Wednesday is Order Your Opponent Around Day? Oh, what’s that? Only you get to do that? Figures.
Your comment at #434 says a great deal more about you, none of it good. But, right, SPs and RPs are totally not bigots. Yeppers.
@424Cole Pram, if the level of harassment that was endured by Ms. Quinn happens every day to ‘thousands, if not millions, of people’ then what a terrifying world this truly is. And something that should be of far greater concern to everyone than the fact that the Wall Street Journal fired three journalists in the last ten months for lapses in journalistic ethics.
I read what Ms. Quinn went through; what she still has to go through. No one should have to endure that, ever. Nor should people get to sweep it under the rug as if it didn’t happen or if it did, well, it happens to us all; suck it up, Sally & grow a thicker skin or a pair of balls. People don’t get to marginalize other people and think that they won’t get called on it.
Just because it happened on the internet, yes, ‘seriously, the internet,’ does make that OK or just another day at the office.
Kato
“No, I am trying to get to stop lying about and minimizing what happened to Zoe Quinn. You stop doing that, you can talk about what you want.”
I’m pretty sure I haven’t lied about anything here. Also I’m pretty sure I’ve eluded that it’s terrible she was harassed, It’s also terrible that it happens to a lot of people on the internet. I suppose that’s minimizing her harassment because we shouldn’t acknowledge she’s not the only one that receives it, RIGHT? (I’m feeling a little harassed right now.)
“Yet, none of that has anything to do with Gamergate.”
I’m not sure how discussing ethics in journalism has nothing to do with GamerGate, when GamerGate is about ethics in journalism.
“You wanna know how many journalists were let go in the 10 months prior to that? About the same, the media just didn’t post anything about it,”
Firstly, I thought I was the conspiracy nut here. So big breaches took place in the media over the last two years, but only after GamerGate happened was the media willing to report on it… Secondly, If I take you at face value here it seems like you’re admitting there’s a problem with the media, but then passing it off as “no big deal”
“now they do,”
You don’t say, it’s almost as if GamerGate is having an impact and journalists are now being held accountable publicly for shady ethical behaviour.
“because it allows you all to break your arms patting yourselves on the back”
I can reach my back just fine without breaking my arm. Although improving the ethical standards, including having FTC guidelines updated so sites can’t scam readers, seems like something one should be proud of.
“and gets you off their case for awhile”
Except it’s been 10 months and we’re still going strong.
It’s amazing how you can dismissively validate something so well.
Can maybe you let it go now and let people move on to discussing how Ms. Gallo’s has a right to her opinion?
“Your comment at #434 says a great deal more about you, none of it good.”
But, I was only agreeing with your comment! I was showing support to a position that YOU articulated in your comment.
“Why don’t you balance a ball on your nose for me, Rabbib . . . “
Careful now. This smacks of latent anti-Semitism and says a great deal about you as well.
@438, Yes, conflating the extreme level of coordinated harassment Quinn has been subjected to with “what happens everyday on the internet” is minimizing.
but only after GamerGate happened was the media willing to report on it…
Personnel decisions at most media organizations aren’t front page news, until your cohort got in a frenzy that someone was getting their dick wet.
Although improving the ethical standards, including having FTC guidelines updated
All things that existed prior to GG, you don’t get to take credit for that. They are not just featured more prominently.
I also notice how you ignore the massively unethical campaign to influence editorial content at news sites by threatening their advertising revenue.
Can maybe you let it go now and let people move on
I am not preventing anyone from doing anything. If you want me to let go, stop posting obfuscating lies.
@440. Aeryl: Amazing how you can simultaneously say things are happening because of GamerGate, then deny it’s having any positive impact
“I also notice how you ignore the massively unethical campaign to influence editorial content at news sites by threatening their advertising revenue.”
What exactly is unethical about sending links to advertisers when pointing out how a sites are breaking SPJ ethical codes or violating terms of use? Some people would call that backing up an assertions with evidence.
Sorry I’m off for the afternoon. I’d be happy to take this up in the morning, but preferably we could continue on twitter or G+ as the GamerGate debate I’m being roped into is really kind of off topic for this comment thread. I’m sure you know where to find me.
Way to throw her under the bus, Tor. I’m disappointed you thought this was necessary, and are caving so heavily to the SPs.
“The harder question is are less *worthy* winners coming through? I personally think no, but I haven’t read all of the ones nominated in past years.”
Redshirts.
The fact that people looked at this slight, trivial work and believed that it was comparable to works like ‘The Left Hand of Darkness,’ ‘Dune,’ and ‘Flowers for Algernon,’ is all the evidence you will ever need to see how far the award has been diminished in quality in recent years. In fact, it is almost hilarious to read the reviews of the left leaning anti-puppies at sites like Goodreads and Amazon of the Puppy Slate nominees because they all apply the exact same standard of excellence to the Puppy slate works, (which all inevitably fail, because, -sigh-, they read them and they just aren’t up to snuff), that I demand that people apply to Redshirts, but obviously none of them did.
@441, Because trying to influence journalists by threatening their revenue is the death of free speech, which you would know, if you actually cared the first thing about ethics in journalism.
What quality works did you nominate, idontknow@443?
The year that Redshirts won or this year?
Either or both.
“Last month, Irene Gallo, a member of Tor’s staff, posted comments about two groups of science fiction writers, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, and about the quality of some of the 2015 Hugo Award nominees, on her personal Facebook page. Ms. Gallo is identified on her page as working for Tor. She did not make it clear that her comments were hers alone.”
I find this statement to be, at best, nitpicky. Irene’s FB page is clearly identified as her page. Nearly everyone on FB works for someone; very few bother to state with every entry that their words are theirs and not those of their employer.
In the normal everyday course of events, no one would presume that Irene’s identification as working for TOR is anything other than the standard kind of information included with many FB accounts. IN fact, I think the DEFAULT presumption of people reading posts on FB is that the source is speaking for themselves – not their mentioned employer, school they attend or family members that are listed.
“Tor employees, including Ms. Gallo, have been reminded that they are required to clarify when they are speaking for Tor and when they are speaking for themselves.” You sent out a memo and called Irene out by name. An act that I consider to be worse than anything Irene might have done.
I completely understand that TOR, as a company, desires to stay out of the Hugo fight. However, that is no longer possible, and the longer TOR tries to ride the fence, the worse things will get.
I don’t think you did your employees any good here by trying to thread the needle. What you needed to do was to call this little Gallo side-note to the fight what it was: a grasping at straws attempt by a known bad element to distract from the Nebula awards and create a club they can beat TOR with.
Unfortunately, you gave it to them. (The web is already filled with “it’s an inadequate apology”, “TOR needs to fire Gallo to make this right” response to your clarification.)
It was a bullying tactic that you responded to by backing down, rather than standing up.
Of course you’re stuck in the middle now.
The year that Redshirts won, I didn’t nominate anything. I voted for 2312. This year, I nominated Ancillary Sword and The Goblin Emperor. I would have nominated the Three Body Problem, but I thought that it was going to be kicked for being published in China ten years ago. Though I like Jim Butcher and the Dresden Files, I didn’t think Skin Game was what I considered to be a Hugo Award winner. I didn’t like Kevin Anderson’s book very much, so I didn’t nominate it either.
443: I didn’t much care for Redshirts, and I don’t think it deserved a Hugo. But I understand why it did, and I truly believe it’s nothing to do with leaning left. It’s because it’s a kind of book that’s basically targeted to mass appeal – anyone who’s grown up with fond memories of Star Trek is a potential audience. It’s easy to read. It’s got so much main stream accessibility that it is already in production as a TV show. It’s even funny (although, IMHO, not nearly as much as it thinks it is… of course, humor is subjective). It’s also from an author who’s got a huge fanbase from his other works (I’ve seen plenty of award winners that I don’t think were particularly good but seem to be awarded for that reason)… and granted, some of the reason he’s got a huge fanbase is because of his politics, but it’s not the only reason, and it’s not particularly evident in the work. I’m sure there are many right wing people who liked Redshirts as well (and I’m sure there are plenty who would have, but disliked it SIMPLY because it was Scalzi). I never would have nominated or voted (I wasn’t a Worldcon member then), but I can easily see plenty of people doing so. I didn’t think Harry Potter deserved to win in 2001, but I understand why it did, it’s a phenomenon.
There are always going to be works that people find unworthy because tastes aren’t identical. I don’t object to unworthy books, as I view them, winning from time to time. I wouldn’t even object to conservative works, or works that the Sad Puppies like winning, if they get on the ballot fairly. I do object to the organized slate they ran, and for all people claim that it’s been going on all the time from the left, I’ve asked many times and never been shown a shred of evidence beyond “Well, they MUST BE, look at this crap that wins” (I remember Brad T joining a thread I was in to suggest that the only reason Ancillary Justice got nominated was because of affirmative action… he may not have liked it, but I thought it was far more interesting than anything on the SP slate that year). or pointing to posts by authors listing their own eligible works or what they personally are nominating (and opening it up to for everyone else to post whatever they think was worth it), rather than “This is what we’re nominating.”
“I find this statement to be, at best, nitpicky. Irene’s FB page is clearly identified as her page. Nearly everyone on FB works for someone; very few bother to state with every entry that their words are theirs and not those of their employer.”
Well, yes, it would have been far more accurate for him to explain that the post in question was basically an advertisement for a TOR product, using the fact that she knew it would anger those who self-identified as ‘Puppies’ angry as the major selling point for that product. It would probably be best if there were rules put in place regarding using your own personal Facebook page as a venue for social networking for job related things, because it is very easy to fall back into ‘but this is my space’ when you publicly exhibit unprofessional behavior in a public setting that is arguably private, even though you are using it as public. If the rule was simply ‘don’t use you private social networking tools to push TOR products,’ then there would be no argument about whether the behavior she exhibited was exhibited while she was acting as a de facto representative of the company.
idontknow@449:Thanks for voting. That’s all people need to do.
“Irene’s FB page is clearly identified as her page. Nearly everyone on FB works for someone . . “
Exactly! All the more reason to be circumspect and professional, especially when the ‘someone’ for whom you work is more publicly visible, like Tor/Macmillan.
” . . . very few bother to state with every entry that their words are theirs and not those of their employer.””
It is generally pretty clear whose words are whose. There was no question in my mind that Ms. Gallo’s words were her own, words which served no other purpose than to cast aspersion on innocent people whom she doesn’t even know. Her words reflect poorly on the organization she represents in a professional capacity. Her refusal to accept responsibility for the harm her words have caused Tor’s customer’s, authors, and Tor is far worse and far more unprofessional than the original offense.
You misunderstand me. I liked Redshirts fine. I read it over the course of an afternoon at the lake and then never picked it up again. I was stunned that it was nominated. I was even more stunned that it won. Because it’s a work on par with ‘Glory Lane’ by Alan Dean Foster or ‘Another Fine Myth’ by Robert Asprin… enjoyable, but slight. I am very sure that the only reason it won was because it was Scalzi and that was ridiculous when you consider that there were at least two other nominees on the ballots that would not have been the weakest Hugo winner of all time if they had won. Redshirts is snarky science fiction humor. Even worse, it’s derivative science fiction meta-humor from a source that Scalzi himself didn’t even create. That’s not to say it wasn’t enjoyable, but to suggest it should have ever won a Hugo, especially when people are demanding that the works on the Puppy slates be the equivalent of the works I mentioned above is disingenuous at best. The Hugo is an award for the Best Whatever of that particular year. It’s not in competition with ‘Flowers for Algernon.’ It’s in competition with whatever else was published that year.
As a long-time reader of science fiction of all imprints (first picked up a compilation including the short for Ender’s Game in 89) I would like to state my incredulity at this whole fiasco. A highly visible/vocal employee denigrated her company’s authors and readers in a public forum, has not apologized for her unprofessional conduct, has not recalled and corrected her libels, and has not (yet) offered a resignation. If I pulled that kind of stunt at my squadron, I would be pulled before my commander, disciplined, probably demoted if I refused to correct my behavior, and most certainly not be allowed to re-up at the end of my contract. When I was a civilian I would have simply been fired, for cause, with no hesitation. I don’t expect personal perfection from the makers of the books I buy and read, but I do expect professionalism. This young lady should be fired, and her supervisor should be reprimanded for failing to train her properly in professional conduct.
Well it looks like John C. Wright is no longer accepting the apology and wants Irene Gallo fired. I suppose it’s WWJD. http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/06/honor-is-satisfied/ Love the mealy mouthed platitudes that he spews out that it is in her best interest. So does the Evil Legion of Evil comprised of Theodore Beale, Wright and the two sore losers Correia and Torgersen http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/06/peter-grant-issues-second-warning.html Tom you made the mistake of dealing with people in good faith but who themselves aren’t acting in good faith and are actively being duplicitous in order to further their culture war. Tom they will demand further firings you can count on it. This is just the start and you got suckered. Theodore Beale is laughing his ass off at how much he suckered you.
I don’t know, Peter D and SH – thanks for the discussion. I have no dog in this fight (pun intended) but I’m always interested in knowing what people believe are the truly deserving works (or not). I agree with Peter that Redshirts was too slight to win but it was fun and that counts for many in the voting. I really liked Ancillary Justice and was glad it won, irrespective of its interesting gender issues.
@454 Interestingly, Redshirts (aside from being a comedy) strikes me as the closest thing I’ve seen to Hugo bait. It engages with beloved/hated SF tropes, has like three different levels of meta-textual shenanigans going on and is still fairly readable. It’s literary and pulp at the same time.
I didn’t like it much and wouldn’t have nominated but I still see why it won the Hugo. I’ve read two of the books it was up against and Bujold’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance was good but not one of her best and Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon was a solid contender but I can see why it didn’t win.
I didn’t have a problem with Redshirts winning. FWIW, I ranked it in my 5th position. I liked the others better, but enough other people disagreed that Redshirts won. That’s how the process works.
459:
Yah, and truthfully, I didn’t really mind that it was on the ballot. There have been plenty of things on plenty of ballots that have made me scratch my head and just move on for a whole slew of awards. That’s just the way these things go. But I do think the fact that it won, (and that it was Scalzi), really fed into this whole perception on the right that more corrupt forces have been in play in the Hugos, simply because of Scalzi’s obvious connections to TOR and the fact that he’s such a darling of the left. That may not be fair. As they say above, it may well be that it received lots of votes because Star Trek is so beloved, Scalzi himself has great popularity with one segment of the reading public, and because it was meta-textual humor, (my reason for dismissing it).
I just think fairness should be applied. No matter how they got there, these are the noms we have this year. I still don’t think Skin Game is something I’d immediately give a Hugo award to, but claiming that Jim Butcher isn’t worthy of consideration is something I don’t agree with. Voting No Award above Jim Butcher would just be unconscionable to me. And torching his reviews on Goodreads and Amazon just because Skin Game doesn’t hold up to ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ or ”Ender’s Game’ is unethical.
I disagree, somewhat… to me, the “these are the noms we have, however we got there is unimportant” attitude just encourages more gaming. All the same, I won’t blindly vote No Award this year to those on the SP/RP slate. However, I will hold them to a strict standard: If I don’t like them better than at least ONE of the five nominees I made in a category during nomination season, then I’ll vote No Award. Because they were only there because of cheating (in the cases of many of them, not on the part of the authors themselves, I want to make clear, but it’s tainted nonetheless), and if that cheating weren’t in play, it’s possible that one of the books/stories I nommed would have gotten in. Without the Puppy madness, my standard would be “Do I feel the quality is far below par for a Hugo award”, but I’d be more open to voting things I just didn’t like as a 4 or 5 but above NA (although, I probably would have voted Redshirts below No Award, even though I enjoy Scalzi and although I didn’t care for it a lot, it was mildly enjoyable).
My other standard for No Award is: If, due to time, I don’t get around to reading a puppy nom, I’ll also vote No Award. I probably would have the same policy even if the SP thing didn’t happen, I don’t think it’s fair to vote on something I haven’t read… however, in previous years, I would have made a hell of a lot more effort TO read the nominates works (I probably wouldn’t have gotten to Wheel of Time last year, if I was voting, but luckily I wasn’t). This year, if it’s part of the SP/RP slate,it’s last in my priority, and for some of them, the people behind them just make me not want to bother.
Honestly, by my second standard, Jim Butcher probably would lose out even over KJA, even though I suspect he’s a stronger writers… since I’m just not interested in the Dresden files, whereas KJA, although I’ve not been impressed in the past, at least has a more compelling idea to me. So there’s a chance I’ll get to KJA before the deadline but miss Butcher. Although there’s also a chance I’ll miss both of them.
Though, I should add, I agree that torching the reviews on Goodreads/Amazon is unconscionable (unless of course they read it due to the publicity and legitimately thought it was awful, which is possible, although I suspect the minority)
I liked Skin Games, but it wasn’t in my top 5 so I didn’t nominate it. I considered it as I was nominating (prior to even hearing about SP3). Unfortunately for Butcher, SG got on the ballot through bloc voting as part of a slate and I don’t approve of that behavior (from anywhere or one). I’ll be putting it below No Award for that reason.
The Hugo voting is about as open a voting process as there is. It is a club to which anyone who pays the dues can belong and then can vote. If you pay your dues to the club and then run inside and accuse everyone of being part of a cabal and set fire to the place, people aren’t going to react favorably.
Irene Gallo was promoting Tor products. During that promotion, she insulted both customers and authors.
This isn’t difficult. Keep her and lose customers. We’re tired of the irrational insults.
I do wish people would refrain from the “cheating” accusation. There was no cheating. There is no rule against presenting a slate, or voting a slate. Not a single rule of Hugo nominating was broken. If there were no broken rules and no dishonesty, there was no cheating. In fact, the SPs were quite open and honest about what they were doing, to the point of at least attempting to contact authors they wished to list, and in every case removing authors from their slate at those authors request.
I understand that people don’t like the fact that a couple hundred people followed one lead – but that doesn’t make it cheating. Continuing to claim it was “not fair” makes people sound like six-year-olds on a playground with one swing. Aren’t we supposed to be adults? Don’t we realize that life isn’t “fair” per se, and don’t we live with that on a daily basis?
I’m no SP, though I can certainly acknowledge the validity of some of their impetus. The fact remains, the only reason they succeeded with this effort is that the Hugo Awards were irrelevant to the vast majority of the SFF fandom*.
Look at the numbers. A mere ten years ago, there were a grand total of 546 nominations submitted. Five hundred forty-six. Out of how many tens of thousands of readers? Really. Five years ago, the number of nominations had climbed all the way up to 1006, breaking the thousand mark for the first time ever. Out of how many tens of thousands of readers? Last year, with an active SP contingent and a whole lot of Wheel of Time fans getting involved, it reached all the way up to 1923 nominations. Again – out of how many? This year, for the first time in its more than 60 years, there were over two thousand nominating ballots. 2122, to be precise, and I still say: out of how many tens (or hundreds) of thousands of readers? The logical assumption is that, to the vast majority of SFF fans*, the Hugo Awards are irrelevant.
* Even if you buy into the (IMO lame) definition of “fan” which claims that merely buying and reading the books doesn’t count, and active participation in cons is a necessary requirement to consider yourself a True Fan, the numbers prove the same thing. Of the nearly 5000 people who had purchased their 2015 WorldCon membership before the nominating deadline, significantly less than half had submitted a nomination – and that doesn’t even count the additional people who were eligible to nominate based their 2014 or 2016 memberships. There were over 10,000 people holding 2014 memberships… but where were they when it came time to nominate? The majority of them simply didn’t care.
This year, membership is setting new records – and frankly, a lot of it is a direct result of the SP activities. Whether people are buying their memberships to vote for or against, the end result is that, for the first time ever, there may actually be more than 4000 final ballots cast. And if every supporting member actually votes, it may well double the number of final ballots from last year. It’s still a pitiful number for the award that claims to be “science fiction’s most prestigious award,” but at least it shows a little more interest. For that, if nothing else, anyone who wants to think the Hugos matter should be thanking Correia and Torgerson from the bottom of their shiny little hearts.
Wetlandernw@465:You are correct that it wasn’t cheating. They made use of a known loophole that no one else had felt a need to violate in over fifty years of voting.
The Hugo awards are exactly what they are. They are the awards voted on by the members of the current Worldcon. They aren’t the awards representing anyone else. They have over fifty years of history of doing a decent job.
My heart, whether shiny or not, shall not be thanking either Torgersen or Correia.
I find this mansplaining apology insulting to Irene Gallo. But then I find the whole puppy and gamergate crowd abhorrent. I’m not the target audience for this post or for books by TOR.
stevenhalter@466:
In my opinion you are perfectly right in so far as what Torgersen and Correia did was wrong. The fact that they prevented the (in my opinion) more than deserved winner of the Nebula from even beeing nominated speaks for itself. One cannot rightly complain about Scalzi winning the Hugo (which I can only comment on in so far as the one book of his which I read (not Redshirts) surely did not deserve a Hugo) if one later nominates enjoyable but – in my opinion – mediocre writers like Butcher or Correia. On the other hand I dont think that their claim that there has been a political bias in the Hugo awards in recent years can be completely discarded. In so far I see both of the groups shouting and screaming away at each other here and in other places of the Internet as guilty of the mess the award is in now.
Any of you remember Justine Sacco? She was the woman who was fired for tweeting (on her personal twitter account) a thoughtless comment about AIDS. I wonder how many of you saying Irene’s comment was fine hounded twitter in an attempt to get Justine fired?
Just because you agree with what Irene said doesn’t make it right or okay that she said it. She attacked the hands that feed the hand that feeds her. In the real world, people get terminated for this kind of boneheaded behavior.
In short, please know and understand this: SJWs are not too big to fail.
And that, boys and girls, is all there is to it.
I call it as I see it. I freely acknowledge that it might technically be allowable under the rules, but, in my personal view, it’s cheating. It’s also hypocritical (complaining about a liberal cabal doing this, a charge they’ve never been able to show a shred of actual evidence for, and then going ahead and doing the exact same thing, only worse), and it makes the award LESS relevant, not more. If they wanted to organize a mass Hugo recruitment campaign for “their” kind of voters, more power to them, but to suggest they vote in lockstep so that their selected slate dominates, that’s, in my view, cheating, because it breaks the game for everyone else.
R World@469
Justine Sacco’s sad (and idiotic) case is the best argument against firing anyone because of an internet mob that demands her or his head. This is kind of social violence by shitstorm is the worst side of social media and should be fought at every turn.
@471,
This is a boycott. It’s a simple business decision now.
Irene’s case is far worse. She insulted customers and she thought it was okay. She doesn’t respect where part of her paycheck comes from. A lot of us are done paying good money to be spit on.
Irene Gallo and editors like Nielsen Hayden have seriously damaged Tor’s reputation. Don’t imagine that this will just go away without adequate response from either Tor or, failing that, Macmillan.
If a few dozens whiners stop buying Tor’s books the company won’t even notice. Especially since most of them spent the last few months explaining at length how Tor publishes only crap with one or two exceptions and how proud you are of not buying their books. On the other hand, Gallo is by all accounts great at her job and a major reason why Tor covers are so good which probably helps Tor sales a lot. Firing her would be idiotic, especially since Vox and his followers won’t be satisfied with that (he has already declared that) and will continue to whine and insult the company and that a lot more people will boycott Tor if she gets fired than if she stays.
This pretty much sums it up for me: http://www.kameronhurley.com/the-revolution-of-self-righteous-dickery-with-not-be-moderated/
At the risk of paying further undeserved attention, while Peter D and his ilk might not understand or acknowledge that they owe Wright an apology for repeatedly claiming he wishes any harm or discrimination whatsoever upon homosexuals, to aver some obvious conflict between “we believe works should be judged on their merits” and “we prefer not to associate with those leading figures in the publishing world who describe our belief in judging works on their merits as racist, homophobic, misogynist, and Nazist” is not so much an argument as an pitiable act of rhetorical self-defenestration that perfectly illustrates the futility of discussion.
Bergmaniac @473,
While I’m sure you’re proud of the napkin math you used to come up with a few dozen, we’ll see.
To my fellow Sad Puppy supporters: as I’ve said a few times on this thread, I think that calls for Gallo to be fired are wrong. Her remarks on Facebook were hateful and intolerant. But, I think that contributing to the culture of demanding punishment whenever anyone says anything offensive is counter to the Sad Puppy goal of more intellectual/political diversity in SF and Fantasy (as well the main goal supporting the primacy of good story over message). If you like a book/writer published by Tor, buy it. If you don’t, don’t buy it. In the long run, the free market will prevail and Tor (like any other company that doesn’t get the government to bail it out) will either change or die.
To the supporters of Gallo vowing to never buy from Tor again because Tom Doherty didn’t denounce badthought strongly enough. Get real. Boycotting Tor is not going to help Gallo. If you do boycott the most politically progressive major SF/Fantasy publisher out there, you certainly are not doing your side any favors.
I’m also <sarcasm> in awe of the vast psychic powers </sarcasm> displayed by those of you who confidently assert that anyone (like myself) who supports Sad Puppies and/or Gamergate is a racists, sexist, homophobic bigot. You can’t read my mind; you don’t know what’s in my heart. Calling people you don’t know “misogynist”, “neo-nazi”, etc. just makes you look silly and intolerant. I can tell you from my experience in Gamergate that being on the receiving end of that sort of abuse doesn’t convince your opponents of anything. No one ever thinks “fifty people who have never met me on the internet think I’m a bigot! I shall immediately change how I think and act!” People just laugh at you.
Meanwhile, while Irene Gallo twists in the wind, on his blog, John Scalzi, his income secured by millions of Tor’s dollars that could have been used to support new POC, LGBT and women writers, uses lots and lots of words to tell us he doesn’t have the guts to take a stand.
“If you like a book/writer published by Tor, buy it. If you don’t, don’t buy it. In the long run, the free market will prevail and Tor (like any other company that doesn’t get the government to bail it out) will either change or die.”
This is ineffective in holding the company accountable for the conduct of their employees. Ms. Gallo’s reprehensible and offensive comments were directed squarely at Tor’s customers and even authors. It is in Tor’s best interests (financial and otherwise) to set the tone at the top and demonstrate that they will not tolerate unprofessional behavior that brings reproach on their customers, authors, the SF/F community, and the good name of their organization.
This is not about works we like or dislike, but about keeping the SF/F publishing industry reputable and honorable. Ms. Gallo remains unrepentant and unaccountable for her actions. She is also misrepresenting the SF/F community at large as I just can’t imagine that the rest of the SF/F community that is represented here would claim Ms. Gallo’s views as their own.
Does she have a right to own and express her views? Certainly. However, as an assistant publisher and creative director acting in a professional capacity, she should have thought twice about how her views would reflect upon her employers before exercising that right in a public venue.
To whom much is given, much is expected. Ms. Gallo is no exception.
@477,
I don’t need to know what’s in your heart, to know that your actions are harmful.
Kah-thurak@468:I don’t really see a vast liberal tendency among Hugo winners. There has been a trend towards more female writers getting nominated and that has seemed to be a good thing to me. Again, the people/books getting nominated are there because the people nominating them like them. Pretty straightforward.
The dilemma the Puppies (and Gamergaters, for that matter) face is this: On the one hand, they don’t believe in outrage culture. They consider it to be the province of “SJWs” and “radfems” and “leftists”, and they cheerfully mock those who would choose not to read a work because the author is racist, or try to get a game company to be more inclusive in their character designs. They pour scorn on “professional victims” and people who “play the race card.” On the other hand, they are themselves outraged; they are seethingly wounded by accusations from people that they respect that their organizations have endemic problems with racism or misogyny, which they call “libel” and “slander”, and they are driven to lash out at their oppressors. They profess to be adopting the despised tactics of the SJW as a kind of cynical parody, a smug “see how you like it!” as they turn our own guns against us, but those tactics are motivated by a sour kernel of real hurt. None of them actually want or expect Irene Gallo to be fired, unless it’s for the lulz, because that would be a capitulation to the outrage culture they’ve fought so hard against—but, deep down, they do. They hurt, and they want someone to pay.
In other words, they have become exactly what they disdain: full-time victims who boycott companies that hurt their feelings, who agitate for the firing of people who exercise their free speech in ways they don’t like. What began as a jerky SJW-strawman marionette has become a real boy, and they don’t know whether to insist that we accept and validate him or dress him in clown shoes. Unfortunately for them, they can’t have it both ways; by mocking activism, they’re now mocking themselves.
It goes without saying that the situation here is not symmetrical; the Puppies and the Gamergaters are entitled consumers, mostly youngish and whiteish and maleish and catered to, stacking their hurts up against the towering monoliths of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, and calling their pile taller. They are a few thousand angry people with delusions of grandeur and a lot of free time, and they don’t understand the subtleties of social justice deeply enough to embrace the good and reject the bad. All they can build is strawmen. But they’ve discovered that a persecution complex can make them feel good, and make them feel powerful, and they’ve come to like that; by trying to fight fire with fire, they’ve set their own strawman alight.
Redshirts is an interesting case.
I think the Hugo pool in 2013 was particularly weak, some works probably got in on name recognition more than anything else. Looking around, the Locus pool had The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M Banks and Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey in place of the Ahmed and Grant while the Nebula for 2012 had the Ahmed and the Robinson, but none of the others.
Of the Hugo pool, the Bujold was fun, but not one of her best. The Ahmed I haven’t read. The Grant I don’t like – I’m not a fan of horror. 2312 won the Nebula, and was a good work. I rate it above Redshirts, but I would put Redshirts second in that list.
Checking the Goodreads statistics, Redshirts is in third place of the nominees for that year, so not the lowest ever. It also compares well with other years, being solidly middle of the pack.
Jo Walton’s Among Others from 2012 is the lowest popular rated winner since 1966, but then it also swept the awards that year so was clearly worthy. Leviathan Wakes and Embassytown also deserved to be on the list. A Dance With Dragons didn’t as far as I am concerned, but it dominates the popularity vote.
Of last year – I went Ancillary Justice > Neptune’s Brood > Warbound > Parasite > WOT. I thought Warbound was entertaining, but nowhere near as good as the previous two. Parasite I just don’t like, and the WOT I felt should have been in a different category with other long serial works.
This year – Ancillary Sword was good. The Goblin Emperor is next on my to-read pile. The Three-Body Problem I’ve heard good things about. All three are in the Locus and Nebula pools. I loved Skin Game but it’s an odd nomination – though it does at least stand alone better than say Changes which depended on the series for its impact. I haven’t read anything by KJA in the past that I would consider Hugo worthy – the Seven Suns and Dune books rather put me off him to be honest.
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