Posted on 02/18/2021 8:39:18 PM PST by tbw2
Bujold, and Harry Turtledove, none of whom fit into the conservative author narrative. Let’s stop right here before we go any further. Sanford is engaging in a shell game. Despite the qualifying paragraph, he’s doing everything possible here to depict Baen Books as being predominantly a publisher of what he calls “socially conservative writers.” Such a conveniently vague three words those are—which papers over what is in fact a very diverse group of authors. How diverse? Well, let’s start with me. Which I think is appropriate not simply because I’m writing this essay but because over the past (almost) quarter of a century (1997 to 2021) I have published 67 novels through Baen Books. That’s more than any other author whom Baen publishes. I have also published through Baen Books a total (so far—there are two more coming out this year) of 15 anthologies involving my own fiction and 36 anthologies of other writers. I was also the editor of Baen Books’ online magazine Jim Baen’s Universe for the four years it lasted, and I am the publisher of the online magazine The Grantville Gazette, which was launched out of Baen’s Bar and has continued for the past 14 years as a successful science fiction magazine, recognized by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association as a qualifying professional venue for new authors. And I’ve been on the New York Times bestseller list six times. And I have somewhere in the vicinity of three million books in print. And… I get one sentence in an essay purporting to expose all about Baen Books. Whose central thesis is that Baen is a den of right wing maniacs, and never mind that Baen’s most-published author for the past 24 years is a flaming socialist.
(Excerpt) Read more at ericflint.net ...
THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT BAEN’S BAR
by Eric Flint | Feb 17, 2021
https://ericflint.net/information/controversy-about-baens-bar/
And it now seems that this hit piece against Baen Books, which is one of the last big scifi publishers with conservative authors in their portfolio, was the intentional start of deplatforming them like Parler.
“Yesterday some nobody, wannabe writer, social justice twit released a hit piece “expose” about how posters on Baen’s Bar were fomenting insurrection or some such nonsense.
It was the usual bullshit hit piece (the sad part is, by saying the usual, half the country immediately knows exactly what I’m talking about). It was lots of pearl clutching over regular people not toeing their arbitrary political lines, misquotes, errors, quotes taken out of context, and some flat out lies.
However, this was clearly part of a coordinated attack in order to materially harm our business, because immediately after the hit piece was released complaints were filed with the various internet companies Baen uses for services to pressure them into kicking us off the internet. This hit piece was presented as “evidence”.
Without going into details the companies then contacted Baen about these “serious allegations” so last night Baen temporarily took down the Bar forum to protect the rest of the company from being deplatformed.”
Revenge of the Baen, the Jason Sanford Report, and the Quest for Justice (or is it Vengeance?)
https://poweredbyrobots.com/2021/02/18/revenge-of-the-baen-the-jason-sanford-report-and-the-quest-for-justice-or-is-it-vengeance/
Wouldn’t it be nice idealists were more common...
Began reading SciFi in the 1960s, but in recent years have all but given it up, due to the drivel that gets published in the name of SciFi nowadays.
Knowing that the Baen imprint might assure me of something readable is reassuring.
For me, the worst part of the more recent SCiFi and Fantasy books is the huge amount of dialogue and intricate detail describing the most insignificant action. A two page description of a thunderstorm, for instance.
Mr. Flint is as wordy as any other, if not more so. In his favor, though, his wordiness goes back many years, and is among the best done.
The left has become way to successful at crashing free speech. This attack on Baen Publishing is nothing but an attempt to crash any dissent in the culture , even in the ghetto outlying realm of science fiction!
“Began reading SciFi in the 1960s, but in recent years have all but given it up, due to the drivel that gets published in the name of SciFi nowadays.”
I’ve been going to Amazon and downloading the collected works of different writers. I’m reading H. Beam Piper right now and just finished Andre Norton. Many of the are free.
I've been a big fan of Baen publishing for years. I like most of their authors a lot. I've known that Eric Flint was a flaming socialist for years as well, as he comes right out and says it in an afterwards in one of his early books.
That doesn't stop me from reading his stuff though, because I like him as an author. Jim Baen was a great publisher in that he cared less about the politics of his authors than he did about the revenue a good story will generate.
One of the reasons I like Baen is because very early on it took a very strong stance against DRM in its ebooks. They even have a section on their site called the "Free Library" where you can download many of the first (and sometimes second books from most of the series that they publish. (On the theory that like any good drug dealer, the first one's free.) This is a great way for you to read an author or series that you might be unfamiliar with, at no cost to you beyond the time it takes to read it.
IMO, all of this 'controversy' stems from the simple fact that Baen does, in fact, have some conservative folks writing from them. The whacky left can't stand the thought that conservatives even exist, and will do anything they can to destroy anyone who has the nerve to actually employ one.
These days, I seriously doubt that a fellow like Tom Kratman could get published at all, because he is obviously not a leftist. He penned a scathing indictment about 'transnationalists' as the afterward for a book he co-wrote with John Ringo in the 'Alendata' series. I think I posted an excerpt from that afterward here on FR some time ago.
This whole thing is crap, and I hope it doesn't adversely impact Baen.
I’ve been going to Amazon and downloading the collected works of different writers. I’m reading H. Beam Piper right now and just finished Andre Norton. Many of the are free.
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Take a look at the Indies on Amazon. Many are very readable in a variety of ways. It takes some time to wade through reviews and summaries, but it’s a way to support the writers w/o trad contracts.
What's your proposed solution?
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