Smeagol Nielson Hayden
As regular readers of this column know, there was a Hugo Award ceremony this weekend. Speaking personally, let me say that I had a lovely time visiting with friends and meeting fans.
I was asked beforehand more than once if I thought there would be any unpleasantness or insults from the few but vocal pests in jest I call Morlocks who have been steadily infiltrating and corrupting the science fiction community in general, and the Hugo Award process in particular, over the last twenty years.
I answered in the negative. The Morlocks are a cowardly lot, and would not dare say to my face the foolish lies they say behind my back on the internet. Besides, like me, they came to have a good time and to celebrate our mutual love of science fiction, and applaud in the fashion of good sports what we each severally take to be the best the genre offers. I thought there would be no incident.
I am sad to report that I was mistaken. The Archmorlock himself displayed his courage against the short and girlish figure of my meek and gentle wife.
At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extend to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.
Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.
I should mention that during the last few months of the Sad Puppies kerfuffle, I once upon a time accurately described him, Mr. Moshe Feder, and Mrs Irene Gallo of Tor Books as ‘Christ Haters.’ The support of abortion, sodomy, and euthanasia rather unambiguously put a soul into the position of open rebellion against Christian teachings. In addition, any man who bears false witness against his neighbor, delights in poison-tongued gossip, and destroys writing careers of anyone who does not support his politics not only disobeys Christ, but violates the ordinary decency of ordinary men of good will of any faith.
It seems that Mr. Hayden is a Roman Catholic and was so deeply moved to offense by my words that he could not retain a levelheaded and professional demeanor while speaking with my short little wife. He shouted filthy words at her and stormed off. I do not know if there were tears in his eyes.
Before I continue, I should explain to the reader that Mr. Hayden, and no one else, was the driving force behind the corruption of the Hugo Awards in these last fifteen to twenty years.
It was he who spearheaded the infiltration what had once been the fans’ award and expression of love for the most excellent work in the field.
Once, the Hugos were the popular award given to the best works by Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Bob Silverberg, Ursula K LeGuin and Harlan Ellison, and Roger Zelazny. After much patient effort, the Hugo Awards, together with the SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) were controlled by a small clique of like-minded creatures loyal to Mr. Hayden.
Thereafter, the Hugo voters awarded awards to the Tor authors Mr. Hayden selected based on their political correctness, and expelled those whose politics the clique found not to their taste.
None of this was done on merit. Editors and writers in the field have been silenced or shoved to the sidelines thanks to the action of the clique. I mention no names in public, but those in the field recall the various false accusations leveled against numbers of people, both working for Tor and outside.
So, in effect, the Hugo Award became the Tor Award. It was given, over and over again, to works of modest merit (such as REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi) or none at all (“The Ink Readers of Doi Saket” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt) or selected solely on the grounds of their promoting political correctness or sexual abnormalities (“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu).
I should also mention something of which I was previously unaware, but which a close friend (who happens to be a tireless and diligent librarian researcher) explained to me in some detail.
It seemed that the monster known as Vox Day is a creation entirely of Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
Theodore Beale, some years ago, was a well respected judge of the Nebula Award committee for SFWA, and a writer of a libertarian column for a conservative website. Out of the blue, unprovoked, and unannounced, Mr. Hayden launched a series of bitter personal attacks against Mr. Beale. The two men were not acquaintances, and the attacks were based solely on the conservative or libertarian ideas Mr. Beale express in a column written for a conservative or libertarian readership in a conservative journal.
It was thought policing pure and simple. Reading back through the archives and old comments, one is astonished to come across a remark by John Scalzi chiding Mr Hayden for being a thought policeman, and criticizing an author’s outside political writings into the discussion. This was before Mr. Scalzi became the bootlicking toady of Mr. Hayden, obviously.
Even more astonishing, the remarkable and controversial stances Mr. Beale delights to strike were nowhere in evidence in those pre-Hayden days, nor is there is single comment by any woman anywhere that he was anything other than a perfect gentleman. Mr. Beale’s opinions about the scientific basis of an alleged genetic equality of the races and sexes appear to have been provoked (at least at first) by sheer, cussedly perverse delight in pointing out the flaws and blindspots in Mr. Hayden’s political dogmas.
So both the corruption of the Hugos AND the rebellion of the Rabid Puppies against that corruption are laid square at the doorstep of Mr. Hayden.
This is the man who ruined the Hugos, and is in the process of ruining Tor Books.
I am, in all modesty, a skilled author, one of the finest writing today. I intend to write no more books for Tor, until, at the very least, I am ameliorated for the unprofessional behavior shown in public toward that other loyal Tor author, L Jagi Lamplighter, my wife.
Tor, thanks once more to Mr. Hayden, has lost the otherwise unshakeable love and loyalty of one of their more skilled writers, namely, yours truly. (I say one because my wife is an unnaturally forgiving and kindhearted woman, and I cannot guess her mind in this matter.)
But there is one note of hope in all this petty bitterness.
Of all the things said or written since first Larry Correia announced that the craptastification of the Hugo Awards created Sad Puppy syndrome and was the leading cause of puppy sadness, this comment alone, my observation that Mr Hayden and his cronies are Christ Haters, is the one that provoked him to this undignified and petulant display.
I was unaware that he was a Roman Catholic. This is cause for immense hope. He could go tomorrow, nay, today, to a confessional booth, receive the sacrament, and save his darkened soul from damnation.
He could take the host tomorrow, nay, today, and the evil spirit of malice, greed, stupidity and sloth which had been darkening his intellect and casting such a shadow of malodorous corruption across our whole genre could be fumigated, or, to use a more accurate word, exorcised.
It could happen in a moment, in a miracle. All of the last twenty years of crap that has been given awards, and all of the careers stifled or ruined by this man, all the promising books that never saw the light of day because they were shouldered aside by poorly-written uber-Leftist propaganda penned by freaks who hate our genre and despise our founding members — all that could be forgiven by heaven and not held against Mr. Hayden’s account on Judgement Day.
Two decades and more of lies, lies, lies could be sponged away in once second of absolution in the sacrament of reconciliation. All he has to do is kneel and ask.
We must certainly pray for this poor, sad little man and all the damage he has done to the esteem of our genre, the people he has hurt, and the careers his malice has ruined.
That damage will not be sponged away in a year, or in a decade, if ever, but at least one human soul could be saved.
Why does this hope leap up in my heart? Because if Mr. Hayden were truly and utterly lost, it would not bother him to hear his support of contraception, abortion, sodomy and euthanasia called Christ-hatred. Christ said that we who love Him does what He says. Those who do the opposite, and who hate and persecute the body of Christ, hate Christ.
Sin darkens the intellect. Sin makes you stupid. Support for contraception tempts the weak-minded to support the sexual revolution hence to support abortion; support for the sexual revolution require the normalization of divorce, then fornication, then perversion; support for abortion tempts the weak-minded to support euthanasia, because human life is no longer sacrosanct, but instead merely an adjunct to human bodily pleasure. Once an otherwise intelligent and decent man is convinced all these abominations and horrors are moral, he has a visceral hatred of morality, of decency, and of honesty, and he soon learns to hate decent and honest people.
This unfortunately involves a corruption of the taste as well. The beauty’s of God’s cosmos and the wonder of it no longer please the Gollum. The wretched soul expresses indifference, and soon comes to despise all things bright and beautiful, including that sense of wonder, and that exercise of the powers of speculation and imagination, which characterize the science fiction genre.
I am not saying sin makes one come hate science fiction. I am saying sin makes one come to hate anything and everything that is filled with fun, and wonder, and pleasure, and delight. The Enemy hates us because we bear the image of Christ in us, and so anyone who hates Christ, sooner or later, comes to hate humanity.
But anyone who turns away and returns to God — and we Roman Catholics have a wide number of sacraments and long memory of traditions to help and aid the angels and saints in their mighty works — anyone who repents can be saved from all that.
Even he can be saved. Even a man like Mr Hayden, who screamed at my wife and his authoress, because his conscience was pricking him, even he can be saved. (More to the point, even I can be, provided I answer enmity and malice with love and compassion.)
Answering malice with compassion is impossible for any Son of Adam to do in the long run, but not for any Son of the New Adam who puts his heart in the pierced but omnipotent hands.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
