[Manabi]

Originally Posted by meeera

There's nothing inherently extremist-right-wing about military SF as a whole! I read and enjoy plenty of it, and I'm about as leftie as it comes.

Same here, I'm pretty left-wing and I enjoy a lot of military SF. I've also found quite a lot of it, intentionally or not, makes the point very clearly that war is not glorious or fun.

Originally Posted by mgbino

Fair enough. Now stop smacking yourself, it's a bad habit.

But what if gbm enjoys smacking theirself? Surely you don't want to deny that pleasure to them?

Originally Posted by tompe

The problem is the suspicion that sub standard books have been published because they politically agree with the publishers views.

This isn't a problem. If the books are sub-standard, they won't sell well even if they are published. And besides, trying to tell Baen that can't publish whatever the heck they want to would be censorship. Let them (and every other publisher out there) publish what they please and don't buy or read the things you don't like. If Baen (or any other publisher) routinely puts out crap because of a political agenda, sales will drop and they'll go out of business.

Originally Posted by tompe

But MacMilllan do not have a political opinions. The problem is not the author's opinions.

The implication is both, that because Baen has certain political opinions he publishes mostly books that conform to his opinions. Thus the author of this piece is tarring Baen and all Baen authors with the same brush.

Originally Posted by taosaur

There's no indication in this article or a brief scan of his blog that he's ever read any lit-fic, and every indication that he's a fan of science fiction. He's a professional fan of science fiction, for reality's sake!

I do have to question just how good he is at his job to state that Baen "specializes in works of 'military SF'". It doesn't seem like that's even the majority of what the publish, and as others have pointed out in the thread, Baen was founded to publish adventure SF, which certainly includes military, but is not solely military. He may be a sci-fi fan, but he appears to have a blind spot about Baen that extends to not even researching their catalog before making such statements. That's hardly what I consider professional. (But is, sadly, about par for the course for most journalism nowadays. )