Authors Hating Authors

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by mgbino

Anyone else here a sci-fi or fantasy fan? There is basically open warfare right now between Liberal and conservative authors...


For example, Vox Day has lovingly nicknamed John Scalzi McRapey and Jim C. Hines McCreepy, and continues to lovingly refer to N.K. Jemisin as an ignorant savage. Scalzi has taken to calling Vox "That Ignorant, Racist Dipshit." That's true author on author hate.

The current Hugo situation is one of the most insane examples of author on author hate I've ever seen.

I should start following that. Had never heard of that Vox Day/Theodore Beale character. A cursory reading of his Wikipedia entry gives the impression that Scalzi's statement is quite an accurate assessment.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Froide

Sorry my comment comes across that way.

Full disclosure:

I read one of TK's books, years ago. I grabbed it because TK was SK's wife, I'd read all the novels by Stephen King/Richard Bachman and my other fave authors on the shelves at the time, and I figured TK's book might be an interesting read on the plane. I was disappointed.

Nonetheless, even had I critiqued TK's book in the various forums where I do that kind of thing, I would never have made such a scathing statement about TK as a writer (or anyone else) as Stephen King made about Stephenie Meyer.

I imagine TK's writing might have improved in the decades since I read one of her publications, but she still gets mixed reviews. (For that matter, so do J.K. Rowling and for some books, Stephen King!) I'm unsure to what degree TK suffers from comparisons to her husband, but whatever the reason for the unfavorable reivews, I'm sure neither TK or SK appreciates reviews which are unnecessarily unkind or snarky. Consequently - and because his clout might confer on him something like an "Oprah effect" (of which I'm sure he's well aware) - I would have expected SK to take a higher road than he did with SM, when critiquing another author.

I didn't mean to imply anything was wrong with your comment. I thought I more or less agreed with you.


Helen

[Froide]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I didn't mean to imply anything was wrong with your comment. I thought I more or less agreed with you.


Helen

I was responding your comment: "Perhaps it is a sneaky dig at his wife."

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Froide

I was responding your comment: "Perhaps it is a sneaky dig at his wife."

I meant a dig by him not you.

Helen

[eschwartz]

Stephenie Meyer is not a bad writer. She just writes things that a lot of people find objectionable/not matching their taste in books ("sparkly" vampires ). That is quite different from incomprehensible drek.

Credit where credit is due: she set out to create a book about a sparkly-vampire romance, and succeeded in making a well-written ... sparkly-vampire romance.

The fact that the concept is weird and, as far as I am concerned, inferior in plot value, merely makes me a more discerning reader. It does not magically make the-books-that-must-not-be-named possessed of bad writing. Which is a separate issue entirely, and someone who was unbiased would just write that off to different tastes.

(As you can see I am heavily conflicted. )

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Credit where credit is due: she set out to create a book about a sparkly-vampire romance, and succeeded in making a well-written ... sparkly-vampire romance.

The fact that the concept is weird and, as far as I am concerned, inferior in plot value, merely makes me a more discerning reader.

I find all vampires, zombies, and creatures of similar ilk to be weird concepts and avoid reading and watching anything to do with the genre

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Stephenie Meyer is not a bad writer. She just writes things that a lot of people find objectionable/not matching their taste in books ("sparkly" vampires ). That is quite different from incomprehensible drek.

She is an extremely successful writer who has identified and exploited a previously-untapped market. I honestly fail to see how she can be called a "bad" writer; she has been successful beyond most other authors' wildest dreams.

[DrNefario]

It is a weird one, that Stephen King quotation. It's not like Rowling is widely considered to be a master stylist. Or King, for that matter.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

She is an extremely successful writer who has identified and exploited a previously-untapped market. I honestly fail to see how she can be called a "bad" writer; she has been successful beyond most other authors' wildest dreams.

I have never read any of her stuff because the genre doesn't interest me, but what un-tapped market did she identify that Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Joss Whedon, Charlaine Harris and others all hadn't identified and tapped previously?

Her exploration of and success in the market is unquestionable.

ApK

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by ApK

what un-tapped market did she identify that Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Joss Whedon, Charlaine Harris and others all hadn't identified and tapped previously?

Kids yearning for Romeo and Juliet and Vampires.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ApK

I have never read any of her stuff because the genre doesn't interest me, but what un-tapped market did she identify that Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Joss Whedon, Charlaine Harris and others all hadn't identified and tapped previously?

Teen vampire romance.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Teen vampire romance.

Has anyone done monkey vampire romance?

[doubleshuffle]

What about Zombie Monkeys from Outer Space?

[WT Sharpe]

Jealousy may partially explain why Schopenhauer's attacks on Hegel were so frequent and so full of venom. His biographers record how he was not at all pleased that his own lectures had to be cancelled for lack of interest while Hegel's—held at the same time and at the same university—were wildly popular. This is from Schopenhauer's essay, "On Authorship and Style":

Nothing else is at the bottom of all such endeavours but the inexhaustible attempt which is always venturing on new paths, to sell words for thoughts, and by means of new expressions, or expressions used in a new sense, turns of phrases and combinations of all kinds, to produce the appearance of intellect in order to compensate for the want of it which is so painfully felt. It is amusing to see how, with this aim in view, first this mannerism and then that is tried; these they intend to represent the mask of intellect: this mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced for a while, until it is recognized as being nothing but a dead mask, when it is laughed at and exchanged for another.

We find a writer of this kind sometimes writing in a dithyrambic style, as if he were intoxicated; at other times, nay, on the very next page, he will be high-sounding, severe, and deeply learned, prolix to the last degree of dulness, and cutting everything very small, like the late Christian Wolf, only in a modern garment. The mask of unintelligibility holds out the longest; this is only in Germany, however, where it was introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and attained its highest climax finally in Hegel, always with the happiest results. And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand; on the other hand, nothing is more difficult than to express learned ideas so that every one must understand them. All the arts I have cited above are superfluous if the writer really possesses any intellect, for it allows a man to show himself as he is and verifies for all time what Horace said: Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons ("Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing").

Also from the same essay:

Those writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and ambiguous phrases most certainly do not rightly know what it is they wish to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still struggling to put itself into thought; they also often wish to conceal from themselves and other people that in reality they have nothing to say. Like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, they wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they do not think, and to say what they do not say.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Angst

Authors hating authors is not limited to classic authors. Just look at what current authors are saying about Stephenie Meyer. If history repeats itself, she may be considered classic in 100 years.

Just as Jane Austin's vampire series is considered classic today.


(Runs for cover.)