What is Vox Day planning?
It's gone eight thirty now, where I live, and I haven't written a single word on The Warlord's Peace yet tonight, so I've decided that I'll give tonight up as a lost cause and bash out this blog post that I've been pondering for a while now.
Readers may or may not be familiar with the Hugo Awards, a rather kitsch collection of trophies given out every year at Worldcon to celebrate the best Science Fiction and Fantasy as voted on by the approximately 4,000 people who vote for it year on year*
Each year the Hugo Award campaign officially begins in March with the announcement of the nominees, and continues until late August with the announcement of the winners. Usually a sedate process, last year's awards were rather enlivened by the intervention of the Rabid Puppies, led by the Napoleon of the Net** Vox Day. Under his leadership, the Rabid Puppies came within a hair's breath of claiming all the places, although they weren't quite able to seize every position on the shortlist due to the presence of some strong consensus candidates from...the opposition***. Over the months between nominations and the announcement of the winners, opinion in the greater fandom coalesced in favour of those consensus candidates and the Rabid Puppies were routed, coming below no award in every category, even those where they had swept the ballot. In the wake of the battle won, it seemed in the opinion of many that Vox Day had met his Waterloo.
However, though Day had been defeated his dark fortresses at Castalia House and Vox Popoli endured, and he retreated into the stygian gloom of his online strongholds to rally his enduring minions and plot his revenge, vowing to return to wreak his havoc upon Worldcon and not stop until he had turned all of fandom to ashes and ploughed and salted o'er the ruins.****
And so, for a couple of weeks now, Day has been presenting his Rabid Puppies 2 slate and so far it is...rather tame, honestly. At this point all of the fan categories are taken care of, along with the editor categories, the Campbell Award and Dramatic Presentation (Long Form); and it's hard to say that there's much to cry about. Some of Day's choices are almost disappointingly conventional, like Andy Weir for the Campbell Award or Avengers: Age of Ultron for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form). There is, it is true, a large number of entries in Day's ballot related to gaming and video games, but unless you honestly believe that this is an attempt to summon a horde of Gamergaters (and I don't believe it is, because if Day had a button labelled 'Summon Gamergate' he would have used it last year) then there isn't anything about that to get excited about*****.
So what's going on? Has the bomb-throwing anarchist decided to become respectable? Is he presenting reasonable choices so that his opponents will look unreasonable when they no-award them? Is he pinning all his hopes upon the expose of pedophilia in fandom published at the blog of his publishing house late last year, aiming to shake fandom to it's foundations with the truths contained within?
That last seems to be what many people, particularly the commenters at leading SF blog File770, think that Day is up to. They also don't seem to believe that they have very much to worry about, given that the revelations contained in the expose amount to very thin gruel, all told. Half of it concerns people who are safely dead or in prison, and the other half consists of excerpts from the, admittedly disgusting, work of Samuel Delaney, quotes from people praising Samuel Delaney, and the equivalent of muttering 'there's no smoke without fire'.
And so I would agree with those who are already writing Vox Day off...if I believe for a second that that was what his plan was. I don't, and I think that those who assume that this is all he's got are taking him lightly, and ought to remember that it was taking him lightly that ruined the 2015 Hugo Awards. Now, his plan definitely has something to do with pedophilia allegations, he has as good as announced this. However, he has also been pretty clear that he has something up his sleeve, something to which only his inner circle of Vile Faceless Minions are privy. And if the expose was his plan, well...he wouldn't be calling it a secret, now, would he?
Personally, given the tone of his recent remarks...I think...I fear...I believe that he has some evidence on someone, or thinks he has. Vox Day thinks he has a smoking gun linking a prominent member of fandom to child abuse, and he is going to dramatically reveal it at the optimum moment and rock fandom to its foundations, or hope to anyway.
I honestly think that is what this is all leading up to. Rabid Puppies 2 is just a smoke screen, the Castalia House expose was deliberately watered down so as to lure his enemies into a false sense of security, and at the right moment Vox is going to pull back the curtain and expose John Scalzi/Patrick Nielsen Hayden/Philip Sandifer as a monster before the sight of God and man.
Except I hope he won't. Not because I want to protect abusers, or keep the truth hidden, but because if I'm right then it will mean that Vox Day had evidence of a monstrous crime and, rather than taking it to the appropriate authorities, sat on it until it was most dramatically opportune to reveal his knowledge. Now, Day has form in that regard considering the way he held onto the Irene Gallo facebook post until his followers needed their outrage ginning up a bit, but that was a pretty harmless piece of political chicanery which ultimately did no harm to Irene Gallo's career or Tor publishing house. If I'm right, then Day has turned a blind eye to the perpetration of evil to suit his own purposes. And that would disappoint me greatly because, as much as I disagree with the man, I honestly thought that he had higher standards than that.
*Apologies, that should say 'given out every year at Worldcon to celebrate the best Science Fiction and Fantasy published/produced that year' since those who take the Hugos (too) seriously will tell you with great solemnity that the Hugo awards recognised the highest standard of excellence in the genre, and that their long and prestigious history lends them a prestige and honour unmatched in the field. To which I say that sixty three years is not old enough to be historic; it isn't even old enough to collect a state pension. How can the Hugo Awards claim to be historic when they aren't even old enough to retire yet?
**I considered dubbing him the Napoleon of Trolls, in a reference to the 'Napoleon of Crime' Professor Moriarty; however, the Napoleon of the Net conjures up a different reference, not only to the Great Man but to the 'Napoleon of the West' General Santa Ana. I feel this is more appropriate as not only is Day a descendant of Mexican revolutionaries but he is also a man of most astonishing tenacity, who has bounced back from defeat and disaster about as many times as Santa Ana ever did, if not more often.
***People who are opposed to Rabid Puppies have a morbid horror of being addressed as though they are an organised opposition, possibly because they don't want to be thought of as a coordinated body. I can't say that I can fathom their reasoning.
****This is only a very (very) slight exaggeration of the way that Vox Day writes sometimes. One of the reasons I feel a sneaking admiration for the man, in spite of his atrocious political opinions, is that he seems to be having so much fun in his life. The other reason is his extraordinary, and rather ironic in view of his staunch Christianity, resemblance to Milton's Lucifer.
*****Unless, perhaps, you really don't like videogames.
