So the big Facebook news for the last day or so has been that Jon Del Arroz, an up-and-coming SF writer, has been banned from attending Worldcon.
Why? Because he planned to wear a body camera.
OK, I’m being vague.
Jon Del Arroz is a conservative Hispanic science fiction writer. You can see his Amazon author page here. With the disclaimer that I haven’t read any of his stuff myself (yet), there are folks out there like Moira Greyland Peat* who say it’s good stuff, and that Del Arroz himself is a fine gentleman. I’m inclined to take their word for it.
Del Arroz was going to wear a body camera to Worldcon because he and his family have been threatened and doxxed. Worldcon, in response to his statement that he would be wearing a body camera because he felt he might be attacked during the con, demoted his full membership to a supporting membership (i.e., “no ticket for you!”) Why? Well, to quote Larry Corriea, “They banned a dude because he’s got the wrong politics and he’s loud and annoying about it?”
Two years ago, I said I’d be perfectly happy to see Worldcon fold up tent and have that be the end of the Hugos. I haven’t budged from that position. There are other awards (the Dragon, for instance) that have a much more open and fair process, and which aren’t subject to the whims of the tiny fraction of fandom — mostly the SJW branch of fandom — who buy either a full or a supporting membership in Worldcon to vote for them.
The banning of a conservative SF author from Worldcon simply because there are people out there who dislike him enough to attack him personally and physically, prompting him to make it clear that he’ll be documenting everything that happens while he’s there, is just more proof that the powers that be at Worldcon have lost any authority they have to administer the most ancient and hoary of SF awards. And that they have been completely overtaken by the proggy wing of fandom, i.e., most of the people I ever met at cons who are the reason I haven’t been to a con in over thirty years.
This makes several consecutive Worldcons where the SJW contingent has held the upper hand. It’s time either to get some fairness and balance into the process, or to just let the damn thing die. And given the leadership they have, the latter is more likely than the former.
[Updated to correct my misspelling of Del Arroz’s name. My apologies.]
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* Moira is the daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen, the former a lesbian who divorced her husband and took up with another woman, and the latter a pedophile (finally convicted and sentenced to prison, where he eventually died). You can purchase her recently-released book on the subject of her childhood and what a pair of slimy human beings her parents were at this link. Or — and this is most likely if you grew up reading MZB’s books — you can go on believing the fairy tales told about them. Whatever. I stand with Moira.