I’m two or more weeks behind posting links and comments, though not without collecting them in my blogposts word doc, so I’ll be catching up eventually — I think this next week. The context is settling in to our new home in Oakland: until a couple weeks ago, I was still unpacking boxes of books, arranging bookcases, etc. Then followed preoccupation with dealing with an accountant to have our taxes done (very complicated this year, what with layoffs, severance payments, selling and buying houses, etc.) And still dealing with expensive repair issues to get our old house in LA sold.
While most of my links and comments deal with recurrent themes of interest to me in the very broad context of how science fiction informs the big issues of humanity and the universe (life, the universe, and everything), the overpowering issue in recent weeks, in the SF community, is what has come to be called ‘Puppygate’, the circumstance in which a group of right-wing writers have bought their way onto this year’s Hugo ballot.
Without making any specific commentary on this issue, I would relate this issue to my provisional conclusion #7, which says that resistance to the historical trend of inclusions of previously demonized human groups is “is driven by subconscious, evolutionary-grounded desires to maintain social cohesion among one’s group against threats that might undermine the group’s religious or ideological narrative.”
The worst member of the groups behind Puppygate is clearly extremely racist and homophobic. And he brags about it. And he’s extremely Christian.
