Last Call For The Freedom Of Hate

Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds takes to his weekly USA Today column to defend professional bigot (and apparently amateur sci-fi writer) Larry Correia's Hugo Award nomination, and declares Correia's long, long history of political speech in his books to be completely irrelevant to his fiction writing because only the true bigots on the left would censor his views blah blah blah.

But then, there was a time when that sort of openness characterized much of American intellectual life. That time seems to be over, judging by the latest science fiction dust-up. Now, apparently, a writer's politics are the most important thing, and authors with the wrong politics are no longer acceptable, at least to a loud crowd that has apparently colonized much of the world of science fiction fandom. 

The Hugo Awards are presented at the World Science Fiction Society's convention ("Worldcon") and nominees and awardees are chosen by attendees and supporters. The Hugo is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in science fiction, but in recent years critics have accused the award process — and much of science fiction fandom itself — of becoming politicized. 

That's certainly been the experience of Larry Correia, who was nominated for a Hugo this year. Correia, the author of numerous highly successful science fiction books likeMonster Hunter Internationaland Hard Magic, is getting a lot of flak because he's a right-leaning libertarian. Makes you wonder if Robert Heinlein could get a Hugo Award today. (Answer: Probably not.)

Correia does have his fans, and he successfully politicized the Hugo Awards to teach us liberal fascists a lesson or something and got his nomination.  Getting a win on the other hand, well, that's something altogether different.

These are the same folks who have rallied around odious pile of racist vomit and techno-misogynist Vox Day, who also defends Correia (and is himself up for a Hugo award this year):

What is the solution? There are various possibilities, but my answer would be to outwrite them, outsell them, and win all their awards until they beg for mercy and offer a truce. They politicized science fiction, and only they can unpoliticize it. Until then, they'll have to deal with the fact that we're not only capable of playing the game according to the new rules, we're able to play it better than they are.

Politics don't belong in science fiction. But we didn't put them there and we can't take them out.

Apparently sci-fi is now totally a contact sport, and Vox Day and Larry Correia are just gonna write liberalism out of existence or something.

Definitely fiction writers.  Just not very good ones.