I had not expected there to be one final entry on this subject

[james_davis_nicoll]

Helix SF takes down archives.

Comments

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it was done with the usual amount of maturity and grace.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

And unsigned. I wonder whether Lawrence Watt-Evans was even involved.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

I've never encountered this site before, but I can sense venom dripping off this guy's sentences, from a bit of glancing around.

Am I getting sarcasm from you?

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

No, actually. Helix was run by William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans, and it's Sanders who chronically drips venom while LWE is a nicy guy, so much so that sometimes he's seemed to have a gaping blind spot where Sanders' venom is concerned.

[lwe.livejournal.com]

Not a blind spot so much as accepting that that's how William is, and there's no point in trying to change it.

When you wonder whether I was involved -- involved in what? If you mean the announcement, no, I had no input in that. Not my department. If you mean the discussions with SFWA's Grievance Committee, yes, I was involved, and William's description is accurate.

Saying that the two of us ran Helix is misleading. Helix had a staff of ten; William was in charge, and I was second in command, but some of the others had their own niches in which they were the final authority -- Bud Webster was the poetry editor and William and I didn't interfere with anything he did there, for example, and Melanie Fletcher, the webmistress, had the final say on technical issues.

I was assistant editor and handled anything involving money; making announcements wasn't my job.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

The Helix editor in question has a long and sordid history of infantile behavior.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

tasty, tasty, tasty drama.

We feeeds on it. yeeessssssss.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That's only the most recent kerfluffle with Sanders and Helix. There were earlier ones, which my fallible memory suggests went back to the earliest days of the magazine.

I am sure there was a 'sheetheads' slapfight before the one in August.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the one in July.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

There was a minor one at least once before--I want to say back when they published a story (perhaps Ian's?) with Muslim characters. It was probably in the days of the Helix newsgroup which of course was deleted in a fit of pique (we were TALKING ABOUT THEM) so there is no proof of any of that bad behavior. I think at the time the sheetheads wasn't the point of the slapfight, it was just background noise.

Incidentally, it took him two days to find that you'd posted about it, but now he's confused as to why you hate him. ( http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&artid=%3C496598d5.0@news.sff.net%3E ) Nick apparently is jealous that Helix is so much cooler than Clarkesworld, but he never did anything to you, so why do you hate him so?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I guess he never noticed that I also was one of the first people to point out to people that Helix SF existed, period.

I don't quite see how posting a link without commentary to a public announcement constitutes an attack. If he didn't want people to know, why not just quietly take the archive down?

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Well, he wrote a furious letter to Locus when the reviewed an issue of Helix in mostly glowing terms, only saying that one of the story was "not extraordinary" or some such. At the time it was pointed out that it's not the preferred method of getting better reviews.

Then there was the Sanders part of the Connie Willis/Harlan Ellison story, where he said something outrageous that he then wondered why people were taking so bad.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I have a new theory, based on, well, the last two days or so. I think he's so used to everyone being upset at what he says that he doesn't know how else to reply to something. If we're talking about him, we MUST be mad. We can't be laughing or mocking him, we MUST BE MAD.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

minor! you malign my good works!

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe there were two then! He refers to one mention that was cut off by that whole Harlan Ellison foolishness, but I remember one mention of it right when the first issue came out, which was the proto-slapfight so we have no evidence it existed except the way it shaped the world around itself.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness, yes. And well before that, I remembered him as a notorious troll in the sff.net groups.