Uh huh.

[james_davis_nicoll]

How Jim Baen saved SF, Earth and the universe from commie leftist nihilistic postmodern anti-Western New Wave Literati.

My favourite sentence:

The "New Wave" was never really popular (New Worlds, the major New Wave magazine in Britain, was bailed out by public money after the buyers and readers stayed away in droves), but it might well have had the purely negative achievement of driving traditional science-fiction writers out of publishing.

Most people would have put "New Wave: A More Terrible Menace to SF than Evelyn E. Smith!" into a different paragraph than "New Wave: Nobody Reads it anyway." Almost nobody would have put those sentiments into the same sentence.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

The New Wave: Getting Girl Germs all over SFF before there were even really any girls.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I think what they really mean is Teh Gay, which some do confuse with Girl Germs, but not all of them...

[tandw.livejournal.com]

Almost nobody would have put those sentiments into the same sentence.

Yes, but Hal G. P. Colebatch* is almost nobody.

If he was going to talk about girl cooties and F&SF, though, he really should've mentioned how WisCon got started.

*A name that cries out for exclamation points, to be sure.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

"At the same time, Jim Baen pioneered the New Subjectivism, where any opinion pulled out of one's ass becomes as valid as FACT as long as it conforms to a reader's prejudices."

[elynne.livejournal.com]

The Soviet Union tried to match SDI and couldn't, either technically or economically. Gorbachev recognized there was no way out. That was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It would be simplistic to claim too much. When the end actually came it had many causes, and was due to many people. But the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy with its science-fiction writers and publishers as well as others played its part and more. It was a story worthy of a science-fiction plot itself, but real, and Jim Baen was there on St. Crispin's Day.

*hahahahahahaha*snort*hahahahahahahaha*

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Jim Baen invaded France over a petty land dispute?

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

According to a book review elsewhere I read, Reagan expressed the idea of bankrupting the USSR via an arms race even as far back as the 60s. Gore Vidal pegged it when he described the strategy of escalating military spending as one of who goes bankrupt first. Therefore, Baen's contribution was far smaller than the piece claims. If SDI hadn't been proposed, some other incredibly expensive military megaproject would have been used in its place.

[(Anonymous)]

Queue the Super Trooper (http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/browse_frm/thread/b3eb7d3fce74ccab/758af1d6c53c707b?#758af1d6c53c707b) thread from SHWI.

-Will (http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com).

[matt-ruff.livejournal.com]

Would that be the theory that ABBA brought down the Soviet Union?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Politics/fitzgerald.html

appears to argue that it was Communism that broke the SU, not the US. Of course, since Reagan was a union man and therefore as red as my underwear, I wouldn't expect him (if he was still alive) or his pinko supporters to admit that Soviet communism is a lousy way to run an economy.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

No doubt there is some parallel universe to ours where Jimmy Carter was reelected in 1980, began a huge arms buildup because of Afghanistan, although probably not one with a Star Wars type effort or as bloated as the Reagan one, and where conservatives argue that said buidup had nothing to do with Communism collapsing. Which of course, as in our universe, it really didn't, but they only argue it because Carter was in office and not a conservative like Reagan.

[raycun.livejournal.com]

"In its way, and without beating up any obvious political message, Baen Books has played its part in the Culture War, on the right side"

This guy is not very good at detecting political messages, is he?

The Secret History of Jim Baen, According to Colebatch

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

God, I couldn't read that article without hearing the GI Joe cartoon theme song in my head. Specifically the refrain that goes something like "real american heee-ro"

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Making these two sentences consecutive also seems to me infelicitous:

In its way, and without beating up any obvious political message, Baen Books has played its part in the Culture War, on the right side.

Baen Books also gave me my own break into professional science-fiction writing.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

What a maroon.

No, wait, let me rephrase that: what an asshole.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Oh.

American Spectator.

The magazine that thought it cool to use a blackface cover .... in 2003.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Well, in one way it is a tenable argument in that something doesn't have to be popular to be influential. The Velvet Underground never sold huge numbers of albums during their existence and for a long while afterward, but as someone once quipped it seemed everyone who bought a copy of their albums went out and started a band.