Thanks loads, Carlos

[james_davis_nicoll]

Collected John W. Campbell, Jr. editorials

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I see he's gotten everyone thinking and talking about stuff.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Only to mock.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Hey, are you still a lush? I have a bet.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

*fsnork*

Like you'd pay up.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I always pay my bets. What kind of people do you hang out with where people don't? Wait, I know the answer to that question.

It's true, though, that I only make bets I think I can win. The last bet I lost was whether a hockey "fan" (much as you're a science fiction "fan") who threw a banana on the ice at what's now the Budweiser Centre to harass Wayne Simmonds, one of hockey's few black players, was originally from Eastern Europe or not.

I thought for sure the dickhead must have been some European, since they pull that banana crap all the time with black players and soccer there. I made the bet with a guy who's now an editor at Road and Track, but was sports editor at one of the larger weeklies at the time.

Nope. Asswipe was a homegrown white dude, one Christopher Moorhouse of London, Ontario. $50 to the Southern Poverty Law Center. That was September 2011.

(What threw me was it happened in Ontario. If it happened in Boston, I would never have made that bet.)

Back to the question at hand. Since you're belligerent and impulsive and associate with writers known for their heavy drinking and, frankly, rather stupid -- not that alcoholism is any respecter of intelligence -- it seems fair to assume that you have not actually stopped drinking to excess. In fact, you might be posting while inebriated right now.

If you haven't, good for you! I'll send the donation to some worthwhile charity that you'd find completely hateful. Maybe we could have a special post about it.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Jesus. That is an appalling story.

On the other hand, if your evidence of his identity is equal to the quality of the stuff I've known you to cite, you were cheated and should raise Hell.

Clean and sober since 10/22/1980, and it's been worth dealing with the pain I'd been masking with drugs. (Nothing worked all that well anyway. When the hospital gave me morphine for my kidney stones, I couldn't tell a difference. Fibromyalgia makes everything ever so much more interesting. Meh.)

(They switched to Dilaudid. That did make me stop screaming. But I am bewildered by people who don't mind needles. That damn thing does not belong in there.)

If you're giving it to a genuine charity, rather than a front for totalitarianism, there really isn't one I can think of that I'd find objectionable. Southern Poverty Law Center is kind of awesome. (And brave. Any outfit that publicly lists Nation of Islam as a hate group is a ready-made market for Kevlar baby clothes.)

I suppose you could give it to Greenpeace, which is the outfit that taught me to make poison gas and letterbombs back in the 70s, before they "separated" from the terrorists at Earth First. (Still funded by the same people, though.)

--Incidentally, as regards SF writers and drinking, I think you should know this isn't 1955.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Honestly, good for you about the sobriety. You can look up the hockey incident on Google.

Now, back to your ignorance: if you think I'm totalitarian, you're arguing with the voices your head, for you unless totalitarianism means "something that Matthew Joseph Harrington thinks is icky." Asshole.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I expect fish don't understand the word "water".

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

You have had kidney stones and *needles* bother you? And not belong there? Are we not scifi fans? Do we not want cyborgian implants?

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

???

I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to dislike more than one thing.

As for going cyborg, I have to do too much maintenance on the original gear to deal with an operating manual as well.

Although-- no, never mind; if the human body came with an operating manual, it would be published by the lowest bidder, written by an MBA, censored by moralists and politicians, and doubled in weight by the warnings and disclaimers demanded by lawyers.

Possibly tripled. Do you know, I saw a notice on a bag of microwave popcorn that said:
CONTAINS HOT POPCORN
KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN
?

This notice is there for no reason but to get money for a lawyer. Absolutely nobody believes it has any more effect than would a notice that said:
CONTAINS ANGELINA JOLIE AND CHARLIZE THERON
NAKED
ON TOP OF A FLYING SAUCER
LANDING AT THE SUPERBOWL HALFTIME SHOW
KEEP AWAY FROM CAMERAS.

(Oh God, I mentioned popcorn. I can't have corn ever again. it yields oxalic acid, which goes into kidney stones.)

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

'...a hockey "fan" (much as you're a science fiction "fan")...'

I've been puzzling over this.

Surely if he was the man the pros set up the puck for to get a guaranteed goal, and had been for ten years, you'd have recognized him.

[kla10.livejournal.com]

You seem to be especially interested in baiting this guy, over and above any of the other conservative trolls here. Is there some bit of history between you and him you'd like to share with the rest of the class?

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

It may have something to do with my being honest. Totalitarianism advocates need to silence honest men for fear that it will catch on.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

... history, paranoia, _and_ persecution complex? Well, chronic pain goes a ways towards excusing some sorts of assholish behavior - I have some myself. But if you see yourself as being 'silenced' here, you need an eyedoctor appointment. They're mocking you and pointing out slight flaws in your sage character and/or reasoning. In some sense they're encouraging you to keep posting, for various reasons.

--Dave

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I've only encountered him here. But he's rotten to the core, so why not?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Getting someone to point and laugh at you is not generally considered an equivalent.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Well, it's attention....

:D

The key word seems to be "generally". Campbell was quite open about writing editorials with the specific intention of getting people to write stories that contradicted him.

Worked, too.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Campbell was quite open about writing editorials with the specific intention of getting people to write stories that contradicted him.

But, it must be said, people also wrote some stories that sucked up to him.

And he bought them.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

If they were well-written.