Tag / jeff vandermeer

by Edward Champion

Jeff VanderMeer and Nick Mamatas: Bullies Who Invent Context, Enemies to Those in Recovery

Jeff VanderMeer and Nick Mamatas are schoolyard bullies and enemies to people in recovery. How many other people have they harmed?

I’ve already been transparent about the fact that I had an alcohol-fueled episode during a 36 hour period on Friday and Saturday, one in which I barely remember much of what I was doing. We’re talking vituperative emails and blackout drunk conversations that I don’t even recall on the phone with friends. Shameful assholic stuff that I would certainly not have done if I were sober. That’s why I attended a meeting today for the first time in my life. And that’s why I deleted my Twitter account. And that’s why I won’t be drinking again for a very long time, if ever. To all the friends who reached out to me and who know the true score and who actually know who I am and who have directed me to resources, thank you.

During the course of that hideous bender, a blog post in draft — seemingly listing the people who I wanted dead (a satirical holding place title that did not reflect the true intent of the list, of which more anon) and written after I had imbibed a large bottle of scotch, a six pack of beer, and a bottle of wine and was hardly in what I or any person would call a rational or clear-thinking place — was accidentally published and swiftly unpublished after I realized what I did. But blue-checkmarked authors like Jeff VanderMeer and Nick Mamatas (the latter, citing blue zone fighting, has also threatened me with a fight to the death and, as you can see from the screenshot, tried to hack my website) — two people who I have literally not thought about in years but that I was thinking about for reasons that shall soon become apparent, two people who I have said nothing about in more than a decade, two authors whose books I do not read and will not read and have no interest in reading or knowing in any way — but who have both gone out of their way to use their influence on Twitter, invoking my name to spread false rumors about me while also dredging up my drunkenly assembled list without context, which came from a very dark place that I hope you never have to experience. They are now so obsessed with me that they are literally scouring cached images of my website to impugn me and badmouth me. Trying to egg the addict back onto Twitter. These are clearly two harmful browbeaters who I will now not be including on the far more important list I was assembling and that I’m not supposed to talk about — one that involves submitting myself with humility and contrition to the people who I have wronged.

Mamatas and VanderMeer thrive on hating and injuring and hurting perceived enemies. (Here are a few examples. On October 7, 2020, VanderMeer claimed, sans evidence, that Dan Bloom “sent me strange and harassing emails, emailed venues I was speaking at insinuating that they could cut me loose.” Meanwhile, Weird Webzine, after not expressing enough fealty to Mamatas for a minimal contribution, was harassed by Mamatas on December 12, 2018.) People talked to me about the weirdly obsessive conduct of both men when I used to practice as a literary journalist. And it’s clear that it would delight them if I cracked. But I won’t. They want me to drink. They want me to be a raging asshole. They want me, in short, to suffer and be the worst human being possible. But they were on this list. Because I was thinking about the people for whom I had bad feelings about and trying to fix myself. I am truly baffled as to why I live rent-free in their heads. Because I have literally said or thought nothing at all about them for a good ten years. Not even in emails. But they seem peculiarly obsessed with me. They want you to know that I am an irredeemable human being. The timing here — and this was initiated by Mamatas — isn’t an accident. I’ve been public in other online places about the fact that I’m unemployed and in the running for jobs right now. And aside from disrupting my efforts at recovery, these two people want to take potential bread out of my mouth by making sure the social media deck is stacked against me. Which is something I wouldn’t even do to my worst enemy.

I know there is no appealing to either Mamatas or VanderMeer. Both have, in my personal dealings with them (the last I contacted them in any way was more than a good ten years ago, for Pete’s sake), possessed neither a stain of empathy nor an ability to commiserate and I’m hardly the only person who they’ve hunted down and invented stories and motivations about. I hope one day that the many victims of VanderMeer and Mamatas eventually come forward. My list should never have been published and was not intended to be published. It was the rough draft for another list. And it had a bold title. Because I have a sick sense of humor. But I just figured I would provide the appropriate context as I remain committed to carrying on with two very important things: (a) not returning to Twitter and (b) not drinking.

I am not afraid of telling the truth about myself. Even the unpleasant parts. And I’m certainly not afraid of either Mamtas or VanderMeer, who are both little more than schoolyard bullies in the form of sad and resentful middle-aged men and who will undoubtedly twist this essay (and the list with the acerbic title) to serve their own wildly narcissistic and abusive ends.

by Edward Champion

BEA 2012: Science Fiction & Mainstream — Crossing Over

Can four well-regarded authors discuss science fiction at BEA? Or do a few of them need hugs?

They congregated just before lunch at the Upstairs Stage, hoping to get some thoughts on a future weirder than ham on rye. Some of their faces were young and fleshy, and I heard a few talk about authors who sent work contained within a pizza box. Some were older bespectacled men who might have still believed in a dream cut out of the cloth of hard independent labor. Whatever their reasons for being there, this did not prohibit author John Scalzi from waving an impish toodle-oo just before this business of “crossing over,” or perhaps “passing” as genre in the mainstream, was initiated just after the stroke of noon.

The moderator was a man named Ryan Britt, his gray vest insinuating some classy authority. But his promising role waned a mite when he stated, “Everything that relates to genre fiction is extremely weird.” Plenty of us have experienced “weird” moments in our lives without having to cleave to genre. That’s the problem. How do the glories of “weird” in any form get any self-respect?

The other big question was whether Walter Mosley would attempt to rile up the crowd with an outlandish and unsubtle statement.

But before Mosley opened his mouth, Jeff VanderMeer, co-editor of a massive new anthology devoted to weird fiction called (what else?) The Weird (the other editor is his wife, Ann VanderMeer, who was also present at the panel), wisely suggested that weird fiction contributed to the 20th century in much the same way that fairy tales had bolstered the years before that.

These stories “take a look at possible futures based on what we were in the past,” added Ann VanderMeer. “It’s an exploration of the unknown.” Did looking at a “weird” future offer an explanation for the present? For that matter, why did “weird” have to be so time-sensitive?

John Scalzi, author of Redshirts and the sharpest and most vibrant contributor to the discussion, pointed out that the flip phone had emerged because some engineer at Motorola had wanted to talk like Kirk on Star Trek. And while Scalzi was wearing a red shirt undoubtedly for the sole purpose of pimping his novel, it was evident that he was making a larger point about how fiction offers cues for how we live in the real.

“My daughter was freaked up beyond measure about the dude who chewed off his face in Florida,” continued Scalzi. “And it wasn’t just her.” The government had actually issued a statement clarifying to the public that what was happening was not the zombie apocalypse. “Well, that’s what the government would say,” responded his daughter. But it was, Scalzi added, a metaphor we could all relate to.

Stories may “take place in the future or they may be written in the alternative world. But they’re being written for today.” Such a distinction was not limited to fantasy fiction, but was eminently pragmatic applied across the whole. “The idea that you take what people know and give it a twist makes absolute sense as a writer.”

Jeff VanderMeer suggested that good weird fiction was comparable to “a frog in a hot pot” or “the idea of being acclimated by something.” Mosley took this idea of tangibility with narrative further, noting that Gogol’s Dead Souls carries the notion of a man buying and selling dead people for a profit.

But Mosley wished to stir people up. So he brought up the pre-Lando installment of Star Wars. “As far as I can tell, everyone had blonde hair and blue eyes. That may be unconscious wish fulfillment.” I had hoped that the moderator would be brave enough to tell Mosley that Carrie Fisher not only had brown hair and brown eyes, but even had the temerity to put up her hair in a bun. But nobody wanted to mess with Mosley. He was doing just fine carrying on his impersonation of Hooper X from Chasing Amy, except that he didn’t have the benefit of Kevin Smith writing sharp dialogue.

“One of the things walking around this place is how many white people are. And it’s another weird moment. Maybe it’s a weird moment for me, not for other people in here.”

There wasn’t really much that people could say to this, and I didn’t see any fist pumping in response to Mosley’s remark. I did observe Jeff VanderMeer, dressed in a white suit and seated next to Mosley, sink further into his seat. Ann VanderMeer attempted to return the conversation to the human factor that Scalzi had set up so well. Jeff VanderMeer attempted to respond to Mosley by pointing out that the duo had selected stories “from Japan, from Nigeria, from all over the place.” Mosley spent much of the time after this puffing up his cheeks. (But to his credit, he was the only one up there who brought up Samuel R. Delany. Nobody mentioned the New Yorker‘s recent science fiction issue.)

Then Mosley tried to pass off Scalzi’s anecdote about the Star Trek communicator as his own. “It was the kid who was watching Star Trek and said, ‘Wow, I would want to make that!'” Hadn’t we heard a more concise version of this story only minutes earlier?

Scalzi attempted to steer the conversation back on track, pointing out that Ayn Rand and Steve Jobs were likely to be just as significant to culture ten years from now. “Technology has always been about keeping the threads of the past continuing to be in the fabric of the future,” said Scalzi, “regardless of whether the technology is a codex or the technology is a hologram of Tupac.”

To this, Jeff VanderMeer added cynical relish, “I think technology comes off as too bloodless for me.” He pointed to a story he had written about half-dead bears that devour you alive if you expect to engage in transdimensional travel. “If you want to travel, you really have to want to travel.” He praised the later iterations of steampunk for exploring these issues. “It’s great to aspire to perfection. But actually achieving it is a kind of insanity.”

Did the panel turn into a dead shark?

“I’ve been on these panels before for the last twenty years,” added VanderMeer. “I’m less optimistic that they really mean anything aside from cross-pollination.” He then added that one future pastime might be “sorting through the rubble for the remains of books that were published before the ebook revolution.”

“Jeff VanderMeer,” asked Scalzi. “Do you need a hug?”