Yup, at last Andy Remic has come to the rescue – no longer will we have to suffer unvetted, immoral rubbish in the genre world! All praise to the man who shall preserve our immortal souls and bring the fiery and pointy end of God’s grace to the heathens who write this blasphemy, sinners who imagine other Gods and worlds by utilizing that engine of the devil’s work, their imagination.
Nah, only kidding. The Ethics police aren’t coming to get you, or (more importantly) me, and there’s going to be no mention of morality going on that I’m aware, except in discussions of the delicious lack thereof. What the SFFE site is all about – which you can find here – is celebrating what’s good about the genre an telling the world about what you like. What it’s NOT about is the negative, intentionally malicious crap that goes on whenever a bunch of social misfits are allowed an internet connection. As Andy’s noticed some people just like to make themselves look big (or what they think is big anyway) but taking great delight in tearing apart the work of others; picking holes, bad-mouthing and generally acting like the pieces of shit they wouldn’t dare to be in the real world because someone would have beaten their pale flabby arses to a pulp by now. It’s not a new thing, The Simpsons have been mocking that sort of person for years in the shape of Comic Book Guy, but it’s been ignored in the genre world and for too long. If you really don’t know what I’m talking about, just go to the Westeros forums and type in my name – I’ve seen things posted there that went along the lines of ‘I hope he dies so he stops infecting the world with this shit’ and that’s the sort of thing SFFE wants to step around.
There are places to bitch about books, plenty of them and good luck to ’em, but this ain’t one of them. If what you enjoy is ripping something to shreds then go somewhere else (or come do it to our faces) but if you feel embarrassed by the sub-set that do this and want to hear about what people like, check it out. Hopefully I’ll be finding the time to contribute soon, once page-proofs and wedding stuff stops getting in the way!