After three successful terms as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, John Scalzi has finally fallen to his knees and prayed "Oh Great Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke, deliver me from all this SF politicking!" Seriously, John's done a great job at SFWA, helping grow the membership and set up reforms to ensure the organization's future. He's entitled to a well-earned break and he fully intends to take it.
Which, of course, brings up the question of who will be SFWA's next president. And from there comes the latest drama to play out on the SFWA discussion forums.
Now before I talk about that ... let me say I'm not supposed to talk about that. SFWA has a long tradition of keeping its discussion boards private and frowning upon anyone who breaks said silence. As as SFWA member I have no desire for a frowning upon, so no talkie on the private fun and games.
However, that doesn't mean I can't talk about what people have said in public. Theodore Beale has publically declared his candidacy for SFWA President. Now if you don't know Beale, he's published a number of genre books and also writes columns for WorldNetDaily under the name Vox Day. While I can't confirm or deny or even speculate if Beale's candidacy is causing any drama on the SFWA forums, I can point to a public comment from two years ago on how he felt
"... inspired to run against John Scalzi for SFWA President next year. My platform is going to involve disenfranchising all of the female members and endorsing a Federal law banning women from writing any science fiction or fantasy that does not contain vampires or wereseals and comes with a warning label: WARNING: this is Vampire/Wereseal fiction, not actual science fiction or fantasy."
Beale has also made a number of other fun comments, including that "educating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves" and that Americans need to expel all Mexican immigrants and "reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture."
Oh yeah. Nothing controversial about this candidacy.
But the good news is that Beale is nothing more than an attention seeking candidate. Soon other candidates will throw their hats into the ring and we'll all breathe a big sigh of speculative fiction relief.
Until then, welcome to the SFWA madhouse.