Episode 160 -- Science Fiction Fandom II: The Wrath of Con

I will note part of the plot in Forever War is the protagonist being The Last Straight

I almost skipped this series because it did not sound interesting at all (sorry Adrian) but I’m glad I didn’t because your analysis was fascinating

the term didn't explicitly come up, but a lot of Sci Fi is also explicitly or unthinkingly pro colonization. there are so many stories about space exploration or colonizing new worlds. sometimes humans find worlds with less advanced life and the colonization is framed as bringing progress to those people (colonization is helping out those savages). or the original inhabitants attack the explorers and have to be killed now because they didn't even give the humans a chance so clearly they are just unintelligent and dangerous. or sometimes the humans find uninhabited worlds, which can bolster the myth that the Americas were mostly empty and we didn't genocide full societies during the "age of exploration" or westward expansion. a lot of it is also about the fear of the violence we have done to others being done to us, via alien invasion. those stories often go into great replacement fears (like was discussed in the episode) or the humans beat the invaders which can communicate something like "colonization wouldn't happen to us, we're smarter/stronger/braver than that, therefore people who have been colonized historically are lesser." critically engaging in those storylines can be labeled as political and unthinkingly retelling them is not.

I'll be honest I did not like the descriptions of what Hard Sci-fi is relative to the rest of sci-fi. In fact, Adrian you never actually really define the core features of hard Sci-Fi before going into what I think is kind of an unfair attack on it. Hard Sci-Fi is just stories that focus on realism of the physics involved so that, while elements may be speculative, it COULD take place in our world. Softer Sci-Fi essentially uses some forms of magic as plot elements. There's rooms for both types, in fact a spectrum of them, in Sci-fi. But I thought it was very unfair to say Hard Sci-Fi is just a vehicle for genocidal thought puzzles, or is always marginal, or is a way to make it more adult and just poo poo kids that are into Sci-Fi.

I would really love to hear your take on Octavia Butler bc I often really like her work for its brutal exposition of horrible things but one of the ways she does that is with deeply uncomfortable sex, especially with child(like) beings and incest and sex that can’t be consensual

Science fiction! Double feature!

Just wanted to point you at the Sad Puppies re-surfacing in re the VERY recent James Talarico 'mental breakdown' hoax. Ever-reliable fan writer Camestros Felapton commented on it here: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2026/10/14/puppies-paxton/

I left a comment yesterday, and deleted by mistake, I think. Will try again: I liked these episodes, but I wish there had been a mention of how uncertain we were of the outcome of the 2015 Hugo awards: we *did not know* if the SFF community would reject the misogyny and racism of the Rabid Puppies & the gamification of the awards. But that awards ceremony became increasingly joyful, as the hosts announced “no award” in one category after the next, after the next.

This is not a critique of Adrian's knowledge at all, but it seems pretty likely to me that the fears of demographic change (and all that other crap) are connected to decolonization and the lack of white control over the rest of the world.

I'm here for the Lovecraft ep, but also an ep on James M Tiptree, Jr would be so awesome!!! Joanna Russ and her disruption of the Canon is also an incredible gender story. Loved this episode as a sci-fi reader who abandoned the genre for a while and have now returned to discover the glorious wokeness.

I would love an episode about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I’m a bookseller, so I think a lot about recommending books and the forces behind what’s popular. I was really excited to read it because so many of my fellow booksellers (whose taste I admire) genuinely loved it; imagine my disappointment when I found it not only badly written, but also full of misogyny, ableism, and rape jokes. It really is a rich text (derogatory) and I think it reflects something very unnerving about the present moment. P.S. DCC fans, please don’t come for me, I don’t want to argue

Wanted to tell you how very much I enjoyed this episode. The articulation, the outrage, the snark. All immensely satisfying, thank you so much.

Another deceased right-wing sci-fi crank with atrocious gender politics: Michael Crichton

Adrian discussing mid-20th century creep libertarian sci-fi authors — Ayn Rand technically counts here, no? EDIT: and of course Frank Herbert

Loved these science fiction episodes! And I say this as a sci-fi fan.

Unfortunately for me, I read the title as “Wrath of Cohn” and was so excited for tie-in with my bb boi Roy.

Star Trek is generally considered a pretty forward thinking franchise, but the whole old(er) man creeping on basically-teenagers (or very much younger adult women) thing feels like something I often want to call out. "Gene's Vision" was very sex-positive... To the point that it was willing to ignore a lot of creepy age stuff in both the original series and Next Generation particularly.

Subverts the tyranny of chronological time. SUBVERTS THE TYRANNY OF CHRONOLOGICAL TIME! First, thank you Moira for flagging in real time, second, I’m going to need a bonus episode diving into that nugget! Thinking you could bury that in the last 3 minutes and avoid further analysis.

Okay, I haven't finished the episode, but I just have to say: "Science fiction used to just be about the cool future-tech and was never about heavy-handed moral messaging" is about the most brain-dead take you could possibly come up with. Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, widely considered the first modern-ish sci-fi novel) damn well had a message. HG Wells had a message. "A Canticle for Liebowitz" is nothing but moral messaging for 300 pages. Guys. Are you sure you read these books? Are you *REALLY* sure??

Lovecraft episode! In bed with the fish people!

Oh no, at 39:30 I think you mentioned David Brin when you meant Larry Niven. Very different authors!

Re the politics of sex. I suspect many kinky people, esp BDSM folks, bristle defensively at political analysis of sexuality bc we're used to analysis being a fig leaf for disparagement. I'm very familiar with the Entitled Cis Male Dom, and he's all yours, but yeah, I want the rest of us left TF alone. We have enough to cope with from the Christian right.

PLEASE do a Lovecraft episode. I'm so sorry Moira but it would be so good

I would love an episode on the books of Ira Levin. You’d think you are on pretty safe ground after The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby and then This Perfect Day gets real rapey. Have left Sliver and A Kiss Before Dying sitting on my shelf a while before I can dive back in.

One of the more problematic aspects of Haldeman's "Forever War" is the daily compulsory sex between male and female soldiers (in pairs that get assigned according to a roster). That is actually pretty close to the whole "state mandated girlfriend" idea, that incels like so much.

this episode was rad, i’d personally love to hear an episode solely focused on Le Guin’s writings, she was a powerhouse and a visionary for sure.

Since you mentioned conventions, I should note that Isaac Asimov died of AIDS that he acquired from screwing every fan he could find.

Note this is a weird man who was into incest and control including in the 1950s writing a story about an intersex person transing their gender. Except said person via time travel is their own dad and mom, child, and bartender and other people I forget. Playboy said we are not interested in said story in 1958 so Heinlein publishes it himself in 1959 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2527%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94%2527 Said story is also time cops for supposedly this self creation via timeline manipulation is needed to create an ideal subject… via incest … for civilization allows non hierarchy and thus something something sacred timeline. Heinlein has like 4 stories involving trans characters or clones and thus is self c’est, and god why is there so much toxic gender / patriarchy with you can only generate a specific way that the libertarian author is into.

SEX CULTS , messy poly people let me introduce cursed lore that I learned from The New Republic where Jeet Heer did a review of a Heinlein Book. This is about the second and third wife but notice who also had a sex cult with in a threesome who is a man > In this passage, Heer is describing Patterson’s book as it relates how Heinlein’s second marriage to liberal Leslyn gave way to his third marriage to conservative Virginia… >> https://newrepublic.com/article/118048/william-pattersons-robert-heinlein-biography-hagiography >>In 1944, Heinlein met Lieutenant Virginia Gerstenfeld, and after the war tried to bring her into his house as part of a ménage à trois. Gerstenfeld accepted but her stay with the Heinleins was brief and stormy. This wasn’t the first love triangle in the Heinlein residence (they had earlier been in a consensual threesome with L. Ron Hubbard), but Leslyn found Virginia threatening so the marriage collapsed in 1947. Heinlein and Gerstenfeld wed the following year, a marriage that would also be open. so yeah threesomes with the Church of Scientology founder before anyone was famous. Likewise third wife Virginia Gerstenfeld is married to Heinlein from 1947 till his death in 1988. Heinlein and Gerstenfeld start the sex cult book “stranger in a strange land” (1961, won the hugo in 1962) in 1948 after reading Kipling The Jungle Book. It is this 1961 book that gives us the term Grok which is another one of those horny, death, control, knowledge words per said text. Well Gerstenfeld convinced Heinlein not to publish stranger in a strange land earlier before 1961 for this will be the magnum opus. Said publication is also an edited version for the public and Gerstenfeld in 1991 after Heinlein death publishes the longer unedited version. *shivers* Also Heinlein is into Ayn Rand and that sex cult as well and easter eggs her sex cult group several times.

So many interesting threads in this episode. I have been thinking about how invisible the political valence of some of these books can be, especially if read while younger. The counter-culture elements of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ was definitely more salient to me than libertarian bits when I read it at 13 (although _Starship Troopers_ was hard to miss). [and no real excuse for the _The Weapon Shops of Isher_] Reading Norman Spinrad's _The Iron Dream_ (a scifi book as if written by an alternate hitler if he had moved to the US and become a pulp author), the most frightening thing was how unexceptional it was. It didn't feel out of place with other pulp sf/f, even as its protagonist was rising to power and wiping out "mutants." On the subject of sex at cons: There are also the semi-recent revelations that it was an open secret that Isaac Asimov serially harassed women at conventions: https://www.publicbooks.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/

"they're the minions" sent me into hysterics

One angle that is beyond the scope of what Adrian has talked about in this two-parter is the difference between affirmational fandom vs. transformative fandom (all credit to obsession_inc). Affirmational fandom tends to be male-dominated, focuses on arcane knowledge and gate-keeping, and obsessed with getting things "right." Transformative fandom is female- and queer-dominated, sees a canon as the launching-off point for exploration, and is more interested in differing readings of the text (there's a reason that the idea of "meta" essays come out of transformative fandom). And on a practical level, transformative fans are writing fanfiction and meta, creating fanart and fanvids, imagining original characters operating within the universe of the canon, and doing a lot of "what if"-ing. There are cis guys in these spaces, absolutely, but they are a minority, sometimes (depending on the online platform and the nature of the fandom) such a minority that it's honestly shocking when you encounter one. These kinds of fans were making Kirk/Spock zines in the 70s and in the 90s and 2000s hung out more on Yahoo mailing lists, Livejournal and other journaling platforms, fanfiction sites, and then later in spaces like Tumblr. They created the Archive of Our Own. Affirmative fandom absolutely used to dominate real-world things like comics stores/bookstores, most of the bigger conventions, message boards, and then later Reddit (and maybe Twitter? I don't know, I've never been a Twitter user). There are always women in these spaces, too, but there are way fewer of them, and imo it's because they're alienated by the more toxic aspects of that masculine subculture. I actually started out in an affirmational fandom circa 2000 (the Star Wars EU novels) but then found the transformative fans hanging out on the fanfiction boards and realized that was my niche. I didn't care what the dudes in the affirmational side of things were doing nearly as much as I cared about what the women and genderqueer people were doing over in the other spaces. I moved over into Livejournal and other places, into completely different fandoms, and I've now been in transformative fandom for over two decades, to the point where when I think "fandom," I think transformative fandom and often forget that affirmational fandom is a thing.

Misread the episode description and spent the whole episode excited to hear Adrian explaining podracing

Gosh these episodes are "hard" for me, haha. I'm a huge sci fi and fantasy dork, but I guess I've always been completely immersed in the "woke" fandom. I'm a huge Trek fan because I believe that a future where capitalism doesn't exist (as one example) is something to strive for. The super conservative Trek fans have always baffled me, because they seemed to ya'know, miss the point. Like, I know these douche canoes exist out there, I guess I've just crafted my environment to almost completely exclude them, so they barely exist in my simple brain.

I loved these episodes! I will admit that I was surprised Neal Stephenson wasn’t brought up, especially wrt libertarianism in hard science.

For anyone not a Sci fi person— it seems essential to remind you that it’s not all like this. I teach an entire course on SF that is basically all fantastic progressive stuff (LeGuin, Butler, etc.) also it was so much fun to watch those guys’ heads explode when N.K. Jemisin won the Hugo… 3 years in a row. Read her if you haven’t. Amazing.

Haven’t listened yet, but already grinning because of The Wrath of Con! Nicely done 👍

If you ever do a lovecraft episode, I’d love to also hear your thoughts about the Lovecraft Country tv show, though that comes with a Jonathan Majors asterisk in addition to its intrinsic issues,

shameless plug for the indisputable goat https://www.rifters.com/

omg **pleaseee** do Lovecraft!

HP Lovecraft, "is this just about Italians?" made me laugh and The Wrath of Con is a beautiful pun.

Pedophilia can be found in most male subgroups -- but sci fi pedos might be the premier group of 🤓☝️ "acktuallyyy, it's not pedophilia if they're teenagers..."

Oh uhhh yeah, there are plenty of credible abuse allegations against Marion Zimmer-Bradley herself. I was going to recommend the "This week in fandom history" episode on the subject, but I see someone else has already linked it.

Jesus, I knew Heinlein could get gross, but that's a whole other level from what I was expecting. I've never actually got round to reading any of his work but I've considered it a few times, because he clearly seems to have been quite a competent author, but every time I do, I learn some new gross and unpleasant thing that he believed/wrote about at length and it puts me off.

Oh I think the reactionaries would definitely call The Expanse "woke": Main characters include multiple women of color, Holden (our hero) is a real goody-two-shoes guy who has feelings a lot instead of being a stoic badass, and there's a lot of class conflict. It's been a while, but isn't that scene from To Sail Beyond the Sunset also in Time Enough for Love but from the dad's perspective? And the dad is actually immortal time travelling author stand-in Lazerous Long? He does multiple grooming fantasies, has sex with his mom, and the novel concludes with him having a threesome with his nubile twin daughters who are gender swapped clones of him.

Oh, please do the HP Lovecraft episode! Lovecraftian horror is a popular setting for boardgames, because it's recognisable, but public domain, so cash-strapped boardgame publishers don't have to pay licensing fees. Arkham Horror The Card Game is one of my favourite games. It's a really compelling adaptation of the genre to me - the publisher, Fantasy Flight Games have sort of made their own version of a lovecraftian setting, but woke (affectionate), with a very diverse set of characters, which I love. Yes, I want to play the feisty red-haired female aviator (in practical clothing!) and the black trans postal carrier stopping the apocalypse. Of course that doesn't fix the racism and various other -isms inherent to the source material, but I think in terms of writing in the game they do a good job of leaning the other way.

Having been to a bunch of gaming conventions, I have to say, unless the conventions in the 70s and 80s were more restrictive, meeting someone at a con doesn’t mean they were necessarily of age. I definitely went to my first few cons as a teenager and there were perpetually rumors, credible accusations, and so forth.

I was waiting for the half hour Warhammer 40k rant which never came the entire time 😭

i think i accidentally deleted my comment due to being stoned, but marion zimmer bradley has also been credibly accused of sexually abusing children

i feel the need to point out that marion zimmer bradley has also been accused of sexually abusing children it's been a while since i've listened to it, but another podcast, with sources: https://www.tumblr.com/thisweekinfandomhistory/752273417410150401/this-week-in-fandom-history-is-a-fandom-centric?source=share

The point about the sexism in nerd spaces being a reflection of existing sexism made me think about my own attempts to join nerd culture and how much I was initially willing to overlook just to belong to a group of people who had similar interests. There's an award-winning book by Jo Walton, Amoung Others. It's more ambiguous fantasy than it is scifi, but the protagnist is a big fan of scifi and joins a science fiction fan club. I don't know that it's a good book, or that I liked it, but I was very struck by the way the protagonist deals with a lot of the inherent misogyny of the authors she's a fan of. She reasons her way out of being upset by an attempted sexual assault by her estranged father with ideas cribbed from Hienlien, IIRC. But the reason she's so willing to embrace and use this particular form of misogyny is because she's already familiar with and fighting against a more mainstream misogyny. She does not want to get married and have children, and her fellow scifi fans at least don't believe this is her biological destiny. It parallels how she dismisses the attempted sexual assault by her father because she's already very familiar with the different and prolonged abuse of her mother. I don't know if this was the author's intention, but I was left with the impression that for women who get into nerd spaces it's often a choice between two kinds of misogyny and you might as well go for the one that at least has dragons and rockets.

I didn’t realize you guys had done an episode with Jordan Carroll. I love his work! Certainly listening to that episode after this one.