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MistressDREAD -> RE: Gorean slave silks (8/12/2004 9:56:30 AM)
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I stated Leon that the Gor books and the Bible are the base to each Lifestyle
I never stated that I view the GOR books as The Bible. Thats You again tempt to force feed words in the way You would have them be read to You, but not how I wrote them.
I live on earth just llike You all tho You would wish I dident.
Peoples own takes on what they learn of anything is not a fabrication or a lie or mis information.
It is simply their Own take on such.
You seem to take issue that sumthing has evolved out of sumone elses opinion but even John
Norman said this was OK and He himself took offence when the sciene fairs refused Him entry into their places of venue just because He accepted the way that GOR has evolved for people in real life while the moral right tempts to sweltch such in every way and shape and form possible. If We cannot accept the progression of Our beliefs then what good are WE as people if We refuse to progress in what ever direction what We learn and live takes Us?
Again You continue to judge others words and ways including Mine as * wrong* They are not.
quote:
I think to find some actual facts ..facts that can be researched...facts that can be found in the non fiction section of a library that actually support your arguement would be very useful...yes. I believe that you need to, simply in order to support your argument. Ahh there is one thing I would like to say , There are a few Librarys that go against the Goverment and keep bibles on their shelfs and guess what area they can be found in? Being a shelver in One at One time in a College I found this quite amusing.
Illl post sum info here Thorns and You can take the basis and research the Author and His words and writings that tell of the information You seek. I personally have nothing to prove of My Words or Gor to any. Those whom desire to see facts to what I say may seek for Their selfs to see My Truths as I look at them. The Author Him self will tell You where His background for the books came from. Ill leave You wilth sum words of His towards His Own peers in 2001 for the start of Your search Thorns for even in these days and times there are those whom would tempt to only desire to accept GOR at face value and any tempt to expand on it is sqwashed at every turn by many for what ever reason and even the Writer dispised such. Enjoy the Ride~
Open Letter
Programming Committee
The Millennium Philcon
59th World Science Fiction Convention
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U. S. A.
Dear Sirs:
I do not know, of course, how many of you were actually closely involved in programming
decisions at the recent "world science fiction convention." To those of you who objected to,
or were innocent of, ideological activism, the following remarks are not addressed. In
particular, they are not intended to express anything critical of my many friends in the
Philadelphia Science Fiction Society who have time and time again welcomed me to their
community. It must be clearly understood that the convention was not in their hands, but in the
hands of others, and that the taints of the recent convention in no way apply to, or affect, the
Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. There seems little common ground, other than the accidents
of geography, between that esteemed group, so significant in the history of our genre, and the
corporation to which the 59th world science fiction convention was entrusted.
For those in the science-fiction community who are interested in freedom of speech, a free
and open marketplace of ideas, in debate, dialogue, reason, and such, the recent convention is
a considerable embarrassment. It seems a shame that the Millennium World Science Fiction
Convention will be remembered for its suppression of dissent, an absence of authentic dialogue,
its exclusionistic criteria for participation, and its parochial PC mentality. The past cannot
be undone, though, I suppose, it is easy enough to lie about it.
I received a note, dated June 21, 2001., in response to a letter of inquiry, dated June 7,
2001, my letter pertaining to the possible refusal of certain members of the programming
committee to countenance an intellectually open convention. My first letter was dated April 7,
2001, and the program-participant list was several times added to, and updated, after that time.
The following is my response to the note.
Thank you for your note of June 21, 2001.
Your note reads, in part, as follows:
Thank you for your interest in being a Program participant at the Millennium Philcon.
However, we are unable to accept your offer for this Worldcon.
However, we expect to be able to have a mass autographing session at the Worldcon.
Any writer in attendance will be welcome to come in and sign.
It will be noted, in connection with the first paragraph above, that it was not made clear
why the "acceptors and rejecters" were "unable" to accept my offer of participation. I thought
they were in charge of programming. Without being sanguine to edit another's discourse, I think,
perhaps, they might have said something like "we refuse to let you participate" or, perhaps,
"because of political pressures, from certain authors and/or fans, we feel it might our
jeopardize our position in a personality network, to have an open convention."
I was sorry to be unpleasant, but how else could one possibly have construed such a lame and
implausible remark.
With respect to the second paragraph, their offer was empty, and insulting. For example, as
my name did not appear on the list of program participants none of my fans would know that I
would be there, and, accordingly, would not bring any books to sign. It is hard for me to
suppose that this detail escaped the notice of the "acceptors and rejecters."
The grounds for my exclusion were clearly not logistic or professional. For example, I wrote
to the committee months before the convention, arid their membership list had been updated, with
new additions, several times since that time. That rules out the rationalization of not enough
chairs in the hotel, or such. Similarly, the grounds for my exclusion could not plausibly be
professional. Had I not sold enough millions of books? For example, I have had several million
books published in the genre of science fiction, have a worldwide fandom, am available in
several languages, and have had two movies made which were putatively based on my work. I think
there are very few, if any, authors, much as we love them all, who had objectively made more of
a contribution to the genre in the past fifty years.
To be sure, one could always define 'contribution' in a certain way in order to make things
come out in a certain way, a way in which one would like them to come out.
Whereas it is always unpleasant to be the victim of discrimination, to be misunderstood,
denounced, slandered, libeled, and such, as I have often been, there is really more at stake
here than discriminating against a particular author, or authors, in order to have a politically
correct convention, and one that will appease and please certain insecure and narrow-minded
individuals who want to keep science fiction a one-restaurant town. What is at stake here is
more than, say, one author, and whether he is a bastard or not, and so on; what is at stake is
the integrity and openness of a genre of literature; is it to be free, or not; is dialogue to be
permitted, or not; is restriction, exclusion, and censorship to characterize the genre, or not?
There was an attempt on the part of an author, whose name I omit, as I don't think the
reflection on his moral character would do him, or anyone, much good, some years ago, to keep me
from the San Antonio World Science Convention. But he did not get his way. Unfortunately for him
he was dealing with Texans, folks from the Lone Star State, and they believe in freedom, perhaps
having won it in war. One prizes such things. But it seems that the same values did not obtain
in Philadelphia this year.
The acceptors and rejecters had every right, of course, to close their convention, to yield
to the censors and haters, but it disappoints me that they did so. It is not good for the genre,
and I do not think it is really good, morally, for them to have done so. After all, they will be
what they do.
I made it clear in my correspondence with the "committee" that I was perfectly willing,
incidentally, in public debate, or in an independent lecture, to explain and defend my views,
my position, on a large number of topics. For example, I am a libertarian, and not an
establishment neosocialist, and I would have been happy to discuss the demonstrated
shortcomings and dangers of statist positions. I would have been happy to talk about social
dynamics, statism, collectivism, authoritarianism, the altruist-collectivistic morality, to
talk about the incentive problem, the totalitarian problem, the information problem, the values
of a free market, the utility of invisible-hand processes, and such. Similarly I made it clear
that I was ready to explain and defend the right of consenting human beings to apply to sexual
relationships the delights of fantasy and the joys of the liberated imagination. Sex, as Ayn
Rand tried to convince the prudes and bigots of her day, and seemingly failed, is not low,
degrading, evil, and such. There are more possibilities for sex than five minutes in the dark
twice a week. I thought that perhaps some of the puritans and censors, excluders, hypocrites,
slanderers, and liars, would have cared to discuss these issues publicly, before an open-minded,
attentive audience, rather than hide, hoping to keep the members of the science-fiction
community ignorant of a large variety of interesting alternatives to their own unquestioned
dogmatisms and complacent bigotries But I was wrong.
I informed the committee that they cannot really keep censorship, blacklisting, and such,
secret. I told them that if they ran a closed convention, one denying dialogue and the
appearance of views not congenial to a current establishment, that that will be clear.
I would not want such a stain on my honor, but I suppose one man's stain is another's
convention ribbon of self-preening rectitude.
Science fiction should not be limited to the "over-and-over stuff." There should be room,
too, for the "never-before stuff." Someday perhaps the Berlin wall of science fiction will be
brought down. But I do not think it will come down in the near future. In my view science
fiction has driven on the left side of the road long enough. She has been a one-restaurant town,
with only item on the bill of political fare long enough. Why has science fiction, standard
science fiction, a ghetto existence, and small audiences? Guess. There is a population out
there which might well be interested in hearing what science fiction has to say, if it thought
it had anything to say.
Science fiction's future deserves more than to be a literary backwater despised by serious
critics, and held in contempt by the average intellectual; it deserves more than to be a vehicle
for an endless potlatch of prizes.
One thing I think the programming committee should clearly understand, and I am not sure it
did, is that there are many people in science fiction, and a number of them are very well-known
and famous people, who do believe in free speech and an open marketplace for ideas. They are
not afraid of such things. Indeed, they believe such things are essential for an open genre,
and, indeed, for an open society. Not everyone finds discrimination, censorship, and such,
acceptable. Whereas exclusion may please the thought police of science fiction, it does not,
I state for a fact, please everyone in the genre. Whose good opinion did the program committee
desire? That seems clear. It had a choice. I am disappointed at the choice it made.
Incidentally, I was amused to see that the programming committee was supposedly interested
in strengthening its serious or literary side. I have a Ph.D. from a major Ivy League University
in philosophy, and have appeared on panels having to do with Verne, Stapledon, Wells, Asimov,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Cordwainer Smith, Murray Leinster, Ayn Rand, and others. I also proposed
a panel, rejected without explanation, having to do with the science fiction of Poe and
Hawthorne. I suppose that is not literary enough.
I am not the only individual, of course, who found the programming inexplicable except on
grounds of buddy-buddy politics, and ideological nepotism. On the other hand, of those excluded,
I suspect I have a pretty good business and literary argument. If millions of sales in the genre,
and such, are not good enough to earn a place on even one panel, while dozens of individuals
who are unknown, or practically unknown, appear on several panels, something, if not rotten in
Denmark, is certainly surprising somewhere. It is my hope that this convention will not be an
ill omen for the future of science fiction. She deserves better.
I have attended five World Science Fiction Conventions. The last one, ironically conducted
in the very city in which the Declaration of Independence was signed, which must be an
embarrassment for anyone with any historical sense, was the first in which I was denied
permission to participate. What are we to gather here, that the first four conventions were
wrong? That science fiction is to remain tile province of a political backwater, an enclave of
uncritical, smug, effusively emoting, self-righteous leftist Bourbons who after a hundred
million deaths and the collapse of civilizations have learned nothing and forgotten nothing,
that it is to be forever the sanctuary of the "religious left," the captive of proponents of a
historically refuted, bankrupt ideology? She deserves better.
Monothink is not the salvation of science fiction; it is its death knell as an
intellectually stimulating branch of literature. Science fiction could be so much, and it is
confined to so little.
I do not need this genre, but I love it. Indeed, I must love it, to have put up for years
with the abusive, predictable crap of the politically blinkered ideological Pavlovians, the
psychologically insecure, the emotionally immature, the morally benighted, and the sexually
retarded, of which science fiction has more than her share.
I will close on a personal note, which is trivial, but interesting. I wanted to purchase one
of Tom Kidd's wonderful prints at the convention, but I did not do so, for a simple reason—every
time I would look at it on the wall, I would be reminded of Discrimination con.
My wife put it very nicely: "In Philadelphia the Liberty Bell does not ring."
I wish you well,
John Norman
http://www.nyrsf.com/Issue_83.html
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