(See Michael Moorcock's 1977 essay "Starship Stormtroopers" for his account of Campbell's various godawful opinions—he was apparently pro-slavery, for instance)https://libcom.org/library/starship-stormtroopers-michael-moorcock …
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The CoS sadpuppied the Hugos to get a Hubbard novel nominated way back in 1987. Plus ça change, right? It got No Awarded, but the point is that the CoS *wanted* this. Why? Because they want Hubbard to be seen as a major canonical writer in SF.
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There's actually a whole fascinating chapbook called Conspiracy Theories with Dave Langford, Lisa Tuttle, Chris Evans, and others commenting on the whole 1987 CoS/WOTF situation https://ansible.uk/misc/ct-contents.html …
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Here's a quote from the Peter Nicholls essay in this 1987 chapbook https://ansible.uk/misc/ct-nicholls.html …pic.twitter.com/Da0sd6Yqiw
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Thirty years later there's still more positive buzz about WOTF in any given year than negative. Because it's insidious. It slithers unremarked into the general positivity and publication-squee between writers, most of whom don't know about any of this.
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Worse, WOTF is for non-pro writers, who are the least likely to be in the loop on this stuff. To your average new writer WOTF is indistinguishable from any other institution in SF (jfc I mean I submitted a story myself back in 2013, the year I started publishing.)
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When you're new Worldcon, SFWA, Clarion, and WOTF all seem legitimate in the same ways: a decades-long history, annual events, endorsed by many famous names in the SF field. How is somebody just trying to publish their first story supposed to be able to tell these things apart?
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This is especially galling now because so many more new writers are coming into the field from marginalized backgrounds, demographics, and regions in recent years. Who have even less access to insider gossip than otherwise.
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None of this is a criticism of the thousands of writers who participate every year without knowing. The CoS has spent a lot of time and money to exploit you. Obviously it's awkward to find out afterwards, especially if you won or placed. Don't let it compel you to defend them.
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But this *is* a criticism of pros who KNOW all of this but continue to promote the contest and lend it prestige by judging or workshopping, because you doing those things is what legitimizes it for generations upon generations of new writers. Please stop. You can still walk away.
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Would add that @john_clute essay about this: https://ansible.uk/misc/ct-clute.html … -- deals with how it corrupted one writer (Budrys)
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