(Content warning) So it turns out that David Eddings was a convicted and jailed child abuser

[Darth Richard II]

I've actually always kind of loved how open they where about just doing it for the money. But, yeah, don't uh, jesus christ, still wrapping my head around that.

[C.T. Phipps]

I should point out regarding Marion Zimmer Bradley that while the allegations were made by her daughter post-mortem, her status as enabling her husband's child rape was brought out during her lifetime and is a matter of public trial record. The additional charges against her by Moira Greyland don't really do much more than add context to an already awful person's history of actions.

Basically, she admitted to a lot of it under oath.

[Argonath Diver]

Wow, that's hideous behavior. Kind of weird in a way to think that this writer who created such obvious Good Guys vs Evil participated in something that's something I consider to be a real-world Evil.

 

[IlyaP]

16 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

There was a tweet that set the entire thing off. Looking at stuff now, yeah, she’s a super TERF. God damn.  Good thing I have all the HBO books already. 

Sorry about that, as it's clear you're a fan and this is disappointing. 

[Darth Richard II]

7 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Sorry about that, as it's clear you're a fan and this is disappointing. 

It’s not as surprising as I feel it should be. :/

also I’m still buying Harry Potter LEGO dammit it all 

[HexMachina]

19 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I was just thinking of Richard K Morgan actually. As for JKR I’m not sure what she says beyond the initial statement and frankly I’d rather not know til the film series is done.

Well it helps that Morgan’s books are a steaming pile of you know what anyway, so no loss there.

JKR - its not so much that one statement, that was more just the final nail in the coffin. Her conduct, retweets, statements etc. for a while have all showed where her beliefs lie.

I still have the books sitting on my parents bookcase but not sure i could reread them again now, and would certainly colour my reading if I did.

6 hours ago, Zoë Sumra said:

Now, I don't approve of book-burning, but am currently strongly considering book-dumping.

Make some good out of bad and donate to a charity shop? Perhaps one like the NSPCC/Barnardo’s or similar?

[Darth Richard II]

I was just thinking like maybe 4 days ago I should reread some HP or maybe some Eddings. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 5/2/2020 at 6:53 PM, Werthead said:

And his wife too. Shit.

This isn't even a Marion Zimmer Bradley, allegations made after death kind of thing. They were arrested, put on trial and they both went to jail for a year in 1970 for imprisoning and torturing their adopted son. Both their adopted son and daughter were removed from their custody and their adoption papers revoked. Eddings lost his job working in academia in South Dakota and they were forced to relocate to another state, Eddings having to take a job working in a grocery store because he couldn't get another job teaching young people for love nor money (and probably legal requirements).

There is no suggestion of sexual abuse, but the details of the story are still pretty grim. They had a dog cage in their basement (where several animals lived) that they made their four-year-old adopted son sit in for hours and perhaps days at a time, and inflicted physical punishment on him with a belt and other implements. They were literally caught red-handed in the middle of beating him when the cops showed up and arrested them.

After becoming famous, Eddings joked that he left academia because the pay was better working in groceries. In the pre-Internet age the story never came up (in fact, they didn't even change their names, otherwise the story may have never come to light).

It should be noted you don't need to go burn your Eddings books: Leigh died in 2007, David in 2009 and all proceeds from their estate now go to Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Wow.  Glad I don't have any of their books now.

[Paxter]

Funny, this was one of the few “gateway” fantasy authors that I never touched. Very pleased that I didn’t.

[karaddin]

21 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I was just thinking of Richard K Morgan actually. 

I've apparently missed any specifics about him, what came out about him?

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

It’s not as surprising as I feel it should be. :/

Yeah it doesn't surprise me. Was neither the most surprising nor most upsetting British woman I'm aware of that's revealed herself to be a TERF in the last year or so.

2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

JKR - its not so much that one statement, that was more just the final nail in the coffin. Her conduct, retweets, statements etc. for a while have all showed where her beliefs lie.

And everything since then has just reinforced it.

On the "authors we read as children" front has anything bad come up about Feist or Janny Wurts? I was only reminiscing about Magician and the Empire trilogy a few days ago and was considering reading them again so I really hope not.

[Darth Richard II]

RKM supported JKR’s initial TERF Tweet then went full Asshole mode and got banned from Twitter, it’s all on his blog.

[karaddin]

I think I'll spare myself, thanks for the cliff notes.

[Darth Richard II]

2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I think I'll spare myself, thanks for the cliff notes.

Yeah just what JKR is doing only louder and with more doubling down.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Rowling expresses some unpleasant views, but the root of the problem is that she thinks that just because everyone loves Harry Potter, that somehow means that she can use her fame as a soapbox. Calling her a TERF is arguably a misnomer, if only because that would imply she was Radical. She's an orthodox centre-left Liberal (TELF?) of a certain age, with a cluelessness about certain issues she isn't familiar with.

On a similar note, Tolkien was a General Franco fanboy, and Roald Dahl was anti-semitic.

I think having unpleasant views is a bit different from the Eddings situation, where you aren't simply dealing with what's in the author's head, but rather what they are doing. 

 

 

[john]

2 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

On a similar note, Tolkien was a General Franco fanboy, and Roald Dahl was anti-semitic.

I remember going to a talk by Ken Liu and sitting open mouthed while he read aloud from Jack London’s treatise about how to deal with the “Yellow Menace,” by infecting all the Chinese peoples with a virulent disease and ringing the continent with British and American gunboats to prevent anybody leaving.

I agree that the Rowling and Morgan situation is a bit different, that’s a wrong, potentially harmful opinion. It doesn’t have the base evilness of the Eddings or Zimmer Bradley stuff.

(Also Morgan doesn’t write steaming piles of shite, at one point he was one of the greatest visionary SF writers on the planet. )

[Inkdaub]

Knowledge is better than ignorance but I sometimes feel like I'd just rather not know very much about people whose work I admire.  The art is bigger than the artist but it is in many ways impossible to separate the two.  I have read Eddings many years ago but I have never actually owned copies of his books.  Nor any by Zimmer Bradley for that matter.  I have never read Morgan, either, and shared my opinion about his views the last time we discussed him. 

I have been quiet on JK Rowling.  I am a big fan of her work and I have multiple copies of each HP book.  I find myself trying to rationalize her statements even though I know they simply are what they are.  It sucks when an author writes something you love and then shows themselves to hold views you cannot support.    

[Luzifer's right hand]

I stopped recommending JKRs books but she is probably one of the few authors who is rich enough that even a total worldwide boycott would be pretty much irrelevant to her lifestyle. 

[Rorshach]

Haven't read Eddings, and now it seems I never will. 

I have to say, I don't think it'll make my life worse.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, john said:

(Also Morgan doesn’t write steaming piles of shite, at one point he was one of the greatest visionary SF writers on the planet. )

I guess you haven't read Thin Air yet?

[IlyaP]

39 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I guess you haven't read Thin Air yet?

So, I didn't know about this. And I came across an interview where he explains that the book discusses economics and critiques neoliberalism, and I'm a sucker for any book that actively discussed economics, no matter how dry it might be. But the terf-y thing is way icky. Will likely have to make this one a library request.