Over at PJ Media, Megan Fox (whom I would never have taken for an S.F. fan – too pleasant and too well balanced) informs us that author Jon Del Arroz is filing a lawsuit in response to being banned from WorldCon last year.

WorldCon, for those of you unfamiliar with the world of S.F. fandom, is the science fiction field's annual jamboree, held on Labor Day weekend and encompassing up to ten thousand professionals and fans from all corners of the science fiction and fantasy universe.  WorldCon covers all aspects of S.F. media, though the emphasis is on printed S.F.  It is held in a different city each year, usually in the U.S. or Canada, and overseas at rare intervals.  Science fiction's premier literary award, the Hugo, is presented for the best works of the previous year.

It's long been a cliché that S.F. fandom is an odd subculture, composed largely of tech geeks, superannuated hippies, and bohos of all types.  Asperger's is the dominant personality trait, and the politics is leftist – very far to the left, and for far longer than any other American subculture outside the CPUSA itself.  (Keep in mind that the founder of modern science fiction, H.G. Wells, was also a founder of the Fabian Society, the U.K.'s dominant leftist organization.)  There was an attempt by active communists to take over the field as long ago as 1940, and things have not improved in the ensuing nearly eighty years.

That's what Jon Del Arroz ran into.  He's a leading figure as one of the small number of right-of-center S.F. writers, and as is the case in any field absorbed into the leftist Borg (Hollywood, popular music, academia), he is simply an unwelcome virus.  As such, he was banned from the 2017 WorldCon, held in San Jose, California – the heartland of the techno-geek left.  The reasons the WorldCon committee gave were typical: "racist and bullying behavior" (though how Del Arroz, who is Hispanic, can be a "racist" under accepted P.C. rules is difficult to grasp).  What appears to have been at issue was Del Arroz's plans to wear a body camera to document obnoxious behavior directed at him.

I personally have no doubt where the guilt lies here, since I had a similar problem years ago involving the same venue.  By the late '90s, I had published three novels and a couple dozen short stories (one of which missed Hugo qualification by only a few votes).  I had been involved with discussion panels at several previous WorldCons.  In fact, I had chaired one panel that I'd proposed to the committee that year on "The Politics of S.F.," which got large participation and caused quite an uproar.

This is why I got the runaround from the committee of the Baltimore WorldCon.  I applied for the standard professional membership, including panel participation, and heard nothing.  When I contacted them once again, I was told to come on down, where it would be taken care of.

Well, it wasn't.  Instead, when I arrived, I got a contemptuous response from the convention officials, who made it clear that politics was the reason.  After suitably terrorizing them, I turned and walked out and never looked back.

Lefties always get dumber, and this batch left a paper trail, which Del Arroz has taken advantage of by suing the WorldCon committee, something long deserved.  The suit alleges libel (the "racism") and discrimination.  Megan Fox also points out that a California law, the Unruh Act (California Civil Code §51 et seq.), forbids "viewpoint discrimination."  A California court has found that this includes political viewpoints, so the act may well come into play as involves this suit.

Sci-fi may be a niche field, but it's a bellwether – as clearly shown by the connection here with San Jose and the infowave.  If the left succeeds in closing down one field, it will attempt the same in others, and the world will soon grow very narrow and very cold for those on the right.  Donations to Del Arroz's lawsuit fund can be made here.