Vox Day yesterday explained that it wasn’t Jeff Bezos or Amazon officially that took down the “Johan Kalsi” parody of John Scalzi’s latest screed. Little SJW nerds buried deep in the Amazon machine are suspected.

Since some people seem to want to go on the warpath, let me be perfectly clear here: Amazon is not to blame. I even suspect that it is entirely possible that Tor Books is not to blame either, based on a) when the book was pulled and b) the fact that the book has shown as Live for nearly 24 hours but still does not have a page on any Amazon site. The most likely scenario, in my opinion, is a rogue low-level SJW employee, possibly two, in a specific department.

I have already spoken to the manager of one department and they have begun to investigate why Corrosion is Live but not available. They’ve done everything we asked and we have no problem with the way we have been treated.

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Civil War in Amazon IT Department

The Corroding Empire was up this morning, but SuperversiveSF found that it has been going up and down.

The Corroding Empire isn’t out of the woods yet, because following that conversation, it was blocked again, reinstated again and blocked a third time in short order.

Superversive links another Vox post which reports:

As we suspected, there appear to have been internal shenanigans taking place at Amazon, as one or more SJWs appear to have abused their positions to interfere with our ability to sell THE CORRODING EMPIRE. …

Thank you for your support and for holding fire while we sorted out who was, and who was not, responsible for the removal of THE CORRODING EMPIRE. The very helpful KDP representative to whom I spoke said that he did not believe there was anything improper or misleading about the title, the name, or the cover, but we’re going to wait to get explicit permission on all three elements before settling on a final edition that will see print.

Mr. Amazon SJW just blocked it again. Unsigned, of course. SJWs always double down.

We’re writing to let you know that readers have reported a problem in your book. The error significantly impacts the readability of your book. We have temporarily removed it from sale so that more readers don’t experience the same problem in your book

Error Category: Wrong_Content; Comments: The content of your book is a different edition than what the detail page indicates. Because this could be a serious issue for many customers, we have had to temporarily block your book from sale. Please correct the image so that we can make it available for sale again.

UPDATE: Another phone call and we’re back up again.

UPDATE: And blocked again, albeit this time UNDER REVIEW, not memory-holed.

UPDATE: Finally got to speak to a supervisor. She’s not only escalated the matter to legal, but has assured me that the book will be unblocked, stay unblocked, and that the matter will be fully investigated. It’s not just the three blocks, the culprit(s) also put the book on the Excluded list for Amazon Associates, which prevents others from being paid when someone buys the book.

UPDATE: The book is live, and is now locked for a fourth time. SJWs really do double down.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

John Scalzi’s latest, The Collapsing Empire, released today by Tor Books, apparently has some resemblances to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series.

Scalzi and the publishers of Tor books are both prominent on the Social Justice Warrior side in the current and ongoing political conflicts within the Sci Fi-Fantasy community.

Consequently, Vox Day’s Castalia House released yesterday a parody, titled “The Corroding Empire,” purportedly written by one Johan Kalsi, described by Vox Day as, “Finland’s hottest science fiction author. An accomplished geneticist as well as a 6’3″ ex-Finnish Marine.”

The cover of “The Corroding Empire,” as you can see above, has a recognizable resemblance to the cover of “The Collapsing Empire,” and features the imaginary plug line: “Kalzi rips off Asimov even better than Scalzi rips off Heinlein!”

All this seems rather funny, but Tor Books was not amused and (who knew that such a minor publisher had that kind of power?) promptly prevailed on the great and powerful Amazon to remove the parody.

SuperversiveSF.com reports:

Tor Books author John Scalzi announced a book, which he turned in late, titled The Collapsing Empire.

Castalia House quickly and effectively put out a parody book titled The Corroding Empire by Johan Kalsi, which beat out Scalzi’s actual work in pre-orders for several days.

The parody, The Corroding Empire released today, to much fanfare (I’ve read a little myself, it is good science fiction work).

Tor sent Amazon an ultimatum telling them to take it down.

Amazon complied and sent Castalia House a notification that they were taking it down because they were pretending to be John Scalzi.

Castalia House had their book removed, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Wow! Amazon sucks with a leftwing conformist vacuum about as powerful as that of Mozilla, Target, Starbuck’s, ESPN, &c.

Vox Day apparently foresaw the possibility of censorship, and cleverly had ready an alternative cover, title, and auctorial pseudonym: “Harry Seldon” referencing Hari Seldon, the mathematician hero of Asimov’s “Foundation.” (see below). But… you won’t find “Corrosion” on offer at Amazon this morning either.

Here’s where both titles were pre-release yesterday on Amazon’s bestseller list:

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

John Scalzi’s Xmas Card

John Scalzi’s first Mil SciFi novel Old Man’s War featured a plot with a natural appeal to aging boomers, and with a helpful plug from Instapundit quickly broke through to become a best-seller in the genre.

Conservative readers with a liking for Scalzi were soon to be dismayed when the formerly seemingly sympatico author came out as an Obama supporter and Gun Control advocate. John Scalzi has since distinguished himself within the Science Fiction Fandom Community as one of the loudest voices on the Social Justice Warrior side.

Naturally, many of us just stopped buying Scalzi’s books, but some remain really bitter. Chateau Heartiste (an Alt-Right blog) yesterday took aim at Scalzi as a representative of the beta male phenomenon, publishing photos and Scalzi’s 2016 Xmas card which portray him as a nerd, shorter, frailer, and more sensitive-looking than his wife. CH has a lot of fun mocking Scalzi, and promises more:

Reading Scalzi is like bathing in a vat of menstrual blood and having pure estrogen injected straight into the scrotum. One must exit Scalzi’s world through a decontamination chamber of red meat and range shooting. His sickness can’t be allowed to spread to vulnerable men. His dildology worldview is a disfigured anti-reality that will yield like buttery goodness to the shiv every time, because nothing substantial underlies it. And the Chateau will flay him, over and over, until his ugliness of mind and spirit perishes from the earth.

NYT:

John Scalzi, a best-selling author of science fiction, has signed a $3.4 million, 10-year deal with the publisher Tor Books that will cover his next 13 books.

Mr. Scalzi’s works include a series known as the “Old Man’s War” and the more recent “Redshirts,” a Hugo-award-winning sendup of the luckless lives of nonfeatured characters on shows like the original “Star Trek.” Three of his works are being developed for television, including “Redshirts” and “Lock In,” a science-inflected medical thriller that evokes Michael Crichton. Mr. Scalzi’s hyper-caffeinated Internet presence through his blog, Whatever, has made him an online celebrity as well.

Mr. Scalzi approached Tor Books, his longtime publisher, with proposals for 10 adult novels and three young adult novels over 10 years. Some of the books will extend the popular “Old Man’s War” series, building on an existing audience, and one will be a sequel to “Lock In.” Mr. Scalzi said he hoped books like “Lock In” could draw more readers toward science fiction, since many, he said, are still “gun-shy” about the genre.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the executive editor for Tor, said the decision was an easy one. While Mr. Scalzi has never had a “No. 1 best seller,” he said, “he backlists like crazy.”

Scalzi has alienated a significant portion of his readership with sanctimonious hoplophobic blog posts (example) and by lining up with the Social Justice Warriors in the fighting over the Hugo Awards. My guess is that his backlisting powers will be declining.