A Long, Fat Shadow
Worldcon Seattle banned Leslie Varney without explanation—is a portly panelist to blame?
Around this time last year, the SF/F scene writ large was introduced to Leslie Varney, a representative with the Seattle-based Prentis Literary Agency, via a special report (and it being File 770, I do mean special) titled: “Point and Counterpoint: Two Opinions on Penguicon’s Statement on Safety”, co-authored by Charles Barkley, winner of the corruption-tainted Best Fan Writer Hugo Award from Chengdu WorldCon and Jason Sanford, author of—well, this shit.
The report detailed the drama surrounding Penguicon 2024, which saw shapeshifter fantasy erotica author Pat Tomlinson banned without warning from that year’s proceedings at the last minute (you can check out my post mortem here). Varney was included in the report due to her having a well-known and long-running flame war with Tomlinson on social media. While neither Varney nor Tomlinson have shied away from lobbing insults at each other, Tomlinson customarily set up camp in the moral low ground, accusing her of a host of largely baseless epithets, counting her among the “criminal cyberstalking cult targeting my family”, as he so boilerplatedly puts it. When Tomlinson’s banning from Penguicon was announced on Twitter/X , Varney penned a letter to the chair detailing the abuse that had been heaped upon her by him and his very tolerant associates and asking the board to clarify why he was banned. While it’s impossible to know for certain, it’s likely that someone at Penguicon saw it.
Penguicon had been weathering a series of guest cancellations citing ‘safety concerns’ that were likely due to Tomlinson’s reputation, probably deemed him too radioactive, and pulled his invite. This is not the place to rehash the entire saga, suffice to say that the two have history, in the words of Tony Soprano, “like Israel and fuckin’ Palestine”. Fast forward almost a year to the day that report by Barkley and Sanford was published, and it seems the turntables are indeed turning once again.
Stupid Is As Worldcon Does
From cozying up to communists in 2023 and a thoroughly retarded ballot-stuffing scandal last year, The runup to The Big Con That Couldn’t is keeping its culture of incompetence alive this year. In May, mainstream media outlets like Futurist, The Register and Gizmodo covered the revelation that the con had been using a ChatGPT to help vet panelist applications. The backlash was immediate and intense, and for good reason; the damage done to the literary world by AI programs like ChatGPT flooding publishers with landfills worth of generative garbage has been a disaster on several fronts. In Febrary of 2023, Clarkesworld Magazine had to temporarily stop accepting submissions because they were being inundated with drivel ex machina. Publisher Neil Clarke told NPR: “By the time we closed on the 20th, around noon, we had received 700 legitimate submissions and 500 machine-written ones.”
When asked how likely she thought it was that Tomlinson had a hand in her removal, Varney told me “Unless [Worldcon] truly is antisemetic, there is simply no other reason that could exist.”
More recently BookTok was positively apoplectic over two instances of popular romantasy authors who published books and forgot to remove prompts from the finished novel. My own success as an author has even been hampered by AI; recently the Kindle version of my cyberpunk action horror novel Body and Blood went on sale as part of Hans G. Shantz’s Spring Based Book Sale. It quickly shot up the Amazon free cyberpunk charts, but sat stubbornly stuck at #2 for several days. When I went to see what title was ranked above me, it turned out to be, surprise, surprise, some generic sounding steaming pile of words with a KDP stock template cover design and AI generated art, that was also number one on several other genre charts. The “author” had dozens of similar titles on his page, all released within the previous two weeks. The chance at bragging rights for holding a number one bestselling spot, even for a niche genre, is something just about any indie author would take in a heartbeat, and mine had been stolen from me by some fraud pumping out digital sewage.
I bring all this up to make the point that while authors are hardly luddites when it comes to AI and the possibilities it holds, we’re all too keenly aware of how its promise can be abused. A literary convention—the biggest one in science fiction and fantasy, no less—using AI for anything was about the stupidest decision convention chair Kathy Bond could have made, but as you’ll soon read, she would quickly top herself. Several profuse apologies from Bond in the wake of the news couldn’t stem the backlash that resulted in three resignations, including two administrators, lead to Yoon Ha Lee pulling his novel Moonstorm from consideration for the Lodestar Award, and positively cataclysmic outcry from fans and publishers.
Not even a month later on June 17, Leslie Varney wrote an op-ed published on the Fandom Pulse Substack page in which she shares the email she received from Bond. In it, Bond informs Varney that Seattle Worldcon was revoking her attending membership and that Varney will be refunded. No further explanation is given, and none has been forthcoming in the wake of the op-ed.
As we’ve noted many times on this site, the majority of mainstream SF/F cons tend to be little more than leftist circlejerks. The DisCon / Worldcon crowd love to crow about being inclusive of marginalized voices until a Jewish female publisher allows a loosely moderated forum to exist because free speech is a thing. We all remember DisCon 3 chair and generally useless excuse for a human being Bill Lawhorn cancelling the invitation of Baen Book’s Toni Weisskopf as Guest of Honor in an act of guilt by association that would have made Lavrentiy Beria blush. But Varney wasn’t some neocon crank. She’s a woman of very public and vociferous progressive ideals, vehemently pro-LGBT and anti-Trump. Her agency’s website prides itself on championing “diverse, inclusive voices in modern literature.” She was attending the con to help out as a volunteer. Her being cancelled didn’t make any sense to me.
That is, until I took a look at the panelist page of Worldcon Seattle’s website, and saw that by amazing coincidence I’m sure, none other than one Patrick S. Tomlinson was listed among them:
In her op-ed, Varney posits two possible theories behind what motivated Bond’s decision: a) antisemitism, which one would like to think is the less likely scenario, or b) this was a revenge play by Tomlinson to oust her from being in attendance where the two could possibly have met face to face. I reached out to several contacts at Seattle Worldcon, including Kathy Bond, and have as of yet received no response. Ms. Varney did however speak with us via DM. When asked how likely she thought it was that Tomlinson had a hand in her removal, Varney told me that “Unless [Worldcon] truly is antisemetic, there is simply no other reason that could exist.”
When I asked her about how serious she was about pursuing legal action, given the harm the banning could have to her reputation in the publishing world, she replied “Very.”
Oh, and how did Mike Glyer and the gang at File 770 react to the news? By accusing Varney of strawmanning:
Backing The Wrong Pig
I would love to know exactly what the thought process is behind any convention that would bother to have Tomlinson as a guest in any capacity. His last novel was published in 2020. A Christmas Carnage, his sequel to Lewis Carroll’s classic A Christmas Story written as a gritty murder mystery has yet to be picked up or self-published, and the man’s long history of self-serving lies and hyperbole are readily accessible with a few online searches. The man has gotten himself entangled in too many frivolous legal matters to count, has a criminal record for threatening to murder his then-wife and unborn child in 2011, is on video screaming at and assaulting police who respond to his home, and while he has been the victim of SWATtings in the past, has made objectively falsifiable statements about being in other locations where bomb threats were called in, including Penguicon (relevant portion 0:05-2:05).
Only a few days ago, investigative reporter Josiah Munoz posted a screen shot of the FOIA request he claims to have filed to discover more about the alleged Penguicon bomb threat, only to discover nothing was on file because it didn’t happen.
AS I WRITE THIS, posts are circulating around on social media claiming to be a newly discovered police report from an altercation Tomlinson recently had with a driver delivering building materials to his home, becoming aggressive when the driver followed his delivery instructions, chasing him back into his truck and then standing in front of the vehicle refusing to let him leave. Tomlinson would eventually plead No Contest to a charge of Disorderly Conduct.
Worldcon Seattle has decided it would rather have this person in their midst than an actual professional literary agent who was willing to donate her time volunteering. At this point I’m genuinely torn as to whether or not I hope the entire thing continues or not. On the one hand, LOL. On the other, the actions of its administrative staff past and present have by now long foregone any claim to legitimacy or professionalism in the writing or publishing world, especially when they refuse to learn the lesson Penguicon did. Patrick Tomlinson’s capital as a writer, a victim and a good political ally has long been spent. He has no advice to give any aspiring writers, no new projects to promote, no meaningful literary legacy to look back upon. No up and coming writer is looking as Tomlinson and thinking he's anything to aspire to. What on Earth is the purpose of having the man on a panel for anything?
At this point one should count it as a mark of pride to have earned the disdain of the Worldcon administration and those like them. Their ideals are Methuselian, draped in the garishly many-colored garb of false progressivism. Exnovators who are immutably opposed to any actual exchange of ideas, meaningful dialogue or willingness to experiment or push artistic boundaries. If your gender, race or sexual orientation are wrong, you’ll only be allowed in their company if you’ve put forth a sufficient display of groveling. If God forbid your politics are wrong, you might as well not exist. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, go spend five minutes on Manuscript Wishlist and despair at what gets the attention of mainstream agents. They are the absolute antithesis of creative expression and free thought.
Worldcon is still a month and a half away, so there’s still plenty that can go wrong. Leslie Varney for one, certainly doesn’t seem to be willing to put this slight to rest anytime soon, and has posted repeatedly about seeking legal representation. In all likelihood, this year will simply come and go as the annual embarrassment we’ve all become accustomed to by now. But maybe, just maybe, some fireworks will light up the Seattle skyline before all is said and done. We’ll be keeping watch at Upstream.
All I'm going to say is that I met my wife of 24 years at the 2000 Worldcon in Chicago.
Neither of us would go back to one if you paid us all expenses. And that absolutely enrages me, that the best part of my life can't be relived. These people deserve every bad thing that comes their way.
We have a long list of cons that, sadly, we won't go attend. Many of them are big names cons with increasingly bad reputations. Yes, indie creators and publishers pay attention, talk and coordinate. We're still small enough that nobody really cares, but it's setting our selection process if/when we do get big.
You may wonder why? This article is part of why. Too many have socio-political gatekeepers, policy statements and agenda vetting that are intolerant of what we believe and leave us feeling unsafe. The ease at which we could be attacked professionally or culturally makes them a no-go zone. It's sad that we must protect ourselves by opting out of those cons because of the lack of tolerance over a difference of opinion. Too many of these sorts think they have the right to harm a person's business or reputation without consequence because they have some sort of "identarian" card privilege over anyone not like them. They have little power if you don't acknowledge their existence.
But that's where we are, voting with our cash and attendance. Refuse to participate in rigged and hostile events. Choose other cons not controlled by people who are using the event for purposes other than what it was created for. If that's your jam, more power to you. Go have fun. We're just not going to be a part of it. Don't risk your safety, sanity and business. Spend money or time on people and rigged prizes that hate you. Let the old awards and cons die and make new cons and prizes great instead.