A month ago, on September 11th, speculative fiction author Elizabeth Moon posted a long article about her thoughts on the commemoration of the 9/11 attacks on her <a href="http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/335480.html">personal blog</a>. The article contained a few paragraphs on the topic of Muslim immigrants in the US and the big "mosque at Ground Zero" controversy. Largely due to a few particularly wrong-sounding sentences - intentional or unintentional - this led to a rather big fuss in the comments on her own blog and elsewhere, for instance <a href="http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/elizabeth-moon-on-islam/">here</a>. It is not my intention to rekindle a controversy that happened a month ago, or to debate the merits of Moon's views or the reactions to them. Those who wanted to participate in that debate no doubt have done so somewhere in the blogosphere.
However, I thought it might be interesting to have a broader discussion based on incidents like this one or the big controversy sparked by <a href="http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm">this Dan Simmons story</a> that saw such heated debate on the wotmania OF board four years ago (how time flies...). Where authors of generations past propagated their views on controversial subjects mostly through their books, or occasionally through interviews in the mass media, many contemporary authors now have websites, blogs, Twitter, etc., and can share their views with hundreds or thousands of their readers almost instantaneously. And if that causes enough of a stir in the blogosphere, even the mass media may get involved and spread those expressions of views even further. (Of course this is true for all "public figures", not only authors, but since we are after all a board for discussion of literature, I'm focusing on authors here. 
)
)Of course, such controversies are not necessarily all bad for the author. One of the biggest maxims of marketing, after all, is that any publicity is good publicity. Inevitably, controversies of this kind cause some people to declare they'll never read author X or Y again, or at least not buy his or her books, but whether those authors actually notice that in their sales figures, is a different question, and they might get new readers instead. And certain authors actually have enough influence that by publicly discussing an issue, they can affect its outcome, such as J.K. Rowling's intervention in the case of the Romanian mental institutions.
I'll provide a few questions for people to give their views on, but don't feel like you are limited to the questions asked, by all means share any other thoughts you might have.
1) Are you interested in reading the views held by your favourite authors, or authors that you like in general, on topics not directly related to their books?
If it is an author I like then I do like to know what their world view is. Sometimes it helps to understand their work. Of course it is pretty rare that their political point of view surprises me. You can usually get a good idea of their politics from their writing.
1a) If so, how much does it bother you when you find out their views are quite different from yours, or even offensive to you?
Different doesn't bother me but offensive might. Typically though if they hold views strong enough to offend me I pick it up in their writing and that turns me off. Which could be why I find so little appeal in cyberpunk.
1b) If not, can your view of such authors still be influenced by hearing about their views involuntarily?
I could change the way I read their books but so far it has not been a problem. Being a conservative I have grown used to entertainment form people who I do not agree with. If I didn't watch movies from people I disagree with I could never watch anything.
2) Have the political, religious, social,... views of an author ever been a factor in your decision not to read a book by him or her?
I sometimes do not read books because I don't enjoy the way they want to force feed their political views but if I can't think of time I didn't read a book because of the writer’s politics.
2a) Or in your decision not to buy it?
If I felt giving them money would help a cause I was strongly opposed to I would buy their books. If I thought they were supporting a terrorist group or even one of over the top anti-American groups (like say the UN
) then I wouldn't let them have any of my money. I can not think of any writers I feel that way about though it is part of the reason why I never watch Michael Moore. 3) Have you ever had the opposite reaction to such a controversy, feeling more inclined to buy or read books by the author, rather than less?
No.
4) Do you think, all things considered, that it's a good thing for authors to write on their blogs about things not directly related to their work? Does that enhance the reading experience, hinder it, or neither?
I think they are free to express their views just like anyone else. I only object when they start to believe that I should care what they think and when they start to believe that what they think is important simply because they wrote a book a magic. J.K Rowlings does come to mind here. Why the hell should the rest of us care about her political views?
/Survey: Author blogs and political controversies
- 11/10/2010 05:13:40 PM
895 Views
A Good Survey
- 11/10/2010 07:09:52 PM
639 Views
Re: A Good Survey
- 11/10/2010 07:11:06 PM
513 Views
interesting questions
- 11/10/2010 07:51:18 PM
672 Views
Took you long enough to post about the Moon article 
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- 13/10/2010 03:18:35 AM
286 Views
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- 13/10/2010 03:18:35 AM
286 Views
That would be why I didn't just post about the Moon article. 
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- 13/10/2010 10:52:07 AM
202 Views
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- 13/10/2010 10:52:07 AM
202 Views