Tangent Online 2025 Recommended Reading List

SFWA/SF Magazines:

Selling Freedom of Expression

for

Thirty Pieces of Silver 

“Free speech is a human right. It is the free expression of thought that is the essence of being human…it is the natural condition of humans to speak. It is compelled silence or agreement that is unnatural. That is why it takes coercion or threats to compel silence from others.” –Jonathan Turley, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage

Two years ago I used this space as preface to our 2023 Recommended Reading List to comment on several issues pertaining to SF at large, and SFWA in particular. Last year I continued the theme by expressing my view that SFWA is heading down a dark road by engaging in politics rather than concentrating 100% of its time, energy, and money on its traditional goal as that of a writers organization rather than an organization with social justice as its true, sotto voce focus.

This year, as the third leg of this thematic triptych, I would like to examine examples of how SFWA and many (not all) of the science fiction and fantasy magazines (print and online) quietly, behind the scenes in some cases and more overtly in others, and which are noticeable to those who follow the magazines closely, have been limiting writers’ freedom of expression by discouraging certain viewpoints on various themes that can best be described as political.

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