Careercow Thomas Kratman - Living SEAL copypasta, Sad Puppy, Sci-Fi "Author"

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Techpriest said:
Tom Kratman basically has no friends outside of the echo chamber of the far right authors. Ringo at least has some feedback and sanity for the most part, and if I was given a choice at gunpoint to either read any random Ringo novel or any random Kratman novel I would grab that Ringo novel and tear into it with honest tears of joy.

I also love how little fucking EFFORT was put into that cover. I can imagine the meeting for it already.

"So uh, yeah, the book is about Muslims taking over Europe, and there's nukes and crap, and we have to include some kind of freedom thing because this is a Baen novel cover. We expect it by tomorrow."
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I read some of Ringo's books and interviews, and although he writes for the same trash tier fringe of military sci-fi as Kratman, Ringo knows he's writing terribad schlock that will never win any awards, and he's a good sport about laughing at his own absurd work when critics point out how it is nothing more than a right wing conservative's wet dream. In comparison, Kratman is really malicious and vindictive, his ego can't stand the slightest criticism, and he will never let go of a grudge.

And the cover art is indeed pretty awful, even for a Baen's publication. For those unaware, Baen's is only one step above self-publishing on Amazon, and in fact, it's where most bottom-of-the-barrel sci-fi and fantasy authors went to get published in the early 2000s before online self-publishing became affordable. Aside from their handful of flagship moneymaking series, Baen's books have infamously terribly cover art because of their shoestring budgets.
 
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Seconding that everything I've heard about John Ringo is that while he's kind of a hard-right edgelord who writes some crazy rapey shit, he's self-aware about how over the top his books are, capable of being friendly to critics, and even had a sense of humor about "OH JOHN RINGO NO" becoming a meme. Which may make him a better balanced human being than many scifi authors on both the left and right.

Kratman, by contrast, is yet another Baen hack who really, really cares what internet randos say about his books. There are quite a few of those.
 
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I'm going to check out his forums and shit later today after class. Wish me luck because alcohol will likely be required to survive

Anyway, I've made an account so I'll try and dig up what I can.

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Other things to note: He's got a pretty active following on the Baen forums. There might be more milk to be found here too, and I'm not surprised how dead most of this is. Seriously, some forums haven't had posts since March. The layout for the site is absolutely horrible and hideous. I'll post again soon once I find something actually interesting.

EDIT:

Good news, bad news, Tom's not extremely active on the Baen forums from what I can tell, at least ATM, but he's got a fuckload of posts there and I'll browse through the posts for anything notably special, but otherwise I'm likely going to have to wade into the cesspool of more op-ed articles. Jesus, why is it that every cow I enjoy seems to like posting shitty opinion articles online?

EDIT EDIT:

Well, if any Kiwis happen to be in Chattanooga TN, do I have a treat for you at the Choo-Choo

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Drake would be worth visiting for alone, but boy oh boy, you get a two for one crazy rightwing author pair in Williamson and Kratman.

Plus the con itself looks pretty rad from what I can tell, the people running it seem fun, and the other guests this year are pretty neat.
 
I'll do A Desert Called Peace if you do Victoria, because I'm not going to be EVER drunk enough to get through Victoria, because the prose is THAT BAD. Kratman, I'll give it a shot.
 
Tranhuviya said:
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holy shit it's like they didn't give a shit.
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Holy crap, that cover looks like somebody threw up in Daz Studio and/or Carrara (right down to the Victoria 4 and Michael 4 models in the lower right corner. I can tell b/c of the unnatural way the coat is "flowing" on Vicki there) and then tried to clean the vomit up in Photoshop, only to throw up again there.

What a hot mess.
 
Cato said:
I just discovered this guy.

His thread may have become inactive, but that's certainly not because he's mellowed out and stopped ranting and raving at critics online:

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That reminds me I still need to do that Desert Called Peace thing.

Fuck me.

It's not just his writing that's painful but his world building. The leaps in logic he makes are just insane.
 
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Techpriest said:
-Snip-
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I didn't want to double post, but seeing that there's any interest in the thread from anyone other than me, I'll share this amusing exchange I found after posting the last one:

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I must caution that I can't verify that account is really him, but the comments certainly align with the way he interacts online generally, and the account's subscriptions certainly line up with it really being him too:

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www.youtube.com

Tom Kratman

www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
archive.is

Tom Kratman - YouTube

archived 12 Apr 2019 23:00:45 UTC
archive.is

Unsurprisingly, the link to his official youtube account (not this account) from his website is dead, with a message indicating that the account was suspended due to TOS violations.
 
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BTW since he boasted about attending a "top decile" law school, I should mention that he got his JD from Washington and Lee University, which was ranked 26th out of 194 US law schools in the 2019 U.S. News & World Report. The language he used made it obvious that he went to a tier 2 school and not a T14, because obviously he likes to boast and play up his credentials to the extent possible while trying to keep his statements technically correct, but it wasn't even technically correct in this instance. Granted, to be fair to him it's not crazy far off and it may have actually been true at the time he attended in the early 90's.

But it seems like a common theme, in any case, that he has credentials that are legitimately relatively impressive but he still feels the need to embellish them to make them sound better than they actually are.

Also, Caliphate is available for free online, so I've given it a look and it's hilarious as expected. I'm literally only three pages in (not counting the prologue) and it's already been established that in the year 2103, "Mohammad" is the most common name in Europe, Muslims carry guns around to intimidate infidels (who are forbidden from owning them), and Muslims impose exorbitant taxes on Christians and enslave their boys to force them to be soldiers and their girls to force them into prostitution.
 
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Cato said:
[...] Muslims impose exorbitant taxes on Christians and enslave their boys to force them to be soldiers[...]
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Is there hilariously bad word choice, or Wendig-esque stroke victim pacing, or something? Because those details are just him copy/pasting the Ottoman empire.
 
Randall Fragg said:
“It’s [past culture] but in THE FUTURE”.
Fuck, I might have to read through this guy’s masterpieces at some point.
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That’s his entire Carrera stories. Half the reason I’ll need a drink doing “A Desert Called Peace” is the entire book is him being preachy and going “no this totally isn’t a comment on how I would run a real army.”

EDIT: Here's the most recent post, hot off the presses.
 
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Techpriest said:
I'll do A Desert Called Peace if you do Victoria, because I'm not going to be EVER drunk enough to get through Victoria, because the prose is THAT BAD. Kratman, I'll give it a shot.
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Holy shit, Victoria. That was... bad. Like, 'someone doesn't understand how a tech base works' bad. I thought I was the only one who'd ever suffered through that.
 
Capsaicin Addict said:
Holy shit, Victoria. That was... bad. Like, 'someone doesn't understand how a tech base works' bad. I thought I was the only one who'd ever suffered through that.
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There's an excellent thread by Coiler on Space Battles that sums up Lind's insane manifesto. I'm not crazy enough to read through the whole fucking book of Lind's super reactionary bullshit even if part of it is free.
 
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