To whomever it may concern,
On June 8th, I wrote an email to Tor.com withdrawing one of my stories in response to the highly unprofessional and inflammatory comments made by Irene Gallo about the Hugo awards controversy. In the past week, it appears that many other writers and readers have contacted both Tor.com and Tor Books to express similar disconent. It also appears that some of the senior members of your organization are attempting to dismiss these responses as manufactured outrage propagated by bots, and not by real people.
I would like to make it clear to anyone at Tor.com and Tor Books that I am a real person, and that the email that I sent on June 8th was not solicited by Vox Day or any other person. Ms. Gallo has since apologized “to anyone hurt by my comments,” and while I appreciate the gesture, without a retraction of her original statements, the gesture is empty. Furthermore, repeated comments from Moshe Feder, the Nielsen Haydens, and other senior members of your organization demeaning large segments of your company’s clientele lead me to believe that the problem is not with a few individuals acting in poor judgment, but with the corporate culture at Tor.
In my first email, I stated that I could not in good conscience continue to support your organization by submitting my stories for publication at Tor.com. The events of the last seven days have made me reluctant to buy Tor books as well. In the coming months, I hope that we can move past this controversy so that we can get back to reading, writing, and publishing stories that we all love, without concern for politics. However, until the corporate culture at Tor has changed to be more inclusive of readers and writers like me, I do not see how that is possible.
Sincerely yours,
Joe Vasicek
