Theodore Beale

Theodore Beale
Theodore Beale
Born	Minnesota, United States
Other names	Vox Day
Education	Bucknell University
Known for	Writer, computer game designer, publisher, musician
Religion	Nondenominational Christian
Parent(s)	Robert Beale
Website
Vox Popoli

Theodore Beale is an American musician, publisher, science fiction writer, blogger, and former video game designer sometimes using the pseudonym Vox Day.

Early life

Beale is the son of entrepreneur and jailed tax protester Robert Beale.^[1] He is of English, Irish, Mexican, and Native American descent.^[2] He graduated from Bucknell University in 1990.^[3]

Career

Between 1992 and 1994 Beale was a member of the electronic band Psykosonik, which recorded four^[4] Billboard Top 40 club play hits.^[5]

In 1993, together with Andrew Lunstad, he founded a video game company named Fenris Wolf. They developed the game Rebel Moon in 1995, and its sequel Rebel Moon Rising in 1997.^[6] Fenris Wolf was developing two games, Rebel Moon Revolution and Traveler for the Sega Dreamcast, when it closed in 1999 after a legal dispute with its retail publisher GT Interactive.^[7] In 1999, under the name Eternal Warriors, Beale and Lunstad released The War in Heaven, a biblical video game published by Valusoft and distributed by GT Interactive.^[8]

In 2000, Beale published The War in Heaven, the first in a series of fantasy novels with a religious theme; entitled The Eternal Warriors, it is "about good versus evil among angels, fallen and otherwise".^[9] The third in the series was published in 2006.

He served as a member of the Nebula Award Novel Jury in 2004^[10] and in 2007.^[11] He was a contributor to the Black Gate blog until December 2012,^[12] and under his pseudonym Vox Day, he wrote a weekly video game review column and other features for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.^[13] He presently uses the pen name for a blog, Vox Popoli, and (formerly) a weekly opinion column at WorldNetDaily (where his father was formerly a board member) and in the past was nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate.

In 2008, as Vox Day, he published The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, a nontheological book devoted to criticizing the arguments presented in various books by atheist authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray.^[14] The book was named a 2007 Christmas recommendation by John Derbyshire in the conservative magazine, National Review.^[15] Beale's 2008 book, Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy, was nominated for an American Christian Fiction Writers award in 2009.^[16]

Beale holds the design patent^[17] for WarMouse, a computer mouse with 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, a thumb-operated joystick, and 512k of memory.^[18]

In 2013 Beale ran unsuccessfully to succeed John Scalzi as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Later in 2013, he was investigated by the Board, who subsequently voted to expel him from the organization.^[19] Beale maintains that the vote does not signify his expulsion from the organization.^[20]

2014 Hugo Awards

In 2014 Beale's novelette, "Opera Vita Aeterna", was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette.^[21] It came in sixth out of five nominees, behind "No Award."^{[22][23][24][25]}

2015 Hugo Awards

In 2015 Beale created a slate of candidates for the Hugo Awards called "Rabid Puppies," which placed most of its nominees on the ballot. It also led two authors, an editor and a fanzine to withdraw their own nominations, and for one presenter to withdraw from the event.^[26][27][28] According to Slate, it also led to two nominations for Beale, and seven nominations for works published by the small Finnish publisher, Castalia House, which is affiliated with Beale.^[29]

Castalia House

Beale is the Lead Editor at Castalia House where he has published the novels of such writers as John C. Wright, Tom Kratman, and Rolf Nelson.^[30]

In 2014 Castalia House published the novel Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War, an American military fiction novel written by William S. Lind.^[31] Lind wrote the novel in the 1990s but could not find a publisher.^[31] Victoria was published by Castalia House under Lind's pseudonym Thomas Hobbes.^[32]

Hugo Award nominations

Beale has been nominated three times for a Hugo Award.

• 2014 nominee for Hugo Award for Best Novelette^[33]
• 2015 nominee for Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form^[34]
• 2015 nominee for Hugo Award for Best Editor Long Form^[34]

Personal life

Beale speaks German and Italian.^[35]

Views

Writing for Publishers Weekly, Kimberly Winston has described Beale as a "fundamentalist Southern Baptist",^[9] but other journalists have made more pointed characterizations, such as Mike VanHelder's assertion in Popular Science that Beale's views are "white supremacist."^[36] Similarly, an article by Jeet Heer in The New Republic says that Beale "has written that women should be deprived of the vote and refers to African Americans as 'half-savages'",^[37] referring to Beale's own article "Why women's rights are wrong"^[38] and his conflict with the SFWA (noted below).

Feud with John Scalzi

Since 2005, Beale has been engaged in an online feud with science fiction writer John Scalzi. In February 2013, Scalzi attracted media attention with a pledge to pay $5 to various charities and nonprofit advocacy organizations every time Beale mentioned him; after others echoed this pledge, over $50,000 was pledged in under a week.^[35]

Conflict with the SFWA

In June 2013, Beale used the SFWAuthors Twitter feed to post a link to his blog, in which he referred to African-American author N. K. Jemisin as "an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature" ^[39] and Teresa Nielsen Hayden as a "fat frog."^[40] In August, after complaints from members and an investigation initiated by the board of the SFWA, Beale posted an excerpt of a letter from the SFWA president on his blog.^[40] Jemisin later commented that "if you represent the civilization to which I'm supposed to aspire then I am all savage, and damned proud of it."^[41]

Discography

• Psykosonik (1993)
• Silicon Jesus (1993)
• Welcome to My Mind (1993)
• Details Magazine Music Matters Volume 4 (1992)
• Black Box – Wax Trax! Records: The First 13 Years (1994)

Video games

Game name	First released	System name(s)	Beale's role(s)
X-Kaliber 2097	1994	SNES	Music (Psykosonik)
CyClones	1994	DOS	Audio
Rebel Moon	1995	DOS	Game designer, co-producer
Rebel Moon Rising	1997	DOS	Game designer, co-producer
Rebel Moon Revolution	Planned 1999	Windows	Game designer, co-producer
The War in Heaven	1999	Windows	Game designer
Traveller	Planned 2000	Sega Dreamcast	Game designer
Hot Dish	2007	Windows	Game designer

Published writings

As sole author:

• The Altar of Hate (2014) ISBN 978-952-7065-23-5
• The Last Witchking (2013) ISBN 978-952-7065-04-4
• The Wardog's Coin (2013) ISBN 978-1-935929-97-0
• A Throne of Bones (2012) ISBN 978-1-935929-82-6
• A Magic Broken (2012) ISBN 978-1-935929-79-6
• The Return of the Great Depression (2009) ISBN 978-1-935071-18-1
• The Irrational Atheist (2008) ISBN 978-1-933771-36-6
• Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy (2008) ISBN 978-0-9821049-2-7
• The Wrath of Angels (2006) ISBN 978-0-7434-6982-1
• The World in Shadow (2002) ISBN 978-0-671-02454-3
• The War in Heaven (2000) ISBN 978-0-7434-5344-8

As a contributor:

• Quantum Mortis: The Programmed Mind (2014), Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton. Castalia House. ISBN 978-952-7065-13-6
• Quantum Mortis: Gravity Kills (2013), Steve Rzasa. Marcher Lord Hinterlands. ISBN 978-952-7065-12-9
• Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted (2013), Steve Rzasa. Marcher Lord Hinterlands. ISBN 978-952-7065-10-5
• Rebel Moon (1996), Bruce Bethke. Pocket Books. ISBN 978-0-671-00236-7
• The Anthology at the End of the Universe (2004), Glen Yeffeth (editor). BenBella Books. ISBN 978-1-932100-56-3
• Archangels: The Fall (2005) ISBN 978-1-887814-15-7
• Revisiting Narnia: Fantasy, Myth, and Religion in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles (2005), Shanna Caughey (editor). BenBella Books. ISBN 978-1-932100-63-1
• Halo Effect (2007), Glenn Yeffeth (editor). BenBella Books. ISBN 978-1-933771-11-3
• You Do Not Talk About Fight Club (2008), Chuck Palahniuk (Foreword), Read Mercer Schuchardt (Editor). BenBella Books. ISBN 978-1-933771-52-6
• Stupefying Stories October 2011 (2011), Bruce Bethke (Editor). Rampant Loon Press. ASIN B005T5B9YC
• Stupefying Stories March 2012 (2012), Bruce Bethke (Editor). Rampant Loon Press. ASIN B007T3N0XK

References

External links

Writing

• Vox Day
• Vox Popoli
• Castalia House
• Archive at WorldNetDaily
• Black Gate Magazine - Adventures in Fantasy Literature
• Theodore Beale at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Theodore Beale on Twitter

Video games

• Theodore Beale at Allgame
• Theodore Beale at the Internet Movie Database
• Game bibliography at MobyGames

Media

• David Pakman Show interview with Vox Day

Authority control VIAF: 43838628 MusicBrainz: 939ba425-a93c-4a01-99d4-5d2563a75659