Vox Day facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Vox Day
|
|
|---|---|
Day in 2007
|
|
| Born |
Theodore Robert Beale
August 21, 1968 Minnesota, U.S.
|
| Education | Bucknell University |
| Known for | Writer, publisher, game designer, activist |
| Parent(s) | Rebecca Beale Robert Beale |
Theodore Robert Beale (born August 21, 1968), commonly known as Vox Day, is an American activist and writer. He has been described as a far-right white supremacist, a misogynist, and part of the alt-right. The Wall Street Journal described him as "the most despised man in science fiction".
Beale started in video game development, which led to him writing science fiction and social commentary with a focus on issues of religion, race and gender. He became active in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, from which he was expelled, and was a central figure in the "Rabid Puppies" controversy involving the Hugo Awards for science fiction. He is active in publishing, being a founding member of Castalia House.
Contents
Early life and music career
Beale grew up in Minnesota, the son of Rebecca and Robert Beale. He states on his blog that he is of English, Irish, Mexican, and self-identified Native American descent. He graduated from Bucknell University in 1990.
Beale was a member of the band Psykosonik between 1992 and 1994.
Video game development
Beale and Andrew Lunstad founded the video game company Fenris Wolf in 1993. The company 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. 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.
Technology
Beale created the WarMouse – known as the OpenOffice Mouse until Sun Microsystems objected on trademark grounds – a computer mouse with 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, a thumb-operated joystick, and 512k of memory.
Writings
Beale writes under the pseudonym Vox Day – a near-homophone for the Latin phrase "Vox Dei", literally "the voice of God". He first used the aliases as a contributor for the magazine Computer Gaming World throughout the first half of 1995. He then appeared in a weekly video game review column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and later continued to use the pen name for a weekly WorldNetDaily opinion column. In 2000, Beale published his first solo novel, The War in Heaven, the first in a series of fantasy novels with a religious theme titled The Eternal Warriors. The novel investigates themes "about good versus evil among angels, fallen and otherwise".
Beale served as a member of the Nebula Award Novel Jury in 2004.
In 2008, Beale published The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, a book devoted to criticizing the arguments presented in various books by atheist authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray. The book was named a 2007 Christmas recommendation by John Derbyshire in the conservative magazine National Review Online.
Publishing
Castalia House
In early 2014, Beale founded Castalia House publishing in Kouvola, Finland. He is lead editor and has published the work of such writers as John C. Wright, Jerry Pournelle, Tom Kratman, Eric S. Raymond, Martin van Creveld, Rolf Nelson, and William S. Lind.
In 2016, Castalia House works had two wins at the Dragon Awards:
- Best Science Fiction Novel: Somewhither, by John C. Wright
- Best Apocalyptic Novel: Ctrl-Alt-Revolt! by Nick Cole
Infogalactic
In 2017, Beale launched Infogalactic, an English-language wiki encyclopedia. The site was a fork of the contents of English Wikipedia which could be gradually edited to remove the influence of what Beale described as "the left-wing thought police who administer [Wikipedia]". It has been described by Wired and The Washington Post as a version of Wikipedia targeted to alt-right readers.
Arkhaven Comics
In September 2018, Beale announced Comicsgate Comics as a "100% SJW-free" comic book publishing imprint. The use of this name drew backlash from Ethan Van Sciver and other Comicsgate activists, who variously objected to being associated with white supremacists or to the name being commercialized. Beale later renamed the imprint to Arkhaven Comics.
Beale also runs YouTube channels which, according to The Daily Dot, have jointly more than 49,500 subscribers.
Hugo Award nominations
The Hugo voters ranked "Opera" sixth out of five nominees, behind No Award. In the 2015 Hugos, it was alleged that his nomination may have been the result of "block voting by special interest groups". In all cases, his nominations have been ranked below "No Award" in the final vote.
Personal life
Beale is married, and has several children. With his family of five, he lives in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland, and owns Cressier Manor in the Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Political views
Beale describes himself as a Christian nationalist. He has been described as an alt-right personality by Wired, and a leader of the alt-right by Business Insider. Writing for Publishers Weekly, Kimberly Winston described Beale as a "fundamentalist Southern Baptist", but other journalists have made more pointed characterizations, such as Mike VanHelder's assertion in Popular Science that Beale's views are "white supremacist".
White supremacy
Beale has been supportive of the white supremacist Fourteen Words slogan, promoting it in his Sixteen points of the Alt-Right, which placed the sentence "we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children" as the fourteenth point.
Women's suffrage
The New Republic reported that Beale "has written that women should be deprived of the vote". Beale said in a blog post that "women's suffrage has been a complete and unmitigated disaster across the West and it is doubtful that any society can survive it for long."
Video games
| Game name | First released | System name(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 (cancelled) | Planned 1999 | Windows | Game designer, co-producer |
| The War in Heaven | 1999 | Windows | Game designer |
| RPG Traveller (cancelled) | (Planned 2000) | Sega Dreamcast | Game designer |
| Hot Dish | 2007 | Windows | (co-)game designer |
Published works
Fiction
- A Sea of Skulls (2017)
- 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
- 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 (as Theodore Beale)
- The World in Shadow (2002) ISBN: 978-0-671-02454-3 (as Theodore Beale)
- The War in Heaven (2000) ISBN: 978-0-7434-5344-8 (as Theodore Beale)
Nonfiction
- Jordanetics: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity's Greatest Thinker (2018) ISBN: 978-952-7065-69-3
- SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police (2017) ISBN: 978-952-7065-19-8
- SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police (2015) ISBN: 978-952-7065-68-6
- The Return of the Great Depression (2009) ISBN: 978-1-935071-18-1
- The Irrational Atheist (2008) ISBN: 978-1-933771-36-6
As contributor
- Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America (2015), John Red Eagle, ASIN B018ZHHA52
- Quantum Mortis: A Mind Programmed (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. Novelization of the Rebel Moon game.
- 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
