A Note About Borderlands Books and Alan Beatts
Posted on July 10, 2020 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
This news story hit me like a punch to the gut. It features of accusations of sexual assault and domestic violence against Alan Beatts, the owner of Borderland Books. Borderlands is one of my favorite bookstores in the world; Alan is literally one of the first people I met in the science fiction and fantasy community, and a friend. He’s been a huge supporter of me and my work, and conversely I’ve been a supporter of him and Borderlands. It’s the store I’ve held all my San Francisco events at, basically for as long as I’ve been doing events at all. I’ve supported Borderlands annually as a patron, and I lent the store money to purchase a new building, which it’s currently in the process of moving to.
It actually and genuinely hurt to read these accusations, which I believe. I wrote yesterday on Twitter that I was in shock about it, and I still am. This one stirs up emotions for me in a way I’m not prepared to publicly quantify or express. Suffice to say it hits close to home on a number of levels.
So, about the money I gave to Borderlands for its new store. It’s a loan, and as a loan the store’s LLC pays me back a little each year. I’ve gotten a couple of payments on that loan to date. This morning I estimated the sum of those payments to date and donated that sum to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). I’ll go into my financial records over the weekend to confirm amounts, and if necessary adjust the donation amount upward. At the moment I can’t hazard a guess as to what will happen with regard to the principal of the loan, or any future repayments. I can say that any amount of either that returns to me will immediately go out the door again, to RAINN or to other organizations helping survivors of sexual abuse.
I am inexpressibly sad about all of this, and for those who are hurting because of it.
That’s where I’m at right now.
Folks, I’m not in a good place to sit here and try to moderate a comment thread about this post, so the comments are closed on this one.
Also, if there are any journalists lurking about, I’m not planning to make any further comment about this at the moment.
I will say this. It’s easy to say “believe women” when it’s about someone you have no connection to. It’s another thing when it’s about someone you know and like. This fucking hurts.