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 theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, from which he was expelled, and was a central figure in the "Rabid Puppies" controversy involving theHugo Awards for science fiction. He is active in publishing, being a founding member of Castalia House.
Beale and Andrew Lunstad founded the video game company Fenris Wolf in 1993. The company was developing two games –Rebel Moon Revolution andTraveler for the Sega Dreamcast – when it closed in 1999 after a legal dispute with its retail publisherGT Interactive.[12] In 1999, under the name Eternal Warriors, Beale and Lunstad releasedThe War in Heaven, a Biblical video game published by Valusoft and distributed by GT Interactive.[13]
Beale created the WarMouse (known as theOpenOffice Mouse untilSun Microsystems objected on trademark grounds[14]), a computer mouse with 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, a thumb-operated joystick, and 512k of memory.[15]
Beale writes under thepseudonymVox Day – a near-homophone for the Latin phrase "Vox Dei", literally "the voice of God".[16] He first used the aliases as a contributor for the magazineComputer Gaming World throughout the first half of 1995.[17][18] He then appeared in a weekly video game review column in theSt. Paul Pioneer Press,[19] and later continued to use the pen name for a weeklyWorldNetDaily 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 titledThe Eternal Warriors. The novel investigates themes "about good versus evil among angels, fallen and otherwise".[20]
In 2017, Beale launched Infogalactic, an English-languagewiki encyclopedia.[30] The site was afork of the contents ofEnglish Wikipedia which could be gradually edited to remove the influence of what Beale described as "the left-wing thought police who administer [Wikipedia]".[6][31] It has been described byWired andThe Washington Post as a version of Wikipedia targeted to alt-right readers.[6][32]
In September 2018, Beale announced Comicsgate Comics as a "100%SJW-free" comic book publishing imprint. The use of this name drew backlash fromEthan Van Sciver and otherComicsgate activists, who variously objected to being associated withwhite supremacists or to the name being commercialized.[5] Beale later renamed the imprint to Arkhaven Comics.
Beale also runsYouTube channels which, according toThe Daily Dot, have jointly more than 49,500 subscribers.[7]
In 2013, Beale ran unsuccessfully againstSteven Gould to succeedJohn Scalzi as president of theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). African-American writerN. K. Jemisin, during her delivery of the Guest of Honour speech at 2013 Continuum in Australia, stated that 10% of the SFWA membership voted for Beale in his bid for the SFWA presidential position and called him "a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole" and asserted that silence about these issues was the same as enabling them.[33] Beale responded by calling Jemisin an "ignorant half-savage".[33] In the resulting interactions, Beale also called writer and editorTeresa Nielsen Hayden a "fat frog".[34]
Beale tweeted a link to his comments about Jemisin on the SFWA's official @SFWAAuthors Twitter feed. The SFWA Board subsequently voted unanimously to expel him from the organization.[34] In 2015,The Wall Street Journal described Beale as "the most despised man in science fiction".[35]
Based onLarry Correia's "Sad Puppies" ballot-manipulation campaign, Beale implemented aslate of candidates for the 2015Hugo Awards called "Rabid Puppies", instructing his followers to nominate the slate "precisely as they are."[36] The Rabid Puppies slate placed 58 of its 67 recommended nominees on the ballot. Two of the nominations were for Beale himself (Best Editor - Long Form,Best Editor - Short Form) and eleven were for works published by his publisher Castalia House,[37][38] where Beale acts as lead editor.[36] Two authors, an editor, and a fanzine subsequently withdrew their own nominations; three of these four explicitly cited the wish to dissociate themselves from Beale as being among their reasons for doing so.[39][40][41] Withdrawals from theBest Novel category allowed space forLiu Cixin'sThe Three-Body Problem to move into a finalist position,[42][43] and it went on to win theBest Novel Award.[44] Although the winning novel was one of the few nominees not on the Rabid Puppies slate, some sources credited the win to Beale's backing of the novel.[45]
Beale stated that his intentions behind the Rabid Puppies campaign were that he "wanted to leave a big smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were" and send "a giant Fuck You—one massive gesture of contempt." He also said that no matter how the Hugo administrators modify the nominating process to try to prevent manipulation, he will still have enough supporters to control future awards: "I have 390 sworn and numbered vile faceless minions who are sworn to mindless and perfect obedience."[46]
In 2016, Beale continued the Rabid Puppies campaign, posting a slate of finalists for the Hugo Award, including all finalists in the Best Short Story category.[47] Beale included himself on the slate of candidates, and was nominated in the category Best Editor, Long Form, theCastalia House Blog edited by Jeffro Johnson in the category Best Fanzine, and his own non-fiction releaseSJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, published by Castalia House, in the category Best Related Work.
Other Rabid Puppy recommendations that were Hugo Award finalists includedChuck Tingle's short storySpace Raptor Butt Invasion andHao Jingfang'sFolding Beijing, which won in the Best Novelette category.[48] All nominated works associated with Castalia House ranked below No Award.[49]
In 2019, Beale put together a campaign tocrowdfundRebel's Run, which was to be an "anti-woke" superhero movie.[51][52] The campaign exceeded its original goal and collected slightly over a million dollars in funding,[52] which was to be held in escrow while Beale worked to secure additional funds to make the movie. In 2022, however, Beale announced that he had put the funds in an investment with Ohana Capital Financial, which allegedly spent the funds on an unrelated business undertaking. Ohana owner James Wolfgramm has been indicted on charges of fraud.[53] By video, Beale told the subscribers "I wouldn't count on us getting the money back."[52]
The Hugo voters ranked "Opera" sixth out of five nominees, behind No Award.[54] In the 2015 Hugos, it was alleged that his nomination may have been the result of "block voting by special interest groups".[55] In all cases, his nominations have been ranked below "No Award" in the final vote.[56][57][49]
Beale has been supportive of the white supremacistFourteen Words slogan,[63] promoting it in hisSixteen points of the Alt-Right,[64][65] which placed the sentence "we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children" as the fourteenth point.[66]
The New Republic reported that Beale "has written that women should be deprived of the vote".[67] 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."[68]
Quotations related toVox Day at Wikiquote
Media related toVox Day at Wikimedia Commons