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.
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 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.