The Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance’s pick for Book of the Year is Larry Correia’s Son of the Black Sword (Saga of the Forgotten Warrior Book 1).
The CLFA press release identifies the author as an “action favorite and Sad Puppy extraordinaire.”
Second place went to Michael Sheldon for his debut novel The Violet Crow: A Bruno X Psychic Detective Mystery.
In third place is Jack July, for Amy Lynn: Golden Angel.
The winners and the nominees will receive an electronic badge with CLFA logo reflecting their respective achievements. First Place Winner also gets a framed certificate.
[Thanks to David Doering for the story.]
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Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance (CLFA), a Facebook community of authors, readers and reviewers who write and promote pro-freedom fiction
Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance (CLFA)
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Well, I’m glad that the Puppies decided to take the good advice to create their own award.
The last 2 years would have been a lot more pleasant for everyone if they’d done this at the beginning, instead of trying to hijack Worldcon’s awards.
Oh, I’m sure it won’t stop them from trying to wreck the Hugos as often as they can. Once you’ve pissed in a punch bowl and gotten noticed, the next punchbowl that comes around can’t be resisted.
Good to hear that there’s finally an award out there that eschews political considerations and just focuses on the story. Congrats to the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance for finally removing politics from our fiction!
a) The contradictions, they amuse:
b) Is it the least bit surprising that their mission statement is badly written?
I would wish them well, but their come-on uses “SJW” unironically, so I don’t. Plus, I don’t endorse prizing ideological litmus tests over good storytelling.
‘AsYouKnow’ Bob: The contradictions, they amuse
I found this juxtaposition absolutely hilarious:
In a truly free country, there is room for all of us!
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It’s like Tron Guy’s SF Awards For Everyone, In Which Only Those Who Belong To The “Web of Trust” Are Allowed To Participate.
You just can’t make this stuff up. 😀
Other than keeping people with liberal cooties out, I don’t see what this group offers that the Libertarian Futurist Society does not.
Aaron: Other than keeping people with liberal cooties out, I don’t see what this group offers that the Libertarian Futurist Society does not.
I have a feeling that the Prometheus Award administrators told them to Take A Hike.
jj agreed, but I think the usual fannish progression would have been something like:
agitation through conversation, fanzine posts, discussion at conventions
perhaps the forming of a loose alliance of authors and fans
proposal of special events, panels at worldcons – perhaps a proposal or two at the business meeting.
After a few years of pushing the agenda and not really getting anywhere, they’d decide to either pursue other things or do their own awards, own special interest conventions and, if there was a real need for what they wanted to represent, those things would grow steadily and eventually cross-pollination between “mainstrem” fandom and the special interest would occur. And probably at some point not shortly thereafter, people and things that they felt represented their viewpoints would win Hugo Awards that would necessarily include mainstream fannish support. Othere would notice and others would begin to particpate. The rough edges between the two groups would wear off and the special interest would no longer be special, it would be a respected aspect of the mainstream.
Some people have never learned to work at their passions be ause they are passionate, and others have never learned that they are not the sole center of attention. Neither of those types make good fans.
they’re looking for an award that they can offer in place of the Hugo when it is destroyed.
Between this and the dragon award, it looks like they are targeting either newly created awards, or those that they think they can control with voting games.
They’ll keep going, their pronouncements will always have some kind of dogwhistle and they’ll continue to be puzzled (and outraged) that everyone else continues to refer to the Hugos as SF’s most prestigious award.
also don’t be surprised when they complain that the same SJWs who told them to do their own award are now attacking them when they’ve done so.
You know, I think it’s great that the Sad Puppies and friends have decided to create their own award rather than hijack somebody else’s. But why this strident language? Can’t these people simply celebrate the books they love without insulting those they disagree with?
Cora Buhlert: Can’t these people simply celebrate the books they love without insulting those they disagree with?
That was the problem with the Jovian Awards last year, too. Instead of being about celebration of work they thought was good, they had to include inflammatory claims that the Worldcon voters who chose No Award — with very good, legitimate reason — were wrong to do so, and it was about contravening the decision of the Worldcon voters. 😐
Visit for the latest news of fiction for consumers ranging from religious conservatives to atheist libertarians and everyone in between – in short, everyone who wants less government control and less SJW authoritarianism, and who loves a good story!
A new politically correct award with a side dish of insults. Just what was missing from the world. *snort* 2016 could have been the year they chose good books with fun stories instead of message fiction but nope
Putting all of the Sad Puppy discourse aside…can anyone comment on the quality of the book itself?
I haven’t read it and ever since the entire chapter on Strawman FDR, let alone the past few years of everything he’s done, said and written, LC has gone beyond my threshold for “How bad could it possibly be?” or “This is an example of what not to do” reading material.
The only information I can get about the book are umpteen thousand 5-Star Reviews from superfans who are like, “This is the best thing ever!” and basically praise everything, or people on the other end of the spectrum that are like, “Typical Puppy crap” and nothing else. Both of which tell me nothing.
I have also read the main character is like Judge Dredd with less personality unless you believe LC’s description of him as, “George Washington meets The Punisher” .
So how bad/good is this book? Is it worth the cover price?
Eh, It’s a pretty basic sword and sorcery fantasy. The world’s full of evil demons, the society’s caste-based and really corrupt, with the untouchables getting the really short end of the stick, the main character’s the best swordsman/state executionor ever, and he’s imprisoned unjustly, so eventually joins The Rebellion. It’s not terrible, but it didn’t knock my socks off either.
I had never heard of this group, so I decided to look at their site. Despite their title, they’re a more or less standard Right Wing site with screes against Obama, Progressives in general and even Librarians for censoring conservative books. So no, this Award isn’t one I’ve got any interest in it.
And despite the use of Libertarian in their name, I see little if anything of that nature here.
Lano
I read it as someone who enjoys his Monster Hunter books. I didn’t like it. Felt like Conan the Blah-barian. The main protagonist is intentionally emotionally flat which is later explained in the plot, but for most of the book he’s a Mary Sue character that spends a lot of the book throwing himself a pity party which is the worse kind of Mary Sue character. There’s some interesting world building with things borrowed from Indian/Asian cultures but it felt like these like they were taken ala carte from different regions to make the book make sense rather than having a deep underlying structure in the world. Like there are castes similar to India only stripped of any religious or other context aside from ‘they were in power once, but were assholes so they got cast down, and now we’re in power and are assholes’. The main bad guy requires you to believe everyone else is too dumb to notice his political power plays. Water is bad because that’s where demons come from.
Mostly for me I was disappointed because I like the MH series because it’s corny and fun and he writes the action scenes well. Son of the Black Sword isn’t fun, is devoid of personality, and action scenes are written poorly. MH had a werewolf/Frankenstein fist fight that was meticulously detailed, while Black Sword has lots of ‘He spun in a circle with his sword and dropped six foes.’
Honestly I’m surprised about it winning an award focused from Conservative/Libertarians there’s not much about upholding ideals of either aside from the main character extremely reluctantly the savior for the lowest caste. Only thing I can think of is that the book has a main theme of society rejecting religion and making it illegal with the lowest caste fighting to bring religion back.
I felt more like the character was more “Conan the Barbarian meets Eeyore”.
As I’ve always said, a libertarian is just a neoconservative who wants more sex and drugs.
@Hampus Eckerman:
As an ex-libertarian who still has a number of libertarian friends, I’ll aver that pretty much all of them want more sex and drugs. But in US political terms, the neoconservative comparison is inapposite. (Cannot believe Chrome is flagging “inapposite” for spelling. Oh yes I can.) Neoconservatism’s highest principle is global US hegemony with militarism as a moral virtue. The vast majority of libertarians are doves. This is true even among the nativist, “paleo-libertarian” end of the movement, and especially so among the “cosmotarians” I have run with. Indeed, several of my buds work or worked for the Cato Institute’s foreign-policy team, which has spent decades opposing US interventions from Central America to the Middle East. The modern libertarian movement was born in the 1960s in reaction to the Vietnam War, a split in the Goldwaterite Young Americans for Freedom organization between a group who burned their draft cards (and went on to found the Libertarian Party) and those who supported the war.
Also, once you have “neoconservatives who want more drugs and sex” you kind of don’t have neoconservatives even leaving war aside. The first generation of US neoconservatives was driven not just by foreign policy but by a reaction to what it perceived as “excesses” in the civil rights movement and the “decadence” of the counterculture. They broadly accepted the welfare state but developed a racialized critique of crime, family breakdown and urban misgovernment. “Neoconservatism with more sex and drugs” just isn’t neoconservatism.
There are a hell of a lot of things to criticize libertarianism for, and I do plenty of that. But there’s very little of the libertarian perspective that isn’t in direct opposition to neoconservatism as such.
I consider libertarians liberals that don’t understand economics. They won’t personal freedom but don’t understand that interacts with imperfect simplistic economic systems.
Well, at least they’ve done away with gatekeepers who aren’t them.
AYKBob:
No, no, they got it right. It’s just the music that doesn’t insult you. The books and movies are new, but no guarantees.
I wish them the best of luck, but surely their award needs a snappy nickname. How about The Put-Upons?
@Zenu:
Yeah, while there are credentialed libertarian economists of varying degrees of moderation, there are an awful lot of “Econ 101” libertarians out there: folks who get the simplified version of macro and micro and never wonder what might be in Econ 201 let alone the graduate courses. “Theory of the Second-Best?” Not even a rumor.
And don’t get me started on contractarians who’ve plainly never dealt with actual existing contracts in the actual existing business world, or else never reflected on that experience. Or considered the implications for contractarianism of Coase’s theory of firm-formation. And – well, I should stop.
I remember showing a contractarian a “Covenants and Restrictions” from a subdivision built back in the ’20s, and them being completely shocked. Especially when I pointed out that the only way to buy a property in that development was to sign on to those C&Rs, even after all the original owners and the builder were long dead and gone. Fortunately, the government has disallowed some of the clauses….
Can’t these people simply celebrate the books they love without insulting those they disagree with?
I don’t think so. Not only does insulting everyone not in their tiny clique serve to signal their virtue to one another, it also seems to enhance their enjoyment of a book or movie.
I kinda love that their mission statement never defines “SJW”.
More people unpack that Three-Letter-Acronym as “Single Jewish Woman” than as “Social Justice Warrior”;
…and of those who DO think of it as “Social Justice Warrior”, maybe one-quarter are using it unironically, maybe half are using it with irony – and only a minority are using it as an in-group signal to other people who ALSO think that “fighting for social justice” is a bad thing.