50 Ways To Leave Your Rover 6/20

aka “I love the smell of puppy in the morning.”

In today’s roundup, Ed Fortune, David Gerrold, T.C. McCarthy, Daniel Haight, Natalie Luhrs, John C. Wright, Morgan Locke, Mick, Carl Henderson, Vox Day, Tom Knighton, Rolf Nelson, Kevin Standlee, Melina D, Lis Carey, Kurt Busiek, Fred Kiesche, Brad Johnson, and mysterious others. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day John King Tarpinian and Hampus Eckerman.)

Ed Fortune on Starburst

“Book Boycott Backfires” – June 20

An attempted boycott of publisher Tor Books by right-wing online activists has spectacularly backfired as booklovers across the world have responded by purchasing books from Tor to show their support. The activists in question are known as the Sad Puppies, or simply ‘The Puppies’. They recently gained notoriety by block voting in the recent Hugo Award nominations. The demands are in response to recent statements made by editors and authors who are associated with Tor in some way. Military sci-fi author Peter Grant issued a list of demands on behalf of The Puppies in a private letter that he then posted on his blog. The demands are:

Tor must publicly apologize for writings by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Moshe Feder, Irene Gallo, and John Scalzi that “demonize, denigrate, slander and lie about the ‘Puppies’ campaigns”

Tor must “publicly reprimand those individuals for stepping over the line”

Tor must “publicly indicate that it is putting in place policies to prevent any recurrence of such issues.” Despite original Sad Puppy campaigner Larry Correia stating on his blog “The Sad Puppies Campaign is NOT calling for any boycotts, the letter was later endorsed by prominent members of The Puppies, including Theodor Beale (aka Vox Day) and John C. Wright. The Puppies now seem mostly leaderless, operating in a way similar to other online activists such as Gamer Gate and Anonymous have done in the past.

The response from the greater community has mostly been mockery, and to do their best to support authors by purchasing books from Tor

 

David Gerrold on Facebook – June 20

With the various escalations over perceived hurts, it seems that this is no longer about the Hugos — it looks more like an attempt to ignite a full-scale culture war within the genre.

Certainly, there is a lot of polarization evident in the various blogs and comment threads. But while the online discussions seem to present a picture of equal sides, I think that’s an illusion. It may turn out that the larger body of fandom will not be stampeded by the few who have become addicted to outrage.

Some of the most offensive posts — some of which are being widely circulated — will only serve to further marginalize not only the authors of those posts, but also those who are seen as comrades.

 

 

Daniel Haight on Flotilla Online

“Too Soon? How Should Sci-Fi Authors Deal with Tragedy?” – June 20

I felt compelled to speak up when another author linked to the above post made by the sci-fi author Michael Z. Williamson.  I found that Mr. Williamson’s Facebook is public and I was able to confirm that he did say what he said and that it’s still visible (as of today, 6/20 @ 10:05PDT)

I immediately felt a number of conflicting emotions: shock and revulsion at the tactless joke that was made. Sadness that we have become so inured to senseless violence that people are rushing to be the first one to find a way to joke about it. Confusion at whether I had a right to say anything, knowing I’ve made a few dark jokes from time to time. Uncertainty about whether it was my business to speak up.

And yet … a joke like that … made the same day the Charleston shooting occurred.  I can’t keep my mouth shut about that.  Innocent people died.  Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters … hundreds of lives ripped apart by a senseless act of violence.  That’s not hyperbole, those people’s lives are inexorably altered and potentially ruined. You … you can joke about that?

I can’t.

 

Natalie Luhrs on Pretty Terrible

“Documenting a Wannabe Supervillain” – June 20

I don’t care if you think they’re jokes. And I know full well what kind of context they’re coming from, when your Twitter feed is full of you taunting people who are grieving and angry over an act of terrorism perpetrated against their community and you have pictures of yourself with guns and your Facebook profile pic is pro-waterboarding. I know exactly what kind of asshole you are and you can’t slither out of responsibility for your words because you think they’re jokes. You are a hateful, vile, and pathetic human being, Michael Z. Williamson.

And Williamson’s Hugo-nominated work, “Wisdom from My Internet” is execrable. It should never have made it to the ballot–and it wouldn’t have, if the Puppies hadn’t gamed the system with coordinated slates.

 

John C. Wright

“Moshe Feder Speaks for Himself” – June 20

He has decided publicly to rebuff those customers Mr Feder calls our customers unhappy with the recent unprofessional antics at Tor Books by the charming epithet “idiots”:

As you may have heard, certain scoundrels have declared a boycott of Tor, starting today, to protest the efforts of some Tor employees to defend the Hugo Awards from attack. In response, some of our friends have declared today “Buy A Tor Book Day.”

I wouldn’t have the temerity to ask you to buy a book just because some idiots have declared war on us. But if there _is_ a Tor Book you’ve been meaning to get anyway, buying it today would be a a gesture I’d appreciate.

[As always here on Facebook, I’m speaking for myself and not the company.]

Ah… Well, thank you for your help mollifying our customers, Mr Feder. I am sure that being told they are idiots will make them eager to spend their hard earned book-buying dollars the product you and I are working together to produce for them….

Since I have a conflict of interest, I must remain neutral. Loyalty to my publisher demands I not take sides. Loyalty to my beloved customers demands I not take sides.

Mr Feder has taken sides. Loyalty to his political correctness outweighs, for him, loyalty to publisher. And he just called you, my dear readers and customers, idiots and scoundrels.

This has nothing to do with the Sad Puppies. We are only here for the Hugo Awards.

This particular fight is between, on the one hand, those at Tor Books who think political correctness outweighs all professional and personal loyalties, all standards of decency, all need to be truthful, and who damn their own customers; and, on the other, those who are thankful to the customers and who think the purpose of a business is business.

One side consists of those calling for the resignations that any professional worthy of the name would long ago have proffered for the damage they have done to the company name and public goodwill.

The other side consists of people at Tor who regard Tor as an instrument of social engineering, an arm of the Democrat Party’s press department, or a weapon in the war for social justice.

Without expressing any personal opinion, I can say that there is an easy compromise which our free and robust capitalistic system allows: we can all wish the best to Miss Gallo and Mr Feder when they day comes when they decide to take their interests and obsessions elsewhere, and leave the company in the hands of those of us who merely want to write, publish, and read science fiction told from any and every point of view, political or otherwise, provided the story is well crafted.

 

 

Mick on Mick On Everything

“I Support The Tor Boycott” – June 20

There is plenty of evidence that they’ve been lying to you internally, if in fact they are telling you that those of use who’ve been e-mailing the company are bots as has been rumored.

There is plenty of evidence that they won’t stop, and even though they are now careful to state they don’t speak for Tor, without their positions they wouldn’t have nearly the platform or audience they do. These people are trading on the status the company gave them to trash the customer base, and the authors who actually produce the work.

The originator of the Sad Puppies movement, the International Lord of Hate Larry Correia, has come out and said he does not endorse the boycott. I reiterate – I do. Those of us on the Puppy side have taken enough abuse from the other side, and it’s time we hit them in the wallet.

If someone starts a fight and you don’t fight back, you lose. They started it years ago. Now is time to fight back.

 

Carl Henderson on Offend Everyone

“In Which I Speak of Sad Puppies.” – June 20

I’m a supporter of free speech—which ideally extends beyond the 1st Amendment protections against Government interference or suppression of speech. We as a society and individuals need to cultivate tolerance for opinions we disagree with.

Ms Gallo should not be fired. While her original Facebook remarks were mean-spirited and showed contempt for Tor readers and Tor authors, employers should not purge employees for having unpopular views. They may have a legal right to (depending on state laws and contracts), but they should not because: 1) the organization becomes captive to the loudest and most easily offended of their stakeholders, and 2) free speech is an objective good that writers and publishers should support, even when that speech is unpopular, or even considered hateful.

I think that calls for Tor to fire Gallo to be are wrong. Her remarks on Facebook were hateful and intolerant. But contributing to the culture of demanding punishment whenever anyone says anything offensive is counter to the Sad Puppy goal of more intellectual/political diversity in SF and Fantasy (as well the main goal supporting the primacy of good story over message). If you like a book/writer published by Tor, buy it. If you don’t, don’t buy it. In the long run, the free market will prevail and Tor (like any other company that doesn’t get the government to bail it out) will either change or die.

The justifications I hear from some people involved in Sad Puppies for supporting a Tor boycott or a campaign to have Gallo fired, generally run along these lines of “our opponents use these tactics, so we have to as well”. (I’m oversimplifying. Duh.)

But there’s an important point that those Puppies are missing. People like Gallo are good for your side. The louder and more extreme your opponents get, the better you look. And the better you look, the more support you gain.

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Mr. Feder fans the flames” – June 20

It’s worth pointing out that we are not at war with Tor Books. We are merely asking Macmillan to save Tor Books from the observably self-destructive and unprofessional leadership of three of its senior employees, who have abused Tor’s authors and attacked Tor’s customers.

 

Tom Knighton

“Thoughts on the TOR boycott” – June 20

Tor, for some silly reason, is one of many traditional publishers that look at ebooks as a novelty and has them priced in a way to encourage you to buy the print book instead.  I hate that.  There are books I want to read, but I’m not spending more than $10 for a brand new ebook, and I expect that price to drop as time goes on.  Tor’s starting point, so to speak, is so much higher than I want to spend that I don’t really see me buying much of anything anyways.

Honestly, I can’t really boycott someone I don’t buy from in the first place.  I may have yet another reason to not buy Tor books, but it’s not like they’ll notice my lack of spending on their books.  Now, that’s not true for a lot of my Sad Puppy brethren, but it is for me.

Some are screaming that it’s not fair to try and “destroy” someone’s livelihood over comments they made a month earlier on their personal Facebook page.  I’ll buy that when the Left quits trying to destroy the livelihood of everyone who says something they disagree with.

I don’t want Irene Gallo fired necessarily.  I haven’t called for anyone from Tor to be fired.  The only person whose job I called for was the twit who wrote the Entertainment Weekly article, and that wasn’t because of her personal views, it was because she is an embarrassment to journalism.  It’s as simple as that.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a few people from Tor I’d love to see hunting for a job.  There are.  I hear those people get fired, and it’s party central at the Knighton household.  They’ve insulted me and my friends so many times that I really don’t care about how they’ll manage in today’s job market.

 

Wheels Within Wheels

“Boycott in progress” – June 20

I won’t be acquiring any more, though. Tor gives every impression of having a corporate culture that despises anyone who isn’t wholly on board with the left-wing causes of the day, and is more than willing to demonize them. As that applies to me, since they despise me, I’ll not force them to associate with me any longer.

 

Rolf Nelson

“Tor Boycott” – June 19

Gee, I can just feel the love from here. Details at Vox’s blog, Peter Grant’s place, Hoyt’s, and many other places in the SF/F blog-o-sphere. So, if you like SF, keep reading, but but use the library. If you think you just must buy your favorite Tor author, buy used and hit their tip-jar. Or, check out competing publishers like Baen or Castalia House, which don’t treat their authors and fan base like crap.

 

 

Kevin Standlee on Fandom Is My Way Of Life

“E Pluribus Hugo Submitted” – June 20

As presiding officer, I obviously won’t take a stance on the proposal; however, its very complexity requires me to be concerned about how to handle it technically at the Business Meeting. It will probably depend on how much more business gets submitted. It’s proposals like this that lead me to planning for WSFS to hold a Sunday (final day) business meeting for the first time since 1992.

 

 

Melina D on Subversive Reader

“Hugos 2015 Mini Review: The Lego Movie” – June 21

I was watching along enjoying it, but thinking that there wasn’t really anything deeper to the movie, and then it turns around and hits me in the feels.The ‘twist’ at the end was unexpected and definitely added another element to the movie, but it also raises some questions (for me anyway) about the purpose of adult collectors of toys. I come from a family of these (my grandparents actually ran a toy museum when I was a kid) so maybe I think about these things when others don’t, but should toys be played with or preserved?

 

Melina D on Subversive Reader

“Hugos 2015 Reading: Related Works” – June 20 So, the best of this category was better than I expected, but the worst was much worse than expected. I will use No Award in this category, because I don’t think any of the writing was polished or completely engaging enough to win an award as prestigious as the Hugo. However, I’ll list The Hot Equations next, as it was a mostly cohesive piece of writing which showed clear links to SF fiction.

This is where the slate is once again doing themselves a disservice, because it’s possible in another year The Hot Equations might have been in their amongst the top pieces. It’s the kind of thing I was expecting/hoping to find in the nominations – work on topics which aren’t usually my cup of tea (milSF and thermodynamics) which are good enough to engage me and make me think. But because there’s nothing to compare it with, I have to judge it on its own – create my own criteria – which leaves a possibility that I’m being harder on it than it deserves. And there’s such a lot of energy spent on promoting the really bad writing which could be spent on promoting and polishing and presenting more work like this.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Abyss & Apex: Hugo-Nominated Magazine of Speculative Fiction” – June 20

Abyss & Apex is a 2015 Hugo nominee for Best Semiprozine. It’s a web-based zine publishing a mix of poetry and fiction. I was very pleased to see that they have organized and accessible archives that made it easy to look at their issues from 2014. i.e., the relevant ones for this year’s Hugos. Overall, the quality looks high, and the presentation is good. My one objection is that the body text font doesn’t seem to be completely consistent across the site, and for me, that makes it a smidge less reasonable. In total, though, I’m favorably impressed.

 

 

 

 

603 thoughts on “50 Ways To Leave Your Rover 6/20

  1. Similar to what Nick Mamatas said above, I signed three Tor contracts, and there was nothing like that in mine, either.

    Also nothing like that in contracts I signed with various other publishers.

    The most restrictive clauses I’ve ever signed were confidentiality clauses (and clauses that arose out of that confidentiality issue) in a couple of work-for-hire contracts. Those outlined a bunch of things I was contractually prohibited from talking about in public, and they were understandable in the context of the assignment. (Ex. I couldn’t discuss what info or suggestions I’d been given, specific details of the working process, brainstorming discussions or notes for the project, plans for the media property that had been revealed to me, etc.)

    I did sign some weird clauses when I wrote for Harlequin at the start of my career, but those contracts ceased being in effect years ago (all rights reverted to me), and I didn’t keep them (I just keep the reversion paperwork after a contract is terminated), so I can’t quote those. A number of those clauses ceased being included in Hq contracts more than a decade ago, anyhow. (Though knowing Hq, they probably have -other- weird things in their contracts now.)

    There are also non-disclosure clauses (Amazons publishing programs use these), but these prohibit the author from discussing the specific of the contract, nothing more.

    As Nick has said a number of times, we’re freelance contractors and publishers don’t attempt to control our behavior. They may utterly deplore our behavior and decide they don’t want to work with us anymore because of our behavior, but they don’t control it, and it’s extremely unusual that they have any -contractual- means for controlling it (out the parameters of confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses which apply in certain cases, and which govern only what a writer can say about very specific matters pertaining to their mutual business).

  2. > “So for those who’ve read on – does [Matthew Swift] change? Do we get a firmer impression of him as a person, or is it still going to be about his powers and fighting the forces of evil?”

    The reader gets to know more of what makes him tick to some extent, but possibly not enough for your tastes; in later books he becomes something of an observer figure, participating in events (often reluctantly) in reaction to the more dramatic personalities around him.

    HOWEVER if that is your objection and you liked other aspects of the book, I would encourage you to check out Kate Griffin’s Magicals Anonymous series (also set in London in the fictional universe as the Matthew Swift books, he’s a minor character in them) that starts with “Stray Souls”. The main character of that series, Sharon Li, is chock-full of personality in life. It is also written in a breezier, more humorous style.

  3. Hey folks who claim I’m “slamming” Scalzi – I’ve said before he’s a very good writer and I enjoy his blog, and I just a little while ago said he’s a great guy with a self-deprecating sense of humor who had no bad intentions. What I did assert was that he was one of the trendsetters of The Bacon Age and helped inaugurate the current Guild of Author-Pimpers. That question of whether it is “seemly” – or healthy for the Hugos – to pimp yourself for an award given to you by fans when you have a million eyeballs and your colleagues mostly don’t is utterly distinct from the question of whether it is good to be a successful self-promoter, which it obviously is. I’m perennially amazed how you guys manage to read things I didn’t say.

    Matt Y,

    And yet for all the clout you give him for his influence, I see it wasn’t nominated though it got 16 whole votes. That sekrit cabal influence.

    Interesting. That’s already half as many as one of the Sad Puppies 2 short stories got. Matt Y, you could have written “When The Yogurt Took Over,” put it on your blog, and announced you’d like to see it considered for Best Short Story. Who else could have got even 16 votes for as awful a pun as “our society has curdled”? (ps. I love that story!)

    Peter Watts won that year and on his site writes ‘won a Hugo (pos­si­bly due to fan out­rage over an al­ter­ca­tion with US bor­der guards in 2009)’.

    Heh. I noticed how well, ahem, Peter Watts’ comments on Gallogate went over around these parts. He got lots of sympathy for that border incident, including from me, and by the way The Things is a fantastic story and you should all read it immediately, yet I’m not sure how much his blog is helping him win awards in the grand scheme of things.

  4. I don’t see why authors engaging in self-promotion should justify a small clique of writers and their supporters voting in lockstep in order to exclude everyone else from the nomination pool and with the intention of annoying the fellow members of their community.

    It’s also interesting that Scalzi’s one post a year is a symptom of all that is wrong and corrupt with the industry, but publishers spending money on promoting authors or hosting parties and events etc. can pass without comment.

  5. rob_matic, I’m underlining the link between the practice of annual Award Pimpage and Correia’s now-abandoned tradition of Sad Puppies 1 and 2, not Brad Torgersen’s Sad Puppies 3 “slate of 4 or 5 things”. I’m really the only one that sees a connection?

    Did someone say it is a symptom of a corrupt industry? I said there is a clear disparity between Scalzi or say GRRM or Steven King or god forbid JK Rowling doing it and a lesser mortal doing it. Are you reading the same comments I am?

  6. @Brian Z:

    I’m underlining the link between the practice of annual Award Pimpage and Correia’s now-abandoned tradition of Sad Puppies 1 and 2, not Brad Torgersen’s Sad Puppies 3 “slate of 4 or 5 things”. I’m really the only one that sees a connection?

    Links often have underlines, it’s a way to spot them. Generally when making an argument it is helpful to give links and connections a point and a context rather than just stylistic markers.

  7. Scalzi’s nomination as fan writer WAS unpopular and controversial at the time, although apparently not as unpopular as Dave Langford winning the award until the heat death of the universe*. I certainly don’t object to pro-writers being nominated for their fan writing**. I’m not keen on pro-writers noting that they are eligible for fan categories, but then I’m not keen on award eligibility posts in the first place. My preferred method would be an enthusiastic endorsement of other people for an award, and, when inevitably asked, a discreet link to the author’s coincidentally updated bibliography at most.

    People said that this is just self promotion, and after all what’s the difference between “Buy my book, it’s nifty,” and “My story is the best of the year and if you agree nominate it for an award”, and what’s the worst that could happen? Well the worst has happened and it’s two puppy slates.

    * It appears that 56 of the 474 ballots places No Award ahead of Scalzi, so there wasn’t a
    ** Langford has, of course, published professionally.

  8. Scalzi’s and anyone else’s posts noting their award eligible work have nothing to do with this mean spirited vicious attack on WSFS and fandom.

    Also, Brian has lost the last of my good will.

  9. Brian Z on June 22, 2015 at 4:35 am said:
    rob_matic, I’m underlining the link between the practice of annual Award Pimpage and Correia’s now-abandoned tradition of Sad Puppies 1 and 2, not Brad Torgersen’s Sad Puppies 3 “slate of 4 or 5 things”. I’m really the only one that sees a connection?

    So we’re agreed, there’s no justification for SP3 to be found in talking about Scalzi.

    Did someone say it is a symptom of a corrupt industry? I said there is a clear disparity between Scalzi or say GRRM or Steven King or god forbid JK Rowling doing it and a lesser mortal doing it. Are you reading the same comments I am?

    Popular writers have more exposure than unpopular ones. Big publishers have more marketing resources than small presses. There are disparities all over the industry. Why is it only an issue with Scalzi?

  10. Also, Brian has lost the last of my good will.

    He has his quota of apawlogetics to work through, but he doesn’t advocate beating people with bats.

    Come on, anyone who can propose to award the best Saga once every 17 years deserves some good will.

  11. ULTRAGOTHA Scalzi’s and anyone else’s posts noting their award eligible work have nothing to do with this mean spirited vicious attack on WSFS and fandom.

    They’re not the reason for this. But when authors began to note their eligibility fans enthusiastically accepted these as part of normal self promotion. That’s why Correia and the Puppies thought that it might work; a bit of moaning and then the new status quo. As it turns out most fans have said that this is a step, or rather half a dozen steps, too far.

  12. influxus on June 22, 2015 at 5:33 am said:

    Also, Brian has lost the last of my good will.

    He has his quota of apawlogetics to work through, but he doesn’t advocate beating people with bats.

    Come on, anyone who can propose to award the best Saga once every 17 years deserves some good will.

    Brian Z has received a lot of goodwill since he first showed up.

    I am (still) inclined to extend him a little more since when he is not doing the passive-aggressive thing he has made some good points and written some amusing filk.

    But it is worth noting that he has worn out the patience of a significant number of interesting, thoughtful, and generous posters.

  13. My preferred method would be an enthusiastic endorsement of other people for an award, and, when inevitably asked, a discreet link to the author’s coincidentally updated bibliography at most.

    Hear, hear. But perhaps hard to turn back at this late date, unless the Puppies serve as a shock to the system.

  14. Why is it only an issue with Scalzi?

    Again, who said that? I said he certainly set the template with his purple-prosed pimpage over the past decade. He certainly has dialed it back, and he has also gone to great lengths to lend his megaphone to other authors and promote their work too. I said he is one of the good ones, for cryin’ out loud.

  15. Oh, the puppies have already prompted an appropriate response in the proposals being made to reduce the effectiveness of slates. Authors noting their award-eligible works isn’t the problem, really.

  16. Though to be sure, if we are truly going to express our unmitigated happiness over our favorite authors’ “endorsement of other people” for awards, let’s take special care to extend a similar good will to Kate Paulk next year.

  17. Authors noting their award-eligible works isn’t the problem, really.

    No, not for them, and perhaps not for us if we are fans of them. But how about for authors who aren’t in the same ballpark in terms of page ranks? Do they just miss out if they are not captivating bloggers? And if so, can we really blame the Mad Geniuses for giving it the old college try?

  18. Brian Z: Though to be sure, if we are truly going to express our unmitigated happiness over our favorite authors’ “endorsement of other people” for awards, let’s take special care to extend a similar good will to Kate Paulk next year.

    Feel free to express whatever you want to her. But refrain from making more of your “let’s do this” and “let’s agree that” statements, and stick with speaking for yourself.

    I personally have observed nothing but ill intent and action from her thus far, and will not be extending her anything unless and until she demonstrates, in my opinion, that she has earned it.

    Everybody starts out with the benefit of the doubt with me. It’s theirs to retain, or to lose. Most of the Puppies have not just lost it, it’s so far down the road that they are going to have to do a great deal of demonstrating good faith and intent to earn any of it back. Some of them have serious apologies to make to get there — and I’m well aware that that is not going to happen.

    So far, they — including Kate Paulk — have just been digging the hole deeper.

  19. @Brian

    My extension of good will ends at the point that an author participates in, and supports, a slate that operates in the way that SP did.

    Funny that.

  20. Brian Z, yesterday I noted how prolific Sarah Hoyt is at blogging and she definitely has a following, but… as I also said you still have to write stories that are award-worthy. If Hoyt does, and wins an award, her blogging wouldn’t be the reason for it. As I also noted yesterday, lots of SF&F authors have popular blogs and a following. Some don’t. But the lack of a popular blog didn’t keep The Three Body Problem from being nominated, despite not being on a slate.

    The puppies’ slatening of the Hugos isn’t just an old college try, it’s taking unfair advantage of the fact that a relative few can use targeted slates to dominate the nominations. Larry Corriea has a popular blog and Brad Torgersen certainly isn’t shy about speaking up online either, and Beale’s infamy isn’t because he’s been starved for attention on the intarwebs. So holding up Scalzi as somehow being a problem comes off as smelling like a red herring to me.

  21. influxus at 5:33 am:

    He has his quota of apawlogetics to work through, but he doesn’t advocate beating people with bats.

    Come on, anyone who can propose to award the best Saga once every 17 years deserves some good will.

    Thanks influxus, I appreciate that, but it’s really fine. Just let them do their worst.

  22. Larry Corriea has a popular blog

    Absolutely, his award pimpage campaigns of the previous couple years were very successful. But I gather he has seen the violence inherent in the system.

  23. Brian Z, it’s the slates that have been effective at gaming the system, not blogging.

  24. Kate “point at them and quack like a duck” Paulk may endorse who she pleases and I will give her endorsements the same considered weight I give to anyone who endorses anyone.

  25. That’s already half as many as one of the Sad Puppies 2 short stories got.

    He didn’t slate anything initially for the short story category for SP2. Looks like Torgersen turned up the heat with promoting SP3 and looking at his comments after SP2 maybe we can see why Correia failed and what he might’ve done to succeed with more nominations:

    ‘Larry Correia’s sin being: he was honest about what he was doing.’

    Well at least he wouldn’t make that mistake.

    And again there’s a significant difference between an author putting up what they have eligible for consideration and a slate where people are asked to vote on to make dem liberals angry no matter how you play mental twister to conflate the two.

  26. And again there’s a significant difference between an author putting up what they have eligible for consideration and a slate where people are asked to vote on to make dem liberals angry no matter how you play mental twister to conflate the two.

    Well, one of them is wrong because… Scalzi!

  27. I can kind of see the logic that if you hated all eligibility posts then the Puppy slates might seem just more of the same badness… What I don’t get is then being terribly generous to the slates and not so to people who post eligibility posts. Ordinary writers do not get nominated just because they have an eligibility post; they have to be damn good writers. Slate works got nominated even though some of them were bad. The difference is obvious.

    Editing a post as a mean-spirited jab at someone else (especially without clear markings – no PS is not a good enough indicator, you want EDIT or ETA) is not cool.

    @Brian Z

    Please, please stop talking about the angry posts more than the calm ones. Its likely to make people extending goodwill feel ignored, and to the people it aren’t its basically blood in the water. Its just not sensible. Its natural! But not sensible. I’ll repeat the advice Jeffro got once: You don’t have to reply to people being aggressive or bringing in subjects you don’t want to discuss.

  28. Brian Z, I wrote a comment directed at you upthread, and FWIW, sorry for posting at you during a dogpile. I was genuinely interested in understanding your opinion further.

  29. I find eligibilty posts distasteful. “Here, this is my book, I think it’s good, maybe you should buy it,” is self-promotion. “Hey, did you know my book is eligible for best of the year, and you could vote for it. Not that I’m saying it’s the best. WINK WINK,” makes me think, hey let me make up my own mind what’s best.

    I think slates break the process. If I think J Random Author is not a good judge of their own work, I definitely am not in favour of Brad Torgersen’s mate’s slate, or Vox Day’s my-publishing-house-and-the-odd-screw-you slate dominating the nomination list.

  30. @neil
    I am not irked by eligibility posts (and have done them myself) because the weirdness of publishing cycles and the length of a year makes me wonder–okay, was Karen Memory a 2014 or a 2015 book? When did Mieneke Van der Salm do that blogpost I thought was excellent? Et cetera.

    Having an author or eligible nominee lay it out on their blog for all to see helps me remember and choose and nominate.

  31. I’m with Paul on this one. If I’m even bothering to read an author’s blog, I’m at least interested in what they’ve written, and I don’t feel as if I’m being spammed if they list their award-eligible work as it’s my choice to be there. If anything, I think it’s insulting to intelligent readers to suggest they’re swayed by such things.

  32. Eh, I consider it a slightly bad habit I’d prefer not to see. I don’t get excited about it. The slates are worse, both for being many times more arrogant and for other reasons.

  33. @ Brian Z on June 22, 2015 at 12:36 pm

    Oh no need – I didn’t mean to demand an answer! It was very much in the flow of the conversation. I just feel like a lot of the grief over the last few months has been down to the unintentional hostility that is born out the format of online conversations: I mean, people can participate in dog-piling, sea lioning and pile-ons without intending to do so and often without realising that they have done so. I didn’t want you to think that everyone here was deliberately ganging up on you.

  34. Since I have attempted to nominate ineligible works, I don’t see a problem with authors blogging a list of their eligible work, especially if they entitle the blog post appropriately. For example, I sometimes read Scalzi’s blog, but I usually skip the ones that are clearly self-promotion, like the recent ones announcing the availability of his latest works. If I haven’t read anything by him, or didn’t care for the ones I read, I would certainly skip a blog post entitled “My 2014 award eligible works”.

    I also think there’s a difference between the blog posts I’ve seen that were “My award recommendations”, where the blogger listed some number of works with a short synopsis of the work and why they liked it, vs. the slates listing 4-5 works in each category with absolutely no commentary about the selections. The recommendations seem like there’s more of an attempt to engage the blog reader to seek out the work and check it for themselves.

  35. Pluvian,

    You asked me to go back and respond to something – I think it must be this.

    I’ve got faith. Specifically, I’ve got faith in the thousands and thousands of new Hugo nominators.
    If we don’t (collectively) screw up.

    If I’ve read you correctly here Brian, you’re saying that the Hugos have gone to mediocre works in past years when great works, like Gene Wolfe’s, have been overlooked. You believe that the influx of puppy voters will help the Hugos return to being an award for great works.
    Can you explain that a little further for me? What evidence do you see in the Puppy slate, or in Puppy opinions about books, that suggests they would support great SF?

    1. Who said the thousands and thousands of new voters are all puppies? All of them regardless of species, breed or specific melancholic/infectious state are going to weigh in.
    2. I don’t generally share VD’s tastes but I noticed he put The Three Body Problem at the top of his ballot. It is also at the top of my ballot. So there is that.
    3. Don’t forget there are at least a couple things either on the puppylists, or previously on until withdrawn, that are widely recognized as being pretty good.
    4. I don’t think Skin Game or “One Bright Start to Guide Them” (etc) are the best the field has to offer, but not everybody finds all of them completely unreadable either, and your characterization of “puppies” who just want adventure stories and would only vote for something literary sight unseen when they are told to is not entirely fair to all of the real people with individual tastes and interests who sympathize with those camps.
    5. I see “puppies” engaged in reading new sff and talking about it, which is, you know, serendipitous.

  36. Brian Z:

    1. New voters are probably people who are pissed off at the puppies trying to destroy the Hugos.
    3. Keyword is withdrawn. People that are good writers don’t need block voting and are insulted by it.
    4. Awards shouldn’t go to works that just manages to be above “completely unreadable”.
    5. You do? I see puppies appearing sprouting talking points, screaming about SJWs and trying to stop all proposed rule changes that could stop block voting.

  37. Brian Z:

    I don’t generally share VD’s tastes but I noticed he put The Three Body Problem at the top of his ballot. It is also at the top of my ballot. So there is that.

    That is a blatant lie. I can’t believe how dishonest you can be. Just lie after lie that spews forth.

    No, Beale hadn’t got Three Body Problem at his ballot at all. His ballot was:

    Monster Hunter Nemesis by Larry Correia, Baen Books
    The Chaplain’s War by Brad Torgersen, Baen Books
    Skin Game by Jim Butcher, ROC
    Lines of Departure, by Marko Kloos, self-published
    The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson, Tor Books

    He actually almost managed to keep Three Body Problem out of the contest with his block voting. The only reason it is on the ballot is all is because Kloos was disgusted with Beales slating.

    Brian, you haven’t got a honest bone in you. Your behaviour is disgusting.

  38. @Hampus

    I think Brian is referring to the voting ballot Beale said he was using on his website recently (which did put TBP as the top slot), not the nominating ballot.

  39. Meredith:

    When Beale published a list of his favourite SFF it mapped very well with mine. Problem is that it is not that kind of works he decided to put on his slate. Mostly the opposite.

    And the problem is the block voting during nominations. That a small number of dishonest persons can block out good works such as Three Body Problem, relying on honest people who react in disgust and decline their nominations.

    That Beale then says he would have voted on a work he actively tried to keep away from the ballot just highlights the problem. And Brian is extremely dishonest who ignores this. That Beale isn’t even registered for voting says it all. He has publicly stated that he wants to destroy the Hugos. And dishonest Brian just ignores this.

    Dishonesty and lies. Brians way of debating.

  40. @Hampus

    I think ignoring that Beale would have kept TBP off the ballot is bad, and is part of a pattern of being overly generous to Puppies, but it doesn’t make it lies to say that Beale is voting for it (assuming Beale is voting at all – he may have hidden his name on the website, although I don’t know why he would).

  41. Hampus Eckerman: I think I’m getting a bit pissed off.

    I’m right there with you. It’s appalling how much time a whole lot of people have had to spend refuting Brian Z’s lies over the last 3 months — time that could have been spent on joyful discussion of books and Worldcon and other SFFnal things.

    As far as I’m concerned, what he’s been doing is engaging in a malicious assault on the SFF community.

  42. @Hampus

    I should probably admit I have a specific hangup about people being accused of lying. It freaks me out (I was kicked out of college when my physical symptoms first ballooned and I didn’t have a diagnosis yet because these things take time – I was accused of lying to get attention), and unless its definitely true (Beale, for example, is definitely a dishonest person) it just… Makes me very uncomfortable, even aimed at someone else. Aimed at me I usually have to go rock in a corner for a bit (and it has been once today so I’m a bit sensitive tonight), but aimed at someone else its still not nice for me. I’d just rather people were more cautious about throwing it around, but I do get that you’re frustrated and angry.

  43. Meredith: I should probably admit I have a specific hangup about people being accused of lying. It freaks me out… and unless its definitely true… it just… Makes me very uncomfortable, even aimed at someone else… I’d just rather people were more cautious about throwing it around, but I do get that you’re frustrated and angry.

    Wow, I’m really sorry to hear that, Meredith. It’s bad enough when a malicious person wrongly accuses you of lying, but when someone who is supposed to be helping you treats you that way… it’s a whole level of gaslighting worse.

    However, I don’t think there’s any dispute that Brian Z has repeatedly engaged in lying here on File770 and over at Making Light. Many, many people have made post after post after post refuting his lies — and he never apologizes or makes a retraction, he just skates around the subject, engages in attempts at misdirection, and lies about something else.

    I hope you will save your sympathy and compassion for the people who wrongly get accused of lying. Brian Z is not one of them.

  44. Meredith:

    As Beale isn’t even registered with Worldcon, he can’t put anything on a ballot.

    For me it has taken some time to get tired of Brian, but he has been grating on me. First with accusing me of being some kind of “thought police”, then by continuing to argue in bad faith. He has been here long enough to know things. To not only go by rumours. To still repeat the same things as from two months ago, regardless of links, quotes, etc, thats too much for me.

    Yes, I can understand your reaction to the words such as “liars”, they are very categorical, but I can’t really think of Brian in any other way now. Had you asked me a few weeks ago I would probably had said weasely instead. :/

    It is too much gamergate over it. People who just return again and again with the same talking points. Never staying to actually defending them, just coming back with them anew a few days later.

  45. Theodore Beale did not put “Three Body Problem” at the top of his ballot.

    He is not a member of Sasquan, so he has no ballot and no voting privileges. His claims of a ballot are vaporware.

    Furthermore, he left TBP off his slate. Beale worked deliberately to destroy any chance it could have to be voted on.

    Beale is no more responsible for TBP being on the slate than the Ku Klux Klan is for Barack Obama being the Democratic Presidential candidate in the US in 2008.

    Beale’s endorsement is hollow pandering once he sensed the wind had shifted.

  46. A belated response:

    Editing a post as a mean-spirited jab at someone else (especially without clear markings – no PS is not a good enough indicator, you want EDIT or ETA) is not cool.

    YMMV Meredith, but it was funny and not mean-spirited, given the little emoticon smiley-face that was also a part of the P.S. line. Also, as Brian Z’s subsequent query about it being an edit or not, it was even funnier because really, it was his second flounce so the odds of guessing it weren’t bad… 😉

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