aka Crate Expectations
The Memorial Day roundup begins with Dave Freer and carries on with Cheryl Morgan, Jeff Duntemann, Sam Finlay, Adam-Troy Castro, Lisa J. Goldstein, Joseph Tomaras, Andrew Hickey, Rebekah Golden, Martin Wisse, Declan Finn, Steve Leahy and Dcarson. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day William Reichard and Jim Henley.)
Dave Freer on Mad Genius Club
“Making a living, and things that may interfere with it” – May 25
So far, to best of my knowledge, the Puppies, both sad and rabid, and their followers have avoided attacking things which make people a living. They’ve asked people to NOT take it out on the authors who have been pressured into stepping out of Noms. They’ve spoken out against punishing Tor Books despite the Neilsen Hayden’s and friends attacks on ‘Making Light’. No-one has called for a boycott or blacklist of David Gerrold, or Glenn Hauman, or to have their reputations tarnished and Amazon reviews deliberately lowered.
That’s of course NOT true in the converse. And while there’s been some passive-aggressive ‘semi-plausible-deniability’ ‘who will rid us of these turbulent puppies’ basically from the get-go it’s been attacks on the ability of the Puppy organizers and the nominees ability to make a living. We’re immoral destroyers (we obeyed the rules to letter. Patrick Nielsen Hayden broke the embargo rules with absolute impunity, not a word of criticism offered. Rules are only for little people.) who break every convention of good behavior (David Gerrold, the MC of the event, has been campaigning relentlessly against the Pups and the nominees – which is so far outside the canon of ‘acceptable behavior’ as to be a light-year beyond the pale). They organized smears on Entertainment Weekly to label us racists and sexists – which the magazine had to redact because they’re demonstrably untrue. It didn’t stop the smears mysteriously cropping up in ‘friendly’ outlets across the English Speaking world. Gerrold and TNH carefully listed all the nasty things –exclusion from Cons, denial of space in publications, editors closing doors to subs, reviews being denied… that just would happen to us. All things that would, had to affect the puppies ability to make a living. Not one of them said ‘hey, these people have families. They’re human too.’ In fact we had phrases flung about putting us down. Untermench. Then we have Glenn Hauman calling for people to use the Hugo package for a way to game the rankings against the puppies. “Oh, and to answer the title question: what do you do to rabid puppies? You put them down.”
Jeff Duntemann on Jeff Duntemann’s Contrapositive Diary
“Sad Puppies Summary and Wrapup” – May 24
Eveybody’s got a theory on how to fix the Hugo Awards process, but to me the process is fine; what’s missing is about 25,000 more involved nominators and voters. A large enough voter base is unlikely to be swept by something like a slate of recommendations. Whether so many new people can be brought into the Worldcon/Hugos community is unclear, but I doubt it.
That’s about all I’m going to have to say about the Sad Puppies topic for awhile. I’m turning my attention back to writing, to the concept of the Human Wave, and perhaps to a suspicion I have that fandom is in the process of splitting. The problems of fandom are caught up in the problems of publishing. Once Manhattan-style traditional publishing becomes more or less irrelevant, fandom may become an overlapping group of online communities centered on authors and genres. Each will probably have its own awards, and the Hugos will become only one among many. Is this a good thing?
You bet!
Sam Finlay on Return of Kings
“How Female-Dominated Publishing Houses Are Censoring Male Authors” – May 25
We continued talking about why the industry seems to be so focused on just playing to the tastes of upper-middle class women in New York City, and I then told him some things that Sci-Fi author Larry Correia had said recently in a podcast concerning the Sad Puppies-Rabid Puppies controversy, and how it struck me that by pursuing their current strategy the publishing houses are ignoring huge markets of people willing to buy books and are cutting their own throats.
He broke in saying, “I know, I know…But look, Sam…you gotta stop thinking. Just stop thinking! Thinking about all this will drive you crazy! Don’t go to bookstores, if they even still have any where you live. Don’t look at other books. You’ll just wonder how in the world this thing even got published,” and then told me some more anecdotes about how the sausage is made. He then quoted Otto Priminger, saying “Nobody knows anything.”
It was sad. He’s a good man, and was just as frustrated about it all as anybody, but he’s stuck fighting a literati who only look for books that support the current narrative, and is left trying to sneak in what stories he can, however he can.
Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – May 25
So if somebody unfamiliar to me wins an award I was up for, and more importantly gets a big contract while I’m left begging for more porridge at Mr. Bumble’s Workhouse, I honestly give serious thought to the premise that I have missed something that excels in a way my efforts do not.
By contrast, a glance at some of the rhetoric issued by {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts} establishes a deep and unwavering belief that he, and those who work in his wheelhouse, represent the bastion of greatness against which the rest of us hammer in vain, like zombies trying to get past a boarded-up window.. To wit, if he hasn’t set the world on fire, if he is not met at the convention gates by a swarm of screaming groupies like the kids at the beginning of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, if books that are nothing like the books he writes get more acclaim than his, the answer can only be that it MUST BE A CONSPIRACY, that justifies an EVEN MORE BLATANT CONSPIRACY. He has no doubts at all. He deserves this. He is angry, Mr. {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts}. And it is not just regular anger. It is righteous anger, bringing us to the point that being righteously angry is not necessarily the same thing as being justifiably angry, not even close.
The difference between Mr. {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts} and myself is therefore significant, and it boils down to the statement that while I am very capable of being an asshole about many things, I am not an asshole to that extent or in that particular way.
I also possess discernment about some things that apparently still confuse him.
For instance, I have absolutely no difficulty identifying my elbow. It’s the place in the middle of my arm that bends.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot, Part 15: Back to Novellas” – May 25
Okay, I’m surprised. Tom Kratman’s “Big Boys Don’t Cry” actually reads in places like an anti-war story. Well, let’s not get carried away here — it’s more a story about the harm that fighting wars can do, the ways in which a personality can be twisted and perverted by the aims of those in command.
Maggie is a Ratha, an intelligent fighting vehicle who has been through countless battles, and been made to forget some of her more disturbing actions. She has been mortally wounded and is being taken apart for scrap — but the more the workers drill down, the more she starts remembering things that now seem to her to be problematic…..
Joseph Tomaras on A Skinseller’s Workshop
“Hugo Short Story Ballot” – May 24
“Totaled” by Kary English is too good a story to be tarred with the brush of a slate. It makes good use of not-as-far-future-as-those-unfamiliar-with-the-field-might-think neuroscience to explore the mind-body problem, the relationship of emotion to cognition, and the furthest limits to which careerist self-sacrifice can drive a person. I wish it had first appeared either in a free online venue, or a magazine with broader circulation than Galaxy’s Edge.
Lou Antonelli’s “On a Spiritual Plane” attempts to cover similar ground, but there’s a crippling contradiction between the short story form, which requires some measure of crisis for the protagonist, and the author’s evident desire simply to set up a world that is confirmatory of the narrator’s Thomistic metaphysics….
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Jeffro Johnson Hugo Nomination Fanwriter Sample” – May 25
This might be the best of the Puppy Fan Writer nominees. At the very least, I can see real substance in it that doesn’t work for me, but surely will for its intended audience.
Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!
“Hugo Blogging: ‘Best’ Related Work” – May 25
For fairly obvious reasons, I am not going to give anything on those slates a ranking above No Award. Once again, however, I am grateful that my aesthetic instincts match my moral ones here — while these are (with one notable exception) much less incompetent than the fiction I’ve read so far, none of them are actually, you know, good.
Here’s how I’m ranking them.
Letters from Gardner by Lou Antonelli is half writing autobiography/how to break into SF manual, and half collection of short stories. Basically imagine The Early Asimov, but with Antonelli replacing Asimov and Gardner Dozois replacing John Campbell. Antonelli tells the story of how each of his stories was written, and how it was accepted or rejected. The difference is, though, that Antonelli has had an undistinguished career, lasting roughly a decade, while Asimov was one of the greats of the genre (at least in sales and critical status). There is an intrinsic interest in Asimov’s juvenilia which there just isn’t for Antonelli. The stories were pedestrian, and there were no real insights, but this might be of interest to someone. It’s not *bad*, just also not *good*…..
Rebekah Golden
“2015 Hugo Awards Best Short Story: Reviewing L Antonelli” – May 25
“On A Spiritual Plain”, Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, 11-2014)
If this had been longer than fifteen pages I would not have finished it. After I did finish it I looked up the elements of a story to see what was missing.
Martin Wisse on Wis[s]e Words
“Preliminary thoughts — Best Graphic story Hugo” – May 25
During the various discussions about the Puppies, the Hugo Awards and everything somebody, I think it was Erik Olson, made the excellent remark that new Hugo categories only make sense if there are enough good candidates each year for it. If there only one or two or even five different candidates in any given year, what’s the point? It occurred to me that the converse is also true: any given Hugo category only makes sense if the Hugo voters are knowledgeable enough to actually vote for more than just a handful of the usual subjects year after year. Otherwise it means you just have an even smaller than usual group of people nominating and most people either not voting, or only voting for names they recognise.
The Best Graphic Story category, which was first awarded in 2009, at first seemed to fail that second requirement. The first three awards were won by Girl Genius and you do wonder whether that was because people recognised Kaja & Phil Foglio from fandom, rather than for the comic itself. The Foglios themselves were gracious enough to withdraw after their third win and since then the category has improved a lot, having been won by three different comics since. I’m still a bit skeptical of how well it will work out in the long term, or whether it’ll become just another category most people won’t care about, like the best semi-prozine or best fan artist ones and just vote by rote, if at all.
On the other hand though, if there’s one thing the Hugos, as well as Worldcon needs if it wants to stay relevant, is to get in touch with wider fandom, to not just focus on the old traditional categories. And comics suit the Hugos well. There are plenty of science fiction comics published each year, even omitting superhero series and there does now seems to be a core of Worldcon fans invested in nominating and voting. Since there isn’t really a proper comics orientated sf award yet, haivng the Hugos take up the slack is an opportunity to make them relevant to a primary comics geek, as opposed to a written sf geek audience.
Cheryl Morgan on Cheryl’s Mewsings
“The Wages of Sin” – May 25
Yesterday Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, announced that they now have 9,000 members. Fannish mathematics thus makes it the first billion dollar Worldcon1.
On the back of this unexpected windfall the Commie Pinko Faggot Feminazi Cabal that controls Worldcon via Tor Books has announced the 10-year, $3.4 million deal for its primary gamma rabbit author, John Scalzi.
Scalzi’s editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, explained the rationale behind this move. “It was a tough decision,” he said, especially as none of Scalzi’s books have sold more than a dozen or so copies, mostly to his friends and family. The convention revenue simply doesn’t cover the shortfall.” ….
Declan Finn on A Pius Man
“The Anti-Puppies (Sad Puppies Bite Back VI)” – May 26
[Putatively humor.]
[GRR Martin …gapes, blinks, then turns to NKJ] And you, hold on a second. You’re not content with having a personal vendetta and an online feud with Vox Day, but you want to deliberately taunt the Dark Lord of the Fisk!? Have you no sense of self-preservation?
[Scalzi frowns] I thought he was the International Lord of Hate
[Jemisin] Anything he says to me will prove that he’s a racist!
Declan Finn on A Pius Man
“Putting down the puppies (Sad Puppies Bite Back VII)” – May 26
[Three hours later, down the road, lying in wait, are the Evil League of Evil. Tom Kratman tirelessly watches the road, awaiting the dog catcher truck. John “Dr. O. No” Ringo, now that the sun is down, furiously taps away on his laptop, cranking out a rough draft of a 15-book series on an alien invasion. Larry Correia, the International Lord of Hate, is fisking the entire back catalog of The Guardian. The Cuddly Skeletor, Brad Torgersen, clutches the flamethrower on loan from Larry, looking like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.]
[LC looks up] I’m running out of Guardian articles. Are they coming or not?
[TK growls, frustrated] I don’t see them sir! We still have the Claymore mines ready and waiting to blow them straight to Hell at the first sign! Assuming the land mines in the road don’t get them first! Or the three backup snipers!
[LC] Geez, Tom, are you sure that we’ll even need to fire a shot, assuming they ever get here?
[TK] Better to be prepared than not, sir!
[LC sighs, closes the laptop, and stands up, taking care not to hit the flagpole above him] Okay, everyone, we’re packing up. Brad, sorry, no flamethrower for you tonight.
[Brad, frustrated that he never got to use his flame thrower on the self-destructed anti-Puppies, fires it off into space. The massive fireball makes it way to low orbit. It impacts and explodes against a low-flying alien spacecraft, a scout for the incoming armada. The armada, thinking their surprise has been ruined, turn around and retreat. The wounded ship hurtles in an uncontrolled descent, slamming right into Tor’s officers, taking out the entire suite of offices, and a few cockroaches — including an intern named Joe Buckley, but no one noticed one way or another, since interns are all disposable anyway. But Joe died happy. He FINALLY got to see an exploding space ship!]
Dcarson on Steve Jackson Games Board & Dice Forum
“Mars Attacks (Worldcon)” – May 24
Played Mars Attacks this weekend at Balticon. We noticed that the cities showing were all ones we had been to a Worldcon in. So for the next game we sorted through the city deck and if we allowed San Diego as the site of a Nasfic we had 16 city and monument cards. So a 4 player game of Mars Attacks the Worldcon.
I wonder if all those people trying to rig the Hugo Awards have one of these at home: https://t.co/evPJzSyK7Z
— Steve Leahy (@oz_penguin) May 25, 2015
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The puppies appear to now be saying that the zombie comic isn’t worthy of a Hugo; because it’s not included in the Hugo packet, they’ve asked their Evil Overlord for permission to vote No Award.
Hmmm. Nominees for the Hugo’s on my year of birth….nothing familiar from the novels, but I’ve read 2 of the shorter works (Enemy Mine and Sandkings) in collections.
Nominees that came out in my year of birth….ugh, worse hit ratio. Only 1 that I’m familiar with (Nightflyers).
Seems to improve after that, but maybe that’s because Wolfe and Asimov keep showing up on the list, and I bothjere’s to get a lot of their collected works sort of stuff! 🙂
O.o
…
Yes, that would be a fantastic present for a fan. Wow.
Sheesh. All you have to do is go to the web page and click through as much as you want to read. Since it’s mostly Gag-a-Day stuff, it doesn’t take long to get a feel for things.
My Birth year is 1971. A pretty good ballot that year:
http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Hugo1972.html
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer (da winnah)
Dragonquest, Anne McCaffrey
Jack of Shadows, Roger Zelazny
The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin
A Time of Changes, Robert Silverberg
I’ve read the lot of them. The ballot also had “The Queen of Air and Darkness” by Anderson and “Inconstant Star” by Niven win.
Pretty heavy on the male versus female ratio however–3 nominations by women, total, and two of those were for Le Guin.
Will, Morris
Is that the current narrative? In my last expedition to Puppyland, the belief was that there were no Puppy Graphic Novel nominees, and that 3BP was a Puppy nominee.
Must be fun when reality is so mutable.
What has to be understood about the pulps is that they were literally putting EVERYTHING into them – the pulps, by definition, were a result of cheapening costs to print + an explosion in readership, so they bought and published EVERYTHING, leading to odd things like a naff story about a haunted coffee table getting the cover of the issue of Weird Tales that first published Call of Cthulhu.
Basically, if you wrote something you would eventually sell it if you kept sending it out to magazines simply because one of them would need to fill up a bit of space in the next issue and then happen to read your story near enough to the deadline.
Except on the flip side of the industrial extruded story-like-product scale of the pulps you had Mark Twain, HG Wells, Jack London all writing for and getting reprints in the pulps, so the guy who submitted a poorly reworked cowboy cum detective cum scientifiction story might end up with their work appearing alongside one of HG Wells’ Christian Message stories, one of Jack London’s full communism political screeds and one of Mark Twain’s supernatural detective tales.
Anyone who says “the pulps didn’t have” anything are probably wrong, with the sole exception of “a single unifying ethos, feel, principle or level of quality that defined them” – which isn’t surprising considering the era of the pulps spans the 1870s/80s through to the 1970s.
If I had been born a month earlier, there would have been no Hugos awarded in my birth year; instead, there were no Hugos for work published in my birth year.
There was only one work of fiction which received a Hugo the year I was born, and I read it long ago.
I’ve read four of the five novels nominated for the Retro-Hugo for work published the year that I was born, and the fifth has been on my to-be-read list for a long time. I should get around to it soon, and if John Hertz chooses it for one of his “Classics” discussions, maybe that will motivate me.
I’ve got the same birth year as whoever started this – 1965, so I can go with the Lieber, which I haven’t read, or Zelazny which I have.
I was curious about what SF had been published the year I was born, so I Googled it…Talk about an embarrassment of riches! And my FAVORITE Artist, Frank Kelly Freas, won the Hugo that year.
@paul Good point-I must have looked at the ’71 awards rather than the ’71 books. Just finished Lathe of Heaven. Felt prophetic and contemporary.
Will McLean: I am really amazed that the puppies say they thought the zombie comic and Wisdom From My Internet were worthy of Hugos.
The Williamson one isn’t a Related Work; it’s basically there as a “F*ck You” to non-Puppies.
Morris Keesan on May 26, 2015 at 6:53 pm said:
It’s f r e e…o n…t h e…i n t e r n e t.
It’s a free web comic. Free. On the internets. No charge. Just Google.
Does that mean they will be no awarding the editor who did not include even a list of works in Best Editor Long Form as well?
“The puppies appear to now be saying that the zombie comic isn’t worthy of a Hugo; because it’s not included in the Hugo packet, they’ve asked their Evil Overlord for permission to vote No Award.”
But…but..they already read it back when they nominated it, didn’t they? They did read it before they nominated it….didn’t they?
The puppies appear to now be saying that the zombie comic isn’t worthy of a Hugo; because it’s not included in the Hugo packet, they’ve asked their Evil Overlord for permission to vote No Award.
For a free webcomic. It’s not in the Hugo packet, it’s a free webcomic.
Jeez, do you need someone to give you a link? http://www.thezombienation.com/
(This link provided for all the people Mr. Beale is sending over to read my comments here.)
ULTRAGOTHA: [Zombie Nation is] f r e e…o n…t h e…i n t e r n e t. It’s a free web comic. Free. On the internets. No charge. Just Google.
I know, I was laughing my ass off at the fact that Puppies will “No Award” their own slate nominee because it’s …j u s t…t o o…m u c h…e f f o r t…t o…g o…f i n d…i t.
In my birth year, the Hugo winner for Best Novel was Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
The other nominees were The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak, Nova by Samuel R. Delany, Past Master by R.A. Lafferty, and Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
The only one that could even remotely be called space opera is Nova, which is ironic given that Delany appears to be the Pups current target of convenience.
I completely believe there are even rabid puppies that did not nominate precisely as requested. So some of them not having read all the nominees is understandable.
Others probably bought memberships after the slates were announced. Nominators had to have memberships by January, 31. The puppy slates were posted February 1 and 2.
The puppies appear to now be saying that the zombie comic isn’t worthy of a Hugo; because it’s not included in the Hugo packet, they’ve asked their Evil Overlord for permission to vote No Award.
The reason to No award Zombie Nation is because it is poorly drawn crap with a juvenile and idiotic story line that is light-years behind the rest of the Graphic Story nominees in terms of quality.
Ann Somerville at 3:09pm, without disagreeing with the bulk of your comment, or intending to support Eric in any way, I will point out that Mixon has been (inappropriately, in my opinion) nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo because of that article.
And since you find “implying that Mixon is a mere fan” insulting, let me say that I find your use of the term “mere fan” offensive. Plenty of pros remain fans for their entire lives, and don’t consider their fannish activity “mere”, and have been happy to accept “Best Fan Writer” awards. Notably Fred Pohl and John Scalzi, in this century, in addition to a long list including Alexei Panshin, Ted White, Wilson Tucker, Terry Carr, Bob Shaw, and Dave Langford, most of whom received those awards after they had achieved some success as professional writers and/or editors. And since Mixon hasn’t declined her nomination, I’m assuming that she doesn’t consider being a Fan Writer implying that she’s a “mere fan”.
I didn’t know “The High Crusade” was on the Hugo ballot. Nor “The Witches of Karres.”
Neither of them won. They were beaten by “A Canticle for Liebowitz” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” respectively.
I can understand why. Both books were fun, romps even, but not electric like the winners, and nowhere near as deep.
“The High Crusade” was … Hey, it was sort of the rollicking space adventure the Puppies claim to like, goodhearted medieval people (by way of Renaissance fair culture, I think) who outwit a galactic space empire. “The Witches of Karres” was even better, with excellent strong female characters and a lot of wit, but the author seemed to be flying along by the seat of his pants, and by the end the story had somewhat fallen apart.
The year I was born, Hyperion won the Hugo. I’m probably making a lot of you feel old.
I tried to read it once, but I was maybe 11 years old and I didn’t get it.
Morris Keesan: “without disagreeing with the bulk of your comment, or intending to support Eric in any way, I will point out that Mixon has been (inappropriately, in my opinion) nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo because of that article.”
Yes, I really feel that her nomination should have been for Best Related Work.
However, given that the Puppies filled that category up with reactionary propaganda and trash, I’m glad that Mixon was placed in the Fan Writer category, because it means that a lot more people will see her lengthy analysis.
It’s my hope that if RH or other person of a similar sociopathic intent rears their head in an online forum in future, enough people will have read Mixon’s article and say, “Oh, I see what’s going on here, and no, we won’t be having any of that.”
Throwing out some more puppy themes, these ones from Terror or Horror:
The Hungry Puppies
The Happy Pups
Darby O’Gill and the Good Puppies
The Man Who Wanted To Be In the Kennels
Fidel Basset
TGhe Clemency of the Kennel
Bianca’s Paws
Wolf-Pup
The Canines in the Pit
The Dreams in the Kennels
The Little Dog on the Subway
The Little Dog of Elm Street
The Professor’s Teddy Day
The Quest For Blank Slobberings
The Pup over Hackensack
The Faceless Canid
Wake Not The Dogs
Night And Whining
The Kennel of the Stone God
A Tale of the Thirteenth Pound
His Unconquerable Ticks
The Bitten Hand
No. 252 Rue M. Le Pooch
“let me say that I find your use of the term “mere fan” offensive”
I figured someone would chip me on that. I should make it clear that I was thinking of how Mixon’s writing credits were dismissed in the way Eric referred to her ‘fluff fan piece’, a la Rick Moen a few days ago. I agree with you that nominating Laura Mixon for Best Fan writer is not really the way her work on Miss Hate should be recognised, but as has been discussed ad nauseum here and elsewhere, this year is not a normal Hugo year.
Mixon’s contributions to the SFF community extend well beyond that piece, and I felt Eric, as well as having not read it, knew nothing of the depth of experience and thought that underlay it either. But then diminishing the contribution of non-straight white men to the genre is hardly unique to Eric.
I think the increase in voters from last year to this year is almost entirelt SP/RP related (in a 75/15/10 way of SP/RP voters, new voters, GG voters.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, I’m real sure that thousands of puppies are signing up to vote.
In other news, Tthe year I was born some dude named Mike Gleyer won two Hugo’s for something called “File 770”.
“The reason to No award Zombie Nation is because it is poorly drawn crap with a juvenile and idiotic story line”
It has a story line? All I’ve seen are gag-a-day strips. I read about 2 months worth, just to be fair.
Enjoyed but wasn’t a huge fan of the 1972 Hugo winner, but the nominated novels as a whole are strong and includes one of my favorites:
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov [Galaxy Mar/Apr,May/Jun 1972; If Mar/Apr 1972]
When Harlie Was One by David Gerrold [Ballantine, 1972]
There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson [Signet, 1972]
The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg [Scribner’s, 1972]
Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg [Galaxy Jul/Aug,Sep/Oct 1972; Scribner’s, 1972]
A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak [Putnam, 1972]
I’m amused by Vox’s attempt to claim Campbell was “up on the relevant science”, using the same “just following the science” justification for Campbell’s racism as Vox uses for his own racism.
Campbell, you may need to be reminded, embraced Hubbard’s Dianetics, defended Krebiozen and Hoxsey Therapy as cancer treatments, argued that the lesson to be learnt from Thalidomide was that the countries which had approved it for public use were right, and that Dr Frances Kelly, who did not license it for distribution in the US was wrong.
Campbell was many things when it came to science fiction, some bad, many good, but when it came to science fact? He was a crank.
I can guarantee the memberships I bought for myself and a friend aren’t being used for Team Puppy.
Tintinaus: you bought a membership for a friend? quick, preemptively decline any hugo nominations you might receive next year. You’ll get the puppies all up in arms about your ethics, otherwise.
It’s okay: “Friend of” memberships can’t nominate or vote.
For 1977 I get “Houston, Do You Read” which is interesting. I only read it a year or so ago.
One of those things that you can go “I am sure this was very impressive at the time, but I’ve been exposed to too many variations by now.” The writing is still good, but the revelation was obvious and view of men struck me as sad. “The Gate to Women’s Country” worked better for me, if we’re going with that sort of thing, and at least some of the male characters in that weren’t constantly cross-examining their own manliness in relation to all the other men aboard, which was just unbearably tedious after the first five minutes.
Andrew P: I think the increase in voters from last year to this year is almost entirelt SP/RP related (in a 75/15/10 way of SP/RP voters, new voters, GG voters.
Oh, I guarantee that the increase in new voters is almost entirely SP/RP-related.
But I don’t think it’s in the way that you think it is.
Mutable reality? Varie et mutabile semper Puppy.
In my defense I only bought a membership for one friend.
She has been part of the fannish community for a lot longer than I have, and was a bit bit bummed out that finances were a too tight this year.
Plus she always bring bags of lollies to conventions so is good value(she throws them to the audience of panels she is on, so she can make a bolt for the door while they are busy fighting over the largesse).
Jonathan K. Stephens at 5:34 pm
Regarding 2011 fiction novels that didn’t get their authors anywhere near the egoboo they deserved:
Michael Swanwick, Dancing With Bears
Alex Bledsoe, The Hum and The Shiver
Mathew Hughes, The Other
Nick Mamatas , Sensation
Yeah, gotta give Nick some love, even if it wasn’t till the next year he really hit the ball out of the park with ‘Bullet Time’.
I hope Nick Mamatas wins a Hugo for a novel written at the height of his powers.
I’m sticking to my guns on Red Plenty, endnotes and all. (After reading Echopraxia’s appendix this year, I’m submitting a proposal for the category Best Endnotes.)
Haven’t read The Others and The Hum and The Shiver – I will now.
@ Jethro Johnson et al above, Fritz Leiber may not be the ideal kumbaya moment, influence on gaming notwithstanding. I’m not sure The Wanderer (1965 winner) holds up so well – and some might like its sexy alien catwoman more than others.
Everybody vs. Nick on Lovecraft: Nick is right.
Re Laura Mixon for Best Fan writer , whoever Requires Hate is and however history will judge her (btw I think some bits of her fiction are quite good and others awful), I’d rather Best Fan Writer be awarded to honor a larger body of excellent fan writing. Keeping alive the spirit of fanzines though the stencils and duplicating fluid are long gone, and not willfully heading down the road towards Best Tweet and Best Facebook Update.
“…, and not willfully heading down the road towards Best Tweet and Best Facebook Update.”
::hides nomination longlist with Adam-Troy Castro’s The Last
Voyage of the Starship Lily on it::
Whym, what made me feel old was realizing my stage manager is younger than two of my cats.
Snowcrash: Oh, I was thinking a Best Short Story nom would be more appropriate for that.
Brian Z.: “I’d rather Best Fan Writer be awarded to honor a larger body of excellent fan writing. Keeping alive the spirit of fanzines though the stencils and duplicating fluid are long gone, and not willfully heading down the road towards Best Tweet and Best Facebook Update.”
I will point out yet again that you are clearly not reading any of today’s excellent Fan Writers, given your insistence that all they are doing is promoting their own books and posting Tweets and Facebook updates.
If you don’t want to partake in the works of contemporary Fan Writers, fine. Don’t nominate or vote on that Hugo category, fine.
But I’ve had enough of listening to you bad-mouth the efforts of people you clearly aren’t even bothering to read.
snowcrash: hides nomination longlist with Adam-Troy Castro’s The Last Voyage of the Starship Lily on it
That’s not a “Facebook Update”. It’s a short Related Work. And it’s on my longlist as well. 😀
JJ: That’s not a “Facebook Update”. It’s a short Related Work. And it’s on my longlist as well.
Actually, the guideline for “Related Work” is that it is not primarily fiction.
So MickyFinn is right, it falls under the category of “Short Story”.
In 1957, no Hugos for individual works of fiction. Only periodicals.
Best American pro magazine, Astounding.
Best British pro magazine, New Worlds.
Best Fanzine, Science Fiction Times.
But, but, Lis…The Lord of the Rings!
http://www.tor.com/2010/11/14/hugo-nominees-1957/
JJ: did I endorse one of this year’s Best Fan Writer nominees? Which one? Where did I say that? Oops, am I sea-lioning myself?
Brian, where do you see JJ suggesting that you endorsed a fan writer nominee? I certainly don’t see it.
James Nicoll: Imagine how your cats feel about it.
About twenty years ago, I was having a discussion like this with some work colleagues, and my boss reported having said, “You know you’re getting old when you start noticing how young policemen are,” and his mother replied, “No, you know you’re getting old when your child starts noticing how young policemen are.”
My moment like that came when I was playing in a band, sitting next to someone who was younger than my instrument (which I had purchased new).
Although it did make me feel a little older when I realized that I’m about 7 months older than the Hugos.
Andy H.: Brian, where do you see JJ suggesting that you endorsed a fan writer nominee? I certainly don’t see it.
Oh, that is Brian just doing his usual Making Shit Up (MSU™), in an attempt to derail the discussion, so that he doesn’t have to provide a legitimate response.
Andy H., I said I was concern trolling myself, not JJ. There is scads of great fan writing today. Hoary old Mike Glyer is not doing too shabby a job himself. I’m still nominating Nussbaum. I said I’d rather not see the Hugo go to people recognized for a widely read “single post” or even to a series of posts on a “single issue,” but rather for a broad collection of work.