aka “My name is Canis Dolorosa. You ganked my rocket. Prepare to die.”
Today’s heavily self-referential roundup trots out John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, C. Robert Cargill, Michael Rapoport, Vox Day, Cephus, Nicholas Whyte, L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright, Vann R. Newkirk II, Lis Carey, Spacefaring Kitten, Alexandra Erin, William Reichard, Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little , Happyturtle, ULTRAGOTHA, jayn, Sarah, J.C. Salomon, Steve and Jim Henley. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Paul Weimer and Alexandra Erin.)
Puppies parsing my sales numbers at http://t.co/1rtJ17UJXt. Can't decide between "bless their hearts" and "oh, my dear sweet summer child."
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 15, 2015
@ChuckWendig @SamSykesSwears @scalzi "It puts the Hugo in the basket or it gets the hose again!"
— C. Robert Cargill (@Massawyrm) May 15, 2015
Michael Rapoport in the Wall Street Journal
“The Culture Wars Invade Science Fiction” – May 15
Mr. Scalzi likens the Puppies’ campaigns to the backlash that women and minorities have faced in other geek-culture arenas—notably “Gamergate,” the videogamers’ campaign widely associated with threats against feminist videogame critics.
But Larry Correia, another Sad Puppies organizer, doesn’t see the Puppies’ campaign as a backlash against diversity. “That’s a narrative they came up with to try to discredit us,” he says. He and Mr. Torgersen have distanced themselves from Mr. Beale’s extreme views, but the Rabids are “still fans, they’re still people, their votes still count.”
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“the most despised man in science fiction” – May 15
Despised, feared, it’s pretty much all the same, isn’t it? The Wall Street Journal takes note of the Hugo Awards, with an article entitled “The Culture Wars Invade Science Fiction Online campaigners are pushing to give SF’s annual Hugo Awards to popular space yarns, not more literary fiction or tales of diversity”. It’s not entirely negative despite the reporter feeling the need to get the opinion of two writers, John Scalzi and George Martin, who don’t know a damn thing about what the Puppies are doing. But regardless, the main thing is that the reporter correctly grasped that this is a new front in the cultural war and not a self-serving attempt to pick up meaningless trophies.
Difster VFM #109 in a comment on Vox Popoli – May 15
They WSJ (anagram for SJW I might note) was not entirely negative.
Cephus on Bitchspot
“The SJWs Lose at the Hugo Awards” – May 15
It is time that people rise up against this kind of absurd liberal oppression, where it’s political correctness that means more than actual merit. The Hugo Awards were not designed to award people for their social consciousness, but for their work in the field of writing science fiction and fantasy. It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what you write. The same is true of television and movies, where it shouldn’t make a difference what a director or an actor or a producer thinks, only the end-product of their labors. Unfortunately, these liberal idiots get butt-hurt because someone doesn’t follow the social justice collective and they must set out to call them names, harm their careers and deny them their due for what they’ve actually done with their lives. Is it any wonder there’s such a backlash against liberal stupidity these days? Here’s hoping it keeps up and picks up in the future.
Nicholas Whyte on From The Heart of Europe
“My vote for Best Novel” – May 15
Matt Foster has made a good argument in favour of not only voting No Award above all slate nominees, but also voting No Award top in all categories where there are only one or two non-slate contenders, on the basis that the slate organisers have denied us a proper choice in those categories too. I find myself sympathetic to this line of thought. I was already planning to put No Award top in Best Novelette (because I was not impressed by the one non-slate finalist) and Best Fan Writer (because the one non-slate finalist has been nominated for a single piece of work rather than for a body of work over the last year), though in both cases I will rank the non-slate finalist second to minimise the chance of a slate win.
I had been going to vote for Julie Dillon as the one non-slate finalist in Best Professional Artist, but I shall consider Matt Foster’s’s arguments carefully; if the choice is Julie Dillon or nobody, is that really a choice? I like her work in general, but I don’t actually like the category anyway (which is a different argument for a different time), and this year’s ballot is deeply flawed due to the intervention of the slatemongers. Again, she will get at least a second preference from me, to reduce the chance of a slate nominee winning.
Anyway, for Best Novel these arguments no longer apply, since the honourable withdrawal of one of the (unwitting) slate nominees has given us three excellent books to choose from, each of which would be an acceptable winner in a normal year. Ranking them is difficult, but it’s got to be done. My vote is as follows.
L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright on Superversive SF
“Hugo Nominee Interview: Mike Williamson” – May 13
1) All the Sad Puppies selections came from a list of stories that fans felt were their favorites from 2014. What about your story do you think brought it to the attention of whomever suggested it?
Obviously, they, like me, hate humanity and want children to die. I would like to thank Brad for seeing through the haze and realizing I’m a scorching liberal right wing gay-agenda-endorsing homophobe and terrible parent who’s teaching his mixed race children to be white supremacists. And with the assistance of Gamergate, the Illuminati and Elvis, I might actually win to spread our Gospel.
Vann R. Newkirk II on Gawker Review of Books
“The City Is a Crossroads: Daniel José Older on Protest Art and Urban Lit” – May 15
Do you consider decisions like that in your work to be political, whatever that entails?
I do. Well, I consider all books to be political. I think if you ask authors on any side of the spectrum whether they meant to write a political book or not, most would tell you that they just went into it to write a book and a great story and didn’t intentionally include politics, but I would like to call bullshit on that. We are always including our politics. You can actually not do that, and we do ourselves an injustice when we pretend to not be conscious of it. I’m very strategic in how I choose to bring politics into my writing and I can’t think of any other writing advice that tells you to not be conscious or strategic about stuff. There’s this idea that if you don’t think about politics, it’ll just seep through. And for some people that’s true.
To bring it around to the Hugos, you’ll see this conversation pop up in the sense of the Sad Puppies folks lamenting that suddenly science-fiction and fantasy have become political, as if Tolkien wasn’t thoroughly writing a political book about the supremacy of western culture. There’s nothing more political than that; it’s just so normalized that people read it as, ‘Oh it’s just another fantasy story.’ You have a message; it’s just a message that’s normalized. People act like only folks coming from the left have a message to give, and that’s bullshit. These are very political books, and they always have been. Fantasy and sci-fi have always been a political project. Look at Lovecraft….
So, more about the Hugos and the Sad Puppies stuff. Do you think the back and forth represents something of the larger cultural conflicts going on?
Yes. Definitely. First of all, it represents people who are again so normalized to the idea of their comfort being provided for that they freak out entirely the second that it’s slightly off-kilter. Because sci-fi and fantasy have always been a very white, very straight, very heteronormative, male political project. A very colonial project. In the past couple years, their big complaint is that suddenly people that aren’t them are winning awards, winning Hugos and that is cause for them to, you know, create this great big stir and takeover.
When we’re in a time when we have to proclaim in the streets that Black Lives Matter, literature is one of the first places where we learn what matters and whose life matters and whose doesn’t. And literature has been saying for centuries that black lives don’t matter. By not publishing black authors, by not publishing books about black people, that’s become the message by default. Whiteness being the default has been the message. So, the fact that we now have to fight to just get a fair Hugo ballot because a few people have hurt feelings and want to grasp at relevancy after decades of this really destructive form of erasure from fantasy and sci-fi absolutely speaks to the movement in the streets today, to what’s going on with the police, to what’s going on in politics. Literature is always a reflection of society and society is always a reflection of literature, and when publishing is as white as it is, we have to look at those numbers and understand that they are connected. They are 100 percent connected. There’s no way to disconnect them. But people always want to act surprised.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale, by Rajnar Vajra” – May 15
There’s a story here, and it’s decently written. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit cliched, and in some ways strains my suspension of disbelief in ways that are not good.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium, by Gray Rinehart” – May 15
This is a competently, professionally done story, and a good read. I recommend it on that basis. However, it’s no more than competent and professional, and a Hugo winner needs to be more than just competent and professional.
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens
“’Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium’ by Gray Rinehart” – May 15
The plotting would have needed some more work, even if the story is decently written. There’s just too much talking heads to keep me intrested. Now the whole story was about the dying guy’s friend finding out what it was all about, but the really interesting part would have been what happens next and what further complications there will be. It’s frustrating when a story fails to focus on the most interesting aspects of its proposition.
Adult Onset Atheist
“SNARL: The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” – May 14
I picked up this book expecting SF/F, and I was disappointed. Imagine someone going to the store and buying a box of “Best NUTTY NUGGETS Ever” because they love “NUTTY NUGGETS”, only to find that they were so awful they might not even be “NUTTY NUGGETS”, and were quite inedible. Then imagine them going back to the store and buying another box of “Best NUTTY NUGGETS Ever” only to find out that they were similarly not even edible “NUTTY NUGGETS”. I’m sure they would be Sad, and maybe even Mad; some people might do things that were Bad. “SAD, MAD, BAD” sounds like a children’s book, and so does this story. It has talking animals that start to walk upright because … God.
Adult Onset Atheist
“SNARL: On a Spiritual Plain” – May 14
Dead people on the planet Ymilas get trapped as ghosts, when they get tired of that they travel to giant Stonehenge at the pole to “move on”. It is a weak premise executed poorly.
Doctor Science on Obsidian Wings
“The Demolished Puppy” – May 15
The setting: An Account of Juliette Wade’s Withdrawal from Sad Puppies 3, at File770….
The surreality was seeing Torgersen re-write someone’s motives to their face, while people were watching. It’s always difficult to get a real sense of social atmosphere over the internet, but it seemed to me that I was watching Torgersen’s reputation sink before my eyes, in real time. It certainly happened for me….
In case it’s not clear to you why I was appalled: Torgersen talked at length and repeatedly about how Wade was motivated by fear, and never seems to have noticed that (a) she never said nor implied that was true, and (b) she was really pissed that he attributed made-up motivations to her.
And the rest of us just stood there (digitally), watching while Torgersen kept trying to re-write a history we could read by scrolling up.
Alfred Bester‘s The Demolished Man won the first Hugo Award for best Novel, in 1953. The Demolished Man is about a murder, but it’s not a mystery: we know from the start (because he’s a POV character) that Ben Reich killed his business rival Craye D’Courtney, after Reich proposed a merger and D’Courtney turned him down. But [SPOILERS] the detective on the case is baffled, because Reich seems to have no motive: D’Courtney sent Reich a message accepting his offer.
In the end, we find out that Reich mis-heard the message, because he was already determined to kill D’Courtney — who, it turned out, was his biological father.
Bester makes the whole reveal pretty Freudian, which didn’t impress me when I read the book in the 1970s and is rather quaint now. But watching Torgersen editing his perceptions in real time, the plot of The Demolished Man starts to seem much less contrived, much more psychologically realistic.
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Sad Puppies Review Books: MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS” – May 15
Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)
If you want evidence of the deep rot that has infested the once-great Caldecott Medal, look no further than this book, which is a putrid example of ham-handed message fiction given an award by Feminazi SJWs basically as a participation prize for having a “strong female protagonist who doesn’t need a man”….
Why doesn’t she just open a Patreon account while she’s at it? She could tell the sob story about how she was almost hit by a bicycle and the victim bucks would come pouring in, let me tell you. They all have Patreons for some reason even though they produce nothing of value to anyone. It’s nothing but welfare for hipsters. It should be illegal…..
Did you know that only fifteen people in all the world choose the winner of the Caldecott every year? How are the opinions of fifteen people supposed to determine “most distinguished American picture book for children”, I ask you?
Will in a comment on File 770 – May 15
I stopped commenting at File770 and all I got was this stupid T-shirt
Happyturtle in a comment on File 770 – May 15
For Puppies Sad did Torgersen
A stately rocket ship decree:
While mouths of many loudly ran
Through websites measureless to man
As long as wifi’s free.Had we but slates enough and time,
This Hugo, Puppy, were no crime.
We would sit and discuss which tales
We love and which we think are fails.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two ballots diverged at a con – Sasquan! –
I chose the one less voted on,
And that has made all the difference.
Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little in a comment on iFile 770 – May 15
I’m a Puppy! Who are you?
Are you all — Puppies — too?
Then there’s a bloc of us!
Don’t tell! they’d banish us — you know!
How sad — to be — an Ess Jay Dub!
How PC — like a CHORF —
They bully us — the live-long Spring —
WOOF WOOF — ARF-ARF-ARF!…ok, it kind of fell apart there at the end.
ULTRAGOTHA in a comment on File 770 – May 15
This is Just to Say
We have nominated
The stories
That were on
The ballot
And which
You were probably
Hoping
For better stories
Forgive us
Revenge is delicious
So sweet
And so cold
jayn in a comment on File 770 – May 15
For each Pup kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a crummy book,
Some with a whiny word…
Sarah in a comment on File 770 – May 15
Now my pups are all o’erthrown,
And what sads I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must receive awards from you,
Or sent to Spokane. Let me not,
Since I have my Hugo got,
And pardon’d the SJWs, dwell
In this bare website by your spell;
But release me from Amazons,
With the help of your book bombs.
Gentle praise in your emails,
Must fill, or else my project fails.
Alexandra Erin in a comment on File 770 – May 15
I am the very model of a modern Canine-Miserable.
I’ve indignations slight, imagined, and quite risible.
I know the Nielsen Haydens, and I quote their slates historical
from novellete to best short form on ballots categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters dialectical,
and syllogisms, both implied and also quite elliptical,
About rhetorical speaking I’m teeming with a lot of news
with many outraged squeals about the lies of SJWs.
I’m very good at inference and attributing animus,
I know the things I know are true without any analysis.
In short, in outrage slight, imagined, and quite risible,
I am the very model of a modern Canine-Miserable.
J. C. Salomon in a comment on File 770 – May 14
With the Hugo coverage on File 770 going meta like this—half the links are to comments made on this blog—is it fair to say there’s a puppy chasing its tail here? ?
Steve in a comment on Vox Popoli – May 15
[Speculating about who will accept Vox Day’s Hugo at Sasquan.]
Because I like the idea that, as soon as your name is mentioned by a grimacing David Gerrold, a fell cry rends the air and freezes the blood of every CHORF present…
The ceiling groans as if in hideous pain, then there is a hellish crash as concrete and tile yield to an enormous creature. The minion lands in the middle of the convention, its iron boots striking the floor with a terrifying thud, then flexes its vast, midnight-black leathery wings to shake off the dust.
It points an armoured finger at Gerrold, a thin wisp of sulphurous smoke curling from its clawed tip.
“The Lord of Fear sends his regards. I am his emissary. Give me the trinket.”
Gerrold cringes and hides behind Due as the minion ascends to the podium.
“My Dark Lord authorises me to bid you thanks for this trifling bauble, and to assure most of you that he wishes you no specific harm. As a token of his noblesse oblige he advises those of you who are afraid of giant sentient scorpions to avoid the Losers Party this evening. You may find it… distressing. That is all.”
Clutching his trophy, the minion runs at the windows and leaps through the glass, its wings pounding the air as it departs in malevolent triumph.
David Gerrold attempts to compose himself.
“And… umm… the n-next award goes to…. OH… FFFUUUUUUUU….”
“What’s wrong?”, cries Due.
“I-it’s T-tom K-kratman…” sobs Gerrold, just as the gun turret of a Tiger tank erupts through the back wall…
Jim Henley in a comment on File 770 – May 15
If you were a dinosaur, my love, you would be a time-traveling dinosaur, who retroactively justified Sad Puppies 1 and 2, launched before your nomination was known. Your scales would shimmer with tachyons.
If you were a dinosaur, my love, you would be all puppies could talk about, because dinosaurs are freaking cool, and big and scary, and puppies are small and easily frightened.
If you were a dinosaur, my love, you would be free on the internet, and short enough to read quickly, with an easily digested precis, so that all your critics could get through you or at least take the word of someone who had without being obviously wrong on the facts. So you would be an easy example of What Has Gone Wrong With All Reptiles even though you were but a single dinosaur. You would be the dinosaur that stops all conversations before they start.
If you were a dinosaur, my love, you would be a magic dinosaur that irradiates a field that makes some people reeeeeeaaaaaaalllllyyyyyy lazy. “What about all the other dinosaurs?” others would say. But the people in the field would respond, “Hey, man. Why do you keep nagging me?”
https://twitter.com/henrydampier/status/599038965472079872
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Nigel – I’m guessing he thinks that appealing to 1.5% of the population instead of 98.5% of the population is, well, niche. To say the least. And that’s assuming that the rate of consumption of SFF is equal among homo/heterosexuals generally – on that point I have no idea.
May Tree – Frankly, now you know how a lot of SP supporters feel. I don’t trust the Hugos as an indicator of quality past about 1980, and even then it’s a bit sketchy.
delurking – I’ll see if my local library has that. If it does, it’ll go on my list (which is currently very short, as I stopped looking for things until the Hugo packet comes out).
‘Are you saying Requires Hate and her cronies attacked Pat Cadigan?!?’
Peace, it was a tortuous piece of rotten, willful stupidity on the part of RH and her supporters. There was a vaguely similar kerfuffle involving another person getting attacked by them in the last couple of weeks. Beale isn’t even the most despised person in science fiction making an arse of themselves THIS MONTH.
>> If it had been up to Baen’s covers I never would have read a Bujold book.>>
Probably me too. I didn’t read any until I asked a knowledgable friend to recommend me some milSF, and tried out a few things.
>> I only picked up my first after Barrayar won a Hugo, because the award signaled potential value there. I’ve been a die-hard Dendarii ever since.>>
Me, I read THE WARRIOR’S APPRENTICE, and liked the writing but not the story — it felt to me like the writer was rigging everything the hero’s way and telling us to think the hero brilliant for it.
So Bujold’s on my list to try something else by, sometime, but what with all the other stuff I have to read I don’t know when that’ll be.
“Actually, yes, though not in supreme detail. But I stumbled across this post by Anthony Vicino which points out that of the 2014 Locus awards for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, 90% of them feature a homosexual primary character. Which as he observes, is actually really, really high.”
Hmmm. You know what? The representation of aliens in SFF is also a lot higher than what you typically find on Earth (unless you are perhaps a follower of David Icke.)
I’m pretty sure elves and dwarves and goblins are all represented in fantasy at a much higher proportion than they appear in our daily lives as well.
And magicians! What is with all the fantasy being written about people doing magic?! Why are they so badly over-represented? Wiccans make up such a small percentage of the population and I’ve never seen a single one cast even a tiny fireball. This is outrageous!
Dammit, Kurt Busiek needs to stop writing so much about superheroes because it’s just wrong to write so much about them and so little about the non-superheroic people.
My point is, sarcasm aside, that writers write about things that interest them. The lives, struggles, and concerns of gay people are a large topic of conversation in the West right now. So of course writers want to explore what they find new, interesting, and trenchant, because, being writers, they have opinions about — well, almost everything — and this weird belief that people will pay to read those opinions if they are packaged in a good story. (God only knows where they get that.) This will stop, in the West at least, when gay folks live normal, boring, ordinary lives that aren’t worthy of comment or discussion. Speed the day!
>>>I’m guessing he thinks that appealing to 1.5% of the population instead of 98.5% of the population is, well, niche. To say the least. And that’s assuming that the rate of consumption of SFF is equal among homo/heterosexuals generally – on that point I have no idea.
That’d be an interesting study. Personally, based on my own experience, I’d expect that the appeal of literature staring homosexual characters to be appealing also to those who aren’t homosexual but incredibly vocal supporters of homosexual rights, perhaps even moreso than to homosexuals themselves. The vocal supporters would find such works very appealing not because of the story, but because of the sexuality of the primary characters and … that’s a rabbit hole of a debate that serves as building block for part of this whole debate in the first place, doesn’t it?
Interesting that S1AL didn’t have much to say when we were reciting poetry and sharing our top ten lists, but then when “gasp” Larry Correia might be IMPUGNED he shows up full of indignation.
As far as “conservatives” winning Hugos… how would you tell? It’s not like that’s anywhere on the ballot, or in the author bio.
S1AL on May 16, 2015 at 2:32 pm said:
Delurking – Some of Clancy’s stuff is phoned in, but some of it is fantastic. Net Force, The Hunt for Red October, or Without Remorse, for example.
I liked Zhan’s Blackcollar works, and the Thrawn Trilogy single-handedly revived the Start Watts franchise.
And yeah, “contemporary” is a bit odd for me, because most of what I’ve read is older than I am.
—
Kurt Busiek – Baen cover art isn’t really my thing, either. But hey, literally judging a book by its cover… 😉
The folks over at goodshowsir.co.uk don’t judge books by their covers, necessarily. There is a lot of sympathy towards great books and authors who get saddled with not so great covers (See, for example, the various editions of LeGuin’s “A Wizard of Earthsea.” Ouch.).
It’s not the books they are judging, it’s *just* the covers.
Alexandra Erin, Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree that niche marketing can be very successful and with independent publishing it can work even if large publishers are wary. But it takes a lot of effort for the writer. Writer are not always good publicists.
Laura Resnick,
I am sure that there is not a saturation point of gay protagonists and your story will be fine. As a accomplished writer I am sure you can weave story elements to make a good story. The gender is not important. It is the character that is important.
“Nigel – I’m guessing he thinks that appealing to 1.5% of the population instead of 98.5% of the population is, well, niche. To say the least. And that’s assuming that the rate of consumption of SFF is equal among homo/heterosexuals generally – on that point I have no idea.”
And yet Max linked to an essay claiming the Locus, a mass vote sort of award, was dominated by gay characters. Thoughts?
alexvdl – I got incredibly bored with the bad poetry, which apparently caused me to miss some top 10 list of… what? I dunno. Feel free to suggest some. Preferable WITHOUT the bad poetry.
S1AL on May 16, 2015 at 2:53 pm said:
Nigel – I’m guessing he thinks that appealing to 1.5% of the population instead of 98.5% of the population is, well, niche. To say the least. And that’s assuming that the rate of consumption of SFF is equal among homo/heterosexuals generally – on that point I have no idea.
I thought the homosexual population was estimated to be closer to about 10%, and I have no idea if that factors in bi, trans, aces, etc.
Also, who says hets don’t have any interest in LGBT fiction? Most of the gay romance fans I know are het women.
Mark L. Van Name is another generally good Baen author. He’s not extremely prolific like Weber, Drake or Ringo, but unlike those three, he actually writes interesting books.
I generally judge books by the description on the cover, not the cover itself. There was an omnibus of Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy which had a cover that made it look for all the world like a romance novel. I still read it.
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0446676101.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
>>> My point is, sarcasm aside, that writers write about things that interest them. The lives, struggles, and concerns of gay people are a large topic of conversation in the West right now. So of course writers want to explore what they find new, interesting, and trenchant, because, being writers, they have opinions about — well, almost everything — and this weird belief that people will pay to read those opinions if they are packaged in a good story. (God only knows where they get that.) This will stop, in the West at least, when gay folks live normal, boring, ordinary lives that aren’t worthy of comment or discussion. Speed the day!
This raises others questions though. So is it ignorance when an author doesn’t write in gay characters? Or is it just that they don’t find the entire debate interesting and are focused on other things? Should that author be looked down on for not making character sexuality a primary focus of their work? At what point is the verdict handed down that the focus is over, and everyone can stop worrying about writing homosexual/non-homosexual works because it’s just ordinary? And who makes such a decision?
Probably my last contribution for the day. Just things to think about.
>> I stumbled across this post by Anthony Vicino which points out that of the 2014 Locus awards for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, 90% of them feature a homosexual primary character.>>
No, he said 90% of the nominated novels had a gay character. Not gay primary character. [Not 90% of the entire list, either. Just novels.]
The gay character in THE GOBLIN EMPEROR is at best a tertiary character, if I’m remembering correctly.
You and Anthony both say this number is astonishingly high, though his argument isn’t that there’s anything wrong with that, just that it’s no longer a remarkable thing.
I tend toward his reading of it. If 9 of 10 nominated novels acknowledge the existence of gay people by including them in the cast, is that strange? Or realistic? And once you dispense with the notion that it’s the primary characters who are gay, does it actually say much about claims that “so many new LGBT and women-centered and minority-centered books have come out”?
There’s a gay character in THE GOBLIN EMPEROR. Does that make it LGBT-centered? In order to not be LGBT-centered, would there need to be no gay characters at all?
I think the answer to both those questions is no.
“Me, I read THE WARRIOR’S APPRENTICE, and liked the writing but not the story — it felt to me like the writer was rigging everything the hero’s way and telling us to think the hero brilliant for it.”
BARRAYAR was my first Bujold and is a much stronger book. APPRENTICE was one of her first and it shows her fanfic roots. I moved both backwards and forwards from BARRAYAR in that APPRENTICE was written first but takes place chronologically after. Bujold tends to alternate heavy stuff with fluffier stuff (CAPTAIN VORPATRIL’S ALLIANCE was very fluffy, but GENTLEMAN JOLE AND THE RED QUEEN looks like it will be weightier); I prefer her heavier stuff, but her large appeal probably has something to do with the fact that she can please both crowds at different times.
My favorites of hers are BARRAYAR, MIRROR DANCE, and MEMORY, with VOR GAME trailing a bit further behind. I do really love the fluffy A CIVIL CAMPAIGN too though. And I will always have love for the Vorkosigan-universe side story ETHAN OF ATHOS. In terms of non-Vorkosigan stuff I loved PALADIN OF SOULS. I should add that in order to enjoy BARRAYAR to its fullest you might have to read SHARDS OF HONOR which was another very early work; while the book is not without merit I suspect you’ll have the same issues with it you had with APPRENTICE and for the same reasons. However, I read BARRAYAR before reading SHARDS and still loved it even not knowing how the main characters got together.
S1AL, you want me to go reread the thread FOR YOU? No thanks.
Furthermore, Net Force, while created by Tom CLancy and Steve Pieczenik, was written by Steve Perry.
James Davis Nicoll – A combination of a literary fad with a political fad? That would be my first instinct.
Peace – I was poking fun, nothing more.
Max Florschutz – I mean, it’s very possible to write gay characters who just are characters who happen to be gay, which is a very different task from writing a GAY character, if you follow my meaning. The latter is what SP calls “message fiction,” the former is… meh? I frequently enjoy books with main characters who are all manner of morally, socially, or behaviorally abnormal or deviant – that’s no different, in my mind.
I’m not a big fan of fiction appealing to people on cause-of-the-day motifs, nor do I tend to read such. That’s the arena of political commentary.
Oh, great, now we’re going to get books certified Statistically Reflective of Actual Populations to Within 1/1,000,000th Percentage Point (Based on Three-Year Trailing Averages Culled from Data Supplied by…Oh, Uh, Wait, Strike That, Just Trust Us It’s Good.).
One-armed farmers, unite!
Also… most of the poetry is pretty famous classical poetry filked to be Puppylike… You don’t like Xanadu or Oh Captain, My Captain?
” I mean, it’s very possible to write gay characters who just are characters who happen to be gay, which is a very different task from writing a GAY character, if you follow my meaning.”
No, no. I think you should expand on the difference between a character who happens to be gay and a GAY character.
alexvdl – Frankly, dredging up some part of some other thread because you’re in a huff that I missed it is… well, I’ll let you know when it makes it onto my list of things I care about.
As for Net Force – yeah, my mistake. Still a good book, still worth reading. And it does make sense – Tom Clancy is very much an idea author, rather than a prose or character author. I’d still rather read any of his novels than slog my way through “1984” again. I bounce off of that thing every time I read it.
alexvdl – Famous poems, poorly filked, are still poor.
And are you serious about expounding on the concept of a (gay) character vs. a gay (character)? I can, but I thought it sufficiently obvious.
That ninety percent of the Locus shortlist books contain a gay main character is not useful information if you don’t know how many characters are being counted as “main”. For Goblin Emperor, considering which one’s gay, you’d have to be counting thirty or so. I mean, I could tell you that at fifty percent of jobs I’ve had there was an out gay or lesbian person, and that wouldn’t tell you how many gay coworkers I’ve had.
S1AL- “dredging up”? I just pointed out that you only seem to get heated when Larry Correia or the Sad Puppies come up. It’s almost like you care more about them then SF/F as a whole.
What makes them poorly filked? Because they made fun of your chosen cause?
I don’t think it’s obvious at all. What it sounds like you’re saying is your okay with their being gay characters as long as they don’t talk about being gay, or have gay relationships, or deal with the realities of being gay, or otherwise gay the place up.
The problem I have with that analysis is that “primary character” isn’t defined. There’s a vast difference between a novel with a single protagonist who is gay vs. a novel with a half dozen or more primary cast members with one or two of them being gay. If each and every one of those ten novels has a single “primary” character and 9/10 are gay, then yeah, it’s 90%. OTOH if the average cast size of “primary” characters for those novels is, pulling a number from thin air, five, of which one is gay, then we’re looking at 18%. That’s an awfully large spread to be drawing conclusions from.
matt
Delurking:
I didn’t know Octavia Butler was black until after I purchased the Xenogenesis omnibus edition from SFBC. I didn’t realize the heroine was black until I ran across a description (sorry for bad paraphrase) along the lines of “the only things with color in the room was me.” I think that’s in the first chapter. I started the book over to see what else I missed. It was a lot easier to overlook these things pre-internet. Now everyone has a blog and, if you care, you can find out anything you want to know.
This is a mixed blessing. Because of the internet, I also have to look harder to find books. I miss the bookstore and reading plot descriptions to find a book I might like. But, since I have to look harder, I also find a wider range of books. Or learn that an author whose work I enjoyed is someone that I don’t admire in real life. All our idols have feet of clay.
On Clancy, he worked on his first book for ten years before he got a publisher. But he had contracts and deadlines for all his others. (I feel many authors have a sophomore slump for this reason). So, first book great, middle books okay, later books better than middle. But not as great as Red October.
@Steve Moss
Wow, I haven’t read the Dresden Files comics, is that where you found the bit about Michael being henpecked? Because I have read all of the books and short stories multiple times, and in those, the Carpenters are presented as an almost ridiculously happy and loving family. Harry is often full of envy over it.
@Max Florschutz:
“But I stumbled across this post by Anthony Vicino which points out that of the 2014 Locus awards for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, 90% of them feature a homosexual primary character. Which as he observes, is actually really, really high.”
Hmmm, not sure you read that post carefully… try:
But I stumbled across this post by Anthony Vicino which points out that of the 2014 Locus awards for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, 90% of them [have] a homosexual [named] character. Which as he observes, [is closer to real demographics than how many novels have characters with chronic or mental illnesses].
alexvdl – I seriously don’t know which top-10 lists you mean. I completely missed it. I tend to skim the threads when I’ve been absent from the discussion, which is about 2/3.
They were poorly-filked because the rhythm and meter got completely butchered, at least on the ones I read. I can appreciate a good parody of anything, but like puns, poor satire is the worst of all.
There’s a difference between a story that contains one or more gay characters who may (or may not) be in some sort of relationship or who otherwise “gay the place up,” and a story that’s ABOUT the character’s gayness. I’m fine with the former, don’t like the latter. Feel free to replace “gay” with just about any other big distinguishing characteristic.
The list that Max linked to is awesomely tendentious. He’s tallying every story that happens to have a gay character in it. That’s ridiculous. The fact is that the world has gay people in it. In any situation where people’s romantic and/or sexual desires matter, it would be weird to have a well-populated fictional world in which not a single person has any significant non-hetero desires. It’s classic bad statistics.
(This is quite apart from the fact that a lot of writers like to feel like their cast provides a microcosm of the setting as a whole. Rigging the cast for diversity purposes is as old as H. Beam Piper and J.R.R. Tolkien.)
A better analysis would work out how many characters are described at all with reference to their romantic and/or sexual desires, and of those, how many are LGBT. (It’d go on to see how much the author is inclined to assign stereotypical behavior to people of which orientation.)
Should we regard it as presumptively suspicious that the Puppies’ slate included an out LGBT woman out of, what, less than a dozen nominated authors total?
‘Tom Clancy? Seriously? That’s Stephanie Meyer level writing, at best.’
His books got worse as they got bigger, and he was never a great prose stylist, but at his best he had a clean, pacy style that conveyed technical and military information in a crisp, effective manner that added to rather than detracted from the excitement: Hunt For Red October is a classic Cold War thriller
Max
Well, what the article says is ‘a gay character’.
That’s rather different to your ‘homosexual primary character’.
I cannot help but feel that the author of the article probably would have issues with you rewriting his article for him; perhaps you could write one of your own…
Update: Influxus points out, quite correctly, that Vicino’s purpose differs from the use Max is making of his list. Credit where credit is due.
Should we go on to be skeptical of stories where too many characters are really rich, really white out of all proportion to the societies in which they live, or really male?
“goodshowsir.co.uk”
Wow, what a great site! That DRAGON WAITING cover is …is…I’m at a loss for words. Thanks for the tip, Peace.
“This raises others questions though. So is it ignorance when an author doesn’t write in gay characters? Or is it just that they don’t find the entire debate interesting and are focused on other things? Should that author be looked down on for not making character sexuality a primary focus of their work? At what point is the verdict handed down that the focus is over, and everyone can stop worrying about writing homosexual/non-homosexual works because it’s just ordinary? And who makes such a decision?”
1. It might or it might not be, depending on the author. An absence of gay characters wouldn’t cause me to comment or probably even notice. The inclusion of only negatively stereotyped gay people, however, is something I would definitely notice and react negatively to.
2. Not every writer is interested in writing with or about gay people, even in the SFF field. I suspect that in the SFF world they provide a handy shortcut into the concept of “life as the other/the others live among us/we are all others in one way or another” which is extremely popular in SFF, but certainly not every story out there has to deal with that theme and many don’t. There’s nothing wrong — in my opinion — with simply not choosing to include that element in your stories, as long as you don’t do something repulsive like claim that they don’t exist any more because they were “cured” or whatever. Although, if you write ten doorstopper books of fantasy fiction and never ever even mention that any sexuality besides hetero exists in your supposedly human cast, I’m going to raise my eyebrows and be less than impressed with your worldcrafting, at a minimum.
3. “Looked down on”? For not having gays in the book?? Wha…? You lost me. I certainly don’t go through each author’s ouevre counting up the gays to see if they hit the minimum quota. About the only time I might even notice is, like I said above, if they write reams and reams of text in a world mostly populated by humans and never even mention the possibility of same-gender attraction, I might think that was a flaw in their worldbuilding and downgrade them for it. I should add, though, that not being gay, I am probably much less aware of the frequency of gay characters appearing in the fiction I read. Someone with a personal stake or connection here might feel differently about the necessity of a favorite author mentioning that people like them exist and not being terribly interested in authors that resolutely fail to address the issue — and that’s their right as readers.
4. “Verdict handed down…” Uh, you lost me again. Who’s handing out “verdicts” here about anything in regard to gay characters, telling people to “stop worrying” or “making decisions”? There isn’t any such regulatory board in SFF, despite the paranoid delusions of the Puppies. Thinking just about Bujold since I was just touting her works, I don’t recall any gay characters in her Nebula-award winning FALLING FREE, and certainly no gay Quaddies, but it doesn’t seemed to have harmed the book’s chances at recognition at all. If there is a gay character there he or she was so insignificant I can’t recall them.
Are you suggesting that an excellent work of SFF that included no clearly gay characters would somehow suffer for that? I disagree. The inclusion of gay characters — NOT primary characters, but just gay people in the book, as Kurt pointed out — in the Locus Award winners list is far more likely to be a result of those authors being good at their craft and interested in realistic world building than of any “gay agenda” being pushed.
A comment that was written roughly two pages ago:
Happyturtle – I’m with Bruce Baugh on justifiable suspicion of Correia and Togersen’s claims that the witch-hunt started early. You will recall I’m sure Torgersen’s desperate attempts to rewrite history with regard to Juliette Wade’s (non)involvement with Sad Puppies 3 here only a few days ago. I’ve observed also Correia’s complete misrepresentation of the non-binary gender pieces by Alex Dally McFarlane and Damien Walter. Neither is terribly good at accurately reporting what is actually happening in real time.
I’m also going to hold my hand up and admit that I personally was harsh on both of them before it became fashionable, so I may have contributed to any feeling of alienation that they have. When Correia was nominated for the Campbell Award, I justified putting it below “No Award” thus:
Correia may well have been offended by my write-up of his Campbell nomination. Then again, he may not have even read it. One commenter chimed in to agree with me online, and the voters ranked him last, so that may count as a witch-hunt.
As for Torgersen, I’m afraid I was brutal about his use of language in both his 2012 nominated novelette, “Ray of Light”, and in one of the stories submitted for Campbell consideration in which one female character was described as “literally flowing with stories and spunk”. Maybe not literally literally. I suspect that he may himself have been the anonymous commenter leaping to the defence of Togersen as writer on the first of those posts. However, I don’t recall making a judgement about his politics at that stage as I didn’t know what they were.
Also I didn’t attend the Worldcons in either 2011 or 201 so it can’t be entirely my fault!
Literally flowing with…spunk?
Ew.
Sorry, Bruce: I hadn’t seen your post before I wrote mine.
I consider that Max changing ‘a gay character’ to ‘homosexual primary character’ is downright misleading, probably intentionally so…
Memory is one of my favorites. It is also a story of change for Miles. My other favorite is Brother in Arms. That is so humorous and places Miles in one of his best playing multiple characters at the same time.
Covers can be off putting some times. I I used to look at covers if I am making a purchase without research. I did that for Warriors Apprentice and then quickly bought Vor Game Then got Shards of Honor.
>>> I consider that Max changing ‘a gay character’ to ‘homosexual primary character’ is downright misleading, probably intentionally so…
Okay, I’d better reply to this.
Actually, I was trying to not be offensive, as I’ve been snapped at before for using the term “gay character” before online because some find the term “gay” to be deriding, as they read gay as male and … basically, you can’t please everyone.
As far as Primary goes, that was my honest mistake. I read that article the day it went up, and in my haste to share it skimmed, saw several instances where he mentioned that they were primary characters, and incorrectly assumed that the rest of the stories followed suit. I apologize, an with that assumption, at least there I’ve finished the latter half of the old saying about such.
Regardless, you guys can debate how it may or may not apply. I threw it out there, complete with link, so have fun, don’t let the small mistakes distract from the overall.
On the subject of Octavia Butler covers, check this out:
http://bfar.us/eBay/2009/DawnHCFC.jpg
That was the cover on the edition of Dawn that I bought. I was a teenager. That lily-white brunette on the cover? That’s Lilith Iyapo. It wasn’t until I had to look up what “Yoruba” meant that I realized Lilith was black.
“XS on May 16, 2015 at 12:37 pm said:
Peace:”Cripes. Are you saying Requires Hate and her cronies attacked Pat Cadigan?!?
So … she and they had no shame and no sense of decency whatsoever?””
I can see how the Cardigan event could have been read in different ways. As far as I understand it:
1. Gamergater started dropping hints that RH aka BS was someone worth looking at.
2. PC referred Gamergater to LM’s piece on why BS is the worst person in the world.
What I saw did not make it terribly clear if PC’s motivation was “dude, this is an old story, other people are on it already, just let it lie” or “Well, if you’re thinking that this person might be a fun target then look at this, it’ll help you reach a conclusion.”
And perhaps she lept to the conclusion that it was the latter not the former. I can understand why.
@Kurt Busiek –
There are much better Bujold books out there, it’s true.
To avoid having to worry about jumping into the middle of a story, you could try her fantasy books: Curse of Chalion is practically perfect. It is a gem of a book.
How can you have a website dedicated to bad SFF covers without Rodent Mutation by Bron Fane (Lionel Fanthorpe)? It’s like the Canadian nightmare scenario brought to life on a Badger paperback.
RAH: Bluntly, I’m sure your son means the world to you, but your son is not, in fact, the world. I recommend you look up the “pundit’s fallacy” and then try to stop committing it.
@NotTheRealMax-
“so have fun, don’t let the small mistakes distract from the overall.”
But without the mistake there *is* no overall. Having found that 90% of a set of works have a queer character with a name is completely different from 90% of those works being primarily about queer people or issues.
“Regardless, you guys can debate how it may or may not apply.”
Okay, let’s debate. In addition to the error already pointed out, there’s another issue.
It’s. One. Year.
As one of my former CFOs and mentors liked to say, “An analysis done once is no analysis at all.”
Max, dude, The Goblin Emperor had 70K characters.
@ Nicholas Whyte — Each time Correia has justified his Puppying on the basis of being treated “badly” when nominated for a Campbell in 2011 or when attending Reno in 2011, my impression of his comments is that he’s complaining about people being critical of (or mean to) him personally, on the basis of how he presents himself personally in his public capacity, i.e. they didn’t like -him-.
I disagree with his premise that being maligned in sf/f on account of who you are (or who you present yourself as) justifies gaming the Hugos or publicly insulting past Hugo winners, nominees, voters, and WorldCon attendees. If it did, then Correia would be obliged to get in line behind many, many other people (including people he has insulted on his blog) who’d have a prior “justification” for such unprofessional behavior.
I did not have the impression he was complaining about people who criticized the quality of his writing, rather than criticizing him personally. Such as the post you’ve written above, which sticks strictly to criticizing the quality of the writing when declaring he didn’t deserve a Campbell Award.
However, I don’t have the interest, time, or stamina to go back and re-read Correia’s long-winded statements about 2011, and I’m realizing I might have had the impression he didn’t mean what people thought of his writing… simply because it never would occur to me that a professional writer would go into such hysterics over THAT. (Yes, I know. Some do. I keep forgetting.)
Seeing your writing criticized–as well as eviscerated, ridiculed, belittled, denigrated, etc.–is really painful. But it’s part of the job. If you’re not prepared to accept a very reaction from an unpredictable percentage of readers and reviewers as one of the possible results of putting your fiction out there, then DON’T PUT YOUR FICTION OUT THERE.
(And I have seen any number of comments about my work over the years which make your comments above about Correia’s work look like a love letter written by the hopelessly smitten. It’s just part of being a writer, and we all have to get used to it.)
People saying that you don’t deserve an award because you’re writing is crap is very demoralizing. But it comes with the territory, and it’s not personal (and long as no one steps across the line to MAKE it personal). And as painful as it is, if you happen to see or hear it, it’s not “mean” and doesn’t justify a snit, a temper tantrum, or public whining, let alone trying to burn down the Hugo Awards. (Just saying this for the record. Although I find Correia’s behavior very unprofessional, I’ve no idea if he was referring to criticism of his writing when saying he chose to Puppy the Hugos because he felt some people were unkind to him. I would hope not, because that would be inexcusably amateur as a rationale for doing anything more severe than whine to his spouse or grumble over a beer with a friend.)
“It then come as no surprise to me that most of the authors I read are the smae. I don’t see that as anything more than an accident of demographics.”
A lot of good contemporary SF is being written by women, and by writers of color.
You should get out of your accidental demographics and seek some of it out.
May I recommend, free online, Crossed Genres?
A few stories to start with:
http://crossedgenres.com/magazine/028-loud-as-a-murder/
http://crossedgenres.com/magazine/024-the-wolf-and-the-dragon/
http://crossedgenres.com/magazine/024-fantaisie-impromptu/
Jack Lint on May 16, 2015 at 3:47 pm said:
How can you have a website dedicated to bad SFF covers without Rodent Mutation by Bron Fane (Lionel Fanthorpe)? It’s like the Canadian nightmare scenario brought to life on a Badger paperback.
They take submissions. If no one sent it in, they won’t have it.