If You Were a Puppy, My Love 4/23

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aka “Catch A Barking Star, Tell Me Where the Hugos Are” 

A combination of new voices speaking out and old hands breaking silence feature in today’s roundup. Cheryl Morgan, T. L. Knighton, Arthur Chenin, T. C. McCarthy, David Gerrold, Melinda Snodgrass, Vox Day and Chris Meadows are among those who chimed in. (And title credits go to File 770 consulting editors of the day, ULTRAGOTHA and Laura Resnick.)

Cheryl Morgan on Cheryl’s Mewsings

“Puppygate – Winners and Losers” – April 23

Has fandom lost? Well obviously if VD and his pals win a bunch of Hugos then we will have done this year. But the final ballot hasn’t happened yet. I understand that Sasquan took an additional 1350 supporting memberships in the two days after the Hugo finalists were announced. I suspect that more memberships are still being bought. Sasquan is on course to be the first Worldcon ever to have more supporting memberships than attending, and probably the third largest Worldcon ever. Some people, I know, are convinced that all of those new members are VD loyalists who will vote as he directs. Personally I’m not so sure.

It’s not just those 1350 or so new members (presumably all voters) that we need to think about either. Given the way that nominating eligibility works (members of last year, this year and next year’s Worldcon), there must have been at least 12,000 people eligible to nominate. Only 2,122 people actually did so. And in the Puppy-dominated short fiction categories the largest number of nominating ballots was 1,174.

What would have happened if all 12,000 eligible WSFS members had cast nominating ballots? Well in Novel, where there were 1,827 ballots cast, three non-Puppy works became finalists.

It is certainly true that a small number of people voting for a slate has far more influence on the nominating ballot than a larger number of people voting independently. But there is a limit. With enough people voting, even a slate becomes less effective.

So my first point is this: VD didn’t win the Hugos, we (collectively) gave them to him by failing to use our votes. Obviously there are good reasons why people don’t participate even though they have the right to do so, but if we want to fix the Puppy problem one of our main priorities ought to be to increase the level of participation in Hugo voting. I do, as you might expect, have ideas about how to do that, which I’ll address in a later post. For now, however, fannish outrage at Puppygate is doing a fine job of encouraging people to vote.

My second point, of course, is that if enough of us vote in the final ballot then he won’t win that either.

 

Kevin Standlee on Fandom Is My Way of Life

“Behold, the Gavel of WSFS” – April 23

LoneStarCon 3 agreed when I asked to fund the purchase of a new one, and a few days ago I finally got around to ordering it

Gavel of WSFS ph K Standlee

 

T. L. Knighton

“Anti-Hugo Shenanigans” – April 23

Many of the Sad Puppies crowd is well aware that things are getting ugly.  The CHORFs, as we well know, seek to do nothing but destroy their enemies with whatever tools they can manage.  One of those tools are negative reviews on Amazon.

But, the question is, how on Earth can you tell someone didn’t read the works versus just didn’t like them?  Well, let me paint you a picture.

 

Arthur Chenin on In Which I Geek

“Don’t be a sad puppy about the Sad Puppies” – April 23

Where Chris [Garcia, on Nedvana Podcast] and I disagree is in how much damage has been done.  He thinks the Hugos are irreparably damaged whereas I think they just got an embarrassing black eye.  He thinks that the Hugo administrators failed in not disallowing the Sad/Rabid Puppy slate nomination ballots.  I agree with Kevin [Standlee] that the Hugos have rules for a reason and that we need to work within those rules or else we truly are the controlling clique the Puppies claim we are.

So how do I see things playing out?

Two things are going to happen this year at Sasquan.  First, there is going to be the World Science Fiction Society business meeting chaired by Kevin Standlee that will address the issue of changing the rules to prevent slating from occurring.  I don’t know what those exact changes are going to be but like Kevin  I hope they go for something simple like instituting a 3/6 or 4/8 rule [1].  The other is that we will know who, if anybody, won any awards.  Vox Day actually did something miraculous by inflicting his slate on the short list, he managed to unite fandom a task akin to herding cats.  I fully expect No Award to win most, if not all, the slated categories.

“But wait,” I hear you cry, “Didn’t Vox Day threaten to burn down the Hugos if No Award wins any of the writing or editing categories?”  Yes, he did and I fully expect him to try.

 

Max Florschutz on Unusual Things

“Speaking on Hugos and Sad Puppies” – April 23

Goats and sheep are not latrine animals. They go wherever. And they don’t care after that. So their pens? They pooped everywhere.

I apologize for those of you who might be off-put by the discussion of so much poop. It isn’t going to get rosier from here, though.

Anyway, these little guys could poop like nobodies business. And they would fill the bottoms of their pens with it. And I’m not exaggerating there. The bottoms of their pens were packed down straw, dirt, and poop. Hard as rock, slightly smelly … and oh, after a few months, a foot or so thick. That’s right, you could walk up to the side of these pens and look at the side railings. A foot thick or more of compact manure. It didn’t bother them. It was dry and mixed with straw leftovers. And they were only in their pens a few hours a day anyway. But it had to be shoveled (well, forked with a pitchfork, since it didn’t cut easily under a shovel blade) every few months because it would get high enough that eventually they would be able to jump out of their pens.

And guess who had to do that? Yup. Me. I was a manure shoveler from the moment my parents decided I was old enough to shovel. Sometimes it went to straight to the garden. Other times it went to one giant compost pile or another. I’m talking emptying piles of poop ten by ten by two feet … and doing six of them. That’s a lot of poop….

So, what’s the point of me telling you this? Pretty simple: I’ve shoveled my fair share of crap. I’ve experienced it on a daily basis. I’ve shoveled, and shoveled and shoveled. And you know what I’ve learned about it?

There are times when it’s worth it to shovel crap, and there are times when it isn’t. And dealing with the endless, recycled crap that the anti-sad puppies crowd continues to spout? Not worth my time.

Look, I’ll admit that no one is flawless. And the Sad Puppies clearly swept the Hugos, much to their surprise. As a result, SP4 will probably be even more interesting to follow. But when it comes down to looking at one side or the other, I’m on the side of the Sad Puppies here, because I know crap, and there’s so much of it coming from the anti-sad puppies side it’s not just filling the pen, it’s burying the occupants, the producers, and their allies.

 

David Gerrold on Facebook – April 23

Tananarive Due and I have now gone through two meetings and three drafts of the proposed Hugo Award Ceremony script.

Every draft has been passed before the Hugo Award administrators, the senior officers of the Con Committee, and several others whose advice is needed. Notes have been passed back and forth. Adjustments and tweaks have been made.

But here’s the important part. Here’s the part I want to stress: From the very beginning, the commitment has been to recognize that the Hugo Award Ceremony is the highlight of the fannish calendar. It is a celebration of the genre, it is a celebration of the community, it is most of all a celebration of the nominees. The evening is for them — it is to honor them as standard bearers for excellence in the field.

 

David Gerrold on Facebook – April 23

Okay, @Karl J. Martin. Here’s the challenge. If you can raise $25,000 to be split between the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund and The Orangutan Foundation, I will host the Hugos in a large purple dress. With shoes to match.

Go for it.

 

T. C. McCarthy

“How I Spent Easter: Tweeting #HugoGate #GamerGate #Sadpuppies #Hugoawards” – April 6

The 2015 announcement of the Hugo nominees was met with so much asshattery that I broke my 4 years of silence on the issue, and tweeted/posted all my thoughts regarding the left side – the establishment side – of the SFF community. I documented the entire weekend on video so you could see the rage in my eyes, the anger in my face, and what I look like when I don’t shower. Click above on my facebook and twitter links to read about all the drama…

(Don’t be expecting another ShayCarl here is all I have to say.)

 

Melinda Snodgrass

“Puppies! – My Two Cents” – April 23

Science fiction is now a world wide source of entertainment from our movies to our TV shows.  Shouldn’t our prose also try to reflect this wonderful kaleidoscope of human diversity?  In fact prose is probably the best place to present this fascinating dance of differing outlooks and beliefs, to speak to and hear from people who aren’t just like us.

I think it deepens and enriches our genre when we have women, and people of color and the LGBT community, and different religions or no religions discussed and explored.

Over the years I’ve had people ask “what do you do?” and when I tell them I’m a writer their initial reaction is “oh cool”.  Then they ask what I write and when I say science fiction the reaction becomes “Oh, that’s kid stuff.  I don’t read science fiction.”  By broadening our field to include this rich symphony of different voices I think science fiction has graduated from being that “Buck Rogers, kid stuff” into a genre which is perfectly positioned to discuss big issues and the deepest human motivations in really interesting ways.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a place for some good old fashioned buckle and swash, but that shouldn’t be the entirety of our field.  Let’s not eat just vanilla ice cream or sing one kind of song.  Let’s explore all of the wonder that the minds of humans can imagine.  I see no evidence that the buckle and swash is being forced out in favor of a more diverse fiction.  The pie is getting bigger not smaller.  More books are being published.  More voices are being heard.  Today readers have an expansive feast to be enjoyed.

What I’m trying to say is none of us should be afraid.  It’s a small blue dot and because of advances in technology we have the ability to hug each other close and face the void united in our humanity and celebrating our differences.

 

Laura Resnick in a comment to Melinda Snodgrass – April 23

Actually, I have decided I am totally on board with 100% RELIABLE & COMPREHENSIVE PACKAGING as a standard for book covers. I think this is a great idea!

Yes! I advocate packaging of books to warn me that the female characters in a novel are all coat-holding carboard cutouts and the male characters address them as “cupcake” and “baby doll” and “cutie.” Packaging that would warn me that the writing is so convoluted and pretentious, or so clumsy and tepid, one can only wonder at what the English language ever did to make the author hate it so much. Packaging that would alert me that the characters are all stereotypically tedious action heroes who shoot everything in sight and make “clever” puns after killing someone. Packaging could warn me that every black character in the book is a servant, every Hispanic person a criminal, every woman a sex object, and every atheist an Evil Marxist Villain.

This would be a GREAT system, and I fully support it!

 

 Vox Day on Vox Populi

“A Thing to Remember” – April 23

In any event, I stand with the Dread Ilk. I stand with the Rabid Puppies. I stand with the Evil Legion of Evil. And I stand with #GamerGate. We don’t reject anyone out of hand for simply existing or disagreeing with us. We don’t demand that people think exactly the way we do, we don’t expect them to march in lockstep with us, nor do we police their thoughts, speech, beliefs, or works. And we don’t need anyone. If you don’t like where things are going or how they are being done, you’re free to leave at anytime.

I supported the Sad Puppies goals, even though I believed that their failure to grasp the true nature of science fiction’s SJWs meant their well-intentioned attempts to reach out to the science fiction left and find common ground were likely to meet with eventual failure. But I have been wrong before, and so I saw no harm in the attempt. I did not use them. I did not need them. I

won’t abandon the Sad Puppies. I will support Sad Puppies 4 and Kate the Impaler. I won’t disavow them when I disagree with them in the future, just as I did not when I disagreed with them in the past.

Evil-Legion-of-Evil_Vile-Faceless-Minion_512x512 from Vox Popoli

Chris Meadows on Teleread

“Why the Hugos are broken, and who’s breaking them now”  – April 23

The Internet Breaks the Hugos

Whether you’re for the Puppies or against them, there can’t be any argument that the Hugo nomination and voting process is badly broken. The interesting thing is that the process hasn’t changed appreciably for years or even decades. It didn’t just break on its own. No, the same thing happened to it that happened to so many other processes and industries that had long been taken for granted. The Internet happened…..

So, here we have the Hugo Awards, adapting their voting process to the Internet by making it possible for associate members to enter ballots by web instead of just mailing them in as before, without taking into account that the Internet makes it possible to organize concerted campaigns by letting people post communications to everyone else on the Internet. Something like this was inevitable. Perhaps the only thing to be surprised about is that it didn’t happen sooner. (And, given that this is the third year in a row there has been Puppy activity, and it takes two years to implement Hugo rule changes, perhaps the Worldcon folks should have started considering this problem a little earlier, before it became the full-blown crisis that it is this year.)

And this could be only the beginning. When I was chatting with SF and romance novelist Mercedes Lackey the other day, she made this prediction:

I cannot WAIT until someone lets the Romance Writers know about this, and how to get a book on the Hugo ballot.

Romance readers outnumber SF readers by about 100 to one, and a very high percentage of them would be gleeful to only pay $40 to get one of their beloved writers an award.

Romance writers are extremely savvy women about energizing their fan bases. They were using social media for that long before SF writers started.

I want to see their faces when Diane Gabaldon takes the Hugo in 2016.

 

https://twitter.com/Spacebunnyday/status/591291254908051456

 

https://twitter.com/QRosborough/status/591346305206738944

 

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113 thoughts on “If You Were a Puppy, My Love 4/23”

  1. Frankly, I’d rather see romance novels on the Hugo ballot than most of the Puppy nominees I’ve gotten to so far.

    Lackey writes at least as well as any of them. Fun but fluffy–not what I would usually have thought of as Hugo material, but then, the Puppies have significantly expanded my expectations about what might end up on the Hugo ballot.

    And I have noticed a certain amount of romance-SF crossover; time-machine love stories, shapeshifter and vampire lovers and so on. And, correct me if I’m wrong–don’t romances tend to sell *extremely* well? So they’d be best-sellers also…

  2. Beale: “We don’t reject anyone out of hand for simply existing or disagreeing with us”

    Lol. That’s why anyone who disagrees with those groups are immediately called shills or labeled ‘Anti-Whatever’. Anti-Puppy, Anti-Hugo, for GG it’s Anti-GG or aGGro. Speaking of geez, get a little more creative guys. I mean I know it’s sad that they’re not lining up on the fields of battle in easily identifiable uniforms, but at least mix it up a little. Counter Puppies, Puppy Adverse, Cynophobics, etc. You reject everyone who disagrees out of hand as ‘Anti’ and it’s kind of lazy. Think outside of the box!

    Also the We Don’t Care motto is amusing. It’s like all those people who enter threads to tell people they don’t care. That’s precious.

    I’m with Laura about the packaging though, it would save me a lot of time if Unimaginative Retread could be listed like the ESRB warnings on video games.

  3. Well, at least from that last thread roundup, Mike, you have titles for these posts for the foreseeable future 🙂

  5. I can think of only one problem with the SF/Romance genre. How is Fabio going to show off his physique and long flowing hair when he is stuck in a spacesuit?

  6. Of course SF/Romance may bring about some interesting pairings.

    “In space no can hear your bodice rip”

  7. There is some really good SFF being published in the Romance genre. The Hugos would not suffer a drop in quality if the best was nominated.

  8. I hear two solutions:

    1. Rally more eligible voters and convince them it is important to vote.

    2. Jury-rig the technical wording of the WSFS Constitution in the hopes that they will continue to have the luxury of not voting.

    Solution # 1 would have the advantage of being supported by the entire membership.

  9. I wonder if the arrival of Open Source upset as many apple carts and caused as much consternation.

    I know that I have contributed to some open source software packages that have totally destroyed the market for certain types of closed source software. I like to think that the world is a better place because of open source software.

  11. I failed to nominate this year out of pure lethargy.

    I had read hardly any 2014 short fiction that I felt excited about, and had found only two books (The Peripheral and Exchopraxia) to be truly deserving. I thought hey, I don’t have time to read more new stuff by March, how much can I really contribute. If everyone in my shoes had more motivation (and boy do we now), things might be different.

    Would everyone be happy? Of course not. But wouldn’t a small group acting in unison (if it is about the spirit of the award, can we at least stop blaming – or giving credit – to anybody who publishes some screed or list of recommendations on a blog and talk directly to the people who made the decision to cast ballots in lockstep without doing the reading) have a harder time dominating if everyone else had taken half a minute to nominate just one or two or three of their favorite books or stories?

    If that means more paranormal romance, sure, I will feel like a dinosaur. But I’d have a hard time begrudging their participation.

  13. I started out as a romance writer (released more than a dozen romances under the name Laura Leone, back when I was an apple-cheeked youth), and I’m still friends with more romance writers than sf/f writers–and they are SMART and very businesslike. Christ Meadows is right about them being savvy about energeizing their fan base.

    They could clean up this town in no time.

    But never mind that–I have been QUOTED in File 770! There are no more worlds for me to conquer.

  14. @Laura Resnick I’m fairly sure romance writers could come in and logroll the hugos if they wanted to, but I’m not sure any of them would see it as a worthwhile thing to do. They’re a noticeably more intelligent and wise than the motivating forces behind the assorted puppies.

  15. Why don’t we just say “romance/sff crossover fans could clean up in no time.”

  16. This just in: In “A statement from Frank Wu and Brianna Wu about RavenCon” on Space Channel 6, those who “orchestrated or benefited from” the lockstep voting are asked “as a professional courtesy” to not attend a RavenCon panel because they share the “same reactionary anger” as a “hate group.”

  18. @BrianZ what an…. interesting phrasing you use for what was said. Why not just use the direct quote?

    http://spacechannel6.com/post/117189650788/a-statement-from-frank-wu-and-brianna-wu-about

    “To put it bluntly, attending this con makes us tremendously uncomfortable. But we agreed to attend, long before Gamergate, and we will follow through with that professional commitment.

    Neither of us wish to discuss the Hugo hijacking with any person responsible for this atrocious action. Both of us would consider it a professional courtesy if you didn’t attend Brianna’s Gamergate panel tomorrow.”

  19. Iphinome, do you mean that I distorted what was written? If so, I apologize, since I did not have that intent. I summarized an eight paragraph statement without a block quote, but thank you for posting one.

    Here is the other part that I referenced:

    “The toll that the hate group Gamergate has taken on our family has been well documented…

    “Sadly, the same reactionary anger has spread into the science fiction community with the hijacking of year’s Hugo awards, deliberately sabotaging them for bitter, regressive political purposes. Many of the forums that orchestrate harassment against Brianna and other women in the game industry have avowed supporters of the Hugo hijacking, many of whom participated in the voting and strongly support Vox Day.

    What makes RavenCon particularly uncomfortable for us is that a number of those attending directly orchestrated or benefited from the hijacking. We’ve heard numbers as high as six.”

    The six asked not to attend the panel would include Hugo nominees Lou Antonelli, Michael Z. Williams and John C. Wright (Writer Guests), and Jim Minz and Gray Rhinehart (Editor Guests). Is the sixth Kate Paulk (Writer Guest), because she helped to orchestrate?

  20. Brian Z: Aha! Thanks for your even keener eye, in figuring out the don’t invitems…. Though should #6 be Paulk or L. Jagi Lamplighter? (Or McGoohan?)

  21. Kind of depressing that the problems starts to spread to other conventions now. Say hello to the balkanization of the SF-world. Before existing in small groups, now spread to whole conventions.

    This puppy war is a total disaster.

  22. ‘And I stand with #GamerGate. We don’t reject anyone out of hand for simply existing or disagreeing with us’

    For anyone writing villains, remember: you can achieve a great sinister effect when you have them speak their bare-faced lies calmly and lucidly.

  23. ULTRAGOTHA and Laura Resnick:

    Is there somewhere to get a sense of science fictional romance recommendations or a place to start reading?

  25. Milly Taiden’s “Tall, Dark and Panther” is certainly Hugo-worthy. Quite the Amazon rank, too.

  26. Peace is My Middle Name:

    I can’t recommend the Jean Johnson “Theirs Not to Reason Why” series enough. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Starts with A Soldier’s life.

  27. Peace: I am generally not a romance reader, but I enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife. (It wasn’t marketed as SF, but the author was nominated for Campbell Award.)

  28. People forget how much romance there was in the Lensman series. Getting Kinnison and Mac married played a big part in the middle books.

    Of course, it was tough, hard-as-nails romance, but it was still a key part of the story.

  30. One would think that puppies of all temperaments would howl in support of a rule change that reduces the chances of a small minority like social justice warriors and voting unions to dominate the ballot and puts more power back into the hands of rugged individualist voters.

  31. Brian Z, it was the intermixing of quotes and paraphrase. I withdraw any statements you think impugn your honor.

  32. “From the very beginning, the commitment has been to recognize that the Hugo Award Ceremony is the highlight of the fannish calendar. It is a celebration of the genre, it is a celebration of the community, it is most of all a celebration of the nominees. The evening is for them — it is to honor them as standard bearers for excellence in the field.” — David Gerrold

    Woah, when did this start? Is this for real?

    Is David Gerrold going to call on the heavy weights of fandom to stop with their organized “let’s No Award all puppy nominees without even reading them” campaign, or is treating the nominees as “standard bearers for excellence in the field” something that’s only to be done during the ceremony? Deidre Saoirse Moen’s behavior towards them certainly crosses the line into exactly the kind of shunning that she herself describes as being evil. Can fandom be counted on to give people a fair shake even if they’re different…? Seriously, I’m getting mixed messages here.

  34. @Jeffro “Seriously, I’m getting mixed messages here.”

    That’s probably because, unlike the fevered fantasies of the RPs, there isn’t a monolithic mass arrayed against them, but a group of people who aren’t co-ordinating messages or following a few mouthpieces.

  35. Jeffro, I took the post you are quoting as being about the *conduct of the ceremony itself* and what will be said or done by the host *during the ceremony*.

    The post came from a guy who is pretty clearly anti-puppy, who is nonetheless saying something to the extent of “look, during the ceremony itself, i have a job to do, and that job doesn’t allow me to inject my personal opinion about the puppies *in any way*, because in the context of what i’ve been hired to do, that would be just wrong.”

  36. Way to take SpaceBunny’s tweet out of context. Someone had tweeted at her calling the Sad Puppies & Gamergate white supremacists. It was clearly a joke.

  37. Jane Carnall if the guardian busted, admits to leaving fake reviews at amazon against Catalina house and John Wright. Not enough to no award, she has to libel against someones livelihood for daring to disagree.

    And there aren’t problems with gatekeepers and cliques in fandom. Right.

  38. Cirsova: Sure it was a joke — that’s why it’s at the end of the roundup, where the comic relief goes. As for context, it’s in the context I found it — standing alone on a list of tweets with “Sad Puppies” in it.

  39. I think it was funny, too. For pity’s sake, everyone knows that she is married to an ethnic minority. Even the dumbest among all of us here recognize that she isn’t possibly a white supremacist, and you’d have to have a birdbrain and some additional emotional handicaps indeed to think otherwise. Mike was including it for levity.

  40. @Mike, it was in response to this tweet Jane Carnall made at her:

    @Spacebunnyday I’m somehow unsurprised to discover that a #SadPuppies fan has *so many* white supremacists following her.

    And my mistake, that original tweet did not specifically mention Gamergate.

  41. As a 30+ year fan (with a lowercase F), this whole mess has galvanized me to vote for the Hugo awards for the first time in my life. I have never voted before because I rarely read books the year they come out. Thanks you, Sad/Rabid Puppies. Without you I would not have just spent a lovely week reading The Goblin Emperor and Ancillary Justice (to get caught up so I can read Ancillary Sword). If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that more fans get involved with Worldcon and voting.

  42. @Robert West

    Thank you for the clarification. I take it then that treating the nominees as “standard bearers for excellence in the field” is something that’s we can expect to be done by fandom ONLY during the ceremony proper. In fact, it’s amazing that anyone could be found that would be willing to even do this much, and we should all be grateful that David Gerrold has stepped up to tackle this particularly distasteful job. Outside of this one narrow venue, the shunning of these people can be expected to be the modus operandi of fandom.

  43. alexander- If that is true, Jane Carnall may well have opened herself up to a damage claim in the UK. It has very strict speech laws and some UK professors just had some hefty damages imposed upon them for doing something similar with the Amazon rankings.

  44. @jeffro: “In fact, it’s amazing that anyone could be found that would be willing to even do this much, and we should all be grateful that David Gerrold has stepped up to tackle this particularly distasteful job”

    I am impressed with the extent you’re willing to go to claim your own victimhood — I thought that kind of “Poor me! Poor me!” was supposed to be the modus operandi of the so-called “SJWs”.

    ” the shunning of these people can be expected to be the modus operandi of fandom.”

    Considering the way, for example, VD’s commentariat treats the parts of fandom they don’t like, they are in no position to throw stones or complain.

    And anyone who groups themselves in with that set is going to have to deal with the results, as well. I’m sure it’s been cited many times here, but lay down with dogs, get up with fleas.

    I don’t support a blacklist; OTOH, I would vote against inviting any of the Puppy organizers/main participants as a guest to a convention I was running, because I don’t think they’d be respectful to the membership. They’re free to attend, provided they behave; but I see no reason to honor them.

  46. @Steven Schwartz

    “And anyone who groups themselves in with that set is going to have to deal with the results, as well. I’m sure it’s been cited many times here, but lay down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

    By all means, please elaborate on all the nasty things I can expect from fandom.

  47. “By all means, please elaborate on all the nasty things I can expect from fandom.”

    Well, first off — let me disabuse you of a notion.

    There is no “fandom”.

    There are a huge number of different fandoms, and they have a lot of overlap. So, you won’t get nasty things from “fandom” as a whole.

    Second: You’re the one who was complaining about shunning. You’re the one who has been taking a position of being a victim.

    Third: I don’t know, because I’m not Speaker For Fandom, as per #1, above.
    I mean, if I heard someone in a bar discussion loudly praising Vox Day’s non-fiction writing, I’d avoid them. I might even make a note as to their namebadge so I could avoid them later on, or avoid them on panels.

    If I saw someone recommending “Here are some great stories!” and I saw “Yes, Virginia…” on the list, I’d probably stop reading, because while there might be other good stuff on there, their tastes would be different enough from mine as to be useless.

    If someone asked me, “Hey, I’ve got this panel I’m trying to schedule, and both and Tom Kratman want to be on it”, I’d say “Don’t put them both on unless you want an explosion — and I think would be better on it.

    If I was inviting David Gerrold to a party, there are people I wouldn’t invite to avoid trouble.

    Those are the sorts of consequences I’d expect. And if that’s “exclusion” and “shunning”, and unacceptable, I hesitate to think what you’d call the kind of treatment someone identified as an SJW receives over at, say, VD’s blog.

  48. Jeffro Johnson: Please note correct spelling ‘Deirdre’. (You seem to have directly copied Lou Antonelli’s misspelling he introduced when he called Deidre [sic] Saoirse Moen a ‘Nazi’ when she disabled his ability to post to her personal blog for ongoing misbehaviour there.)

    And well, hey, I’ve only been on the Internet since the 1980s, so I might be missing something, but last I heard, continuing to be a jerk on someone else’s personal blog isn’t an entitlement and terminating it isn’t ‘shunning’. For the record, Deirdre says she has absolutely no problem with individuals deciding they’ve had enough of each other. What she finds objectionable is enforced shunning compelled from / required by others, which I’ll note is a common tactic used by some Left-political identarians — and by the Church of Scientology. That ‘shunning’ is what Deirdre will have no part of.

    Rick Moen
    [email protected]

  49. Jeffro Johnson- I wouldn’t worry about “nasty things.” Mostly from what I’ve observed it devolves into name calling (which is the sign of weak mind and someone who can be put into their place with a few chosen words without resort to vulgarities, if you are so inclined) and threats of shunning (again, so what, as I’d probably prefer to drink with more rational human beings anyway). And most of both of those occur online. I suspect it would be a rare event for anything overt would be done publicly as that would invite a public response.

    It’s about out of control emotional thinking, for the most part, from what I’ve seen. If they were calmer they’d be focused on minimizing losses (i.e. preserving the Hugos) and preparing for next year.

    If I were advising the traditionalists, like Larry, Brad and Vox due the various Puppies, I’d recommend:

    1. Be polite at all times.
    2. Don’t threaten vengeance.
    3. Read the works and discuss their relative merits, personally and online. See nos. 1-2 above.
    4. Vote your conscience, including voting No Award.
    5. Don’t discuss your vote online, but if you are compelled do so don’t link the No Award vote to “slates”, etc. If you do so, see nos. 1 and 2 above. Find something positive about the No Awarded vote, but conclude “it just wasn’t to the level of deserving a Hugo.”
    6. Make sure your membership for the next WorldCon is up to date.
    7. As slates will likely become the thing, have input (see nos. 1-2 above) on the various proposed Puppy slates, as well as other sites which may propose slates.
    8. Nominate those works which you think are deserving., whether they are on a slate or not. See nos. 1-5 above but adapt to the nomination process.

  50. “I am impressed with the extent you’re willing to go to claim your own victimhood …”

    Some of the Puppies nominees on the ballot are victims. It’s not like Brad Torgersen or Larry Correia was asking them, “Can we put you on a Hugo slate we started to get political revenge on people we hate?” It was sold as a positive effort to get overlooked people on the ballot.

    So if Jeffro is upset, I think he has a right to feel that way. He should be glad that David Gerrold is asking that the award ceremony to be one where the winners are celebrated without taking it out on the other nominees.

    As for whether Gerrold should be condemning the No Award campaign, I think that’s a bit ridiculous. Gerrold’s been involved in Worldcon and the Hugos for decades. If he’s joined those of us who think No Award is the right option to protest bloc voting, his position as emcee shouldn’t have any bearing on that.

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