All the myriad realities parade through today’s roundup, arrayed by Jason Sanford, George R.R. Martin, John Scalzi, Vox Day, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Alexandra Erin, Tom Knighton, Anna Butler, Matt Hotaling, Ann Leckie, Katya Czaja, Rich Horton and Declan Finn, plus a few less easily identified others. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day James H. Burns.)
Jason Sanford
“When science fiction authors are no longer grounded in reality” – April 30
Let me put this delicately: WRONG WRONG WRONG! AND WHAT WORLD ARE YOU ACTUALLY LIVING IN?
First off all, if what [John] Ringo says was true why would science fiction have first begun hitting the bestseller lists in the late 1970s and early 1980s? Those were the decades when Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and many other top SF authors landed massive advances and sales for their novels. Most of which, I should note, were not published by Baen, which wasn’t even founded until 1983.
But we don’t have to go back to the ’70s and ’80s to prove Ringo wrong. For example, the April 2015 Locus Bestseller List had only one Baen title on it (which is Ringo’s Strands of Sorrow, which debuted at number 5 on the list). That’s one title out of 25 novels on the different Locus Bestseller categories for April. The March 2015 list had no Baen titles and neither did the February 2015 list. The January 2015 list had a single Baen title on it.
A similar pattern emerges from the last few years of the Locus Bestseller lists, which cover genre sales in the hardback, paperback and trade paperback formats….
And it isn’t only the bestseller lists showing this pattern — all of this is backed by sales figures from Bookscan, the publishing industry’s system for tracking book sales….
If you are going to make a provocative statement like Ringo’s, you need to back up your words with, you know, some facts. You need to show that you actually understand reality and aren’t simply saying whatever pops into your head.
George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog
“More Hugo Musings” – April 30
BEST SEMIPROZINE. This category has always pissed me off, since it was created largely to kick LOCUS out of Best Fanzine, where it was winning every year. Of course, once Semiprozine was created, LOCUS proceeded to win that a bunch of times too, until the rules were jiggered once again to kick it out once more. (This is one reason I oppose jiggering the rules, even to stop the Puppies). They really ought to call this category BEST SEMIPROZINE THAT ISN’T LOCUS. But they don’t. We have five finalists here, only two of which are from the slates… and one of those, ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS IN FLIGHT MAGAZINE, has been loudly declaring that they were not informed and never asked to be on anyone’s slate. I am really only familiar with LIGHTSPEED and STRANGE HORIZONS from this category. Both of those are pretty good. If anyone has an opinion to offer on the others, do speak up. If I have time to check them out, I will… if I don’t, I will abstain in this category, i.e. not vote. I won’t go NO AWARD, since I do think the two semipros I know are worthy. Not as worthy as LOCUS, mind you, but there you are…
Daniel on Castalia House
“Snapshot in Time: The 2002 Hugo Recommended Ballots” – April 30
Possibly because of the records that have been legitimately broken, there have been a few minor misconceptions recently that a number of other events associated with the 2015 Hugo Awards process are unprecedented. One of these has to do with recommendation lists.
By merely examining a single category (best novel) on the NESFA Recommendation list from 2001 (which promoted candidates for the 2002 Hugos), a few myths are easily dispelled:
John Scalzi on Whatever
“Redshirts as a Social Justice Cabal Hugo Pick” – April 29
[First and second of 13 tweets in series.]
1. It's been recently suggested that I should be ashamed for getting the Hugo for Redshirts (by an author who hasn't himself read the book).
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 29, 2015
2. To be clear: I am not. I am deeply pleased it won, and I think it was entirely deserving of the award, and the other awards it won.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 29, 2015
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Compare and contrast” – April 29
The SJWs in science fiction believe that if they can control the narrative, if they can convince the media to tell the story their way, they are going to retain their control of the science fiction establishment. They are given every opportunity to spin the narrative and make their case; Brad, Larry, and I were contacted by a Wall Street Journal reporter yesterday, which was a welcome change from most of the coverage that we’ve been seeing of late, but so too were John Scalzi and George Martin.
It’s just like one sees on the cable news. If a talking head has on a liberal guest, the liberal appears alone to sell the narrative. If a talking head has on a conservative guest, a liberal guest usually appears to dispute the narrative. And although it is only a guess, I suspect that the way that the story is likely to go will be moderately anti-Puppy, in light of the reporter actually “playing devil’s advocate” in conversation with me.
L. Jagi Lamplighter on Superversive Blog
“Signal To Noise” – April 22
Ever wonder why the opposition—whatever side you are not on—only ever seems to attack and quote the outliners on your side? The most horrible folks? The most obnoxious comments? How they never seem to get the point? How the throwaway line you, or your favorite blogger, tossed off when you were pissed off is repeated everywhere, while the strongly-reasoned arguments are ignored?
This is why.
To them, that throw away line is signal—because its on the subject they care about. To you and your blogger friend, it’s noise.
So, next time you feel the urge to bridge the endless gap—and maybe talk to that crazy lunatic on the other side who used to be a bosom buddy—try this simple trick:
Pick the lines the other person says that upset you the most. Ignore them. Just pretend that they are not there. Pretend that they are static. Noise.
Because, chances are, that to him, it is just noise.
And you’ve been missing the signal, tuning it out, all along.
Then, listen closely to whatever he seems to think is the most important part–even if it sounds like mad nonsense to you. NOT, mind you, what he says at loudest volume—that is likely to be noise, too—the part he speaks about fervently or with reasoning.
From there, you can often find a bridge, a common point of agreement—because at the very least, you now know what the important issues actually are.
Bojoti in a comment on Arhyalon – April 29
I think what the TrueFans and Sad Puppies don’t realize is that they are being watched by the great unwashed masses, hoi polloi, the little people of science fiction. Some of the behavior and rhetoric is so hateful and venomous that I regret my membership. Authors were saying that the new members didn’t love science fiction; they were claiming that they didn’t even read! Some were even saying stupid things like the Koch brothers bought my membership. TrueFans were disgusted by the thought of new members. They like the WorldCon being small and are actively against new members.
Chaos Horizons
“Declined Hugo and Nebula and other SFF Nominations” – April 28
[Needs also to deal with the less-easily-researched self-recusals from awards that led to people not being nominated at all, therefore not registered as declining.]
Since Chaos Horizon is a website dedicated to gathering stats and information about SFF awards, particularly the Hugos and Nebulas, a list of declined award nominations might prove helpful to us. There’s a lot of information out there, but it’s scattered across the web and hard to find . Hopefully we can gather all this information in one place as a useful resource.
So, if you know of any declined nominations—in the Hugos and Nebulas or other major SFF awards—drop the info on the comments. I have not included books withdrawn for eligibility reasons (published in a previous year, usually). I’ll keep the list updated and stash it in my “Resources” tab up at the top.
Hipster Racist
“The Anti-Geek Manifesto #gamergate #sadpuppies #sjw” – April 30
But fucking #gamergate? Who could possibly fucking care, at least after the age of 14? I mean, there is serious shit going on in the world, and you’re worried that some pink haired hipster chick with a nose ring sucked a bunch of dicks to get her game a good review? I mean, I read about “Depression Quest.” Anybody should have been able to figure out she spent a lot of time on her knees to get any recognition for that crap.
“Ethics” in “game journalism?”
“Game Journalism?” Holy fucking God, we had Judith Miller writing in the New York Times about non-existant Weapons of Mass Destruction and you’re worried about “ethics in game journalism?”
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Sad Puppies and Magical Thinking” – April 30
So, I’ve characterized the line of thinking behind the Puppies’ discontent as being unable to understand when reality runs in ways that are counter to their tastes/beliefs without imagining some kind of dark conspiracy or cabal (or “clique”, to use their preferred term).
This belief is so strong that a combination of confirmation bias and the effect of “believing is seeing” causes them to interpret all available information in ways that point to the existence of the cabal, even when this requires them to imagine that people are meaning the exact opposite of what they say.
Tom Knighton
“Thoughts on ‘slate’ voting” – April 30
Yeah, trust Vox to not make it any easier on us.
However, it’s worth noting that a number of Vox’s “Dread Ilk” have stated quite publicly that they didn’t nominate just as he wrote them down. Why is that? Probably because people who value individualism tend to be individualists. Getting any collective of individualists to do anything exactly as you want makes things like cat herding appear to be simple matters. No one is the boss of us unless we want them to be, and even then, we’ll disagree with them all we want. I sincerely hope some of the ilk stop by and tell us how they didn’t nominate a straight slate either.
Lockstep, we ain’t.
Anna Butler
“Links To Blog Posts on Writing” – April 30
The Clusterfuck that is the Hugo Awards: If you hadn’t heard this already, then the Hugo Awards this year have been torpedoed by a coalition of white, reactionary, middle-aged male writers who call themselves the ‘Sad Puppies’ and who hate women/gays/anyone who isn’t them. They’ve gamed the system to get all their books put in for awards, and effectively destroyed any credibility the Hugos had. Sad.
Matt Hotaling in The Beacon
“Hugo Award for Science Fiction not looking so progressive this year” – April 30
At the end of the end of the day and when all the hate and bile is removed from the conversation, the core of what both sides want doesn’t sound too unreasonable. The conservative nerds simply demand excellence from their media, they want the very best that the great wide geekdom has to offer; they recognize work on all of its merits, what it does, not just what it contains. The conservative nerds have no problem if their media contains progressive themes or characters, or if it comes from creators of diverse backgrounds, they simply feel that everything should get its fair shake, nothing should elevated simply because it has progressive representation. The new liberal nerds simply want broader, equal representation of all genders, races, and creeds. They want to create a climate where is it is not just acceptable to play with progressive content, but encouraged. They don’t want representation to be pandered to, they want representation done well and recognized.
The two ideologies at the base of each side of the argument are not mutually exclusive; the only thing standing in the way from the two sides making truly great sci-fi together is that the most vocal members of each group are also the most toxic.
Sad Puppies’ coup of the Hugos went too far; its list is not just a slap in the face to progressive works, but is an outright regressive move as it includes more than one openly homophobic writer.
Rich Horton on Black Gate
The 2015 Hugo Nominations – April 30
To take one more example, hopefully close to the hearts of many reading this: I have to confess that I never nominated Black Gate as Best Fanzine. (I nominated it as a Semiprozine back in the print days, to be sure.) The reason: I simply didn’t think of it as a Fanzine. But it is, really, and (leaving my contributions out of the mix), I honestly think it’s a damn good Fanzine. So I’m glad to have this whole matter bring to my mind the notion that Black Gate is eligible for a Fanzine nomination. At the risk of campaigning, let me suggest that people keeping reading it through 2015, and if it seems to hold up, nominate it again next year.
Ann Leckie
“Hugo Voting Is Open” – April 30
When I first voted for the Hugos, several years ago, I didn’t fully understand the voting system, or how No Award fit into things. But I’m going to be entirely honest, I have felt the need to use No Award in at least one category every single year that I’ve been eligible to vote. No, I’m not going to say what I’ve No Awarded over the years. Nor am I going to tell you whether or how to deploy No Award yourself, if you’re a Hugo voter. That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself, for your own reasons.
Katya Czaja
“Vogon Poetry and Rabid Puppies” – April 30
Not every species can appreciate Vogon poetry. It turns out, I don’t appreciate Vogon poetry.
The Rabid Puppies claim they want stories with better ‘plot’. “So the conservative SF fans can get together and let their hair down and talk about stuff they want to talk about (like books with actual plots and dialogue)” (John Ringo)
I’m currently about 80 pages into a RP nominated novel and I have finished several of the RP short stories. Sure, the stories have plot, but plot alone is not enough. The dialog is wooden. There is a whole lot of telling and very little showing. The prose doesn’t sparkle, it doesn’t even shine. There are more characters than a Russian novel and less characterization than Twilight. In other words, it is not the kind of fiction I enjoy.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Moderates gonna moderate” – April 29
[Second and third of four verses]
They do not like me here or there
They do not like me anywhere
They do not like me on the Net
Because they are so moderate
If only I would be more nice
And pour out sugar in place of spice
Then it would all be duly meet
We’d march off to our brave defeat
Declan Finn
“Puppies Come to WorldCon” – May 1
…If you haven’t read the last two blogs, you might be new here. This started with a thought: what if Sad Puppy authors were SWATted (part 1)? Then it sort of drifted from the “ringleaders” in part one (Correia, Torgersen, Hoyt) to “mere” supporters in part two (Kratman, Ringo, Weber)….
WORLDCON, SPOKANE WASHINGTON
[WorldCon is practically empty, for a Con. A borderline ghost town of two thousand people. If DragonCon is New York City, WorldCon is Detroit. Suddenly, the ground shakes. The front windows rattle. It feels like an earthquake! Suddenly, the squeal of brakes as a tank rumbles to a stop outside.]….
[Gerrold straightens.] And another thing–
[Larry whistles] Wendell’s Roughnecks! Charge!
[Two thousand men and women, all wearing a t-shirt with a cuddly manatee on the front, all invade WorldCon, en mass, with Schardt, Lehman, and Paulk leading the charge. David Gerrold is lost in the stampede.]
[Sarah rolls her eyes and smiles] Show off.
[Kratman] Outstanding!
[Knightman shrugs] I’ll go park the tank.
[Everyone disperses]
[Scalzi, still under a pile of carp] Had enough? I’m invincible! I’ll bite your legs off! Hello! Hello! All right, we’ll call it a draw! Hello?
~The End~
I want to thank all of the people who have made these go over so well, including Tom Kratman, Sarah Hoyt, Brad Torgersen, Tom Knighton, everyone who has shared this throughout the net, everyone who offered suggestions, and even those who asked to be apart of it. I’m honored, touched, and a bit surprised that something that started as a “fever dream” has been suggested (seriously) for a Hugo.
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“Another thing that occurs, had Mr Beale have read Three Body, which of the novels he recommended on his slate would have been dropped?”
The Chaplain’s War by Brad Torgersen. It was good, but not as good as Three Body. I was planning to vote for Nemesis, but Larry declined the nomination. Then Skin Game, but then Three Body made it. It’s a great novel and the sort that should be honored by the Hugos rather than soon-forgotten mediocrities like Redshirts and Ancillary Justice.
As for my not reading it in time, well, perhaps Tor Books should do a better job of sending books to the guy with one of the more influential blogs in SF. They bombarded me with print books for three or four years after I was on the Nebula Best Novel jury, after all, back when I had maybe 250k pageviews a month. Now I have 1.9 million and they don’t bother. It’s certainly an interesting approach to marketing.
“Vox Day has been clear in his opinion about how to destroy the Hugos. Outsiders can only damage them. It takes insiders to destroy them.”
That’s correct. I have to admit, I find it very, very funny that I can spell out exactly what I’m doing, then watch the SJWs froth at the mouth, declare “we’ll show you” and then do exactly what they need to do to destroy the awards. I don’t WANT the awards to be destroyed, I simply EXPECT them to be destroyed by the very people who claim to love them so much.
Because, apparently, sending us a message that we are NOT LIKED is so much more important…. I wish you could understand how funny it looks from outside. It’s like watching a defending army rush to their stations, shouting “we’ll show you, you bastards”, then blowing their own brains out.
That’s not only winning, that’s entertainment. More than a few RP have already said this is the best entertainment bang-for-their buck they’ve ever gotten. And it hasn’t even been a month.
VD: Maybe I should be looking for an endorsement from the people who make that nice Zebra-style popcorn?
“a few RP have already said this is the best entertainment bang-for-their buck they’ve ever gotten.” Well, it has already been established that they are very easy to entertain.
Uh huh. Do you want me to get you a picture of your twirling your mustache to go along with that? A cape perhaps?
It’s a good novel, granted, I’ll certainly be putting it #1 – I’m not sure it’ll be anymore memorable than either Redshirts or Ancilary Justice. For Redshirts it depends on how popular the TV show is, and for Justice, I think it rather depends on what she does in the final book when the big reveal happens.
The simpler version is that Tor Marketing department think your self proclaimed page views might have more to do with your politics than SF and it wouldn’t impact their sales, if, in fact, you’d actually promote them which, let’s be honest here, you wouldn’t would you 🙂
What are your uniques again? I mean 1.9million monthly page views sounds amazing, but if its the same 100,000 people every month, that’s a little less exciting…
But yes yes, you are out to destroy things, and having run the numbers, I have no doubt that next year you can pretty much screw all the short categories again. Amusingly, looking at the same numbers, the people you REALLY screwed in this are the Sad Puppies who actually thought they were doing something 🙂
” the Sad Puppies who actually thought they were doing something” Indeed. They stepped on their own dicks when they invited VD to the party.
So you dispute the Alexa rankings of your site then? Just curious? It’s just you keep saying how great things but you know the ‘trust but verify’ thing – I’m not convinced I can take you at your word on this.
Alexa is a pretty shitty measure.
@Nick:
So far as KJA’s original works go, I have to say that I’ve quite enjoyed his “Dan Shamble” series. It’s urban fantasy with lots of noir tropes, but it’s lighter than what I’d call actual noir.
I can’t speak to the lava-mining stuff, though.
Well, sure but it’s available and the basic stuff is free… it’s also comparatively shitty to other sites we could compare with too, unless they have gamed their results just to annoy Mr Beale?
I mean, the constant repetition of his page views is getting a little ‘my todger is bigger than yours’ isn’t it?
I’d assume TOR might not want their books getting reviews on the same page that VD says things like “What is the point of permitting blacks to govern themselves if whites are going to be held responsible for them anyhow?”
That would be a PR nightmare.
But hey we both agree this has been entertaining and that the Three Body Problem is a great book. The idea that the most deserving book (in my opinion) nearly got left out because of the rabid puppies voting on only what Day read and the problem he sees in that is TOR should’ve given it to him for free is just another amusement in this slapstick comedy.
*makes sign of the cross*
Oh Lord. I’d take a million pages of lava-mining over Dan Shamble, Zombie PI!
“As for my not reading it in time, well, perhaps Tor Books should do a better job of sending books to the guy with one of the more influential blogs in SF. They bombarded me with print books for three or four years after I was on the Nebula Best Novel jury, after all, back when I had maybe 250k pageviews a month. Now I have 1.9 million and they don’t bother. It’s certainly an interesting approach to marketing.”
By your own admission, you couldn’t get people to buy a single copy of your own book in the entire state of Minnesota. How influential could your blog be?
Since religion teaches us that God is everywhere and omnipotent, true believers ought to be thinking that:
1) God has won every Hugo,
and
2) God IS every Hugo.
Of course, all the losers and everyone and everything else is also God, by that definition.
God and morality are about faith in the unprovable, I have enough trouble living in the world of provable stuff, so I don’t support, oppose, or argue matters of religious faith.
“I don’t support, oppose, or argue matters of religious faith.” That only encourages them.
God: the Slate of Slates.
“How influential could your blog be?”
Influentual enough to sweep the Hugos.
“sweep the Hugos” uh, those are nominations, son.
@Seth Gordon: I’ll cop to being both an SF fan and A Believer™
Somehow, this reminds me of the stolid Mr Young’s passing thoughts in Good Omens, while waiting in the hospital maternity ward:
‘No, when it came to avoiding going to church, the church he stolidly avoided going to was St. Cecil and All Angels, no-nonsense C. of E., and he wouldn’t have dreamed of avoiding going to any other. All the others had the wrong smell… floor polish for the Low, somewhat suspicious incense for the High. Deep in the leather armchair of his soul, Mr. Young knew that God got embarrassed at that sort of thing.’
@Nick:
Hey, different strokes, right? At least I didn’t cop to reading the “Dorothy Must Die” Oz-as-dystopia series, though. Well, until now; I read about a third of the second book before going to see Avengers: Age of Ultron last night…
🙂
religion teaches us that God is everywhere and omnipotent
That depends on which religion you’re talking about. ;-/
Glenn Hauman: There’s a pretty popular concept around here that Vox’s blog was influential enough to fill the Hugo ballot with Rabid Puppies.
The Puppies left _Three Body Problem_ off their slate(s), thus locking it out of the Hugo nominations.
Sane slate-making people would look at that result and think “wait, maybe that was a mistake. Maybe the big disadvantage of a slate is that one person, or a small group of people, is *never* going to know as much about what is really good in a field as a group of two thousand people interested in that field do!”
Vox Day looks at it and thinks “Obviously the real problem here is that publishers aren’t sending me all the books I want for free. They are the ones to blame!”
And that, I think, is the Puppies in a nutshell.
“There’s a pretty popular concept around here that Vox’s blog was influential enough to fill the Hugo ballot with Rabid Puppies.” Puppies have a natural talent for shitting all over the place.
J. Coelacanth: Or is it supernatural?
The “supernatural” part of it is their ability to turn 1/2 pound of puppy chow into a pound of puppy crap.
“There’s a pretty popular concept around here that Vox’s blog was influential enough to fill the Hugo ballot with Rabid Puppies.”
Gaming an easily gamed award proves nothing about the blog. It just shows that a few useful idiots will respond to the usual “conservative victimhood” whining on any issue. Before Larry Correia tried to juice his faltering marketing scheme by bringing in Lil’ Voxymandias, no-one in the world of sf would have known that the blog even existed, except as the home of a hate-peddling idiot and sock-puppeteer who had been booted from SFWA from babbling out racist nonsense on someone else’s online accounts. Not exactly what you do if your own blog matters worth a damn, by the way.
Well, looking at the numbers, they actually say very little about how influential his blog is about getting fresh blog into the nomination process. For the Short Story categories he doesn’t need all that many voting en bloc to take that. The Novel Category is harder.
The numbers suggest that the more people who get involved in a more ‘conventional’ way i.e. reading and nominating what they like, the easier it becomes with the current set up to do that in the shorts – mostly because there seems to be some kind of diminishing returns happening in those categories where more people doesn’t lead to a corresponding increase in selections, there’s historically a lot of distribution of nominations so getting something over 5% of the ballot is enough in Short Story to get a good chance, more like 9-10% in novella, but that still only needs you to lock up 80/90 votes based on last year, but relatively speaking the numbers to lock something like novella seem to be coming down in comparison to the number of ballots. It’ll be interesting to see this year’s results.
BTW, am I understanding correctly that the author and editor one of the Puppies’ exemplars of Scientifiction As It Ought To Be Wrote didn’t know the difference between magma and lava?
Realistically, if Mr Beale is confident that he can get 50-70 people a year to vote exactly on slate for whatever he proposes, he can ‘own’ the 3 Short Story categories for as long as it takes to change the rules.
He’s completely correct about that and it doesn’t really matter what anybody does – the more I look at this, the less and less the Sad’s really have had to do with it. I suspect that the SP3 slate probably would have been as effective(ish) as SP2, which is to say effective but limited. The reality is there’s little evidence of anything in the raw data except we’re actually, relative to the people voting, picking less material each year. I could only conjecture on what’s driving that 🙂
Morzer: “Gaming an easily gamed award proves nothing about the blog.”
You’re quite wrong about that. It proves enough to a publisher interested in placing review copies where the exposure might lead to sales. Which is the point under discussion.
Now we all know there might be other reasons Tor isn’t sending freebies to Vox. Of course, Vox knows that too.
“Because, apparently, sending us a message that we are NOT LIKED is so much more important”
Having gone through a fair amount of the nominations now I’m not sure if this message is actually going to come through very well. Last year, VD’s novelette placed below “No Award.” It could be because he was on last year’s slate. But having read it, and read a number of people who reviewed it, it’s also very possible it placed there because it just isn’t very good.
Much of what I’ve read so far seems to fall into the same grey area. I, for example, like all of the Nebula short story nominees more than all of the Hugo short story nominees. There have been plenty of people who said they were going to judge the works on their merits. If much of the slate falls below “No Award” it will be difficult to say if it’s because you’ve incurred the blazing wrath of the SJW’s or you’ve just put up some work that isn’t very good.
” I don’t WANT the awards to be destroyed, I simply EXPECT them to be destroyed by the very people who claim to love them so much.”
There simply isn’t any reasonable scenario where this happens.
I’m wondering if you need more ideas for titles for your posts; I like some Le Guin steals, like “Vaster than Puppies and More Slow. ” “The Left Paw of Puppies,” “The Word for World is Puppy.” Then from Delany could come “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Puppies.” Have you already used “Out of the Silent Puppy”? Oops, time to go.
@Seth Gordon:
“BTW, am I understanding correctly that the author and editor one of the Puppies’ exemplars of Scientifiction As It Ought To Be Wrote didn’t know the difference between magma and lava?”
After seeing the ungrammatical atrocities of alleged Latin at least one Puppy throws around, I am not surprised that fact-checking is not a strong suit.
“You’re quite wrong about that. It proves enough to a publisher interested in placing review copies where the exposure might lead to sales. Which is the point under discussion.”
That may be the point you were making, although you were discussing Alexa rankings not so long ago. My point, which stands, is that the VD blog simply wasn’t influential in sf until this whole latest round of nonsense kicked off. No-one thought it had anything to say except the tedious, seldom sf-related maunderings of a disgraced neer-do-well. It may be slightly more influential now because of the oxygen you have given it, but that’s a separate claim.
Torgersen and Correia called him in for his link to Gamergate, not because the field of sf was listening to him. That’s why they started the puppy nonsense, not VD, All the “genius strategist and influential blogger” contributed was to bring in a few fellow-undesirables and exploit the connection to the sad puppies to push his own slate over the top. Again, that speaks to how easily the award was gamed (and makes it embarrassingly clear that the Hugos are very much the province of a very small group of people who really care about such things).
Before this whole idiocy kicked off, who was listening to what little VD had to say about sf? I would be amazed if you could find a post on his blog in the last couple of years that made the field of sf sit up and say “We should listen more to this gifted raconteur and editor. He has something to contribute!”
Mike: “There’s a pretty popular concept around here that Vox’s blog was influential enough to fill the Hugo ballot with Rabid Puppies.”
Yeah, but I’ll bet it hasn’t moved sales numbers significantly at all.
I don’t WANT the awards to be destroyed, I simply EXPECT them to be destroyed by the very people who claim to love them so much.
When an unruly boy is sent to his room, he may announce, as he stomps up the stairs, that he’s actually happy to go to his room, and he wanted to go there all along, and it doesn’t matter that he’s going to miss dessert, because that dessert is stupid anyway.
Andrew: I started out with the view I was going to try to be fair, but Beale’s pantomine villain act has really annoyed me. That said, having read all but one two of the short options, currently only 1 or 2 (Kary English & Lou Antonelli) were even remotely worthy of voting above the cut.
People might not agree with my view of Lines of Departure (seriously, the kinetic weapon thing turned out to be the solution?!?) if the goal of the exercise has been to get more diverse things onto the ballot then it’s failed. Looking at the ratios of nominations to people nominating, we’re actually going backwards – it’ll be interesting to see what this year actually shows when we see the data.
The more I look at the numbers, the people who really have been played here are the Sad Puppies who thought they had a chance of making a difference here.
I strongly suspect that along side jamming his own stuff from Castila onto the ballot next year he’ll add a smattering of items that would have been there anyway so he can try to force people to vote things down just to spite him. I’m still not sure what he gets out of all of this though.
“By your own admission, you couldn’t get people to buy a single copy of your own book in the entire state of Minnesota.”
The book had just come out and the publisher was only beginning to ship the hardcovers. The book sold pretty well, it has something like 161 reviews on Amazon.
“How influential could your blog be?”
Enough that David Pakman got considerably more views interviewing me than people with 190k Twitter followers, porn stars, and academics. And enough that five or six Congressional offices are in regular contact with me.
“So you dispute the Alexa rankings of your site then?”
I don’t dispute them, I’m observing they are totally irrelevant. Alexa is a ridiculous metric gamed at will. The last time a Scalzi fan was trying to claim it was relevant, I popped VP’s Alexa rating up to the top 5k in a few weeks. You can make the rating appear to be anything up to probably the top 1,500 without even really trying. That’s why advertisers don’t use it much.
“Well, looking at the numbers, they actually say very little about how influential his blog is about getting fresh blog into the nomination process.”
I could have easily brought many multiples of that 50-70 cited. I didn’t see any point in doing so. There are 400 Dread Ilk alone and that’s just the hard core.
“I mean, the constant repetition of his page views is getting a little ‘my todger is bigger than yours’ isn’t it?”
Well, it is. If you guys would stop saying stupidly false things and pretending otherwise, I wouldn’t have to keep pointing it out to you. Reality is what it is, not what we wish it was.
“Gaming an easily gamed award proves nothing about the blog.”
True. But I find it very amusing that Scalzi used to lie about having about as many pageviews as I have, and you guys all went on and on about how massively popular it was. He had less than one-sixth the traffic that I have now, and it was called “the biggest blog in science fiction”.
Here’s the thing that should concern you. I didn’t even try this year. RP totally took a backseat to SP. And due to the way you all have treated SP, now there are a lot more RP. How many more, I have no idea. But it’s going to be pretty damn funny if it turns out there are so many that you go for No Award and fail.
That’s the real risk, you understand. It’s going to be interesting, anyhow.
Of course, it would be kinda funny if a currently non-existent secret cabal were to spring up in response to the Puppies and game up their own slate next year. Thus the Puppies would create the thing they’re currently railing against.
It could be War of the Gargantuas all over again with the rest of the Hugo voters playing the part of Tokyo. The Puppies were first so they get to choose whether they want to be be the Green or Brown Gargantua.
“I strongly suspect that along side jamming his own stuff from Castila onto the ballot next year he’ll add a smattering of items that would have been there anyway so he can try to force people to vote things down just to spite him. I’m still not sure what he gets out of all of this though.”
That wouldn’t make much sense. If he nominates things that would have been nominated anyway then he’s essentially removing his own influence and the straightforward response would be to just ignore him. That doesn’t seem like what VD wants.
Glenn Hauman: Rather than launch into another argument about what people are arguing about, all I have to say about the subject is that I could get review copies — in fact, a few show up unbidden in my mailbox as it is — so I have to assume Vox’s traffic makes him an even surer candidate to receive them unless the publisher has a reason to leave him out.
“The more I look at the numbers, the people who really have been played here are the Sad Puppies who thought they had a chance of making a difference here.”
They did have a chance. They tried. I stayed out of the way and you guys kicked them mercilessly. So, next year, you get to deal with Kate the Impaler. And she is very, very different than the Cuddly Care Bear that is Brad Torgersen.
@Jack Lint:
If the rest of the Hugo voters are Tokyo, can I be the Sens?-ji?
Drat it, the post freaked out over a long “o.”
‘You’re quite wrong about that. It proves enough to a publisher interested in placing review copies where the exposure might lead to sales. Which is the point under discussion.’
If I was doing PR for a company I’d notice that a large number of Day’s own publishing company took up many slots, which wouldn’t make me inclined to send promotional material. Not to mention some of the sentiments against a different publisher with some of the Puppies. Or the backlash from mainstream authors against what was nominated. That’s before even considering the other objectionable content on the site.
I mean those sales would have to be pretty damn stellar.
“Of course, it would be kinda funny if a currently non-existent secret cabal were to spring up in response to the Puppies and game up their own slate next year.”
I was surprised there wasn’t this year, at least, not a credible one. Jason Sanford had one, but no one cares what he thinks. I assume there will be one or more next year. Personally, I’d like to see Scalzi take the lead on one.
“Here’s the thing that should concern you. I didn’t even try this year.” Of course you didn’t. Between your
successful musical careeryour hardware design businessyour phenomenal writing careerand your publishing house with a handful of benighted authors, you must be really busy.“That’s before even considering the other objectionable content on the site.”
My blog existed and had content deemed every bit as objectionable back when Tor was sending me books. It just had a lot less traffic.
We still only have your word for your awesome powas of your website – and you keep avoiding the uniques thing – I’d like to know, honestly, I mean we’re really not in your class, it’s a business site and all but there’s quite a difference.
Any who… yes yes you’re all powerful and scary, got that.
“I could have easily brought many multiples of that 50-70 cited. I didn’t see any point in doing so. There are 400 Dread Ilk alone and that’s just the hard core.”
Ok, so you can game the Hugos with your awesome powas. Ok. Then what? I mean, I know you keep telling us it’s our fault for making you have to hurt us and all, but what next? The Hugos become the Castila House Award system for next year? Wouldn’t your awesome skillz be better served with a better award? It all seems so terribly trite.
And when you say you ‘could have bought’, is that an admission you did buy votes? Or just that the dread ilk do your bidding? Either way, meh, whatever dude.
“Well, it is. If you guys would stop saying stupidly false things and pretending otherwise, I wouldn’t have to keep pointing it out to you. Reality is what it is, not what we wish it was.”
And facts are stubborn things not affected by what you say they are…. it cuts both ways.
Thus far all we know for sure is you can game something easy to game, and have dragged a lot of well meaning people along for the ride.
I’ll be interested in your displays of power next year, I suspect in most of the Short categories you’ll get your arse handed to you and if you do bring 400 people who can be told how to vote exactly to avoid that under the Run Off system then kudos, I will doff my hat to you sir.
You’ll still be a complete arse though.
As others have said, most people grow out of this sort of thing.
@Peace is My Middle Name. It’s a Tokyo land rush as far as I’m concerned. I would like to be Akihabara, but there’s plenty to go around.
Just remember that the Green Gargantua comes out of the water and gets to attack first.