Pixel Scroll 4/30/16 Pride and Prejudice and Puppies

Posted on by

Here is your Hugo-themed Scroll.

(1) RIGHT IN THE EYE. These are beauties….

https://twitter.com/rangercraig/status/726461937387601920

(2) STUBBORN. The G at Nerds of a Feather asks “HUGOPOCALYPSE II: Where Do We Go From Here?” (This was posted the day the nominations were announced, April 26 – I lost track of it while trying get File 770 back online.)

So outside the popular categories, it’s pretty much all RP all the time. And this is the big problem for me, because the clear message is “organize or be rendered irrelevant.” Like I said last year, I don’t want the Hugos to be an annual rerun of the US presidential election. That already takes up too much oxygen as it is, and the Hugos are supposed to be about fans celebrating the best stuff they discovered over the previous year–not voting in lockstep to further someone’s agenda. So I won’t back any proposed counter-slates–not even one that reflected my exact political worldview (and it’s very doubtful that any would). I want nothing to do with that–nothing at all.

(3) ASTERISKS DEFENDED. David Gerrold responded on Facebook to Jim C. Hines’ recent post about the Sasquan asterisks.

…But let’s be honest. There were people who arrived at the Hugo reception and the award ceremony with the intention of being offended, no matter what happened. These were the people who decided that the asterisks were intended as an insult.

I suppose I should be sorry about inadvertently hurting people’s feelings — and I would apologize to people like Toni Weisskopf and Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Ken Burnside (and a few others) if they took it the wrong way. I had hoped that everyone would see it as a chance to laugh away some of the tension.

But the real hurt to all the qualified people on the ballot was the damage done by the slate-mongering in the first place and that’s where the real anger should be directed — not at the attempt to leaven the pain. People who should have gone home with trophies came in behind No Award because the great majority of fans voted no to the slates.

And yet, there is this — despite all the Monday-morning complaining by the outrage committee, the sale of those little wooden asterisks raised $2800 for the Orangutan foundation — and that’s $2800 more than all the pissing and moaning and whining and name-calling raised for anything.

(4) GERROLD DEFENDED. Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag backs David Gerrold at Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog.

David Gerrold has a post about Hugo asterisks. I just want to say, the asterisks were there the instant the puppies gamed the Hugos. Putting them into physical form didn’t make it any worse, since the damage was already done. On the contrary, the asterisks let some of us have a physical memento of their first time voting in the Hugos (me!) and raised money for a worthy cause. The people who were hurt by the asterisks deserved to be hurt because they are the ones who put the asterisk there in the first place by gaming the Hugo nominations. The fact that they still don’t get it only proves the point. And it still amazes me that they are stupid enough to think that people gamed the Hugos before they did. The utter willful ignorance of the puppies is astounding.

(5) THE HAMSTER COMMANDS. Ian Mond’s Hysterical Hamster headline may say “Don’t Look Away – it’s the HUGOOOOOS, oh and the Clarke Awards and a truly fantastic book” but he absolutely refuses to explain….

This week saw the announcement of the Hugo Award and Clarke Award nominees – one rinsing the taste of shit left by the other.

As with 2015, Vox Day successfully took a massive crap all over the Hugo Awards, smearing his poo-stained fingers over 64 of the 81 nominees.  If you have no idea who or what a Vox Day is then GIYF because I honestly can’t be bothered explaining it.

(6) HOT LINKS. Spacefaring Kitten has “Rabid Puppy Finalists’ Reactions, Compiled” at Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens. I spotted one I hadn’t seen before –

(7) I’VE BEEN HAD. Depending on what you thought he was talking about, you also may have been had by Chuck Tingle.

(8) IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR. Europa SF takes an in-depth look at a European Retro Hugo nominee in “Karin Boye’s ‘Kallocain’ Nominated As Best Novel for the Retro Hugo Awards”.

“In Boye’s novel, the “World State” is locked in a condition of perpetual war with the “Universal State” to the East; both states – each of them claustrophobic warren-like male-dominated repressive societies – are gripped by paranoia and fear, with Thought Police ubiquitous. The protagonist’s fatal invention of the eponymous truth drug only generates further repression in the “World State”, as the involuntary self-betraying inner thoughts of everyone are now punishable. He eventually becomes a prisoner scientist in the “Universal State”, where he continues his work. As in Orwell’s novel, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.” – The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“Kallocain” by Karin Boye (Bonnier)

Seen through the eyes of idealistic scientist Leo Kall, “Kallocain‘s depiction of a totalitarian world state may draw on what Boye observed or sensed about the bolshevic dictatorship of Soviet Union, which she visited in 1928 and the Nazi Germany. An important aspect of the novel is the relationships and connections between the various characters, such as the marriage of the main character and his wife Linda Kall, and the feelings of jealousy and suspicion that may arise in a society with heavy surveillance and legal uncertainty.

One of its central ideas coincides with contemporary rumors of truth drugs that ensured the subordination of every citizen to the state. Both Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1932) and Boye’s “Kallocain” are drug dystopias, or societies in which pharmacology is used to suppress opposition to authority. However, unlike “Brave New World”, where a drug is used to suppress the urge to nonconformity generally, in Kallocain a drug is used to detect individual acts and thoughts of rebellion.

“Kallocain“ has been translated into more than 10 languages and was adapted into a television miniseries in 1981 by Hans Abramson.

(8) CANON PREDICTION. Camestros Felapton asks “Is N.K.Jemisin’s The Fifth Season a Science Fiction Classic?”

There is a rhetorical rule of headlines that if they are phrased as a question then the answer is actually “no”. Strictly, I also have to say “no” but only because we can only declare a novel a ‘classic’ retrospectively, after years in which its influence and critical impact have occurred. However, I’m posing the question because I feel that the answer that will come 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line is “yes”. I think this is a book that will shape authors and will be studied and will be cited by many as their favorite SF book. I suspect in 20 years time when people are moaning about the books nominated for the Hugo awards not being as good as the books in the past, people will point at The Fifth Season and say ‘there is nothing this year that is as good as that’.

However, I know that is a hard position to defend. So I’m going to go off on some tangents. Bear with me. Readers should also be aware that the book deals with themes of violence and physical abuse, some of which will be discussed below.

(9) HE READ THE NEWS TODAYS. John C. Wright tells how the mainstream media coverage of the Hugo nominations falls short of his standards in “We Also Call Them Morlocks”.

I used to be a newspaperman and newspaper editor, so I know the business, and I understand the pressure newspapermen are under to lie, and lie, and lie again.

Some, as did I, resist the temptation.

Others, many others, very many others indeed, not only give into the temptation to dwell in falsehoods, but bathe in falsehood, dive into it, drink it, anoint themselves in it, baptize themselves in it, breathe it in, absorb it through every skin pore, mainline it, insert it as a suppository, and perform unnatural sexual acts with it, and in all other ways regard falsehood as a holy calling, and deception a sacrament.

However, even so, the true shocking nature of the falsehood, the insolence of it, the recklessness, the sheer magnitude of it, cannot truly be felt except to one, like me, who has been on the receiving end.

It is astonishing to hear newspapermen who have never made the slightest effort to contact you, who neither interview you nor quote anything you say, nor offer the slightest scintilla of evidence, reporting your innermost thoughts and motivations hidden in the most secret chamber of your heart, and to discover that your motives are the opposite of everything you have said, thought and did your whole life. Astonishing.

Here is a roundup of some links of various media outlets who decided that their honesty, integrity and sacred honor were worth selling in return for the questionable gratification involved in spreading an untruth so unlikely to be believed….

(10) SLATE FATE. “Vote Your Conscience” says Steve Davidson at Amazing Stories.

My argument against slates has always been about the methodology, not the presumed issues that gave rise to them (be it push-back against diversity or the juvenile temper-tantrum that is Beale).  My advancement of the No Award strategy (and I was not the only one to suggest it) was predicated on the idea that a hard and fast line could be established:  either a work had been slated or it had not been.  This directly addressed the methodology of the puppy protest, in effect saying “slates and campaigning are not the way to go about registering your protest”.  It did not address the questions of whether or not their arguments were valid, nor did it shut them out of the process.

This, I believe, is a position that falls in line with the thinking of the vast majority of Hugo Award participants, who welcome anyone who wishes to join – so long as they respect the culture and institutions of the community.  No one is saying to puppies “do not participate”.  All that is being said is “don’t game the system”.

In conjunction with the No Awards voting strategy, I also strongly (and repeatedly) urged everyone who might have something nominated for an award last year or into the far future, to make a public statement that they do not want to be included on a slate and, if they become aware that they have been, they publicly ask to be removed.  Further, I asked that voters respect those public statements and to treat such nominees as if they were not on a slate, should they appear on the ballot.

This strategy does not rely on compliance from puppies.  This year there are several nominees who made such statements, found themselves on a puppy slate, asked to be removed and were ignored.  I have no problem including those authors on my ballot.  I am positive that the vast majority of voters have far less angst over including them in their votes than they do over other works that “would have been on the ballot anyway”, but which are not backed up by slate repudiation.

Absent repudiation, questions remain:  are they happy to be on the ballot regardless of how they got there?  Are they ok with being used as a shield?  How will they feel if it turns out that some other, non-slated work was knocked off the ballot because they said nothing?  (Recognizing that they have no control over placement on a slate is no cover for not having said anything previously.)

(11) THESE THINGS MUST BE DONE VERY CAREFULLY. Mal-3 at Conceptual Neighborhood says “There Is An Art to Trolling….”.

A long time ago at the 2000 World Horror Convention I got to witness Dan Simmons troll the absolute shit out of Harlan Ellison. It was at a panel about getting works adapted in Hollywood, and Ellison has historically had kind of a terrible time getting his stuff through the studios, and he was going on in incredible detail about how the process was horrible and everybody involved was awful and so forth and so on. And then Dan Simmons would break in and just say, with a big kinda dopey smile, “Well, I had a great time!”

Every single time Ellison would start going off on a tear Simmons would come back with that line, and Ellison just kept getting angrier and angrier and it was the funniest goddamned thing.

That’s kind of what I’m seeing here with Chuck Tingle: somebody tried to weaponize him and now it’s not working like it should. Pity, that.

[Thanks to Will R., Gregory N. Hullender, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

Discover more from File 770

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

159 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/30/16 Pride and Prejudice and Puppies”

  1. Re (3 and 4)

    I think that while they may have been a bad idea, let’s not get too angry at Gerrold. Let’s be real here: Sasquan was not going to end with a ceremony where every single Puppy nominee got its own special Hugo, at an awards ceremony where the entirety of the non-Puppy attendees turned and dropped to one knee to Larry and chorusing out that he was right, and has always been right, they are wrong, always have been wrong, and they are all off to the gun range to get research for a future of only writing adventure stories with guns.

    Since that wasn’t going to happen, it’s as sure as gravity that the Puppies would be whining about how someone had been mean to them at Sasquan for some reason. Why lose sleep over it?

    (9)

    FFS.

    @Mark

    Oh, it was well review by Lela Buis? The Lela Buis, who stopped by here to share her thoughts on the sexism of last year’s non-Puppy Hugo nominees? That’s the review he’s flogging. I’m suspecting he may have a real Who’s Who of Puppydom loving it…

    His apology seems like mealy-mouthed misdirection. I’m suspecting this is intended to be super genius 4GW head-exploding, that our poor minds can’t simply comprehend! By similar to Cheah’s parroting of Teddy’s lines a few days back, this removes any worry I have that I’ll feel that any of tales from the Manly Men’s Book of Manly Warfare deserve anything more than No Award.

  2. katster on May 1, 2016 at 1:34 am said:

    John McPhee said pretty much the same thing in Assembling California, which I’d recommend (it’s part of his Annals of the Former World).

  3. Jesus God – why did I go and look at JCW’s goddamned page?

    He has a piece whining about the TV series The Flash as being “politically correct”, because of these two “crimes”

    I will be reading merrily along in what I think is some perfectly ordinary adventure story or science fiction yarn, when suddenly a minor character, such a policeman, will announce that he has a husband. No one around him reacts as if he is a sick pervert or a crazypants. Because in crazypantsland male is female and female is male.

    Uh-huh. Gay marriage has been legal in parts of the US for a dozen years, and legal in all the US for better than a year – but if it gets used in a TV show, Wright expects everyone to react as if it was “crazy”.

    And now,JCW at his best [drumroll please…]

    On the other hand, when in a cop show, the cop’s partner decides to fornicate with the cop’s daughter, the true depth of emotion is displayed when the partner kneels and offers the daughter a box from a jewelry store. Inside is not a ring — fooled ya!–but a key. He is offering to move his gear into her apartment, to make the fornication and the eventual break easily to manage logistically.

    The cop, instead of drawing his sidearm and blowing the brains out of the man who is frelling his daughter outside of wedlock, merely looks mildly grumpy and says the situation is ‘weird’ but he is glad is his daughter is seeking happiness in shallow copulation with an unmarried man who has only moderate affection for her.

    Yes indeedy, people, Wright is expressing amazement that a cop isn’t murdering his 25 year old daughter’s boyfriend. The man has snakes in his head.

    {Incidentally. the boyfriend in question wound up as the daughter’s fiance, and then sacrificed his life to stop a supervillain]

    So, to recap, “Politically Correct” in JCW’s world is NOT screaming and fainting or spitting insults if someone happens to be married to a spouse of the same sex, and NOT attempting to kill any sexual partners your adult unmarried daughters might have…

  4. @rob_matic : But they would have to read it to know how literary it was, and I’m skeptical that much reading goes on among the Rabids.

  5. Stevie on May 1, 2016 at 6:09 am said:

    I haven’t a clue what he means by to defer to the Hugo Administration. I didn’t know there was something/someone called the Hugo Administration.

    Perhaps Kevin Standlee could enlighten us? Pretty please?

    I have no idea what that sentence actually means, either. Possibly “Hugo Administration” means “the Hugo Awards Administration Subcommittee,” which is how I parsed it initially. He also may be totally unaware that the Hugo Awards Administration Subcommittee’s job is to count votes, determine technical eligibility, contact finalists, and prepare the ballot. They aren’t allowed to make subjective judgements except in a tiny number of areas, and “determine whether the prospective finalist is worthy of the honor” is not one of those areas. The Administrators could hate every single finalist’s guts and they’d still be obliged to treat them fairly.

    Not meaning to impose any thoughts upon this specific finalist, but I sometimes get the impression that some of the Griefers assume that of course the system is corrupt, because if they were in charge, they would be throwing out votes and nominees left and right to satisfy their own personal subjective opinions. A certain notable finalist from last year who appears to have tried to get Sasquan’s Toastmaster in trouble with the local police in Spokane casually made a remark that I interpreted to me, “of course all election officials are corrupt and the results are rigged.” I took personal offense at that and said so. My aunt was the deputy county clerk for elections in Yuba County, California (where my home town is located) for many years. I know for certain that my Aunt Mary is a woman of great integrity and I am 100% convinced that the results of the elections conducted on her watch were the results of the legal votes cast in those elections, not because of any ballot-box skulduggery or interference by her or any of her staff. (She also made great spaghetti at our family gatherings.) To his credit, when faced with an actual human being before the bar, the accuser apologized, somewhat.

    Hugo Award Administrators work hard to be fair. They may make mistakes in administration (the job is much harder than most people think), but the administrators are not manipulating the results to reflect their own personal opinions about the works involved. I think most of those people who think they are doing so are saying a lot more about their own personal integrity than that of the Administrators.

    David Shallcross on May 1, 2016 at 7:38 am said:

    And no Long Form Editor, Fan Artist, or Fancast categories [in the Retro-Hugo Awards].

    Which is a little-commented-upon instance of the Hugo Awards Administrators’ absolute authority to drop categories that they believe had insufficient nominations to justify continuing them. There is no technical definition here; it’s a subjective decision, and their call entirely. Their decisions cannot be appealed or overridden on this point. Mind you, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Fancast was going to drop coming in to this process. (The rules require that you run the current list of categories, even if the form didn’t exist 75 years ago.) BELF is due to having even less knowledge of who book editors were than we do now. Fan Artist sort of surprised me, but I couldn’t name any fan artists from back then myself.

  6. I’m inclined to say that JCW is a literary writer. Not a good literary writer (at least in the work of his I’ve seen), but ‘literary’ is not by itself a term of praise; it has more to do with one’s aspirations. Mr Wright’s attention to language and allusion means that his aspirations are of a literary kind. In the sense of ‘literary’ in which Larry Correia disapproves of literary writers and thinks there are too many of them in the Hugos, he is one.

  7. And no Long Form Editor, Fan Artist, or Fancast categories.

    Or Related Work, which I find the most surprising absence.

  8. I have been impressed thus far with the ability of many in the SF community to differentiate between the Sads and the Rabids this year.

    I’m delighted that Butcher’s book, my favorite release form 2015, made the list of finalists. Just the type of book the literary SF awards community consistently overlooks.

    David Gerrold is a jerk who cannot admit an error to save his life. Scalzi continues to be unable to differentiate between Sads & Rabids. Scalizi is a jerk.

    As a voter who has great sympathy for the Sads, I find Mr. Wright’s work to be boring. Most Sad voters take the list as a recommendation – and did not vote in enough numbers to recommend Mr. Wrights work as a finalist. Sads voting behavior is not a lockstep, and overgeneralizing Sad voting behavior is inaccurate.

  9. airboy:

    “I have been impressed thus far with the ability of many in the SF community to differentiate between the Sads and the Rabids this year.”

    That might be because the administrators of the Sad Puppies doesn’t seem to have promoted a slate as a cheating tactic as was done the last year. However, there are a lot of rabid sympathizers among the foot folk among the sads, so there is much harder to see a difference there.

    I have yet to see a sad who proclaimed they were against the rabids cheating tactics this year.

  10. @ airboy
    It is easier to distinguish the Sads from the Rabids this year because the Sads didn’t run a slate this year. Scalzi made this clear on both his blog and his LA Times column.

  11. @Msb,

    Airboy has reiterated that point multiple times in the week since the nominations come out. He has been disabused of the notion just as often.

  12. Poor puppies, can’t give up on their talking points, even when they are proven wrong.

  13. Kevin:

    I sometimes get the impression that some of the Griefers assume that of course the system is corrupt

    One of the strong correlates of an authoritarian personality is cynicism. e.g. from the link:

    Most cynical people think they are just clever and more observant than others. But mostly, cynicism manifests as a way of accepting the status quo. The most annoying example of this is reacting to bad behavior on the part of a politician and saying, “Well, they’re all that way.”

    Cynical authoritarianism always surprises me, because to me the desire for a Strong-Man Leader seems deeply romantic. But apparently for many human minds romanticism and cynicism aren’t actually the opposites they seem to me.

  14. Kevin

    Thank you; it’s comforting to know that I wasn’t simply ignorant, since I have made a point of reading what you have to say about the system before I launch into something about the system.

    And yes, it does look as if the finalist is either completely clueless about the way the Hugo system works, or is hoping that others are completely clueless about the way the Hugo system works…

  15. Poor puppies, can’t give up on their talking points, even when they are proven wrong.

    Reality isn’t particularly favorable to the Pups, so they retreat into self-delusion.

  16. I would like to thank the Puppies for introducing me to Chuck Tingle; I don’t think I would have become aware of him without their endorsement, and he’s added a certain frisson of joy to my daily Internet reading.

  17. @airboy

    Now that Beale doesn’t need a group of dupes and useful idiots and will just troll openly, it is of course easier to tell the difference between the puppeteer’s hand (the Rabids) and puppet on that hand (the Sads).

  18. I just read this quote from David van Dyke over on Spacefaring Kittens, regarding his opinion about the SP/RP *ahem* movements.

    I’ll take the fifth on all that.

    This is generally a reference to the fifth amendment of the US Constitution, but in all the copies I’ve been able to find, there is only one fifth amendment – the order is, confusingly: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (etc.) – so I’m not sure what he’s talking about here.

  20. @Camestros Felapton: What an incredible essay–I read happily, nodding my head, going “oo wow, I hadn’t thought of THAT,” and enjoyed it to the max. I especially like the way you talk about how Jemisin takes familiar/linked sf plots and really SUPERCHARGES them in amazing ways.

    The issue of a classic, well, that is such a fraught question, especially given how effectively the white supremacist culture functions to suppress works by white women and people of color.

    But I think it SHOULD be. (Am forcing myself to wait until the third one is out to write an essay because I want to have the WHOLE THING.) I’ve already taught TFS in my graduate course this term, and will plan on teaching the trilogy as soon as it is out (am using Leckie’s trilogy in my texts and genders class next fall).

    Great to see discussion of love for TFS: I was absolutely blown away by it the first time I read it–and even more the second time. I may wait for my third time until I get the Obelisk Gate.

    Part of my love for it is that I am a geologist’s daughter: I bet few of you got to stop at highway roadcuts and learn about the geologic history of the area when you were on vacation! Of course our vacations never went to places with boring geology (the eastern and southern parts of the U.S.)! (Though during his sabbital semester at Rice University, we got to get behind the regular tour scenes at NASA because one of dad’s graduate students worked there–MOON ROCKS!)

    Growing up with dad left me with an ongoing sense of a deep geologic time, and the complexity of the world we walk around on without paying much attention to (I’m afraid he was rather acerbic about vulcanologists who go sit near active volcanos!).

    One of my favorite memories is helping him label specimens for his exams (I still have some of his rocks–plus others I’ve picked up–choosing a rock as a souvenir is an ongoing thing. And learning about the difficulty the theory of plate tectonics had being accepted by the geological establishment.

    So, clearly, Jemisin’s geological sf was one I was set to fall in love with!

    But there are other things: will go into Rot13 because of spoilers and speculation about the rest of the story.

    Nobir naq orlbaq nalguvat ryfr, bar bs gur zbfg vzcbegnag nfcrpgf sbe zr nf n ernqre vf Rffha’f dhrfg gb svaq ure qnhtugre Anffha (naq xvyy ure uhfonaq). Gur ahzore bs fgbevrf nobhg zbguref erfphvat qnhtugref (gung V xabj bs) va fss vf FB fznyy—nf n cevznel cybg/sbphf, gur bayl bgure bar V xabj bs vf Znewbevr’f dhrfg va Grccre’f Tenff.. Vs lbh xabj bs bguref, cyrnfr funer!). Rira ng gur raq, jura fur guvaxf Nynonfgre vf tbvat gb xvyy ure, naq haqrefgnaqf jul, fur nfxf sbe gvzr gb xvyy ure uhfonaq svefg.

    Qnznln’f/Flgravgr’f/Rffha vf fhpu n oevyyvnagyl ernyvmrq pbzcyrk punenpgre (abg nyjnlf avpr/yvxrnoyr, rfcrpvnyyl nf Flra) ohg nznmvatyl cerfrag. V nz jbaqrevat jurgure erivrjf gung gnyx nobhg gur guerr qvssrerag jbzra ner xrrcvat gur ovt erirny ng gur raq bs gur abiry hafcbvyrq, be jurgure gurl unira’g cvpxrq hc ba gur snpg gung guvf abiry vf nobhg bar jbzna’f yvsr, naq gur rkgrag gb juvpu gur fgbel fb sne yrnqf gb gur znwbe qrpvfvba gung fur jvyy unir gb znxr pbapreavat Nynonfgre’f erdhrfg gb pbagvahr gur qrfgehpgvba bs gur Fgvyyarff, vs abg gur jubyr cynarg.

    Gurer’f gur yrtraq gung gur ubfgvyvgl/chavfuzrag bs bebtrarf vf qhr gb gurve xvyyvat Sngure Rnegu’f—naq ubj oevyyvnag vf SNGURE Rnegu vafgrnq bs ZBGURE Rnegu!—puvyq juvpu V nffhzr vf n ersrerapr gb n zbba—juvpu guvf cynarg qbrf abg unir—nf gur svefg Vagreyhqr abgrf: “Gurl abgvpr jung’f gurer: fgnef naq gur fha naq gur bppnfvbany pbzrg be snyyvat fgneg. Gurl qb abg abgvpr jung’f zvffvat” (ab cntr ahzore orpnhfr robbx). Fb jung qbrf Nynonfgre unir va zvaq ol gnyxvat nobhg n zbba?

    Gura gurer vf gur zlfgrel bs Ubn naq gur boryvfxf naq gur Fgbar Rngref….
    Whfg. fb. zhpu.

    Naq gur pensgfznafuvc naq oevyyvnapr bs gur aneengvir crefbanr–!!!!!!!!!!!!

  21. I’m definitely re-reading The Fifth Season when The Obelisk Gate comes out. I need to read it already knowing all that rot-13’d business.

  23. Yes indeedy, people, Wright is expressing amazement that a cop isn’t murdering his 25 year old daughter’s boyfriend.

    When JCW posts about his desire for a mob to descend upon the DC Comics offices and string up the editors and writers of the comics while dancing as they died some people write it off as hyperbole. When JCW writes about how he thinks the natural reaction of men to seeing a gay couple is to want to beat them to death with ax handles and tire irons, some people just think he is just being hyperbolic.

    But he has espoused these fantasies. Then there is his shock that the response that a police officer might not immediately resort to murdering a man who is sleeping with the police officer’s adult daughter isn’t murder. At what point do people start to consider that he is not being hyperbolic? At what point do people start to consider that he actually has these murderous thoughts, and, but for the fact that he would end up in prison if he acted on them, he wishes he could carry them out?

  24. 6. I like how Neil gets quickly to the point in very few words. Bam. Guy ought to be a writer.

    4. Last year was the first year I watched the Hugo Nominations. I thought David Gerrold did a wonderful job and the asterisk stuff was good shtick. Comedy always offends the easily offended. I hope this years is as good as last year.

    8. @Camestros Felapton thanks for that. Look forward to the listen. I have the audible version on my TBH list. One of the things the kerfuffle has done is focused me more in the SFF world. It’s not my world. I am not a Fan. To me it is just one genre of many. But I have picked up some good reads from you guys so thanks for that. These are things I probably would not have read on my own. Now I have to figure out how to get back to a more balanced reading list. I suspect when this Hugo year is over, it will be time to pivot but I now will have other sources to populate my wish list for the SFF genre.

  25. @ alexvdl
    Not sure if I should blush about being redundant or feel glad I took my turn. In view of TYP’s response, I think the former.

    Apropos of nothing genre, I’m blown away by Rufus Wainwright’s new album Take All My Loves, which sets Shakespeare sonnets to music. His version, and Florence Welch’s, of Sonnet 29 are on YouTube, and enchanting.

  26. ASTERISKS: I’ll say this for Laura Gjøvaag: she’s at least willing to own the offense the asterisks caused. Gerrold is still squirting clouds of ink about it.

    Yes, the asterisks caused hurt and offense. To the same people who had already caused a great deal of hurt and offense. While it isn’t pretty and it might be petty, I have no problem with people who caused a problem having that rebound on them.

    And besides, I LOVE my asterisk. It’s proudly displayed in my living room as a reminder of why I finally got off my butt and participated in Worldcon and the Hugos. It also reminds me of the mistakes *I* made along the way, including a nasty bit of spoilers I posted that I didn’t recognize as spoilers until too late (argh! I’m still kicking myself about that one). For me, the asterisk is a reminder to try to be better. You can’t ask more of anyone than that.

    Gerrold, I think, genuinely didn’t think of the offense it would cause because the gesture was so obvious. He assumed that the people who gamed the Hugos would be as thick-skinned as the people responding to the gaming. The fact that they weren’t, that they were surprised that their own nastiness came back to bite them, wasn’t something Gerrold was prepared to accept. He gives them more credit than they are due. He thinks they understand what they did.

    I think they still don’t understand what happened and they think they are the victims here, instead of the aggressors. Which is why I don’t care if they are offended. Anyone who willingly participated with the slates last year is not a victim, they are the problem.

  27. McPhee, when he is talking geology in particular (Annals of the Former World especially) is great stuff. Learned a lot from him.

  28. Hampus:

    I have yet to see a sad who proclaimed they were against the rabids cheating tactics this year.

    Two examples would be Tom Mays and this commenter on SuperversiveSF site. I would like to see more of that, of course.

  29. I will nth the general squee-ing over Fifth Season (ironic with the number in the name)?

    Not sure why people think it’s a fantasy novel, though (apart from the taverns – there is no snow though) 😉 I suspect it’ll end up firmly in the SF sphere by the end of the trilogy.

  30. robinareid on May 1, 2016 at 11:05 am said:

    @Camestros Felapton: What an incredible essay–I read happily, nodding my head, going “oo wow, I hadn’t thought of THAT,” and enjoyed it to the max. I especially like the way you talk about how Jemisin takes familiar/linked sf plots and really SUPERCHARGES them in amazing ways.

    Thanks 🙂

    One of the things about it being (potentially) a classic is that having read it a second time I still can’t see how she crams so much in and yet keeps the novel lean and personal. There is a level of craft there that is very impressive.

    The novel that suffers most in comparison is Seveneves. Now I like Seveneves and I think its ambition justifies its flaws but…it’s like Jemisin and Stephenson had the same writing prompt:
    A story with multiple POV women characters
    That begins with a catastrophic ‘world ending’ event
    That looks at the lead up to that event from a political and societal perspective
    But also on a personal level
    spoliers, spoilers, spoilers, m__n, spoilers
    And looks at people in the aftermath of the catastrophic event.

    OK Jemisin cheats in so far as she isn’t done yet, but she avoids Stephenson’s bloat, his infodumps and the sketchy bits.

    The “father earth” bit is a good touch as well given the parallels of the violence in the book.

  31. @Camestros Felapton

    OK Jemisin cheats in so far as she isn’t done yet, but she avoids Stephenson’s bloat, his infodumps and the sketchy bits.

    Haven’t read the Stephenson yet, but one of the craftiest elements of Jemisin’s world-building, IMO, was how she managed to show-not-tell without being confusing. That book was so not a slog.

    Now that your essay’s made me think harder on the book, I’m getting excited about it all over again.

  32. Two years ago at Loncon 3, even more categories were dropped from the Retro Hugos: Related Work, Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation-Long Form, Editor-Long Form, Semiprozine, Fancast, and Fan Artist.

    This year, the Retro nominators were able to come up with a sufficient number of nominations to activate the Graphic Story and Dramatic Presentation-Long categories.

  33. @1: so what exactly are those awards for? I recognized the source, but even if they’re at Lucasfilms I can see them being given either for SFF or for special effects.

    robinareid:

    Of course our vacations never went to places with boring geology (the eastern and southern parts of the U.S.)!

    Old doesn’t mean boring. I remember looking at the strata on I-80 in PA on my way to MAC 1 and wishing the geology fan I knew was in my car instead of the other one to explain what I was seeing.

  35. @Chris S: Not sure why people think it’s a fantasy novel, though (apart from the taverns – there is no snow though) ? I suspect it’ll end up firmly in the SF sphere by the end of the trilogy.

    I think they are thinking of the orogenes’ powers as “magic” of some sort.

    I see them firmly in the psychokinetic/psionic powers that were a dominant art of sf in early decades–all credit to Edward James who makes this very same argument, with LOTS of nifty textual evidence, about the powers of the Lakewalkers.

    The other factor is the pre-industrial revolution level of technology in the books–though clearly there were more highly developed industrial deadcivs in the past! (The same is true for Bujolds’ series as well.)

    Just like taverns/snow = FANTASY, so too pre-industrialization technological cultures= fantasy, I suspect.

  36. @Camestros:

    One of the things about it being (potentially) a classic is that having read it a second time I still can’t see how she crams so much in and yet keeps the novel lean and personal. There is a level of craft there that is very impressive.

    Yes! The narrative craft is bloody brilliant (and I loved her earlier works, but when I closed that, I was mostly thinking 1) how INCREDIBLE this is as a story, and 2) wow, this book is written at a whole new level of art, damn it’s amazing).

    The book makes me think that it’s like some originally brilliant hybrid of “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” (LeGuin), “Harlem” (the “dream deferred” stanza) by Langston Hughes, and Beloved by Toni Morrison. I haven’t figured out completely what that means, but I hope to do so in future.

  37. JCW’s entire post represents his continuing retreat from reality into self-delusion.

    And includes an aside about hope there’s no such thing as martial rape.
    Can we not just give this man the respect he deserves until he’s been able to get treatment? I mean, if even the puppies won’t vote for him…

  38. @Chip S: Old doesn’t mean boring.

    Apparently tastes in types of geology are as subjective as anything else–I have been assured by friends who are in geology back east that there is fascinating stuff there! With illustrative images.

    I think my dad just liked bigger mountains: his main work involved mapping some of the Sawtooth Mountains (in Idaho).

  39. TYP

    Although I fear that there are still quite a lot of useful idiots who are completely convinced that, since they weren’t puppies in the first place, they can’t possibly be VD’s useful idiots now.

    This does not appear to have occurred to a number of people proclaiming from on high how we should, or should not vote, just as it does not appear to have occurred to them that, in telling people to refuse or not refuse their places as Hugo finalists, they are acting as VD’s useful idiots now.

    This is not exactly hugely difficult to deduce*, which suggests that the feel-good factor in proclaiming from on high prevents them from even enquiring cui bono?, much less answering that question.

    *after all, it’s not rocket science…

  40. @spacefaringkitten

    Wow. That thread shows that not only is the Superversive guy an asshole, but he really doesn’t understand the argument made.

  41. @Msb, @Stevie

    I guess by this point I’ve lost my patience with all the fig leaves being pulled over the fact that Sad Puppies were quite willing to walk along side outright racists, sexist, and homophobes, and get quiet upset about the fact that people said “your basically doing the same thing as X.” That they were willing to support, profit by, and make weaker versions of the arguments of the white supremacists, sexist homophobes, means I don’t care that calling a horse a horse hits them in the feels.

    Personally, I think that some of the more puritan “No Award” everything screeds are counter productive. At the end of the day, Beale wants the Hugo’s dead. And at the end of the day, the primary thing that keeps the Hugos as something a publisher will put on the book cover is that if it goes on quality enough of the time that it’s on quality. I don’t care that Beale but things on a slate as much as that “Hugo Award Winner” attached to Bujold, or Stephen King, or Neil Gamon etc. does nothing to destroy the Hugos. All Beale can do if that happens is bleat “Xanatos Gambit” and the adults just don’t care. If that’s all the victory he gets, fine by me.

    But on the other hand, I’m sympathetic to the idea of No Awarding all slates. I can’t think of anyone who put it as well Nora Jemisin’s tweets on the matter. I think they’re persuasive as well. I can suggest that we treat Beale’s shield nominees as in good faith, because it allows us to mitigate the long-term damage to the Hugos while all he gets is to proclaim victory to his man children and trolls.

    End of the day, 4000 nominees and 200 slate voters says that relying on the decency of the fen involved should probably have this ending okay.

  42. @Robin Reid: What do you mean, the geology of the eastern US is boring? I get to walk half a mile from my house and pick up stones that bear the ripple-marks of ocean waves that washed sand 400 million years ago! I think that is just as much a reminder of the enormous, ever-moving earth as feeling the motions is. We are not in peril from earthquakes here just now, but our mountains are slowly washing into the sea, and will be underwater once again in a short geological time…

  43. The Andrew M. fellow on Superversive SF explicitly relies on hacker/troll/chan/abuser logic: The process can be abused, so we were right to abuse it. Extended to: Our abuse of the process proves that the award has always been worthless.

    Keep congratulating yourself, kid. But while you can fool yourself, you can’t fool the rest of us.

  44. Re (6): I think the Stephen King picture is the best thing to come out of this so far.

  45. The Fifth Season as fantasy or science fiction: I was curious, so went to Goodreads to see how most people have it shelved. Fantasy – 1,193. Science Fiction – 115. Science Fiction>Dystopia – 71. Science Fiction Fantasy – 54.

    I do not think that the way things are shelved defines a book, but I do find it interesting to see how others interpret the genre of a book. Is it a judgement based on her previous work? Maybe. It could be the problem of classifying a book/series that could be working within multiple genres, too. I’m not sure how Jemisin identifies the genre of the book. Does anyone else know?

    Regardless, it was one of my favorite books last year. Really, really fabulous!

  46. Here’s another good thing to come out of this years’ kerfluffle – I put ‘The Fifth Season’ on my Amazon list. (tips hat to Camestros Felapton and others involved in the discussion).

  47. I also suspect that The Fifth Season, once completed, will be firmly sci-fi, and I wonder if it’s painted as fantasy because further sci-fi developments might be seen as spoilers. Most other series I can think of that overlap fantasy and sci-fi elements in that way are all classified as fantasy as well.

  48. TYP

    I agree entirely that the Sads were happy to ally themselves with VD, knowing exactly what he is and what he does, and are only now trying to pretend otherwise; I just don’t want to see another group of people acting as replacement useful idiots.

  49. My reaction to the question of whether The Fifth Season is fantasy or science fiction is a firm “Yes.”

    Maybe the orogene’s powers are more fantastical in nature.Maybe the stuff we’ve been shown that, it is strongly suggested (spoilered) the (spoiler) is some advanced tech from a prior civilization.

    I really find I don’t care. In a sufficiently rigorously worked out system, magic can be as reliable and applicable as science, with as consistent results*. And there’s no reason why, in a technologically advanced science fiction society, there can’t also be some factors so inexplicable, so weird, that even to the best scientist, it gets defined as “It’s magic.”

    Doris Egan certainly pulled it off, although with a very different feel.

    I also feel it may be relevant that Jemisin herself starts her acknowledgements page with “This fantasy novel” and later makes a comment about pairing geology with sentient rock people.

    * I personally tend towards some subjective, artistic, and/or numinous aspects to my magic, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate seeing, for a different example, Ben Aaronovitch’s main character sitting with a stopwatch timing how long a given spell’s effect runs.

Comments are closed.