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

Here is your Hugo-themed Scroll.

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

(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.]

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

  1. Jim Henley: Yes. One Fifth for fantasy, and the other Fifth for science fiction.

  2. @ robinareid:

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

    That’s also a common marker of post-apocalyptic SF, which, depending on interpretation, The Fifth Season could be. I tend to associate Jemisin’s work with fantasy, which has probably influenced my reading of T5S, but we’ll see where the story goes in succeeding books.

    BTW, there will be another story involving mother rescuing daughter in Beneath Ceaseless Skies this fall.

  3. 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.

    @Laura – Other people got hurt as well, including individuals who hadn’t been causing hurt and offense.

  4. On the asterisk thing, I keep coming back to the Oscar Wilde quote: “A gentleman never causes offense unintentionally.”

  5. Other people got hurt as well, including individuals who hadn’t been causing hurt and offense.

    @Jim – Who didn’t know about the controversy? Who didn’t realize the asterisks were already going to be there, whether or not they were made physical? Can you honestly point to any person who was completely innocent AND blindsided by them? Really? Because if you find such a person, I submit to you they must be either a hermit or a complete idiot to have missed all the uproar the puppies caused.

    The asterisks were created by the actions of the puppies. If the physical representation of them caused offense, look to the source and inspiration for them: the puppies. Don’t blame people who tried to make light of a bad situation and raised money for a good cause to boot.

  6. Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag: Don’t blame people who tried to make light of a bad situation and raised money for a good cause to boot.

    The responsibility of the Sasquan committee and the Hugo ceremony hosts was to play it straight. Which they mostly did, except for the asterisks. Their job was to extend hospitality to all the nominees on a neutral basis. Did the asterisks fit in with that? No.

  7. Can you honestly point to any person who was completely innocent AND blindsided by them?

    I can, yes. I don’t know that they’d meet your standards of “complete innocence,” whatever that means. And I’m not all that comfortable naming names of people when you’ve predetermined them to be hermits or complete idiots. But yes, I’ve spoken to good people who were not part of the slating mess, did their best to be respectful and civil to all involved, and were very much hurt by the asterisks. In my opinion, they didn’t deserve that.

    You’re welcome to take me at my word, or not.

  8. @Lenora Rose – Ha! I didn’t think to look there.

    My general feeling about it, genre-wise, is that it’s complicated. I like complicated, so that’s fine with me. It will be interesting, though, to see what happens as the series progresses.

  9. Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag: They acknowledged the elephant in the room. It would not have been playing it straight to ignore it and pretend everything was fine and dandy.

    For an entire hour preceding the Hugo ceremony, on the auditorium screen was playing the livestreamed panel with John Scalzi, George R.R. Martin, and others discussing the Puppy slates and associated issues in thorough detail. Which also was a bad decision, but the elephant was essentially given its own TV show before the event began.

  10. “A gentleman never causes offense unintentionally.”

    That reminds me of something I saved from the AP wire once. It was a story about safety caps on prescription bottles and how they were designed to prevent “unintended poisoning.”

  11. Just in passing, my favourite example of genre crossing was the year that Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History (which initially appears to be historical fantasy) won the BFSA award, and China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station (which initially appears to be moderately hard SF) was nominated for the World Fantasy Award…

    Clearly neither of them are “pure” examples of their genres, but I tend to accord with that classification of them (that Ash is SF and Perdido is Fantasy.) [Which reminds me: I need to put both of them back on my reread pile.]

  12. The asterisks were going to be there, whether or not they took physical form.

    The asterisks will always be there, and on this year as well.

    The fact that something good was made out of them was enough for me. If people are offended… well, perhaps they should look at the true source of the asterisks in the first place. Anyone actually “hurt” by the physical asterisks was first harmed by the puppies. Blaming the people trying their damnedest to clean up the mess the puppies made offends me.

  13. @Laura: Saying I think the wooden asterisks were a mistake, and asking that we not do something like that again this year, doesn’t mean absolving Beale, Torgersen, and the rest for their responsibility in creating these messes. It’s possible to recognize that they’ve caused tremendous harm and hurt while *also* acknowledging that others have made missteps as well.

    Blaming the people trying their damnedest to clean up the mess the puppies made offends me.

    So be it. My preference would be to acknowledge that the people who were in an impossible position and doing their damnedest to clean up the mess were only human, and humans make mistakes. They did a lot of things well in a difficult situation, and that should be applauded. I also think they made mistakes, and those should be acknowledged and learned from.

  14. @Will R.:

    That reminds me of something I saved from the AP wire once. It was a story about safety caps on prescription bottles and how they were designed to prevent “unintended poisoning.”

    That’s amazing.

  15. Jim, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I think the wooden asterisks were a brilliant way to turn a turd into something of value. They raised money for a good cause, left a lot of people with a memento and served as an acknowledgement of the elephant in the room.

    I personally cannot comprehend being “hurt” by the asterisk unless you were invested in the puppies way of thinking. You claim people were hurt. I suspect the real hurt came from the puppies, not from the asterisks, but … we’re going to have to disagree.

  16. @Vasha: my father the geologist thought it was boring so we never vacationed there. I have no opinion on it at all. And as I said. I am sure tastes in geological formations are as subjective as anything else.

  17. FWIW, I thought the asterisks were a miss-step at a ceremony that was trying to be neutral, especially if you take the bigger view that *all* nominators & voters were members of WSFS.

    That said, I had very little sympathy for those who were offended by the asterisks. Most of my sympathy was for those who were denied a spot in the final ballot (in a normal year, it really is an honor to be nominated), the writers in their last year of eligibility denied an opportunity to win a Campbell award (no “better luck next year” for them), and the members who had to wade through turgid dreck to fairly assess all finalists.

  18. What had to happen for the sake of justice: All the Puppy nominees losing, whether that hurt their feelings or not.

    What was entirely justified: The relieved applause of the audience, whether it hurt the losers’ feelings or not, when it became clear justice would be done.

    What is not necessary for justice is wrong.

    The money raised for charity was no excuse. There are all kinds of ways to raise money for charity.

    If the vote had gone the other way, the asterisks would have looked like the peevish carping of sore losers.

    The way the vote did go, they looked like the boorish piling on of bad sports.

  19. the members who had to wade through turgid dreck to fairly assess all finalists.

    THIS. This is probably one of the biggest reasons I’m annoyed at people being offended by the asterisks. I read through ALL that crap in good faith. You can’t tell me it wasn’t a year of asterisks.

  20. @Jim Fairly sure it was itself unintended. One must always be careful not to tempt the editing gods, but sometimes it’s hard not to laugh. A friend of mine saved a whole story that revolved around an “air conditioning duck” (that one wasn’t the AP).

  21. Re. the asterisks. I still haven’t been able to decide what I think about them. Which, I think, only goes to underline that there are good arguments on both sides! Anyone who thinks it’s a cut-and-dried issue is either deluding themself, or is some sort of sooper-genius who brain power is way beyond mine. (Which, I freely admit, is a possibility, but in my experience, the people who think they’re sooper-geniuses are least likely to be sooper-geniuses.)

  22. Airboy wrote:

    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.

    As was Space Raptor Butt Invasion.

    Regarding Fifth Season–a couple of decades ago now when I was a graduate student one of the post-docs in the lab asked me what made a story fantasy. (He was Chinese and I think a bit puzzled by the books I sometimes had on my desk). I had to think about it for a while and then I said “the presence of working magic.”

    For me psionics are fantasy. Whereas science fiction is often a setting. So there’s nothing keeping Fifth Season from being SF also, but the orogenes powers make it fantasy for me.

    Regarding the asterisks:

    The real mistake would have been pretending there was no elephant in the living room. It would have been quite the spectacle watching everyone on stage tiptoeing around the invisible elephant. Very amusing to a certain sense of humor. But perhaps not the sort of thing that would have done credit to the Hugo Awards or the fans.

    Thus I found it a relief to see the asterisk acknowledged. David Gerrold also managed to spin it deftly and graciously to highlight the positives that grew out of the fan response to the Puppies. I think that was as kind as anything could have been given the situation.

    If the vote had gone the other way, the asterisks would have looked like a way to highlight the positives–the increased interest in and support for the Hugo Awards. If the Puppies can’t accept those positives as being the reason for the asterisk, that is their consciences, desperately trying to get their attention.

    I am sorry for those innocents the Puppies slated. I do know there were a handful who weren’t consulted, who had a good chance at an honest nomination, and who were caught up in a wave of No Award from fans who were in no mood to make fine distinctions. That is a pity. But I have no idea why such people would be identifying with the Puppies.

    Maybe this is just one of those times when feelings aren’t logical. But when feelings aren’t logical people can’t be expected to know in advance how something will affect you.

  23. Cat: Yeah, and now I’m looking forward to what special thing this year’s committee will think is a good idea to acknowledge the “elephant in the room.”

  24. Last year’s No Awarding and Asterisks. It’s pretty clear, now. It wasn’t necessarily clear to everyone last year. Now it is.

    Even to people who started out supporting the puppies before claiming to be neutral, then claimed to be offended by the asterisks. It should be clear now. It’s under the bridge.

  25. @Mike Glyer

    What’s changed?

    They’ve decided asterisks are in poor taste. This year they’re giving out starfish…

    😛

  26. sez Our Gracious Host: “What’s changed?”
    In the context of Hugo-related asterisks, perhaps the most significant change is that this year, the griefers aren’t even pretending to put up a Potemkin façade of an arguably-constructive goal—they’re openly, flat-out trying to destroy the Hugos, full stop.

  27. Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag: It’s pretty clear, now. It wasn’t necessarily clear to everyone last year. Now it is.

    I don’t understand. You were justifying the asterisks as a necessity to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Which would have been for the benefit of people who already knew what was going on. Not people unaware of what was going on.

  28. Mike, the elephant has been acknowledged. Why beat a dead horse? Asterisks are unnecessary. The point has been made.

    Edit: Last year was the first year someone pulled the slating trick. It had to be acknowledged. This year it’s old hat, it’s already happened.

    Now the thing to do is to figure out how to keep a certain trust-fund kiddie from continuing to destroy the Hugos in the future.

  29. @Mike Glyer:

    What’s changed?

    I think the second time you’re supposed to use that thing that looks like two crosses glued together, one right-side up and the other upside-down.

  30. Excuse me if, after having spent two months doing roundups that were getting 30K views a day, I came to Sasquan thinking people already knew what was going on. The challenge was not to relieve their ignorance, but for the Worldcon to set its own high standard of civility, rather than get caught up in giving people what they think they deserved.

  31. The proper order is asterisk, dagger, double dagger, double S, double vertical bar, pilcrow.

    But hopefully it won’t come to that.

  32. I think the second time you’re supposed to use that thing that looks like two crosses glued together, one right-side up and the other upside-down.

    Wrong symbol. This is the right one. Objectively.

    Damn it, JBWeld!

  33. The asterisks were not about education, they were about acknowledgment. The point being made was “This is the first time someone has successfully gamed the nominating system, which is why this year’s results are going to be strange.” No one knew what those results were going to be, just that they weren’t going to be “normal”.

    That’s what it was about, not hurting people, not insulting people. That wasn’t the intent. When I heard about them, I thought, “What a great idea! Acknowledge the problem, pay tribute to Sir Terry and raise a little money! What could go wrong?”

    Personally, when I learned some puppies were offended, I didn’t feel any pity for them because they are the ones who put the asterisk there in the first place. The wooden asterisks were just a physical acknowledgment of their actions. It was not mean-spirited by the organizers, even though it was taken that way by the sore losing cheaters.

    Learning now that people forced someone to take one when she didn’t want it… well, that’s offensive, yes. Folks who did that were behaving badly and being rude. That wasn’t the original intent, and it shouldn’t have been done. But beyond that? I do not feel sorry for people who supported the puppies who were offended.

    And I don’t see any need to repeat it, either. The point was made, it doesn’t need to be made again. In addition, as has been pointed out, some people behaved very badly at the ceremony, so it would make sense to avoid that type of situation again.

  34. Jim, it’s not a cross, it’s a dagger. Handing out daggers to all the nominees might be more cool than asterisks, but I think it’s not a good idea.

  35. Mike Glyer on May 1, 2016 at 7:14 pm said:
    Cat: Yeah, and now I’m looking forward to what special thing this year’s committee will think is a good idea to acknowledge the “elephant in the room.”

    Wooden elephants.

  36. @ULTRAGOTHA

    Why not? The ceremony is to be held in Missouri, the state where “alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives” is a corner store.

    And it means that next year’s nominees will get a pair of puukkos!

  37. Well, it’s true MidAmeriCon II hasn’t published its weapons policy yet….

    Seriously, while I understand the intent behind the asterisks and sympathize with it, I think they hit well wide of that mark. The ballot last year was a cess pit, but I winced so hard I hurt myself at those asterisks when they were announced at the ceremony.

  38. Re SF/F distinctions: Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire is quite explicitly set in a far future, post-apocalyptic Europe when “The Builders” (pre-apocalypse humanity, aka us) had managed to find a way to change the laws of physics to allow us to manipulate stuff with our thoughts, which led to some people able to control fire/air/earth/dreams/death…

    I still class it as Fantasy, even though it also has quite a few SF trappings (AIs, etc). There’s really no reason such a story (and much of, say, Gene Wolfe’s output also) can’t be classed as both, though.

  39. Mike, was the asterisk a committee decision? My impression was that David Gerrold was the originator, which may have gotten a “OK you can do that” from the committee (and by “committee”, I’m also assuming you mean “those on the Sasquan concom responsible for that sort of overall aspect of the Hugo Ceremony”; I certainly wasn’t asked as editor of the afternoon Newsletter, and I suspect from my past experience in the role that the Hugo Ceremony’s House Manager wasn’t asked either, for example). Which is sort of a “decision”, but I’m thinking the ceremony MC would have to go really obviously over the line before being told “don’t do that” in advance. In other words, I don’t think the concom should be assigned very much, if any, responsibility for the asterisks.

  40. Tom, the comittee and the events division head are responsible for what gets done in Sasquan’s name at the Hugo ceremony.

    The asterisks were being handed out at the pre-Hugo party. That’s definately on Sasquan regardless if Gerrold originated the idea.

  41. airboy: 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.

    Yes, and the reason that books like The Aeronaut’s Windlass are overlooked by awards programs like the Hugos is that while they may be enjoyable for some readers, they are neither remarkable nor particularly exceptional in any way, and often pretty much forgotten by the time the reader gets halfway through the next book in their TBR pile.

    Nobody’s saying you aren’t allowed to enjoy — even love — books like that. But it’s ridiculous for you to complain that they are “overlooked” by awards which are designed to recognize something very different from an unremarkable read.

  42. S.R. Algernon: I have chosen to [pretend that the Hugo Administrators have somehow endorsed my story] and allow “Asymmetrical Warfare” to contend for the Hugo in good faith, irrespective of its presence on any slates. “Asymmetrical Warfare” has received some positive reviews (for example, see Lela Buis’s review).

    You know, if the best review you’re able to link to for your story is from an unknown writer/reviewer who has a vanity Wikipedia page which does not meet Wikipedia’s standards for notability… you might have a credibility problem.

  43. I genuinely really did enjoy The Aeronaut’s Windlass. Not something I’d nominate or expect to win a Hugo, but unlike some of the nominated novels last year it is, at least, a positive advert for the genre(s).

    [OK, I concede, I’m biased in favor of anything with airships]

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