Lions roar, kittens tweet, and other animals make noise in today’s Scroll.
(1) Recommended – Gregory Benford reviews Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora in “Envision Starflight Failing”.
Aurora depicts a starship on a long voyage to Tau Ceti four centuries from now. It is shaped like a car axle, with two large wheels turning for centrifugal gravity. The biomes along their rims support many Earthly lifezones which need constant tending to be stable. They’re voyaging to Tau Ceti, so the ship’s name is a reference to Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun, which takes place on a world orbiting Tau Ceti named Aurora. Arrival at the Earthlike moon of a super-Earth primary brings celebration, exploration, and we see just how complex an interstellar expedition four centuries from now can be, in both technology and society.
In 2012, Robinson declared in a Scientific American interview that “It’s a joke and a waste of time to think about starships or inhabiting the galaxy. It’s a systemic lie that science fiction tells the world that the galaxy is within our reach.” Aurora spells this out through unlikely plot devices. Robinson loads the dice quite obviously against interstellar exploration. A brooding pessimism dominates the novel.
There are scientific issues that look quite unlikely, but not central to the novel’s theme. A “magnetic scissors” method of launching a starship seems plagued with problems, for example. But the intent is clear through its staging and plot.
I’ll discuss the quality of the argument Aurora attempts, with spoilers.
Final countdown to Hugo voting deadline…http://t.co/EXPb3bWBbQhttps://t.co/xS8QE27S9G#HugoAwards #Sasquan@sasquansf @TheHugoAwards
— Soon Lee (@SoonLeeNZ) August 1, 2015
(2) Spacefaring Kitten is one of many people posting their Hugo ballot today, but one of the few who has an interesting analysis of my favorite category.
Best Fanzine
- Journey Planet
- Tangent SF Online
- Elitist Book Reviews
- No Award
- The Revenge of Hump Day
Journey Planet is easily the most interesting of these publications. Black Gate would have been able to put up a fight here, but they chose to withdraw because of Puppy-related embarrassment.
Tangent SF Online and The Revenge of Hump Day were probably on the Puppy ballots as a sort of payback for, respectively, the public outcry following Tangent’s umm… let us say fatherly review of the Women Destroy Science Fiction issue of Lightspeed and the disinvitation of Tim Bolgeo (the guy behind The Revenge of Hump Day) as a Fan Guest of Honor in Archon after accusations of racism. However, I chose to place Tangent second and well above No Award, because I think all venues in which short SFF fiction is discussed are important.
As far as I can see, Tangent’s short fiction reviews are quite good, even if the editor’s attitudes smell a bit aged. Take a look at their 2014 Recommended Reading List, for example. Tangent lists noteworthy stories in four categories (0, 1, 2 and 3 stars), and I couldn’t resist counting that together all the 14 Puppy finalists get four mentions and one star. In contrast, the five short story nominations I made myself (none of which made the final ballot, obviously) collect three mentions and eight stars. The Tangent seems like a useful resource for finding the sort of fiction I’d enjoy, and I plan to take a look at some of the three-star stories I haven’t read yet.
There was nothing terribly amiss with Elitist Book Reviews either, even though they seem to generally like books that I don’t and I found their practice of discussing recommended age and levels of offensive language, violence and sex amusingly over-protective. You don’t really have to be 16 to be able to read a curse word, do you? However, they’re number three.
(3) By now I think everybody has seen Adam Roberts’ cheery thoughts about the Hugos in the Guardian:
What the Puppies have done is within the rules of the awards, and key figures in the movement have already declared their intention to repeat the process next year. But this is larger than one set of awards. It is about the direction of science-fiction as a whole, and it poses larger cultural questions.
The truth is that this year’s Hugo awards are wrecked. Can you imagine anyone saying that of the Pulitzer, Man Booker, or Nobel? Yet here we are, and if the Puppies succeed in gaming the awards again in 2016 we may as well give up on the Hugos forever.
This is what is so frustrating about the Puppies’ campaign. Not that it has resulted in a bunch of frankly inferior works being shortlisted – although it has. And not that it values old-fashioned SF over more experimental, literary and progressive writing – that’s a matter of taste. What is so annoying is that it so ostentatiously turns its back on the global context out of which the best writing is happening today.
@damiengwalter … it's been 'let's have elaborate discussion about voting protocols to make block-voting harder to do'.
— Adam Roberts (@arrroberts) July 31, 2015
Can it be true that Roberts values rhetoric about diversity over rules changes that preserve it as a possibility?
(4) The Guardian article sure revived Larry Correia! Yesterday’s limp “fisking” of The New Yorker’s Delany interview has been succeeded his vibrant smackdown “Fisking the Guardian’s Latest Sad Puppy Article of the Week”. Correia’s remarks in boldface, Guardian text in regular text.
Considering that the Hugo awards hadn’t even ever nominated a single work of media tie in fiction until Sad Puppies came along, I don’t know where the hell you’re getting this idea that the insular little inbred cliques were combing the whole world for worthy new talent before. Hell, I believe the first ever INDY PUBLISHED novel nomination came from Sad Puppies, and you expect that little cliquish circle jerk of friends who’ve been taking turns giving each other awards, to suddenly teach themselves Spanish in order to check out the best sci-fi from Uruguay?
This whole train of thought is just a stupid diversion. The Guardian is just being its normal snooty self. Look at us, we read MOAR GLOBALLY (no, actually, they probably don’t. From inaccuracies in previous articles about various classics we’re already pretty sure Damien skates by reading Wikipedia synopsis of books and then pretending to be well read).
Science fiction, if it is about anything, is about hospitality to otherness,
Just not conservatives or libertarians, because screw those guys.
to the alien and the unusual, about freeing one’s mind and boldly going where no one has been before. It is, centrally, about diversity. Locking out women writers, writers of colour, gay and trans writers does a violence to the heart of the genre.
That concluding paragraph is just regurgitated tripe. We’re not the ones trying to lock out anyone. Female, “writers of colour” (oh how I hate that stupid racist term), gay, trans, left handed ginger pygmy wolf-riding garden squirrels, WE DON’T CARE. Write books. Entertain people. Fans get to judge books by the content of their pages rather than the author’s bio. Then give the really good ones awards.
This isn’t exactly rocket science, not that you jackasses didn’t literally try to make actual fucking rocket science all about sexism too.
If the Puppies win, nobody wins.
No. The Puppies would win. That’s sort of what the word win means, dumbass.
If you are voting on Hugo awards, time nearly up. Should stop doing Fan Writer award, collections of political screeds unrelated to books.
— The Dextrorotary DQH (@waelse1) August 1, 2015
(5) Sasquan guest astronaut Kjell Lindgren is at the International Space Station.
It's already been a week! Time is flying…and so am I! pic.twitter.com/YER1B5hIfB
— Kjell Lindgren (@astro_kjell) July 30, 2015
(6) Mark your calendars. Vox Day has announced the release date for his next project:
This is interesting. Apparently the SJWs are more than a little worried about my upcoming book, SJWS ALWAYS LIE: Taking Down the Thought Police….
Just wait until August 27th, the one-year anniversary of #GamerGate, which I plan to celebrate by publishing the book.
You read it here first. Or possibly second. But more likely first. Maybe you can leave town that day – does Kjell Lindgren have a spare cot?
(7) The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis, conducted by Sherwood Eliot Wirt, appeared in Decision magazine in September 1963.
From Part I —
Wirt: How can we foster the encounter of people with Jesus Christ?
Lewis: “You can’t lay down any pattern for God. There are many different ways of bringing people into his Kingdom, even some ways that I specially dislike! I have therefore learned to be cautious in my judgment.
“But we can block it in many ways. As Christians we are tempted to make unnecessary concessions to those outside the faith. We give in too much. Now, I don’t mean that we should run the risk of making a nuisance of ourselves by witnessing at improper times, but there comes a time when we must show that we disagree. We must show our Christian colors, if we are to be true to Jesus Christ. We cannot remain silent or concede everything away.
“There is a character in one of my children’s stories named Aslan, who says, ‘I never tell anyone any story except his own.’ I cannot speak for the way God deals with others; I only know how he deals with me personally. Of course, we are to pray for spiritual awakening, and in various ways we can do something toward it. But we must remember that neither Paul nor Apollos gives the increase. As Charles Williams once said, ‘The altar must often be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place.’”
In Part II, Lewis answers questions about Heaven, Earth and Outer Space.
Wirt: Do you think there will be widespread travel in space?
Lewis: “I look forward with horror to contact with the other inhabited planets, if there are such. We would only transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, and establish a new colonialism. I can’t bear to think of it. But if we on earth were to get right with God, of course, all would be changed. Once we find ourselves spiritually awakened, we can go to outer space and take the good things with us. That is quite a different matter.”
[Thanks to JJ, Gregory Benford, and John King Tarpinian for some of these links. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day JJ.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Everyone here has been a true companion in the journey towards to Hugo’s. If you enjoyed my vote, I can ask for no more — except of course to introduce unbelievers to God Stalk 😉
Voting for what you loved as a teenager is perilous.
Thanks for filling up my TBR list one and all.
Shambles
I doubt that simply reading Godstalk confers your wit, and way with words, but it’s certainly worth a try!
Kira
I’m in favour of opacity, since otherwise I would feel honour bound to enquire whether we are really sure that a first-past-the-post voting system reflects the diversity of views on the works in question, and then we would still be discussing it by the time the next Hugo voters pack arrives…
Kyra: I’m fine with opacity until the end, since you made it clear it is not being treated as functionally an abstention.
(I half expect Brian Z to attempt his usual FUD now though…)
Why can’t someone talk to Kyra, and work toward reconciliation?
I mean someone else. I’m an ideas man.
Shambles, that was amazing. Thank you so much for doing that.
I was thinking some more about what we can sensible deduce about early Puppies attitudes and expectations, and I’m reminded of some related data. The Puppies aren’t Gamergate or vice versa, but we’ve seen how much Puppies leaders admire the crowd and reached out to them. So in this context, it probably matters….
Harassing people – women, people of color, SJWs of all sorts, etc. – on Twitter is and has been a core Gamergate activity. Twitter is a depressingly good platform for it, with management who pretty much don’t get it at all and certainly don’t regard dealing with it as an urgent past-due priority. So one of their most favored victims, Randi Harper, kludged together a very effective bit of blocking software.
Her blockbot is elegant in concept. It looks at messages coming at you, and at the list of who the people sending them follow. If a sender’s following two or more people on a list of prominent Gamergate leaders and inciters, the bot automatically blocks that sender, and while they can keep sending their awful messages, you at least don’t have to read them. And that’s all it does.
Now, this isn’t perfect. There are people who follow various Gamergaters so as to keep an eye on them, seeing what they’re up to – like the Puppies, a lot of Gamergaters are prone to believing that things they say to each other in public forums will somehow magically be invisible to the rest of us – and helping with useful responses. Or they’re just plain curious. So Harper set up a straightforward appeals process, and does periodically manually take someone off the list of names to beware of that her bot uses.
All of this apparently caught Gamergate completely by surprise. They made it hilariously, painfully obvious in their responses that they never dreamed anyone could or would do something that would constructively change an environment they found good for their harassment. They weren’t just angry, they were outraged that someone (particularly a woman) would deprive them of an audience. They continue to rage about it. They’ve described what she did as cheating, in some of their rants. They simply had – and have – no real grasp on the idea that other people can and will do things on their own initiative in response to harassment, and share the results around for the benefit of others. They feel entitled to the perpetual maintenance of conditions they found when they got started.
And the Puppies seem very much of the same general mindset, as we can see in their treatment of the EPH proposal and its development. Actual experts working alongside interested others, in public, with meaningful changes because of testing and discussion? The end results submitted for further actual public discussion, where there’s a real possibility of a scheme wanted by some being significantly modified or even outright rejected? Puppies don’t work that way. And because they, the best people in the world – just ask them – don’t work that way, nobody else really can either. It must be a cover story or trick of some kind and in any event, it’s just not fair for people to change a system the Puppies have been able to exploit so far.
Yes, I find it easy to believe that people who think that way would manage to grossly misunderstand some parts of the system they’re trying to game.
Apropos of nothing, what I’ve been reading lately:
The Girl With All The Gifts, M. R. Carey. Really, really good. I found the beginning particularly affecting. If I have any complaints, it’s that after about a quarter of the way through, there were really only two ways the plot was at all likely to go, and at about halfway through it was pretty clear which one it was most likely to be. But honestly that was a minor issue, since I was happy to go along for the ride as it all unfolded.
Biting the Sun, Tanith Lee. Also really, really good. The first book I particularly liked; such a riveting portrayal of boredom and ennui so ingrained the people experiencing it don’t even know what it is. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about the religious aspects of it, but eventually came to see them as something of a riff on T. S. Elliot’s The Waste Land and thought I got where she was heading with it. Parts of the second book did seem a little on-the-nose, but overall a great read.
A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab. It wasn’t bad, but it was kind of disappointing, since she’s written much better. There was nothing exactly wrong with it, but it never rose above OK. I did like the female protagonist. The male protagonist bored me a little. The Somewhat Ambiguous villain worked better for me than the Totally Evil villains.
The Pyramid Waltz, by Barbara Ann Wright. Also disappointing. Some very clunky character motivation and a number of moments that made me go, “… But wait, then why did they DO that?” rather than “Oh, THAT’S why they did that.” Probably won’t read the sequels.
Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross. Hm. Worked for me more as a “look at the interesting worldbuilding” travelogue than as a novel. And I did like the travelogue and found it extremely interesting, but I’d rather have gotten more out of the plot. I did laugh aloud (in a good way) at the part where the heroine was literally gvrq gb gur envyebnq genpxf.
Kyra Im going to hunt you and your dice down one of these days and turn them into powder and buy you a drink. Or maybe make YOU buy ME one. Because by golly I sure need it.
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
ARGH, ARGH, ARRRRRRRGH!
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
Watership Down, Richard Adams
5. MUCH MORE THAN I SEEM
Tea with the Black Dragon, R. A. MacAvoy
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
What’s that ritual from Fionavar? I’m over here doing the kanior in sorrow.
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
Watership Down, Richard Adams
5. (abstain)
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Little, Big, John Crowley
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
The Golden Compass/Northern Lights, Phillip Pullman
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Biting the Sun, Tanith Lee
There was apparently supposed to be a third book in that series. Never published and no sign of the MS.
I can do this. *stretch* *deep breath* Ooooh-kay. Let’s get started.
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
I have a feeling the Leguin is gong to bury the competition. Sorry- I couldn’t help myself.
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
War for the Oaks, Emma Bull
5. MUCH MORE THAN I SEEM
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
My prediction for the final contest will be LeGuin vs. Pratchett. Can we get some side wagers going?
@ Kyra,
Thanks for the thumbnail reviews. Everyone seems to be so impressed with The Girl with All the Gifts, that I may need to give it a go. And Biting the Sun is an old favourite. Still have my original copies!
Rose Embolism on August 1, 2015 at 1:50 pm said:
You owe me a drink, too. ~~taps foot~~
Bruce
That is fascinating; I have been very puzzled by the way in which puppidum’s vanguard react to people quoting them, as if this is in some way unfair. When people go beyond that to insist that it’s unfair to quote them and unfair to block the comments which they don’t want quoted, it does become very obvious that their worldview is entirely narcissistic…
Jim Henley:
Don’t be a dickweed.
Geez, Brian, I was all set to see it from your point of view, but this bile and vitriol you’re spewing is just fanning the flames of Henley, and while I disapprove highly of his terrible actions, it really is up to you to just go ahead and apologise to him right now as part of a process of reconciliation.
Stevie: They’ve got this unexamined assumption that not only are they entitled to choose all the terms of engagement with others, they actually get this unless the rest of us cheat.
Jim Henley: sorry!
Brian: Now give him the Hugos. All the Hugos.
Nigel: I thought your comments at the tail of the previous scroll were thoughtful and interesting. But I thought they were wrong. They love SFF. I imagine that whether they love Worldcon would depend in some part on their experience of Worldcon.
Brian, they love fighting fake culture wars more. They’re hucksters and huckster’s rubes. They hate the Hugos, and at best they don’t give a shit about WorldCon and the people running it.
Nigel: last year I tried to read Warbound and gave up. But do you know how many Hugo voters put it on their ballot?
Was it enough to disprove the whole SJW cabal thing?
Actually, yes.
There is no accounting for taste but if you look at last year’s statistical breakdown, Warbound got 332 1st place votes (out of 3137). But support for it was narrow; it only managed to eke out a few more to end with 351 votes in a category where Ancillary Justice dominated.
What is more interesting is how close No Award came to beating it into last place, a mere 106 votes. I think that the prospect of actually coming behind No Award was the main reason for declining his nomination this year for Monster Hunter Nemesis.
Not as tough as some of the others!
*standing ovation for Kyra’s Brilliant Brackets, though I loved the idea of the person whose name I cannot recall who suggested Leigh Lines*
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
War for the Oaks, Emma Bull
5. MUCH MORE THAN I SEEM
Tea with the Black Dragon, R. A. MacAvoy
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Abstain
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
Bruce Baugh: I read about the Gamergater Block a few days ago–probably on one of the feminist blogs I follow–and was struck because a very similar program was done some years ag for the atheist progressives as well (also called SJWs): I think it was just called the Block Bot. I think the programmer was Oolon, but I don’t trust my memory and am too tired to look. (I read a number of the blogs on Freethought Blogs, and it was in the context of progressive work in the atheist/freethought/sceptics community, especially involving sexual harassment policies at conferences).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/17/how-block-bot-could-save-the-internet.html
And the people being blocked responded entirely the same way, claiming among other things it was censorship (thus, the “Freeze Peach” meme was born).
So you can add one more group (although it overlaps–several of my favorite feminist atheist bloggers are also sff fans) to the collection of those against equal rights for all.
Rrede: Interesting, thanks! And yeah, the hate-spewing reactionary atheist crowd is another part of the same overall scene.
My head is beginning to hurt …
1. Tigana
2. The Dying Earth
4. War for the Oaks
5. Nine Princes in Amber Not an easy one.
6. The Last Unicorn.
7. Bridge of Birds. I admire Little, Big, but I love this.
8. Tie.
9. Small Gods
1. The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling
9. Taran Wanderer, Lloyd Alexander
The other parallel is the obsession with blacklisting. Lots of Gators tried to claim that the block list was an illegal industry blacklist. And then you get Puppies spinning “being an asshole makes me not want to work with you” into “you’ll never work in this town again!”
I don’t know where this particular obsession comes with, but it kept showing up. Remember when Brian was yammering about blacklists a few months ago, and it eventually turned out he was using it in a…typically idiosyncratic fashion?
Getting harder, as they should.
1 Tigana. Quixotic, I know.
3 The Princess Bride
6 The Last Unicorn
7 Bridge of Birds
9 Small Gods
I had seen that data before but as the ins and outs of this years kerfuffle have progressed it continues to tell more stories.
Mr Victory Condition (aka VD, aka TB) recently announced on his site that No Award was his plan all along and that everything was a massive trick to make the hated SJW reveal their true numbers because then he can…actually I’m not sure what then. Prevent leftists controlling the key political/economic heights of SF/F literary awards?
Anyway, in a post on Wednesday, July 30, 2014 VD posts his voting recommendations for the 2014 ballot. Notably he attempted his oh so scary burn-down-the-category strategy on Short Story i.e. his recommended vote was 1. No Award and then nothing else. Looking at the data 267 voters voted No Award 1 and then gave no other preference [you can see this because No Award was eliminated first and in the next stage only 51 votes passed to other stories]
So the maximum VD minion vote was 267 in 2014.
Now looking at Best Novellette, VD had his story ‘Opera Vite Aeterna’ nominated. It came last (161) above No Award (92). Assuming a VD minion would vote for Opera 1 then the No Award vote here then that puts the 2014 minion estimate at 161 but presumably less as there must be somebody out there willing to vote for VD’s story who isn’t actually a VD minion (or maybe not – I haven’t read it so it might be just plain bad)
Of those who voted No Award 73 had put no other preference. So we can assume there was about 70 people willing to just vote No Award independent of VD. Subtracting the 73 general NoAwarders in Novellette from the 267 NoAwarders in Short Story you get 194.
So a plausible range for VD minions in the 2014 votes is from 160 to 200 and probably on the lower end of that scale.
RedWombat: It’s another of those unexamined things – for them, “free speech” means that they say what they want to say, where and when they want to say it, and they are not just tolerated but supported for it. So they take any opposition as censorship. There’s no distinction for them between an individual or group saying “we’re choosing not to receive your signal” and jackbooted thugs gagging them.
1. Tigana.
The Lions of Al-Rassan is my favorite of Kay’s pre-2000 novels; Jehane is a character dear to my heart, a doctor seeking a way to strike back against a profound injustice. But I admit the fantastical elements are pretty thin on the ground. Whereas I remember reading an interview with GGK where he talked about a tour he’d done in Europe, and how in former Eastern block countries fans responded passionately to Tigana, to a tyrant who took a country’s name away. The taking of words is a powerful Imperialist tool.
2. Abstain.
3. The Princess Bride.
4. Watership Down.
Based on lifetime number of re-reads.
5. Tea with the Black Dragon.
I have given up all pretense of voting for the greatest or most influential novel and am voting with my heart.
6. The Last Unicorn.
7. Bridge of Birds. Excuse me, that’s going to require stitches…
8. The Riddle Master of Hed.
9. Taran Wanderer.
10. Abstain.
Camestros, good careful observations there. Thanks.
RedWombat: I don’t know where this particular obsession comes with, but it kept showing up. Remember when Brian was yammering about blacklists a few months ago, and it eventually turned out he was using it in a…typically idiosyncratic fashion?
GamerGaters and Puppies are aware that the people they oppose and attack have consciences and senses of ethics. Rather than seeing these as admirable qualities, they regard these as simply other weaknesses to be exploited. Either group, when stymied in achievement of their goals, will attempt various methods of getting around that block, one of which is trying to guilt-trip their targets into giving them what they want.
“If we can convince non-Puppies that shunning us because we are assholes / No Awarding us is equivalent to blacklisting — which they know is not a good thing — then they will feel bad about shunning / No Awarding us and stop doing it.”
The whole guilt-trip thing is totally obvious adolescent psychology — but considering the source, it’s hardly surprising that’s part of their methodology.
I am puzzled by puppidum’s contempt for the volunteers who make World-con.
By way of background, I am an upper middle class Englishwoman, educated at a girls public school, a civil servant, now retired, established by open competition when I was 21, and a mandarin. I wasn’t a very senior mandarin, as mandarins go, but a mandarin nevertheless, and thus designated as part of the ruling class.
In other words, I have very considerable socio-economic privilege within the class structure in England, and if anyone should be treating the lower orders like dirt it should, theoretically, be me. But I cannot imagine myself regarding people who work hard to bring happiness to themselves and others, at cons large and small, as tools to be used and abused.
Puppidum does, and I find it stomach turning.
@Camestros: Isn’t the lower bound as low as 19 (92 less 73)? Those are people who voted No Award in Novelette who could also have voted for “Opera Version ?.0,” which was the actual instruction. It’s always possible someone could just vote for “Opera” ironically or because they confused it with an actual opera or because the knew “opera” means “work” and thought they were supporting socialism or, and I recognize this is the least likely possibility, because they just liked the story.
At the end of the second quarter:
The closest matches are The Dragon Waiting/The Princess Bride, and Watership Down/War for the Oaks. Both of them could still easily go either way.
Matches that are more lopsided, but could still potentially flip with a surge for the underdog are Bridge of Birds (leading)/Little Big, The Riddle Master of Hed (leading)/The Golden Compass, and The Once and Future King (leading)/Fire and Hemlock.
In the other pairings, one candidate is pretty solidly ahead. Sizable leads have flipped in the brackets before, but only a few times.
1. The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
2.The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
3. The Princess Bride, William Goldman
4. Watership Down, Richard Adams
5. Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
6. abstain
7. abstain, though I’m tempted to try to avenge some of Hughart’s earlier depredations
8. The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
9. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
10. abstain
I don’t read a lot of VD’s blog, but I looked at the comments following the recent Xanatos Gambit post. Some of the Dead Elk really think there’s a chance that he could win a Hugo. (Won’t the SFW’s head just explode when that happens!) I get the impression they think of themselves as stormtroopers when at best they’re skirmishers without a main army behind them. Of course, I could be wrong. We won’t really know until the awards are presented.
Kyra, you are twisting the knife!
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
Easy!
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
Abstain.
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
…my hate is a pure hate. RRRRGHggghghh…ughhg. Princess Bride but dammit.
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Tough, but Watership Down was the first fanfic I ever wrote. At age eight. It was followed shortly by a Star Trek/Watership Down fanfic where the crew were turned into rabbits by a transporter accident. It took years of internet before I was willing to admit this.
5. MUCH MORE THAN I SEEM
Tea with the Black Dragon, R. A. MacAvoy
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
I enjoyed Potter thoroughly–Hufflepuff forever!–but c’mon.
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
I am over the God Stalk thing–mostly–and will point out that I dream of someday writing anything half as madcap and delightful as Bridge of Birds.
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
Abstain
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Taran put up a good fight, but I have a tiny statue of Om in my bedroom. And Hero & the Crown shall not have died in vain!
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
…everything hurts.
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
Going to abstain, as I haven’t read either of these.
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
The Dying Earth, Jack Vance
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
Another abstention, same reason.
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
The Dragon Waiting. Because PB is wonderful amusement, with many memorable scenes and lines, but TDW blew my mind.
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
Watership Down, Richard Adams
War for the Oaks, Emma Bull
Watership Down, because… rabbits!
5. MUCH MORE THAN I SEEM
Tea with the Black Dragon, R. A. MacAvoy
Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
Going with the Princes, with apologies to the Black Dragon.
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter.
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Little, Big, John Crowley
Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
Abstain; haven’t read either one.
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
The Golden Compass/Northern Lights, Phillip Pullman
Golden Compass.
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
Taran Wanderer, Lloyd Alexander
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Small Gods, because Pratchett.
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
The Once and Future King. It opened the Arthurian mythos to me.
@RedWombat:
FTFY.
Jack
As always I salute the fortitude of those brave souls prepared to endure VD’s interminable ramblings to bring us dispatches from the front, but something concrete has to be done about this.
Obviously Mike Glyer is the right person to do whatever it is he’s supposed to do; comes the hour comes the man!
Anyone who can survive in the chariot as Apollo sinks into the sea, only to turn up next morning unscathed (ok this may be a little bit tricky; it needs work but the rest of it seems reasonably OK. we should be able to have him top the polls?
I was assuming that the No Awarders in Novellette weren’t rabids but who knows :). However it comes to exactly 7 people who put No Award 1 and then Opera 2 (Opera goes from 161 in Pass 1 to 168 in Pass 2). It isn’t possible to tell where those 7 votes went next put that pattern (Noah 1, Opera 2) does look like some kind of protest vote (or maybe somebody just picking randomly?)
I just went back to novellette and luckily VD gave us some extra data. His preference was this:
1.”Opera Vita Aeterna” by Vox Day
2.”The Exchange Officers” by Brad Torgersen
3.”The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang
4.No Award
Now normally it would be a bit hard to see who voted along those lines without more details. However, Beale’s first picks actually went in reverse order. (VD eliminated second after Noah and then Bard Torgersen) which makes it easy to see who put VD 1 followed by BT 2.
Torgersen picked up 2 votes from NoAward and picked up 107 from Opera. So that pushes the numbers of people voting along VD’s preference down to 107.
Mind you 13 people who voted for Opera 1 seem to have voted for Lady Astronaut 2 – people with hmm eclectic tastes?
I’m worried that VD’s forthcoming book will be among next year’s Related Work nominees, and I’ll have to read the thing just so I can “no award” it in good conscience.
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
*The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
– no contest
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
– Abstain: haven’t read the Mirless
3. THE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES OF PLOTTING NOBLES
*The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford
haven’t read it, voting for it anyway
4. THE PHOUKA AND THE HLESSIL
*War for the Oaks, Emma Bull
– I have very high standards for talking animals, and Watership Down doesn’t meet them.
5. MUCH MORE THAN I SEEM
*Tea with the Black Dragon, R. A. MacAvoy
omg so hard.
6. PRETTY GOOD MOVIES, TOO
*The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
– this is so, so close to my heart.
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
*Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
– Little, Big is pretentious. Hughart is fun and also groundbreaking.
8. HEAD TO THE NORTH!
*The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip
– because its sequels didn’t disappoint me as much
9. LEARNING PHILOSOPHY ON THE ROAD
*Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
— that really hurts, but it had to be
10. GROWING UP TO BECOME A HERO
The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
– Abstain, haven’t read the DWJ
1. REBEL AGAINST THE SYSTEM
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
2. RENEWAL AND DECAY
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
Did you just make me vote against The Dying Earth twice in a row?
7. ASCENDING TO OTHER REALMS
Little, Big, John Crowley
So the later brackets are not going the way I wanted them to and filling up with books I’ve already read. Damn it.
Brian: I wouldn’t feel any such obligation. It’ll be widely excerpted, and that will do. If it were to have surprising merit, we will hear about it.
@Camestros: Thanks. Also, I’m reading back through your blog now and really enjoying it.
@Brian (A-Y): You don’t have to read the whole thing to have a clear conscience. You just have to read far enough to know the work is not up to snuff. With a good enough book, that point doesn’t come until after the end. But plenty of books aren’t good enough.