aka The Hugo Chronicles: Puppies of Spring Barking
Today roundup features Steve Davidson, Aditya Manu Jha, Kevin Harkness, Nick Mamatas, Scott Bakal, Vivienne Raper and Spacefaring Kitten. (Title credit belongs to — Anna Nimmhaus, who was inspired by The Phantom Tollbooth, and John Seavey.)
Steve Davidson on Amazing Stories
“FANS Need to Take the Moral High Ground” – June 26
I would like to call for the following actions on the part of fans everywhere:
First, the crafting of a formal statement that articulates the position that Fandom and Fans (which includes authors, artists, editors, podcasters, bloggers, fan writers, fan artists and everyone) do not game awards (or other fannish institutions) for personal, political or financial gain. Further, that individuals who may be eligible for awards state formally that they do not grant permission for third parties to include them or their works in voting campaigns or slates or organized voting blocs and that if their names or works are found on such, it is without their express permission.*
Second, the creation of a publicly accessible web-based archive that publishes the above statement and allows individuals to publicly endorse the statement.
Third, that an amendment to the WSFS by-laws be written and formally adopted (after the appropriate votes), stating that the members of WSFS do not endorse or support voting slates, voting campaigns or organized bloc voting for the awards that WSFS oversees. Further, that rules be crafted that would allow WSFS to deny or withdraw membership privileges from individuals who violate the by-law.
Fourth, that SFWA craft and adopt a formal statement that engaging in actions the same as or similar to those described previously are considered by the organization to be unethical and unprofessional actions on the part of its members that could result (after proper internal review) in censure or withdrawal of membership privileges.
https://twitter.com/LibertarianBlue/status/614954954764238848
Aditya Mani Jha on The Sunday Guardian
“How a hate-mongering group gamed the Hugos” – June 28
Vox Day and his sexist, homophobic lobby group Rabid Puppies have “played” the science fiction world successfully and tarnished the Hugo Awards, perhaps irreparably….
…What the Puppies (both sets) did was publish a “voting slate,” a curated list of titles that they urged their follows to put on the ballot. It worked, and how: out of the 60 nominated by the Sad Puppies, 51 were on the initial ballot. The corresponding figure was 58 out of 67 for the Rabid Puppies….
To top it all, Day has put himself on the slate: twice over, actually, which has made him a double nominee for this year. His publishing firm, Castalia House, has received nine Hugo nominations in total…
Kevin Harkness
“The Hugo Awards Controversy” – June 27
Cent One: The Sad and Rabid Puppy slates don’t work, and will eventually turn around and bite the people who created them. By showing the effectiveness of recruiting voters, you make this into a contest of numbers, not quality. And, considering demographics and mortality rates, I think the 21st century is going to beat the 20th in that fight.
Cent Two: Their reasoning isn’t going to win the Puppies a new generation of converts and so boost their numbers. For example, one of the Puppy arguments I’ve run across is that Hugo-winners are preachy, the so-called SJWs (sidebar: I’m ashamed to say it took me forever to figure out who they were mad at, Single Jewish Women? Slow Jesuit Wardens?). But have the Puppies read Heinlein or Niven and Pournelle? Their old-timey sic-fi adventures are infomercials for their politics, and not very subtle ones either. By the time I was 18, I was yelling, “Shut up and tell the story!” at my last Heinlein books. A second irritating point is the puppies claim the current Hugoists are too literary . . .for a literary award. Yikes!
As a writer with no awards and never a hope for a Hugo, I can say this with the utmost objectivity: stop messing with the system just because the results offend you. Create your own awards. Or better yet, vote as an individual and leave slates for the world of politics. I’m afraid I won’t change a single Puppy’s mind with this blog, because for them, the Hugo Awards are political. It follows then that writing itself is political, and, by extension, all art. If art is political, it must serve the politics of its maker. Come to think of it, that’s what Chairman Mao said. Maybe he was a secret Puppy.
https://twitter.com/NMamatas/status/614888459057016832/photo/1
@mari_ness Well, me for one.
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) June 27, 2015
@jeffvandermeer During QA I hope someone asks "Who do you like for the Hugo Awards this year?"
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) June 27, 2015
Scott Bakal on Instagram
Catching up a little bit with some news: I’m honored that this piece I did for Tor and @irenegallo was given a Distinguished Merit Award from 3×3 Magazine along with 10 other pieces. Thank you to the judges! It’s special because this is one of my recent favorites.
https://instagram.com/p/4cNh0LpKH5/
https://twitter.com/OddlyDinosaur/status/614827808674697216
Vivienne Raper on Futures Less Traveled
“Reading the Rockets – Best Graphic Story” – June 27
[Reviews all five nominees.]
#1 Saga Volume 3
I was reading Saga before the Hugo nomination for Volume 3. I love this series and the strange future-fantasy world the author has created. Volume 3 isn’t the best volume, but it’s hard for me to judge as a standalone as I’ve read the others.
The series follows two former soldiers from long-warring alien races and their struggle to care for their daughter, Hazel, as they’re chased by the authorities. Hazel is born at the beginning of Volume 1 and narrates part of the story as an adult.
Saga has lost narrative momentum as the series has progressed, but I’ve found it remains imaginative and entertaining. I don’t think there’s one baseline human here. In Volume 1 artist Fiona Staples even solved one of my longstanding character niggles – how do you dress a person with more than two legs? (Answer: a prom skirt)
There are flying tree spaceships. There are Egyptian lying cats. There are family feuds, blood feuds, assassins, deaths, births, love affairs, lots of running away. The standard palate of all-purpose human conflict that has driven good storytelling from time eternal. Big thumbs up from me.
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens
This. Was. Shit.
Moreover, Wisdom from My Internet is hard evidence of the fact that there were at least 200 sheer, hundred-percent, honest-go-god trolls sending in nominating ballots. It’s a collection of supposedly humorous, bad to reprehensible tweets with no SFF content whatsoever and — let’s face it — it’s on the ballot to piss off anybody who voted for Kameron Hurley last year.
The time I had to use to write these three sentences is all I’m going to devote to discussing this drivel.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@ Johan P
I agree. I wanted to make it as clear and simple as possible.
@ Shambles
Why choose one consistent reason to be outraged when they can have it all?
Laura
I would love to be able to agree with you, but I can’t because it is very obvious to me, at least, that this has been put together in an attempt to enable VD become either Emperor of the Universe, or Despot of a smallish planet which we are familiar with if only because we live here. Neither is reasonable but that doesn’t matter to them; like Gollum he wants it, and he wants it now…
It’s late over here, and I’m having lunch with my daughter tomorrow; as a hospital specialist she works weird amount of hours, so a whole lunch together is precious to both of us…
Good night to you and all the other posters! I very much enjoy the eclectic mix, so I hope it’s still there tomorrow…
@Mike Glyer
Libertycon was this weekend, several roundup posts over at MGC. I hope it was a fun time and people reconnected with their love of SFF. Maybe for the next roundup ?
http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/06/27/live-from-libertycon-28/
Assuming that my distaste for this sort of fact free speculation and the topic of Beale in general is known: The theory that he isn’t registered requires that this never gets out. Otherwise the rich son of a CEO skimped on the money he asked lots of other people to spend. He can’t argue he’s depriving Worldcon when he sends lots of new members their way and it’s not a meaningful gotcha. But it’d show he doesn’t put his money where his mouth is, while asking people most of whom probably have less, to pay for his campaign. The mere risk of this hurting puppy turnout in 2016 is enough to make him cover his bets for $40. If he tought it useful, he could still lie about it and say he wasn’t registered. Or suggest it in a deniable way.
Regarding moral high ground and codes of conduct.
I am against any kind of juried approach to ballots or banning, it’s too much for already overworked administrators. I believe it’s against the ideal of including all fans together under a big tent.
Any pledges or codes of conduct … not particularly warm to this idea either
Beth in MA on June 28, 2015 at 2:56 pm said:
Willis and her publisher stated they considered Blackout/All Clear to be one work that was split up for technical reasons.
I haven’t seen anything from Walton or Tor one way or the other so I’d say it would be up to individual nominators. Actually, even if they do come out and make a statement it’s still up to the individual nominators.
Peace Is My Middle Name at 5:09 pm:
At this stage ignoring Beale is the best thing to do, at least that’s what I’m trying to do. He continues trying to stir things up & I am disinclined to provide the oxygen. If E pluribus Hugo gets adopted then the Puppies have one more year in which to game the nominations.
The suggestion is that Kate Paulk’s not doing a slate for Sad Puppy 4, but I guess we’ll see.
On nominating:
I used to be reticent thinking I haven’t read enough to have a good grasp of the ‘best’ of the year. But I saw that many people felt the same, so since then, I’ve gone with nominating works I think are Hugo-worthy – and if enough other members feel the same way, they’ll make the final ballot. I almost never nominate the full five, but there is usually something in most categories, my contribution to the “wisdom of crowds”.
Oh hey! If Libertycon is over we should hopefully get Rev Bob’s take on his swan song there soon!
““Manly Men Take Charge In the Bedroom” (romance). ”
I’m bemused at this conflation of apparently small ‘c’ conservative sexual roles with right wing politics. Has anyone done a survey to find out if male subs are usually liberals? Romance prioritises women’s consent, choices, and pleasure, which are definitely not Big ‘C’ conservative interests.
“as a genre written primarily by women authors primarily for women readers, quite a lot of it is liberal in orientation.”
I generally agree with Sweet’s take. Women’s consent and freedom are big deals in Romance (the genre) with the caveat that 30 years ago, rape fantasy was rather more popular. Small ‘c’ conservative ideas like the preference for (often married) monogamy, the lack of tolerance of cheating (by either partner), lack of abortion or even effective contraception as discussed options for ‘oops, surprise pregnancy’, and the man being the one to propose etc, pre-dominate in certain markets and readerships but when the genre has a large number of North American writers, that’s not surprising. Move out of that demographic and out of straight, pure romance, things get a lot more interesting.
The romance blogs I’ve read and writers I’ve seen talk about political issues tend to be a really good mix of left and right wing opinions – again, more to the right when you are talking about American dominated forums. However, America is not the be all and end all in Romance in the slightest, and I wonder if Nick Mamatas can claim the encyclopedic knowledge of the world wide genre as his bald and unsourced comment suggests.
@Soon Lee: The suggestion that Paulk may not run a slate is interesting, but I haven’t seen it. Following the links, I get as far as something like this:
Item #1 reduces to nothing at all since Paulk has no way of knowing who has read what.
Item #2 reduces to less than nothing when you consider that the resentment underlying the puppy movement is that the wrong sort of people have been winning Hugos. Has any puppy nominee ever been a prior Hugo winner?
Item #4 seems to be aimed at a worthwhile target–the shamelessly self-promoting nature of puppy slates so far. Full credit here
What I don’t see above is anything that adds up to “this isn’t a slate.” Anyone got a link to the source material that buddy_kat was repeating there?
Stevie : My lungs are colonised by a strain of hyper-mutating multi resistant mucoid pseudomonas aeruginosa which is a single entity; it is impossible to kill the entity as a whole but a small number of intravenous antibiotics will kill some of it.
[…]
By this point you know where Watts slime mould came from: what he hasn’t really grasped is that in itself the ability to hyper mutate undermines the neo-Darwinism theory which says that the vast majority of mutations are destructive; if this were the case the bacteria in my lungs should have hyper mutated themselselves out of existence long ago. They haven’t, they don’t, and they won’t, and since that is the case one needs to construct a hypothesis to deal with it. Indeed, the bottom line of lateral gene transfer is that we are not driven by genes, selfish or otherwise, the organism selects the genes, not the other way round.
I believe (from my own limited lay perspective) you are mistaken here – your key error is that a pseudomonas aeruginosa infection such as you describe is not a single entity – it is a biofilm created by millions of individual bacteria working in concert, sort of like a city is created by the humans that inhabit it.
Most mutations are neutral, many of those remaining are destructive, some few are beneficial – given a steady environment. When the environment changes, such as when an antibiotic is introduced, some of those neutral mutations become beneficial, and are spread by reproduction and by (as you say) lateral gene transfer – because those bacteria that don’t have them tend to die out and get replaced by those that have adapted.
We ALL have about 100 mutations or so. The vast majority of those go unnoticed.
@ Laertes
There will almost certainly be “events” between now and then that justify changing the rules. So fussing about it now seems pointless.
Moreover, #1 will likely only be in effect for putting together the slate. Otherwise they might just as well talk about books they love and nominate independently. It tellingly says “recommend” not nominate.
So, best case Paulk does what Torgersen said he did but didn’t and produces a curated list based on recommendations from an open discussion.
Good to know–thank you! I really enjoyed The Just City and it is on my long list.
Does SP4 matter, frankly? I think RP2 is the actual problem, isn’t it?
Because here’s the test for “is X a slate?”
Can I examine X and come away from it with a reasonably clear sense of which five items I need to nominate to maximize the chances of my faction dominating the ballot?
A writer outright begging her fans to nominate his book is very bad behavior. This is not a slate.
A writer gathering recommendations from whatever source, operating on that list by any process or no process at all, and then reducing the list to five or presenting the list in some ordered fashion such that the “top five” can be identified is a slate.
I’m assuming that RP2 is just SP4 with a few people muscled out to make room for Castalia house, and that as with this year the SP slate will serve as the “respectable” face of the beast.
which five items I need to nominate to maximize the chances of my faction dominating the ballot?
That right there is a slate: having a faction that you want to dominate the ballot.
Assuming good faith on the part of SP4, yes it does. If e.g. Paulk comes up with a list of up to 10 recommendations for each category and randomises it before publication and tells people to read all that and nominate based on what they read (including outside the rec list) SP4 could promote overlooked authors, increase political diversity, bring in new people _and_ act as a block against RP2. (i) SP4 votes would not contribute to RP2 as much as they do when RP2 can copy a slate and add stuff. (ii) SP4 would have a stake in not having their nominations pushed out by random stuff from Castalia (iii) the moral alternatives would be clear cut. Nobody participating in RP2 under those circumstances would be able to hide behind SP4.
Plus, the SP4 nominees might actually be readable.
Put another way, SP4 is something we might be able to influence on a procedural level and reach compromise with the people behind it. RP2 can only be fixed by fixing the nomination system.
Stevie
I don’t think we disagree. Anymore. Initially I had a small hope that non-slate voters could overwhelm the slates. Then you folks presented the math. That hope is … I won’t say gone, but certainly muted. Math is compelling.
I asked, and got this: “She has not posted them online yet, she is waiting until after this year’s Hugos are over to start doing anything for next year.” So it’s just hearsay at this point.
Agreed. But if those who self-identify as Sad Puppies (the more ‘moderate’ people) are thinking of renouncing slates and switching to a longlist of recommendations, then it’s a step in the right direction. Forgoing slates will take some of the heat out of the controversy.
I don’t see that happening with Beale but if E pluribus Hugo gets adopted, it’ll pull the teeth of the Rabid Puppies; their votes will no longer dominate the nominations but will be more proportionate to their numbers. We can go back to mostly ignoring Beale’s outrage stirring.
ETA: Ninja’ed by mk41
The Wonderful Flight to the Mutt-Chewed Planet
@Gene Lim
I was amused
You’re Vox Day, aren’t you?
to see that Aditya Mani Jha’s article only discusses the Rabid Puppies and doesn’t even mention the Sad Puppies, Correia or Torgersen. I suspect Larry and Brad won’t be rushing to seek a correction so as to have themselves name-checked along with the racist and homophobic Rabid leaders.
Of course, the “Sad Puppies” are mentioned by name even in the short three-paragraph bit that Mike excerpted.
While you may consider SP to be underrepresented in the article, I personally think they’re accorded space proportionate to their relative importance to and impact upon this year’s Hugo ballot.
@Carmestros Felapton
I don’t know if it will affect your vote or not (it won’t change mine) but Vox Day seems to have now disowned Kary English and isn’t voting for Totaled at all.
Wow, Vox doing even more to diminish women as Hugo contenders this year. Who’d have thought?
@mk41
If the slates don’t “sweep the ballot in the novel category” I don’t count that as a win. They didn’t sweep the novel category this year either.
They took all but one slot, though. They only have two slots now because nominees either declined or withdrew.
@Laertes
Has any puppy nominee ever been a prior Hugo winner?
Resnick?
In spite of Brad’s claim of championing the unrepresented, he picked works by Michael Flynn (nominated multiple times) and Jim Butcher (a previous Hugo nominee, even though Brad and Larry vocally regarded only nominating Butcher for a graphic novel as a slap in the face, much as they seem to have viewed their own noms).
@bloodstone
Does SP4 matter, frankly? I think RP2 is the actual problem, isn’t it?
Pretty much. You could even argue that SP3 hardly mattered and RP1 was the actual problem.
/facepalm
That’s embarrassing. Thanks for the correction.
“if those who self-identify as Sad Puppies (the more ‘moderate’ people) are thinking of renouncing slates and switching to a longlist of recommendations”
I’ve seen no evidence of this. On the other hand, I’ve seen evidence that the SPs are veering towards the extreme by supporting VD’s harassment of Irene Gallo and Moshe Feder.
So, not optimistic that common sense will break out.
Richard Brandt:
The Wonderful Flight to the Mutt-Chewed Planet
*doffs hat*
The thing about switching to non-slate tactics is that slate tactics work. They give power. And who doesn’t crave power? Who wants to put down a weapon that’s feared by people they hate?
Unless Kate Paulk manages to disentangle the two (which would surprise me), SP4 is going to be cover for RP2. Although perhaps Castalia will have enough out to completely fill its own slate.
I’ve read The Just City. I haven’t yet read The Philosopher Kings, except for the two chapters that were put up on tor.com. But based on those two chapters, it looks like the second book takes place two decades later, and does not continue the plot of The Just City in any meaningful way. So I’d say two different books, two different nomination slots.
@David Goldfarb: Turns out The Philosopher Kings is available Tuesday. It had slipped my mind. Thanks for the prompt.
A previous thread got me to buy The Space Opera Renaissance anthology (yes, on Torday). Edmund Hamilton’s The Star-Stealers (1929) is the first piece in the book. It isn’t “good” by modern standards – the characters aren’t, and the science is whack even by the standards of the time. (Not only does no one find it remarkable that the “dark star” must be moving much, much faster than c to cover the distance the story describes, it is simultaneously so massive it can drag our sun out of the galaxy while having a low enough surface gravity that humans can land on it and walk around.) It is wonderful that the story keeps referring to Neptune as the solar system’s eighth and final planet, mind you.
But I was super-impressed with Hamilton’s unassuming feminism. One of the four named characters is the female second officer, described simply as being from a long line of distinguished pilots and portrayed as competent, brave and enthusiastic about her work. She does “after the manner of her sex” go to the beauty parlor after the good guys win, but after that, she’s back into space doing her effing job. Indeed, the narrator describes the themselves (her and him) as “two of a kind” in terms of living for travel among the stars. And no, there’s never a hint of romance between them.
It was, I thought, a nice job of bothering to consider that the future really might be different from the present, even a nice job of just presenting the situation without comment given that it would be unremarkable to the narrator. Good show, Edmund Hamilton!
Doire,
Thank you for the link. Last thread I asked someone he didn’t want to give them to me, so I really appreciate your gesture.
Spaca
It’s 3.34 am over here and I need sleep. I will happily discuss your points with you, but the information I derive comes from one of the world’s best respiratory centres, as discussed with my daughter who is on track for the fastest appointment as a consultant in her chose speciality ever.
On the genes side of things I was fortunate that my parent’s friends included a guy who had jointly won a Nobel Prize for biochemistry; he was able to provide the context which enabled me to comprehend the hypothesis. This is not the same as accepting the hypothesis to be true.
ObSF:
I have now finished reading “Ancillary Sword” which completes my Hugo reading this year. It being the sequel to “Ancillary Justice” makes it harder for me to judge. I decided not to re-read AJ before AS to see how well AS works as a stand-alone novel, and for most part, it does. If anything, I enjoyed it more than AJ which I thought was good, but I didn’t feel quite as gushy about as some others.
My current Hugo novel ranking:
1. The Goblin Emperor
2. Ancillary Sword
3. The Three Body Problem
I didn’t mind the ideas-focus of TBP (which made it quite old school SF), and have read a few “translated from the Chinese” stories such that stylistically, it wasn’t off-putting. I think it is a deserving finalist but ultimately it unsuspended my suspension of disbelief too many times to get my top spot. Also TGE & AS came across as more cohesive works.
Will,
Hold on to that brochure, someday it may be worth something.
Didn’t Paulk make a comment about how the SJws would be picking themselves up after their steamrolling? It got linked in the comments a while back but I can’t find it.
Pluviann and Camestros,
Those are all really good ideas!
@mk41
That would be the SP4 run by Kate “SFWA Can Haz Glittery Hoo Haa” Paulk, right?
Kate “We are all Vox Day. Or Larry Correia. Or Brad Torgerson. Or anyone else who dares to disagree with the opinions of the would-be power-brokers” Paulk?
Good old Kate “Honestly, what’s an Evil Impaler to do? Watching the disaster can be fun, but when your opponent can’t seem to manage more than the whiny toddler level of opposition it takes all the pleasure out of giving them a nice high view” Paulk?
Just checking. 😛
“One of the four named characters is the female second officer, described simply as being from a long line of distinguished pilots and portrayed as competent, brave and enthusiastic about her work.”
I think I pointed out on that previous thread that the author was almost certainly inspired by the flourishing of woman aviators of that period, including Earhart.
What a refreshing find in a book from that era.
Meanwhile, over in the short fiction thread, someone characterized Cordwainer Smith as “politically conservative,” which makes no sense to me at all. Probably contributed directly to numerous third-world atrocities in your day-job != “politically conservative”. That was a bipartisan American enterprise during the Cold War.
Tegan,
You were persuading me to reconsider, up until “lazy, lying slate-mongers”.
@Ann Somerville:
Doh! You did. I excuse myself for bringing it up again because before I hadn’t read the whole story, and it turns out that Hamilton didn’t fall down after the beginning part.
@Jim Henley
Edmund Hamilition also married Leigh Brackett in 1946 and they often collaborated on novels without writer credit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hamilton
Yes, JJ linked:
But I note that the comments were in late March, and a lot has happened since then…
“You were persuading me to reconsider”
Bullshit, Brian.
Now run back to Vox and get your next set of orders on how to disrupt discussions.
Brian Z @ 7:53:
Wounded Innocence.
Get your Puppy Bingo cards here.
Laertes, are you going to be at Sasquan? Because I would so much like to buy you a beverage of your choice.
In spirit only, alas. But the offer warms my heart. Thanks.
I would assume the objection to “lazy, lying slate-mongers” is “lazy,” what with the other two being undeniable.
Maybe “industrious, lying slate-mongers”?
Nah. Neither slate shows much in the way of industriousness. I’m declaring “lazy” to be on point.