187 thoughts on “Sad Puppies 4 List”

1. Say what you will about the tenets of Sad Puppes 4; at least it’s not an ethos.

   Which is to say, yes, kudos to Paulk for sticking to her commitments. And I cosign what Camestros said, among others.

2. @ Aaron & Joe – thanks.

   Seems to me to be a bit outside the spirit of the Campbell, but as the rules explicitly rule it in, then its me, not the rules.

   I didn’t think it was Hugo worthy but…not sure about Campbell. It’s certainly polished.

3. *hands Soon Lee a mehnternet*

   They managed to make their not-a-slate standard of 10 suggestions in a mere third of the categories. Hardly a rousing demonstration of a once-silent majority.

   However, there’s no sign of shenanigans with the counting that I can tell – although some of the nominating comments were so vague that I imagine other interpretations will be available.

   ETA: Sanford/Ctein campbell – I believe authors need individual noms in the Campbell, whether they’ve collaborated or not.

4. @John Seavey: Yes, other than Editor (fan and pro) and the ridiculousness of Fan Writer, plus a pick here and there in other categories, it’s pretty innocuous. It covers a wide variety of things, just like everyone else’s lists. Like fandom as a whole.

   It isn’t heavy on non-traditional publishing, it doesn’t look anything like the previous years’ hand-picked slates, there are few suggestions for Retro Hugos (i.e. their Good Old Days before SJW), it doesn’t do anything of the many supposed reasons Sad Puppies put forth about the Silent Majority.

   I mean, teh ebil Scalzi is on there, so’s Ancillary with those SJW pronouns. “Cat Pictures, Please” has na nagv-tnl cernpure pbzvat bhg bs gur pybfrg, yvivat jvgu n avpr zna, naq jbexvat va n jrypbzvat yvoreny pbatertngvba. Brad would clutch his pearls at that heresy! “Watchmaker” has na vagreenpvny tnl pbhcyr.

   Sad Puppies would seem to have outlived its usefulness, except insofar as getting Larry, MGP, and JCW on the ballot. Meaning it’s evolved into pabulum that weakly supports its buddies. Any BNF could do that part.

   Will SP 4 fail except where it overlaps with RP again? Will that failure be blamed on Kate? (even though that was also true of last year’s personal slate by Brad.)

   SP5 may happen just to prove they didn’t let the SJWs win, but they might tighten up the rules so that you have to be a recognized member of MGC or a Puppy sympathizer to vote (Aaron would be RIGHT OUT).

   Or go back to having one person pick the suggestions in some sort of opaque process, which really goes against their “big tent democracy” claims.

   And with the nominators next year being heavy on Europeans due to the con being in Helsinki, the US culture wars are going to be even less cared about and voted against. Even if EPH doesn’t pass (Ghu grant that it does).

   RP will continue because Teddy’s ego.

   SP5, or even SP4 may have inadvertently taken the oft-repeated advice of Bob Barker.

5. Andrew M: Noteworthiness is entirely in the eye of the beholder

   So is primarily, aspects, other, and fiction.

   Reductio ad absurdum arguments are lame.

6. The Campbell is famously Not a Hugo, so the rules are very different. It’s sponsored by Dell Magazines, and the winners get a plaque (and tiara), not a rocket.

   It’s kinda confusing, but so it goes.

7. lurkertype: Sad Puppies would seem to have outlived its usefulness, except insofar as getting Larry, MGP, and JCW on the ballot. Meaning it’s evolved into pabulum that weakly supports its buddies. Any BNF could do that part.

   Will SP 4 fail except where it overlaps with RP again?

   My predicting skills haven’t scored many successes lately, but I think people voting the RP slate are the whole show, in terms of delivering tangible results.

   And if that prediction turns out wrong — well, I guess I’ll just throw a party.

8. @Camestros

   There isn’t much of any kind of supporting structure of fanzines, semi-prozines etc fostering the talent the Puppies are looking for.

   Interestingly, spotted in the MGC comments, there’s a recently launched Puppy-adjacent semiprozine for “Sword & Planet and Heroic Fantasy fiction”. I approve – let them compete in the marketplace of stories and succeed or fail on their merits.

9. @Mike Glyer: At least for the 2015 campaigns, the limit cases (e.g. Gannon and Torgersen in Best Novel) suggest that either slate on its own would have dominated – not to say swept – all categories. The early inference that the RPs were all that mattered last year turned out not to be supported by the nominating data when it was finally released.

   Now this year, RP might be more of “the whole show”:

   1) SP4 isn’t as slate-like as SP3
   2) SP4 overlaps more with the broad tastes of con-going fandom (e.g. Leckie being on it)
   3) SP4 may not get the sort of push SP3 got from Correia, Torgersen, GG symps and such. (Dare one speculate that item 1 and 2 factor in here?)

   Lastly, poor Christopher M. Chupik! Our wails unwailed, our teeth exterting only normal mutual pressure.

10. There are things on this list that are already on my nomination ballot. That alone makes this ballot 200% different from last year’s slate.

    In fact, only a small handful of items on this list are things I find upsetting, questionable, or just plain bad.

    Also: The fact that some categories have fewer than five items (and most of them have MORE than five items) definitely meets with my approval.

    If my response is typical of the rest of Fandom, this might be a good year for the Hugos …

11. Chris S: I’ve read quite a few on the list, the one that’s really really bad IMO is “And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of Dead” – Brooke Bolander – it’d have been dated as hell back in the late 1980s, now its just embarassing, plus Peter Hamilton used a very similar “twist” in one of his shorts.

    < Googles, reads >

    Well, that was singularly unimpressive.

12. So bottom line: an openly selected cross section of Puppy tastes is not all that much at variance from a cross section of fannish tastes in general. It was pretty obvious from the start, just from the fact that the Puppies only ever able to name a handful of specific Hugo winners that they disagreed with.

    Trying to convince people otherwise didn’t get Larry a Hugo, didn’t harmonise novels and their covers for Brad, didn’t reinstate the Inquisition for JCW and cause the entire political left to collapse for VD. That’s ok, guys. It was really kind of a longshot that any of those things were going to happen, if you think about it.

13. ::tickbox::

14. Hey, it just hit me, thanks to viewing the action-figure photography on the SP4 list. Our own Camestros Felapton is totally eligible for Best Fan Artist and would be an entirely worthy nominee. All that humorous 3D rendering and animating on his blog constitutes a genuine body of indisputably fan-made artistic work.

15. How about this: Inside Out should not be on the ballot. It is neither sf or fantasy.

    Don’t get me wrong; it is one of the GREATEST animated films I have ever seen. But at it’s heart, it’s a psychological comedy-drama.

    But as a potential Hugo or Nebula nominee? For me, no sale…

16. Just a few comments on the SP4 list and comments here:

    1. Good call on Camestros Felapton — his body of work is nomination-worthy.
    2. Of the linked Goodreads list, I have either read 13 of 100 entries, or they exist on my Kindle, waiting patiently.
    3. The SP4 list is sufficiently diverse, and can be matched up with other lists available or yet to come. This is offset somewhat by the everlasting straw man-ship and whininess of her MGC entries.
    4. I wish the SP4 list had included sources for the short fiction categories, in the off-chance I might hunt some of them down.
    5. The novella category is, to my eyes, the strongest and least ideologically-affected of the entire list.
    6. So far, I’ve read nothing from Correia or Torgersen about the SP4 situation. But I expect that will change, and we’ll find that it’s not different from SP3 objectives.
    7. Declan Finn is the new JCW.

17. A film in which emotions and imaginary friends are actively personified and manipulate memories and dreams while walking through a non-literal physical representation of the interior of a mind. Whilst exhibiting cartoon logic a la physically impossible cartoon manoeuvres, and magically appearing and vanishing items (welding masks, fire extinguishers and a bag of holding). THAT is not a fantasy.

    Huh.

    Exactly what is your definition of fantasy, then?

18. “Inside Out” is definitely genre & is definitely nomination-worthy. But then I’m a lumper, not a splitter.

19. @Chris Barkley – I’m about 180 degrees from your position in that I didn’t think it easy that great of a movie (it was ok) but it was totally Fantasy. I’ve never understood the the argument the argument that the argument that a story’s fantastic elements have to be external to any character’s mind for it to count as fantasy. It seems a very arbitrary bar.

    ETA- Ninjaed.

20. “The Lord of the Rings” is not Fantasy. At its heart it’s just a Quest story.

21. Despite the telepathy set-dressing, The Demolished Man is just a book about a cop making a parallel construction around tainted evidence to nail a guilty perp.

22. Kudos to Ms. Paulk for fixing most of what I perceived as the major flaws with the puppies (of either ilk) last year: the opaque selection process and the obvious slating.

    I do end up with a bit of a suspicion that their main aim this year may be Best Editor. I know a lot of the folks on the puppy periphery were particularly disappointed about the results in those categories last year. But I’m more than fine with them trying again, as long as they continue to play fair, and, y’know, maybe provide some evidence that their preferred nominee actually deserves the award, this time!

    The most interesting part of all of this is now going to be to see what happens now that the Sads and Rabids are no longer marching more-or-less in lockstep.

23. Competing impulses.

    Let’s just go with: I’m glad that the initial belligerence (which seemed to carry on from SP3) has apparently wandered off somewhere, leaving us with…this.

24. @JJ – it might be a candidate for a Rory award, however.

25. Chris S.: it might be a candidate for a Rory award, however.

    *snort*

    Now I’m tempted to do a copy-and-paste into Word, and Replace All with “Belgium”.

26. All in all a fairly transparent process. People had time to read during the recommendations process. I’d say Kate Paulk did a much better job than her predecessor.

    I would have noted the candidates who’ve said they won’t accept nominations (ones I’m aware of or were discussed in the MCG thread):
    Scalzi
    Correia
    Ringo
    Freer

    I wonder if we will see any new announcements of people disassociating from slates in general now that the list is up or if it’s mostly going to be ignored due to lack of fanfare and lead up?

    @Mike Glyer
    I want to congratulate you on the wide range of places I’ve seen File 770 come up this year as a recommendation. You cut across political wars and have done an amazing job this year.

27. Hear! Hear!
    [What Tasha Turner said about Mike Glyer.]

28. Well, I see this as proof that SP3 was a pure slate. When doing honest nominations, they get a very flat structure with many nominees with few votes each. In SP3 it was few nominees with an enormous amount of votes each.

    Now lets see if the SP4 list will be used for vote aggregation, that is slating. Because it isn’t as if people have time to read the works on it.

29. Catherynne Valente has tweeted this evening “For the record, I was not asked and I do not consent to be on the Sad Puppies List. I am furious.”

    https://twitter.com/catvalente/status/710665773321052161

30. @Doctor Science – I remain distinctly unimpressed by Callahan. I much prefer Malaysian photographer Zahir Batin‘s work with similar materials.

    Also, I’d like to thank/blame you and Greg’s RSR. My Fan/ Pro artist shortlist is currently 20-odd candidates each. My earlier plan of throwing darts may not work anymore. May need to locate a random number generator/ online dice app. So yeah, thanks. ::sigh::

    @Jim Henley – lol on poor Chris’ unfulfilled dreams. Also, IIRC Camestro withdrew from consideration.

31. Catherynne Valente has tweeted this evening “For the record, I was not asked and I do not consent to be on the Sad Puppies List. I am furious.”

    I wonder if she’d be less furious if she knew her piece was recommended by people who loved it and may not be puppies? Or that SP4 appears to be very much Not a Slate?

    It’s her teapot, though, so whatever.

32. She does know that it may have been not-Puppies who nominated her, as we have seen on this very website!

    She still doesn’t wanna have anything to do with them, as is her right.

33. @BGHilton: “an openly selected cross section of Puppy tastes”

    Well, it’s not a cross section of Puppy tastes – rather, it’s Puppies, Filers (mostly anti-slate*, methinks), random people, and self-promoters. 😉

    ETA: I wrote “anti-Puppy” because my brain’s ready for sleepy time. Anti-slate makes more sense – sorry!

    @Various: Well, it’s ranked and shows top-10-or-fewer, but mostly it just seems like yet another unhelpful rec list from random people I don’t know or have any reason to listen to. I’m not sure why anyone would read (or avoid) or vote for (or against) anything just because it was on this list, so really I don’t see the point.

    That said, I’m happy it wasn’t created by a few people in secret; the rec process was open (like the old Hugo rec LJ); and the counting was honest (if error-prone and occasionally inconsistent). But the best parts are (a) the logo and (b) that Paulk stuck to novel for Best Novel. (I feel strongly about Best Novel.)

    Hopefully there’s not a secret, shadow SP4 slate being passed around via e-mail, as some suspect RP has. It is easy to see the Puppy picks in the Novel list, but those are ones I’d expect Puppies to vote for anyway.

34. Jim Henley on March 17, 2016 at 4:51 pm said:

    Hey, it just hit me, thanks to viewing the action-figure photography on the SP4 list. Our own Camestros Felapton is totally eligible for Best Fan Artist and would be an entirely worthy nominee. All that humorous 3D rendering and animating on his blog constitutes a genuine body of indisputably fan-made artistic work.

    Gosh – I think on balance I’d rather not 🙂 The better stuff I made in 2016 anyway. But, thanks for the thought. Maybe next year!

35. A few thoughts before I get ready for the con:

    – Fifthing the criticism of the Dramatic/Short tiebreaking. Arbitrarily discarding half of the tied-for-sixth works looks way too much like “we have to keep the list short or it won’t be effective, but if we stop at five we can’t pretend it’s not a slate” to me.

    – The low average number of recs merely demonstrate why (a) slates are a bad idea and (b) they’re not useful unless one wants to skew the nominations. If a significant number of people use the SP4 list as a slate, the “winning” recs will gain more influence than they would otherwise merit. (Two people should not be able to use “pre-nomination” to inflate something’s chances. Their picks should have to compete on the same fair way as everyone else’s: in the nomination process.) Further, who knows if the people involved in SP4’s pre-nominations are even eligible to nominate for the Hugos? If not, why should they have any say over the ballot’s contents?

    – Inside Out was a fun movie, but it’s no more SFF than Herman’s Head was. It’s okay to like something that’s not genre.

    – In fairness to Cat, SP4 did have an explicit “we ain’t askin’ permission to slate anybody” policy stated right at the outset. It kinda feels like she’s trying to call foul on the violation of a promise they not only never made, but actively said they weren’t making. That said, good on her for instantly making her thoughts on the matter known.

    – If the participation evidenced by the SP4 list is any indication, I don’t think there’s sufficient “rank and file” interest to merit an SP5. Sure, the ringleaders could make it happen, but there doesn’t seem to be any point. The phrases “not with a bang, but with a whimper” and “weak tea” come to mind. Of course, we’ll know more in a few weeks when the finalists are announced…

36. All in all a fairly transparent process. People had time to read during the recommendations process. I’d say Kate Paulk did a much better job than her predecessor

    Well to be perfectly fair that bar was set so low you’d need to tunnel under it.

    My vague thoughts on this: it would be a shame if nominees were to withdraw from consideration based on this (or the RP) list. There are some names on there absolutely worthy of the awards.

37. Not buying it.

    There’s still a politcal agenda behind the ‘not-a-slate’ list.
    There’s still a good possibility that what is public is not what’s going on in private.
    Kudos to Cat valente for not playing – I wish more authors would do the same.

    A “recommendation list” is a list, not curated with most recommended. you let the person using the list make that determination.

    Finally, the real issue was never about the formats or the methodology of putting a list/slate together – it was the entire concept that Worldcon and the Hugo awards ought to become a battlefield in the mundane culture war. SPIV Still represents that and it should Still be firmly rejected on that basis alone.

    I get that people are weary of the whole thing and are looking for any means to start feeling like this is over and that we can get back to business as usual, but it’s not over at least until everyone participating in worldcon and the Hugo’s understands WHY this kind of thing isn’t done and either goes there own way or stops trying to turn the sandbox into a battlefield. EPH isn’t the solution either, that’s just a band aid.

    Yes, many will feel I’m just stirring the pot or unwilling to let go. But we still have to address the fact that we’re not sufficiently or effectively transmitting to a new generation the why’s and wherefores of what it means to be a fan. It starts with addressing the undeserved sense of entitlement, goes on to those feelings of persecution and rejection and descends from there. If we don’t deal with this root issue,there will be future eructions of similar and unknown kinds we’ll be dealing with.

38. I agree that SP4 does not qualify as a slate. And it actually served a useful purpose for me, by reminding me of some stories that I read last year, and enjoyed, and never added to my mental list of things-I-oughtta-nominate-for-Hugos-this-year.

    (Yes, I should have been keeping that list outside of my own head, but I’m a slacker.)

39. The question of whether something is a slate or not is a bit of a red herring. SPs 1 to 3 were sufficiently slate-like that it was a convenient shorthand label for people’s objections to the tactic, but it wasn’t the only objection by a long way.
    For me, the question is whether the SP4 list is part of a tactic that could allow a group of nominators to magnify their voting power, by concentrating their choices around it (a process that doesn’t necessarily require people to vote the straight slate, but simply to tend their choices towards it). Obviously a list of (up to) ten is less effective than a list of up to five, but the ranking system still allows you to concentrate on a top five if you wish, so it is still capable of being used tactically in that way.
    Until the finalists are revealed we won’t know if the SP4 list has been used tactically in this way, but the potential is there.

    I also suspect that there will be some strong reactions to the list that are basically due to unhappiness that the sad puppies campaign is still operating in any form, and these reactions will be taken by the SP as showing that their “reforms” have been ignored. However, the SP “brand” is tainted by its history and rhetoric, and they can’t escape that.

40. Pingback: I wish I could trust you and I hate what we’ve become. ← Rachael Acks: Sound and Nerdery

41. The Hugo Recommendation LiveJournal is still there and still has people posting to it. The results of the Bay Area Science Fiction Association’s several weeks of Hugo Award Discussion Nights (for both the 2016 and 1941 Awards) are posted there.

42. Also, let’s see what the rhetoric is. When we start hearing how some slated works are presented when compared to others, we’ll have a better idea. If, say, “Cat Pictures Please” is only mentioned in the context of “how dare you criticized JCW, we slated some of your SJW trash”, I think we’ll have a better view of why SP4 did things the way they did.

43. @ Snowcrash:

    I used this place: https://www.random.org/

44. @Steve Davidson
    I can appreciate Kate Paulk’s transparency.

    I’m also very saddened to see how much filers had an impact on SP4. Many of the works with high numbers and which are clearly not part of puppy ideology are due to anti-slaters participation in the creation of the slate. It puts authors in a difficult position as well as the hypocritical aspects.

    I’d still like to see slating go away. I don’t care who does it. It’s ethically wrong.

45. @Rev. Bob “– Inside Out was a fun movie, but it’s no more SFF than Herman’s Head was. It’s okay to like something that’s not genre.”

    I agree that it wasn’t Science Fiction. But I just can’t see the argument that it isn’t fantasy. It’s posits a fantastical society of interdependent beings living in everyone’s heads that modulate and control our emotions, a subset of which come together to save their world and the concept of hope itself from extinction.

    Seems like Fantasy to me. 🙂

46. Pingback: sad puppies 4 | Crime and the Blog of Evil

47. @Nate

    Thanks!

48. @dave:

    You’ve just described the premise of Herman’s Head, except that (in both cases) the in-your-head people are the emotions, not beings controlling the emotions.

    To me, the whole thing’s just a variation on the hoary idea where we see someone faced by temptation, and an angel and a devil pop up on his shoulders to fight about whether he should stay strong or give in. That’s a very common device, and while I won’t say that they’re never supposed to be actual angels and devils, most often it’s simply a visual metaphor, a representation of a mental debate. (Kind of like how we don’t watch West Side Story or Grease and believe in expertly-choreographed street gangs.)

    This is the same thing. Yeah, I guess you could call the visual language that of fantasy (although it strikes me as more SFnal, what with all the machinery), but if Inside Out is fantasy, so is every sitcom that’s ever used the shoulder angel/devil gag. That’s just too wide a net for me.

49. (Kind of like how we don’t watch West Side Story or Grease and believe in expertly-choreographed street gangs.)

    What? All street gangs are excellent dancers with great choreography. That’s the definition of a street gang, isn’t it?

50. Woops, accidentally deleted post… let me see if I can recover it…

Comments are closed.