Sad Puppies 4 List

Sad Puppies 4 logoKate Paulk has posted the Sad Puppies 4 List at Mad Genius Club.

She included only works with at least two recommendations on the list. Works are listed in order of the most recommendations received.

Paulk’s spreadsheets tallying all the recommendations can be viewed here.

I have noted in every category the range of votes received. In nine Hugo categories the top work had 5 or fewer recommendations.

Campbell Award for Best New Writer (2-9)

  • Andy Weir – The Martian
  • Brian Niemeier – Nethereal
  • Alyssa Wong – “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers”
  • Natasha Pulley – The Watchmakers of Filigree Street
  • Becky Chambers – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
  • Scott Hawkins – The Library at Mount Char
  • Charlie N. Holmberg – The Paper Magician
  • John Sandford & Ctein – Saturn Run
  • Sebastien de Castelle – Greatcoats series

Best Fan Artist (2-3)

Best Professional Artist (2-4)

  • Abigail Larson
  • Sam Weber
  • Frank Cho
  • Larry Elmore
  • Dustin Nguyen
  • Richard Anderson

Best Fan Writer (3-9)

Best Fancast (2-4)

  • Tea and Jeopardy
  • Geek Gab
  • Hello Greedo

Best Fanzine (2-3)

Best Semiprozine (3)

  • Sci Phi Journal

Best Editor – Short Form (2-5)

  • Jerry Pournelle – There Will Be War vol X
  • John Joseph Adams  – Lightspeed, and Nightmare
  • S. M. Sterling – The Change anthology
  • Jason Rennie – Sci Phi Journal
  • Paula Goodlett – Grantville Gazette
  • Bryan Thomas Schmidt – Mission: Tomorrow

Best Editor – Long Form (4-14)

  • Toni Weisskopf – Baen
  • Jim Mintz – Baen
  • Tony Daniel – Baen

Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form (2-8)

  • Daredevil Season 1 Episode 2
  • My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
  • Person of Interest Season 4 Episode 11: If-Then-Else
  • Kung Fury: Laser Unicorns
  • TIE Fighter animation by Otaking 77077
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: Melinda
  • Daredevil Season 1 Episode 13
  • Doctor Who: Heaven Sent
  • Gravity Falls: Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons
  • Gravity Falls: Northwest Mansion Mystery

“There’s something like a 15-way tie for 6th place, so I’ll just list down to 10.”

Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form (3-11)

  • Mad Max: Fury Road
  • The Martian
  • Predestination
  • Ant-Man
  • Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  • Inside Out
  • iZombie (Season 1 as a whole)
  • Person of Interest (Season 4 as a whole)
  • Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
  • Ex Machina

Best Graphic Story (2-5)

  • Order of the Stick
  • Stand Still Stay Silent – any 2015 plot arc
  • Schlock Mercenary Book 15
  • Empowered Volume 9
  • Saga Volume 5
  • Erfworld
  • Fables: Farewell Volume 22
  • Gunnerkrigg Court Chapter 15: Totem
  • Invisible Republic Volume 1
  • Lazarus: Conclave

Best Related Work (2-12)

  • Sad Puppies Bite Back – Declan Finn
  • Appendix N – Jeffro Johnson
  • Safe Space as Rape Room: Science Fiction Culture and Childhood’s End – Daniel
  • A History of Epic Fantasy – Adam Whitehead
  • Atomic Rockets – Winchell Chung
  • Legosity – Tom Simon
  • There Will Be War Vol X – Edited Jerry Pournelle
  • You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) – Felicia Day
  • Frazetta Sketchbook Number 2
  • Galactic Journeyhttp://galacticjourney.org/

Best Short Story (2-11)

  • “Tuesdays With Molakesh The Destroyer” – Megan Grey
  • “Today I am Paul” – Martin L Shoemaker
  • “… And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes” – Scott Alexander
  • “Asymmetrical Warfare” – S. R. Algernon
  • “Cat Pictures, Please” – Naomi Kritzer
  • “Damage” – David Levine
  • “A Flat Effect” – Eric Flint
  • “Daedelus” – Niall Burke
  • “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” – Alyssa Wong
  • “I am Graalnak of the Vroon Empire, Destroyer of Galaxies, Supreme Overlord of the Planet Earth. Ask Me Anything” – Laura Pearlman

Best Novelette (2-4)

  • “And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of Dead” – Brooke Bolander
  • “Pure Attentions” – T. R. Dillon
  • “Folding Beijing” – Hao Jingfang translated by Ken Liu
  • “If I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up In the Air” – Clifford D. Simak
  • “Obits” – Stephen King
  • “Our Lady of the Open Road” – Sarah Pinsker

Best Novella (2-4)

  • Binti – Nnedi Okorafor
  • Penric’s Demon – Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Slow Bullets – Alastair Reynolds
  • Perfect State – Brandon Sanderson
  • The End of All Things 1: The Life of the Mind – John Scalzi
  • Speak Easy – Catherynne M. Valente
  • The Builders – Daniel Polansky

Best Novel (9-25)

  • Somewhither – John C Wright
  • Honor At Stake – Declan Finn
  • The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass – Jim Butcher
  • Uprooted – Naomi Novik
  • A Long Time Until Now – Michael Z Williamson
  • Seveneves – Neal Stephenson
  • Son of the Black Sword – Larry Correia
  • Strands of Sorrow – John Ringo
  • Nethereal – Brian Niemeier
  • Ancillary Mercy – Ann Leckie

Retro Hugos (2)

  • If This Goes On  – Heinlein, for Best Novel
  • “Requiem” – Heinlein, Best Short Story
  • “The Roads Must Roll” – Heinlein, Best Short Story.

187 thoughts on “Sad Puppies 4 List

  1. I’ve put a lot of thought into this post and how best to respond to the general comment trend wondering about the point of SP4. The general consensus here seems to be that the new list is irrelevant, not at all like the previous SP efforts, and, in general, completely undermining of the SP narrative.

    I disagree with this general consensus, with the exception that, in form at the very least, SP4 differs from SP3, and that it differs greatly from SP1 and SP2.

    I think the above demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Sad Puppies, its origins, and its evolution. The following description is non-judgmental; I’m not saying what was done was right or wrong; this is just a historical account.

    (1) SP1 and SP2 were Larry Correia’s absurdist pet projects to poke the WorldCon membership with a stick and make the more militant anti-conservative/anti-libertarian members speak up and complain, and in his eyes, demonstrate bias amongst the electorate toward the people he wanted nominated. That’s why he included people like Vox Day on his ballot; he knew there would be a nuclear reaction to the author as opposed to the author’s work. Correia knew his efforts had 0% chance of changing anything or winning an award. In essence, he was trolling the Hugo process. He also intended Sad Puppies to end and be done after SP2 having achieved his goal of making quite a number of the more liberal WorldCon voters angry and outraged.

    In steps Brad Torgerson, who does not want to “troll” the Hugo process, but rather redirect/reform it to something more mainstream and representative of popular works. Again, I am not calling this right or wrong, and it’s just my understanding of what his primary goal was. It should also be noted that Brad is far from the only notable person to see this problem and want it fixed (For reference, refer to Eric Flint’s blog post, “The Divergence between Popularity and Awards.” Flint is by no means an SP or RP, but he is saying the same thing as the Sad Puppies, at least, that it has been rare to have a popular author awarded for the last couple decades.).

    So, Brad et. al. put together a list of mainstream authors/fans they felt had been overlooked. They took some recommendations and spitballed the rest (my opinion/best guess on what they did). Yes, their picks lacked sufficient diversity. Yes, the selection was flawed and opaque. They admitted that and have stated they’d go back and change it if they could. Why wasn’t it different initially? Well, they had no earthly clue SP3 would be so successful. Frankly, they were expecting another blip, much like SP1 and SP2. Rabid puppies had not been taken account of, and, frankly, most Sad Puppies supporters didn’t even know they existed.

    Vitriol and mass hysteria erupted on all sides. One side shouting leads to another side shouting and attracts people who really like to shout. I’m not going to go over fallout as that’s not why I’m writing this.

    The primary problem I’ve observed, especially regarding SP3, is that malice*** was presumed for what could easily have been mistake. I truly believe Brad et. al. just wanted to boost signal for people they thought deserving. Were there political under/overtones? Yes. See above reference to people who like to shout. Did some Sad Puppies say or do things they most likely (or at least should) regret? Yes. Like any large group of loosely affiliated people, they do not walk in lockstep and there’s always a few crazies mixed in.

    This provided certain people the opportunity use a wide brush to paint all Puppies, Sad or Rabid, as the same, and has also led to vilification of the Sad Puppies and unintended consequences. Again, see Eric Flint, this time, “In Defense of Sad Puppies” (link in original post above). The Sad Puppies wanted to reform what they saw as flaws and were maligned and discounted as a result, in part due to mistakes they had made in their process and some obnoxiously vocal puppies, but also due to bad actors who didn’t like their politics or simply didn’t like their interference in the Hugo awards. Regardless of the reason, they were still maligned and discounted as “bad people.”

    On to the unintended consequences: Authors who have fans who are Sad Puppies (or even just participated in the SP4 nomination process) can’t accept their support or nominations without worrying about witch hunts. Malice has been assumed, guilt assessed, and conviction made on what SP3 was all about, and thus SP4 must be the same, just more covert.

    My opinion? SP4 is actually the same as SP3 in spirit and exactly what SP3 would have been had Brad et. al. known the effect SP3’s “slate” would have on the Hugo process. The difference is, again, I don’t think malice was intended by the Sad Puppies. It really wasn’t. They did not want to burn the house down or exclude anyone. They just wanted inclusion of people who had been ignored for the last couple decades.

    As to relevance of SP4, well, all the Sad Puppies ever wanted was a voice and a chance to point at authors who they felt deserving of recognition. To be more fair, they opened up nominations to everyone, and certain voters came in and voted for authors already receiving lots of recognition in WorldCon circles. That’s okay. It’s not in the spirit of what SP4 was about, but a group wanting to include prior shut-outs can hardly shut people out.

    That last sentence… it sounds familiar. It sounds like what SF and Fantasy is supposed to be about, isn’t it?

    ***For some reading this, we have some fundamental differences in world-view, and malice will always be presumed. This saddens me, but I accept it. I also fully expect these same people to savage this post.

  2. That’s why he included people like Vox Day on his ballot; he knew there would be a nuclear reaction to the author as opposed to the author’s work.

    The problem with this assertion is that the author’s work was pretty terrible. In fact, all of the work on SP2 was fairly weak when compared to other Hugo-nominated works from that year. If LC wanted to prove “bias”, he failed because he picked works to highlight that were, by and large, not that great.

    The primary problem I’ve observed, especially regarding SP3, is that malice*** was presumed for what could easily have been mistake. I truly believe Brad et. al. just wanted to boost signal for people they thought deserving.

    Then you didn’t pay attention to what BT (and LC, and others) were saying well before SP3/RP1 dominated the nominations. BT started his advocacy for SP3 by politicizing the process and taking shots at people he didn’t like. The culture war aspect of SP3 wasn’t just a few rude Puppy supporters jumping in after the thing got going, it is something that the architects of the brand had baked into it from the beginning. The alleged desire to “reform” the process was pasted on later, after the fallout from their nakedly political project became clear. You’re trying to rewrite the history of the Puppies, and that almost certainly won’t work here.

    So, Brad et. al. put together a list of mainstream authors/fans they felt had been overlooked.

    Except that’s not what they actually did. First off, no one was “overlooking” people like Butcher and Anderson. People weren’t voting for them because they didn’t think their work was good enough. Second, any list with multiple entries from JCW (and SP3 had multiple entries for him: RP1 had more, but SP3 had more than one) can’t be described as being aimed at promoting people who are mainstream or popular.

    They just wanted inclusion of people who had been ignored for the last couple decades.

    Who has been excluded? Male authors? White authors? Conservative authors? Even the briefest overview of the last couple of decades of Hugo nominees and winners shows the notion that any of those groups had been excluded or overlooked to be simply false. And that is the main problem that SP3 had last year with selling their false narrative about their list just being just about “more inclusion”: It is obviously contrary to the facts, and anyone who spends even a tiny amount of time researching the matter will figure this out. So what you have is a group with a politically driven slate trying to sell an obviously false narrative while insulting everyone else in the genre. This isn’t just a few bad actors spoiling something that is noble, this is a group that is seen as malicious because it is the only rational conclusion one can come to.

    For some reading this, we have some fundamental differences in world-view, and malice will always be presumed.

    I thought the Puppy-types were big on the importance of accepting responsibility for one’s actions. The current Puppy brand is tainted by the three previous years in which the leaders of the group have spent acting maliciously and attacking everyone outside their tiny clique. They are presumed to be malicious this time around because of the established track record of maliciousness that has been at the core of Puppyhood since the beginning.

  3. In steps Brad Torgerson, who does not want to “troll” the Hugo process, but rather redirect/reform it to something more mainstream and representative of popular works.

    How do you measure popularity? Is Ann Leckie, bestselling author, not popular? How about Seanan McGuire or Catherynne Valente, also New York Times bestselling authors? Are they not popular? How about John Scalzi? He’s popular enough to get a $13 million contract. Is that not good enough? Kim Stanley Robinson? Lois McMaster Bujold? Brandon Sanderson? All not popular? How about George R.R. Martin and James S.A. Corey? They are both popular enough to get high-budget television series made out of their books.

    I only had to go back as far as 2012 to make that list of Hugo nominees that are all by almost any measure “popular”, and it isn’t even complete. The idea that the Hugo awards aren’t recognizing “popular” authors is pretty much a completely ridiculous notion that is at odds with reality.

  4. @Sean: “I think the above demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Sad Puppies, its origins, and its evolution. The following description is non-judgmental; I’m not saying what was done was right or wrong; this is just a historical account.”

    Well, I’ll give you this much. Whatever else one might say about your account, it certainly is ahistorical.

  5. There are many things that could be said about this–but I will confine myself to pointing out that they spelled Steve Stirling’s name wrong…

  6. Rev. Bob:

    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.

    I disagree. If a sitcom had one episode once where for 5 minutes we have a visualization of the personifications of one character’s emotions, I wouldn’t call the sitcom a fantasy either. But if someone wrote an entire movie from the perspective of the shoulder angel and shoulder devil and telling a tale of their eternal war (in which the actual human’s real world is presented only about a fifth of the screen time or less), I would call that a fantasy film.

    And I’m not arguing this because I don’t think it’s okay to like non-fantasy stuff. First, I’m actually a little burnt out on Inside Out, because I have a 4 year old who thinks watching glowing yellow (and occasionally red, purple, green and blue) balls bounce around onscreen is the BEST.(I think the amount that the film has survived that treatment without becoming torture is testimony to quality, but nonetheless.) Second, my absolute favourite 2015 tv series is explicitly not even a little bit Hugo Eligible.* I’m arguing for its inclusion as a fantasy because it is a fantasy.

    * X Company. If you like the period-piece spy shenanigans of Agent Carter or are one of the people who raved about the book Code Name: Verity, this series about spies working with the Resistance in occupied France should be an insta-watch.

  7. @Sean

    I also fully expect these same people to savage this post.

    A pleasantly calm and well-put defence of the SP side, thank you. Obviously I and others are likely to be disagreeing with you, and I admit there’s a possibility that some of that disagreement will be a bit…testy. One of the reasons for that is that there is little in your arguments which is actually new; much of what you say has been said already, and a certain peevishness is a natural reaction to feeling like you’re repeating yourself.
    For example, in (1) you’re repeating Correia’s retroactive explanation of what he did, rather than his statements at the time, which is a tact that has been tried many times before, starting with Larry himself.
    As another example, with “no earthly clue SP3 would be so successful” I will simply make the reply that I used to someone trying the same argument less then a week ago. If X can lead to Y, even if you genuinely think it improbable, you cannot claim that you didn’t cause Y. Claiming surprise is a diversion from taking responsibility for having done X and therefore caused Y.

  8. If X can lead to Y, even if you genuinely think it improbable, you cannot claim that you didn’t cause Y. Claiming surprise is a diversion from taking responsibility for having done X and therefore caused Y.

    And, if one goes back to look at the SP3 posts made by BT prior to the nominations being announced, it is clear that nominations for all of the works listed was what was being promoted, and was what was clearly desired. It was only after the nominations were announced, and it became clear that the slate was not going to go over well with fans in general, did the revisionist history about “not wanting to be this successful” get started. You can’t campaign for something and then claim it wasn’t what you wanted after the fact. At least not without looking like a lying hypocrite.

  9. @Sean In steps Brad Torgerson, who does not want to “troll” the Hugo process, but rather redirect/reform it to something more mainstream and representative of popular works.

    Below are the nominees and winners in the 5 years preceding LCs Campbell nomination. Can you tell me which ones are not mainstream or representative of popular work? I was going to go back 10 years but I got tired of copying and pasting. Frankly you puppies need to go through the Hugo lists yourself, which can be found at Hugo.org, and give us your list because GRRM tried and couldn’t find books to match affirmative action or message over story. I don’t see a lack of bestsellers.

    2010 Best Novel
    * The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
    * The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
    * Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
    * Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
    * Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
    * Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)

    2009 Best Novel
    * The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
    * Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
    * Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
    * Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
    * Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

    2008 Best Novel
    * The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
    * The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)
    * Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace)
    * Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)
    * Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)

    2007 Best Novel
    * Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge [Tor, 2006]
    * Glasshouse by Charles Stross [Ace, 2006]
    * His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik [Voyager, 2006; Del Rey, 2006]
    * Eifelheim by Michael Flynn [Tor, 2006]
    * Blindsight by Peter Watts [Tor, 2006]

    2006 Best Novel
    * Spin by Robert Charles Wilson [Tor, 2005]
    * Learning the World by Ken MacLeod [Orbit, 2005; Tor, 2005]
    * A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin [Voyager, 2005; Bantam Spectra, 2005]
    * Old Man’s War by John Scalzi [Tor, 2005]
    * Accelerando by Charles Stross [Ace, 2005; Orbit, 2005]

    2005 Best Novel
    * Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke [Bloomsbury, 2004]
    * River of Gods by Ian McDonald [Simon & Schuster UK, 2004]
    * The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks [Orbit, 2004]
    * Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross [Ace, 2004]
    * Iron Council by China Miéville [Del Rey, 2004; Macmillan UK, 2004]

  10. @lurkertype – 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.

    I don’t think she does know, based on her “furious” tweet and the comment she dropped in yesterday’s scroll:

    Cat Valente on March 17, 2016 at 8:18 pm said:

    I am alarmed to find my name on this list. Weren’t they supposed to consult us this time? This is some obvious manipulation–pretty sure File 770 folks predicted this as a possibility last year. Paging Admiral Akbar…

    But seriously. What the crap.

    From those two comments, I’d say she was (it may have changed, because the information is readily available) under the impression that SP4 is the same as SP3, with authors as political dog toys, on a slate put together with spit, conservative flavored gum, and cronyism, with an added dash of malicious conspiracy.

    Sure, anybody can object to anything at any time (although asserting their right to do so in the absence of a challenge sounds a little weird to me), but I find it hard to believe that any author would take a fan to task for loving their work, even if the fan and author had widely differing political views. It’s the slate that is wrong, not the fans.

  11. Rev. Bob on March 18, 2016 at 11:11 am said:

    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.

    Every sit-com that ever used that gag had a fantasy sequence in it but that sequence was limited in scope. For example the sit-com NewsRadio set in a a news radio station had a whole episode set in the future (because why not) that doesn’t make 1. the TV show as whole SF or 2. invalidate ‘the future’ as something that makes things SFnal.

    Inside Out does use the gag/conceit of aspects of a person being little homunculi living inside their head/mind. That by itself doesn’t make it SF/Fnal. What pushes it well over the boundary and safely into the SF/Fnal-land is that it takes that conciet and follows it thought to create a world with sufficient coherence that it can last the whole plot of a film.

  12. @Sean: Thanks for your post. Let me try to sum up my thorough disagreement as best I can in a minute. 🙂 But first, a question: Do you consider John C. Wright a Sad Puppy or a Rabid Puppy?

    Meantime, the disagreement. You write…

    The primary problem I’ve observed, especially regarding SP3, is that malice*** was presumed for what could easily have been mistake.

    And the word “presumed” just doesn’t work here. More accurately, people inferred, concluded, judged malice. Justifiably. Because SP3 was SP3. Brad took the nameplate of Larry’s effort and wore it proudly. You, in your post, put the kindest construction possible on Larry’s campaigns – far too kind in my opinion, but leave that aside. By your account, SP1 and SP2 were Larry’s attempts to manipulate the content of the Hugo ballots for the “goal of making quite a number of the more liberal WorldCon voters angry and outraged.” That just is a malicious act. You can argue that it is justified, that the “number of the more liberal WorldCon voters” were asking for it. I hope you wouldn’t, but you might. Nevertheless, undertaking something with the goal of angering and outraging people is malicious as such, whether righteous or unrighteous.

    So Brad took Larry’s nameplate, which was, by your account, conceived in malice, and effected an even bigger version of what Larry “accomplished” with SP2. Same name. Same results but bigger – a la the line from Tom Disch’s classic review of L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth: “This stands in relation to the ordinary dumb book as a Dyson Sphere to a lampshade, unimaginably greater in scale but the same general shape.” By your own narrative, the message of Larry’s SP campaigns was, “I think you people suck.” Brad said to himself, “That is the flag I want to sail under! Oh, and these are the cannons I want to fire!”

    It’s not the least bizarre that WorldCon-supporting fandom concluded Brad was a pirate.

  13. @Aaron

    Who has been excluded? Male authors? White authors? Conservative authors?

    Why does it always come down to a person’s color or what genitalia they have? Awards are given to individuals, and individuals can be excluded.

  14. Thanks, @Aaron. I don’t read her blog and new 770 comments were weirdly blocked for about five hours today. I couldn’t resolve the problem (a self generated cookie?) until I posted a comment. Anyway, given the heat of her reaction, I’m not surprised she got heated responses in turn. I hope everyone will now calm down and stop looking for bad faith from perceived other sides.

    @Sean, I’m certainly not going to attack you, although I think you’re wrong about Larry Correia and his retroactively created explanation for SP1 and SP2, which I suspect actually stemmed from his wounded sense of entitlement. But Waaah, I Deserve a Hugo for Reasons is far less palatable than I Will Never Get a Hugo Because Conservative mixed with an ego salving retcon of trolling Worldcon members.

    I read Eric Flint’s essay when he wrote it and thought then he had missed the most obvious explanation for popular works not often also being award winning works, which is that most of the people on his list write series novels. The series as a whole are often impressive, but the individual volumes frequently do not have that extra something (I think some of it is a unique arc that concludes satisfactorily) that has them showing up on Best of lists. Other than Sandman, Neil Gaiman tends to write standalone works and is an exception to the disconnect between Flint’s shelf length to awards comparison, which is probably not a coincidence. It’s probably also why urban fiction, be it ever so well written, rarely turns up on award lists that aren’t sub-genre specific.

    The SP3 contention that it was politics that kept the work they liked off award ballots was also wrong, a fact that was obscured but not obliterated by the kerfuffle. With a chance to introduce what a small group of conservative writers thought were overlooked but excellent works, they did nothing of the sort. I really liked the Annie Bellet story, but I don’t think much of the rest on their slate was even defensible let alone award worthy. Saying it was a surprise that the SP3 efforts were so successful in the nomination stage isn’t an effective defense of their basic premise. Which they signally failed to prove.

    I’m certainly willing to assume there was little malice at the inception of any of the SP initiatives, because human weaknesses and wounded egos are more than enough to create all sorts of havoc. I also think, as with Cat Valente and her Twitter experience last night, that it’s unsurprising that anger gets met with anger and charges of bad faith get met with defensive (and offensive) outrage. I think SP4 and their tepid recommendation list is probably a pretty decent interim outcome.

  15. @ Sean:

    I had a number of dealings with Torgersen online. During those dealings, he personally insulted me, called me a liar, and EDITED MY COMMENTS, thus putting words in my mouth. How I could confuse that malice for mistake is beyond me.

    Regarding the “we didn’t know we’d be so successful” I merely point to Torgersen’s “Stealing the Enterprise” post, released shortly after the final ballot was announced. In that post, he very gleefully takes full credit for, well, stealing the Hugo ballot.

    Yes, the selection was flawed and opaque. They admitted that and have stated they’d go back and change it if they could I for one would like a link to support that, because I have never seen Torgersen say anything other than that his process was “fair and open.”

    Now, Sean, you may think I’ve “savaged” your post. I have not. I have provided factual statements in support of a contrary opinion.

  16. Cheryl S: Being series fiction is certainly part of it. Or in fact being a specific kind of series fiction – that which pursues the adventures of a character or group over a long space of time, so that you have to have read the previous fifteen books to know what its going on, and you have to be familiar with the characters to care about what is going on. When a new work in a series comes out, you often see its fans enthusing over seeing more of their favourite characters. Works in series do get nominated, but they are either fairly short series with a clear arc, or rather loose ‘same universe’ series.

    Another thing that counts against a work is being very subgenrefic – core epic fantasy, urban fantasy, MilSF and so on tend not to do well. The works that do well are mostly ones where it’s hard to say more than ‘it’s science fiction’ or ‘it’s fantasy’. I’ve seen quite a few people asking why Seanan McGuire’s ‘Mira Grant’ books do better than her urban fantasy; a lot of her fans find the urban fantasy superior. But while I don’t think the Mira Grant books are particularly outstanding, I found them perfectly readable, while I just couldn’t relate to the urban fantasy; it appeals more, I guess, to the urban fantasy reading community. (Of course, there’s a lot of overlap between being extremely subgenreific and belonging to a long series. But you can have one without the other.)

    All this makes sense, given that the Hugo process is meant to be a group of people considering and comparing works, not just fans each voting for their favourite thing; and given that an award, or indeed a nomination, acts as a recommendation, pointing a thing out to new readers. So it makes sense that the things that stand out have, or at least might be imagined to have, cross-group appeal. These are not always in absolute terms the most popular.

  17. An interesting side note – reaction to SP4 from other Puppies.
    Larry Correia: blog, facebook – nothing.
    Brad Torgersen: blog, facebook – nothing
    Sarah Hoyt: blog, facebook – nothing
    John C Wright: he goes on quite a bit about it including prayers of various kinds in a manner that ‘passive aggressive’ doesn’t really describe well.
    Vox D: indirectly in a post about Catherynne Valente tweets

    Put another way, the SP4 list is not getting the big cross-promotional treatment. Aside from JCW, there isn’t much in the way of signal boosting.

  18. F. Harper, 20 people, maximum, are nominated for the pro writing Hugos out of a pool of tens of thousands of SFF writers. All but those 20 people (maximum; sometimes people get nominated for more than one work in the same year) are excluded.

    Is there a specific person you’re complaining about being excluded, or are you just reporting a truism of ALL awards? Or would you prefer the Hugos to be like the stereotypical sports team for 6-year-olds where everyone gets an award just for showing up?

    Ok, that last was maybe a little snarky, and I apologize. But your complaint is so general as to be utterly meaningless. Would you care to rephrase it with actual content?

  19. “In steps Brad Torgerson, who does not want to “troll” the Hugo process, but rather redirect/reform it to something more mainstream and representative of popular works.”

    I rather suspect Torgerson wants rather more than that: c.f. his response to a post of mine elsewhere just a couple of weeks ago asking if the Puppies opposition to “Social Justice Warriors” didn’t put them into direct opposition with disabled fans like me campaigning for greater access (including protection from unacceptable comments/behaviour), and for SF/F authors writing about disability to get a clue and do the research (I thought it might get a more clear cut response than other minority identities). Torgerson’s response, and he hadn’t previously been part of that discussion: apparently my disability is not an identity, I have ‘a plight’ instead, and the only valid response to disability is to seek a cure. So that’s me told and never mind the major disability groups such as neurodiverse types (like me) and the Deaf who are opposed to cures and cure narratives.

    As a disability activist I know we have a long way to go in educating people, but having someone tell me to my face my disability isn’t an acceptable identity? That’s a pretty extreme position (and very problematic for neurodiversity, were it’s impossible to separate me the individual from the disability, because the disability is part of what makes me me).

    We can talk about what the Puppies want with the Hugos, and that’s all very well, but we ignore the rest of their position wrt fandom and protecting minority access at our peril.

  20. @Camestros: I am dumbfounded that the open, democratically chosen SP4 non-slate* recommendation list open to all of fandom containing a broad mix of styles and viewpoints is not meeting with more enthusiasm from the names you list. I now have to decide whether to spend my weekend binge-watching Daredevil Season 2 as planned, or instead puzzling out the reasons for this shocking news of yours. I do not envy myself.

    ——————
    *more or less, probably.

  21. Jim Henley on March 18, 2016 at 2:49 pm said:

    @Camestros: I am dumbfounded that the open, democratically chosen SP4 non-slate* recommendation list open to all of fandom containing a broad mix of styles and viewpoints is not meeting with more enthusiasm from the names you list. I now have to decide whether to spend my weekend binge-watching Daredevil Season 2 as planned, or instead puzzling out the reasons for this shocking news of yours. I do not envy myself.

    Some hard choices you have to deal with there 🙂

  22. @ Lenora Rose – Yeah, I agree, it’s the sustained nature of the fantasy element that makes Inside Out a Fantasy.

    A good comparison might be Musicals. A movie in which a character sings a song at one point? Not a musical. A movie in which multiple characters sing a variety of songs over the course of the film’s run time? Totally a Musical.

  23. Sean on March 18, 2016 at 11:24 am said:

    I’ve put a lot of thought into this post and how best to respond …

    Fair enough; I will try to respond in kind.

    I don’t think there is any fundamental misunderstanding of Sad Puppies.

    I read what Correia posted. He thought he deserved a Hugo (after Four Whole Years of writing) and he asked his fans to nominate him.

    That’s why he included people like Vox Day on his ballot; he knew there would be a nuclear reaction to the author as opposed to the author’s work.

    He chose Theodore Beale because Satan didn’t have an eligible work that year. He said those very words on a podcast about Sad Puppies II.

    In other words, he admitted publicly that he reacted to the author, not the work.

    To then turn around and crow that other people are doing wrong by doing the exact same thing he did sure looks like hypocrisy to me, and I don’t understand how so many people can blithely ignore it.

    He also intended Sad Puppies to end and be done after SP2 having achieved his goal of making quite a number of the more liberal WorldCon voters angry and outraged.

    He got Brad nominated, the next year Brad got him nominated. It is hard to believe it wasn’t intended as “you scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours”.

    In steps Brad Torgerson, who does not want to “troll” the Hugo process, but rather redirect/reform it to something more mainstream and representative of popular works.

    The intelligible part of Brad’s opening salvo was to say “women and minorities are winning awards! Works that deal with issues that concern women and minorities are winning awards! This is awful! Help me stop it!”

    Then Brad nominated–not best sellers like GRRM and Steven King or even John Ringo or David Weber, but his own personal friends and mentors. This sure doesn’t seem to be about popularity or writing mainstream works.

    Yes, their picks lacked sufficient diversity.

    Yeah, having largely white male friends and mentors creates a problem in that regard.

    Yes, the selection was flawed and opaque.

    As in we still don’t know who chose the slate, yes. And that is something Brad could correct today, by the way.

    They admitted that and have stated they’d go back and change it if they could. Why wasn’t it different initially? Well, they had no earthly clue SP3 would be so successful. Frankly, they were expecting another blip, much like SP1 and SP2.

    Reality check: SP2 got something like half of its slate on the ballot. It would be reasonable to suppose they were expecting to do equally well if not better.

    Rabid puppies had not been taken account of, and, frankly, most Sad Puppies supporters didn’t even know they existed.

    I don’t understand how that could work. Did they join a group whose history was completely opaque to them? Correct me if I’m wrong: don’t I remember Brad Torgersen himself wailing that people were connecting them to Vox Day? How could the Sads not know about the Rabids?

    The primary problem I’ve observed, especially regarding SP3, is that malice*** was presumed for what could easily have been mistake.

    We read Brad saying it was awful that women and minorities were winning awards and appealing to the rest of you to help him put a stop to it. You responded and helped him put a stop to it. How is that not malice? “It’s nothing personal; we just wanted the awards for ourselves”–is that what you mean?

    If you don’t want Sad Puppies held responsible for their “few eccentrics” then you have to allow the nonPuppies (which are a *much* bigger group) a much bigger number of “few eccentrics” for which we cannot be held responsible. As a matter of fact, we’re the people left outside the circle the Sad Puppies drew around their toes–the Sad Puppies chose to be a group; we didn’t–and none of us can reasonably be held responsible for the actions of any other.

    Sad Puppies, by contrast, consist entirely of people who chose to join a group led and represented by these unpleasant eccentrics you want not to be associated with (because let’s face it by “few eccentrics” you mostly mean JCW, Tank Marmot, Theodore Beale, Lou Antonelli, and JCW and perhaps Larry Correia and Dave Freer). Unpleasant eccentrics are the public face of the Sad Puppies. You might give that some thought.

    [Sad Puppies] were maligned and discounted as a result, in part due to mistakes … but also due to bad actors who didn’t like their politics or simply didn’t like their interference in the Hugo awards.

    Resenting inept monkeying with an award doesn’t make someone a “bad actor.” Mischaracterizing innocent people in this way makes you seem… motivated by something other than good will.

    My opinion? SP4 is actually the same as SP3 in spirit

    That is exactly what I’m afraid of too.

    and exactly what SP3 would have been had Brad et. al. known the effect SP3’s “slate” would have on the Hugo process.

    But then Brad wouldn’t have been able to reward his friends and mentors with Hugo nominations. Are you sure he would have been willing to forgo that?

    The difference is, again, I don’t think malice was intended by the Sad Puppies.

    We differ here. If the Sad Puppies didn’t intend malice, they are absolutely terrible at writing, because my reading comprehension is very good and I’m not usually mistaken about these things.

    It really wasn’t. They did not want to burn the house down or exclude anyone. They just wanted inclusion of people who had been ignored for the last couple decades.

    If they weren’t trying to exclude anyone why was Brad’s opening statement all about how awful it was that women and minorities were winning awards?

    As to relevance of SP4, well, all the Sad Puppies ever wanted was a voice and a chance to point at authors who they felt deserving of recognition.

    They didn’t need to slate for that, so it looks very much like what they actually wanted was something else.

    So, if pointing out your mistakes was “savaging” your post, you were right to expect that people would do that.

  24. Why does it always come down to a person’s color or what genitalia they have? Awards are given to individuals, and individuals can be excluded.

    First off, one might notice that you completely skipped by my query concerning conservative authors. You might note that being conservative theoretically is unconnected to color or genitalia. So your “always” is not only silly, its wrong with respect to the very comment you are responding to.

    Second, for the Pups it is because that’s the hill BT chose to die on, first complaining about the fact that women and minorities were winning awards, and then whining about how conservative men were being snubbed. Except that, as has been pointed out many times, men and conservatives have done quite well in the Hugo nominations over the last several cycles without any help at all from Puppies or slates.

    Going by the nominees pushed onto the ballot by SP3, I suppose one might be able to say that “authors who don’t write very good stories” were being excluded, but I’m not sure how that’s much of a selling point for the slate.

  25. For some reading this, we have some fundamental differences in world-view, and malice will always be presumed. This saddens me, but I accept it. I also fully expect these same people to savage this post.

    The usual suspects, doing their usual thing.

  26. Anna Kendrick was on Late Night with Stephen Colbert and her definition of a musical was that the characters didn’t know they were singing. So a movie like Pitch Perfect isn’t a musical because they all know they’re in a music contest. Of course, that definition might eliminate some of the classic musicals where the characters are putting on a show whether it be in their uncle’s barn or up in Vermont.

  27. Sean: The usual suspects, doing their usual thing.

    And… right up until you said that, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt: that your highly-selective Revisionist History of the Puppies was due to a lack of self-awareness and willingness to see only what fit your personal narrative — and not due to a deliberate intention of trying to twist the truth in an attempt to show the Puppies’ malicious actions in a positive light.

    But now you’ve convinced me that it’s the latter. Thanks for that. I won’t waste any time feeling sorry for you that you got suckered by the Puppy leaders into believing their lies.

  28. The usual suspects, doing their usual thing.

    Your problem is that you expect people to accept your revisionist history as reality, when it isn’t. Perhaps if your post wasn’t riddled with obvious falsehoods, it wouldn’t get taken apart.

  29. @Sean

    Disagreement != Savaging

    If you don’t understand that, you may lack the emotional maturity to participate in grown up conversations.

    (That, by the way, would be a savaging response. See the difference from the responses you were getting earlier?)

  30. @Sean – The usual suspects, doing their usual thing.

    Well, yes, if by “usual thing,” you mean correcting what appear to be factual errors with varying degrees of vehemence, because that is totally a thing here, regardless of subject. If you mean savaging you for a countervailing history, no. The tone has been pretty civil, given the simmering feelings left behind by last year’s shenanigans. Although now having accused respondents of savagery, you’ll likely get just that

    @Andrew M, good points all. I just want to add that I think being part of a series, however long or short, with or without subgenre issues, ups the difficulty level for producing award-quality work. For instance, I just read Jo Walton’s The Just City and while I think it’s excellent, it’s not on my longlist. I suspect it’s an inherent mismatch between the qualities necessary to give me complete satisfaction as a reader and the necessities inherent in successfully writing the beginning to what will eventually be a much longer narrative arc.

    Which, yes, is what I already said, but I will probably keep repeating it until the bad analysis of why popular doesn’t translate to award winning stops.

  31. Mm.

    My first exposure to Torgersen was when he said that people like me got our Hugos because of affirmative action.

    That may have made me feel a teensy-weensty bit uncharitable, being attacked by a man that never had any dealing with me. I’ve asked once or twice if he could understand why I might find that upsetting–genuinely politely asked, not JCW “I think I’m smart enough to insult you and not have you notice” asking. He never answered. (Kary English, to her credit, did, and said she’d never agreed with that bit of the Puppy platform. Good on her.)

    I’ll ask you though–can you understand how some of us who had our work degraded by Brad, apparently completely out of blue, might start to feel that there was a bit of malice involved? I’d never done anything to him. I’d heard his name all of once. And suddenly he’s insulting me and people like me for…reasons? And I’m not supposed to feel attacked because…uh…why, again?

  32. @Jack Lint – that’s an interesting definition but it does leave out a lot of stuff – let’s-put-on-a-show stuff like you said, some of those old films from the forties set in nightclubs Inn which which all which many/most songs are sung on stage and more recent genre savvy stuff like the Muppet or Flight of the Conchords.

    @Sean – You popped into a forum where you knew people disagreed with you. People disagreed with you. Welcome to Earth. I hope you enjoy our fascinating planet.

  33. Assuming that was the same Sean, that was rather disappointing – I thought there might be some reasonable discussion in the offing. Never mind.

  34. @Sean

    When discussing Torgerson’s lack of malice, did you read what he actually wrote? Or the accounts of the people who he slated about how disingenuous he was? Honestly asking.

    Also, at what point does personal responsibility play a roll? If you want to benefit from the votes of Teddy’s goons, vote yourselves for his works, defend his right to help you all slate – when do we get to call you on being so comfortable with him?

  35. I’ve said all along that Teddy used SP 1-3 as his Useful Idiots and would discard them as soon as he got what he wanted. He got what he wanted last year, so he doesn’t need those tools any more. He’s dropped SP like a hot potato. No mention of them, no cross-promotion, no hail-fellow-well-met. He was using Brad and Larry and they… um, how can I put this kindly… were so caught up in their fervor that they were blinded to his true nature and how he was strictly using them for his own ends. The friendship went one way, Sads. Judas goat, stalking horse, etc.

    Basically, Teddy used the old strategy of “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you.”

    I also predicted the Sads would use Kate for bear food, and they have. Not a word from Brad, Larry, or even her “co-bitch” Sarah who was supposedly shoulder to shoulder with her this year. They’ve cut her loose, probably so they can blame the whole fiasco on her. AND they’re making her run the Worldcon safe space for Puppies.

    @Aaron: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A PoC. A woman. A conservative. She exists. Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson; conservative beliefs have nothing intrinsic to do with color or gender.

    @RedWombat: I didn’t even know you and I was upset! Digger was the bestest!

    I, personally, was insulted by Brad when he said people had only voted for Hugo winners because they were “politically correct”, not on merit or on how much we enjoyed it. This came as a great surprise to me, considering I’d been voting for Hugos since the 1980’s on the system of “Ooh, that was a GREAT STORY! Must vote for it! Awesome!”

    And yes, many of these works were popular. What else did you think I was gonna vote for Best Dramatic Presentation 1980, but “The Empire Strikes Back”? Who (heh) was surprised by all the recent wins for “Doctor Who”, the longest-running SFF series ever (chock full of white dudes)?

    Now some little punk comes along and tries to tell me (and my husband and our BFFs and many others) that we don’t know our own minds? Fuck. That. Noise.

    Brad and Larry team up with the racist, homophobic, misogynist Teddy B and I’m supposed to feel charitable towards all of them? Nope.

    AND they slate instead of recommend? There could have been a slate consisting of only PoC LGBTQ womyn and I’d have voted against them. It was really easy to vote against what was on the ballot on merit, since most of it was pure dreck. There have to be GOOD conservative writers, but I didn’t see them nominated.

    ————————————————————

    I think musicals are like SF and pr0n: you know them when you see them.
    I think “Inside Out” is sfnal enough, though I’m putting more for-sure SF in that category (Peggy Carter. Matt scienceing the shit out of potatoes).

  36. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A PoC. A woman. A conservative. She exists. Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson; conservative beliefs have nothing intrinsic to do with color or gender.

    I think that’s pretty much what I said.

  37. @sean

    that it has been rare to have a popular author awarded for the last couple decades.

    Really? How are you measuring popular? Looking back at the last ten years from 2014 I see a number of very popular authors from various genres of SF. Your idea of popular may very well be different than mine, but these are writers that I have known of and have read for years as well as seen many positive reviews in various magazines/blogs/online media, et al.

    2014
    “Equoid”, Charles Stross (Tor.com, 09-2013)
    “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”, Mary Robinette Kowal
    2013
    Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, John Scalzi (Tor)
    “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)
    2012
    Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
    2011
    Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
    “The Emperor of Mars”, Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)
    2010
    “Palimpsest”, Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace; Orbit)
    The Island”, Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos)
    2009
    The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
    “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
    Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008)
    2008
    “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Dec. 2007, Subterranean Press)
    2007
    Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge [Tor, 2006]
    2006
    Spin by Robert Charles Wilson [Tor, 2005]
    “Inside Job” by Connie Willis [Asimov’s Jan 2005]
    “Two Hearts” by Peter S. Beagle [F&SF Oct/Nov 2005]
    2005
    “The Concrete Jungle” by Charles Stross [The Atrocity Archives (Golden Gryphon Press), 2004]

  38. Rev.Bob:

    “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. “

    Yes, I’ve seen that one.

  39. Sean:

    “The primary problem I’ve observed, especially regarding SP3, is that malice*** was presumed for what could easily have been mistake.”

    So no malice in this quote from Hoyt then?

    “I suggest we kick them while they’re down and make them fight for the awards and prestige they crave. Also, that we point at them and make duck noises.”

  40. @Aaron: I know. I elaborated since some people discussing this topic seem to have trouble with facts and examples and such. I thought concrete might be easier for them to understand than abstract. Maybe they could answer your questions if I helped out a little.

    @Eric Guy: Oh, no one’s ever heard of that poor Neil Gaiman. He’s not famous or rich or married to a rock star and no one buys his books. And we know Scalzi’s never sold any books and he’s only eating thanks to soup kitchens and bread lines, the poor dear got a terrible contract.

  41. So no malice in this quote from Hoyt then?

    The comments on that post of Hoyt’s are almost a case study in malice.

  42. And no malice from John C Wright in January last year:

    “Hugo Awards are worth around $13,000 to an SJW, according to one Kameron Hurley. For a fraction of one percent of that, you can deny multiple SJWs their ability to commit Pink SF and force them to spend their time delivering pizzas instead.”

  43. Giving Hugos to relatively unknown authors is hardly a recent phenomenon. Far from being a thing of the “last two decades”, it’s something that’s been done since pretty much the beginning.

    Shall I mention the second-ever Best Novel winner again? Who ever heard of those authors before? (Or since?) 🙂

    For that matter, a lot of Big Names you see on a list of historical Hugo Winners were decidedly not Big Names before they won. Card had made a couple of sales to Playboy, which is better than many, but he certainly wasn’t a NYT Best Seller before Ender’s Game. David Brin had one fairly obscure novel and a handful of short stories before Startide Rising won all the awards. William Gibson had even less to his name.

    Of course, if you go far enough back, none of the authors were best-sellers, because “science-fiction best-seller” was nearly an oxymoron back in those days. But even so, there’s some pretty obscure winners back then. Although it was hard to be too obscure, because there were only a handful of markets, mainly the magazines, which most SF fans read. Which made it a lot easier for a good new author to “suddenly” be discovered, since his story would be published alongside stories by other, better-known authors.

    Let me just point out that Avram Davidson won in 1958. And while he had a cult following, and was a wonderful man, his stuff was never even close to being the stuff that best-sellers are made of! In fact, for the average SF reader—then or now—I think much of his output could reasonably be described as “impenetrably obscure”. 🙂

  44. @Hampus Eckerman: The Wright quote is Exhibit A in demonstrating his wicked character. It’s why I asked Sean if he considered JCW is Sad or Rabid Puppy. The distinction seems very important to Sean. IIRC, Wright himself identifies as a Rabid. My own view is that during SP3, the SP honchos were so enmeshed with the Little Elkherd Boy that it’s a distinction without a difference at the leadership level. The SP3 impresarios demanded that they not be tarred with the LEB brush, but never offered a case why they shouldn’t be. As we know.

  45. @Xtifr:

    But even so, there’s some pretty obscure winners back then. Although it was hard to be too obscure, because there were only a handful of markets, mainly the magazines, which most SF fans read.

    Yes, plus some newish authors likely came out of fandom and were known quantities to the con-going, APA-producing Hugo electorate.

  46. @Sean

    The usual suspects, doing their usual thing.

    Actually, people are engaging with you. They’re disagreeing, but not (in general) attacking you personally.

    Personally, I don’t think it does a lot of good to try to rehash the past. A lot of people are willing to give SP4 the benefit of the doubt, which is quite a concession given that past (which I still don’t want to talk about).

    A much more interesting discussion, I think, would be “what was the point of SP4?” If it wasn’t a slate and it wasn’t an attempt to cause trouble and it wasn’t an attempt to promote the organizers’ friends, then what was it for? As a recommendation list, it didn’t get anywhere near the participation it needed.

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