aka Something Canine This Way Comes

Behind Kennel Door #3 we find Joshua W. Herring, Mary Robinette Kowal, Redneck Gaijin, Matthew Foster, Michele Lee, Nick Mamatas, Ian Mond, Spacefaring Kitten, Nicholas Whyte, Alexandra Erin, and Brian Z. (Title credit goes to File 770’s contributing editors of the day David Langford and Laura Resnick.)

Joshua W. Herring on The Only Winning Move

“When Fighting Fire with Fire Is Just an Excuse for Fire” – May 9

We are not under any delusions about how SJWs act. We’ve seen all the same evidence you have. It’s QUITE clear that the a great many feminism and/or “diversity” and/or gay rights activists don’t give a fig about tolerance or inclusiveness. Tolerance and inclusiveness are just tools they use to get what they really want; they aren’t virtues for them.

Thing is: they are for us.

It’s always the same problem with Vox. He claims to want to live and let live, but there’s never any evidence of it. And it’s always the same excuse: “they” won’t play nice, so why should he? This is sensible enough if reserved for extreme cases, but when absolutely every post on his blog that deals with SJWs is about the need to deny them a seat, the line between their tactics and his becomes impossible to draw.

Here’s the rub: if somebody doesn’t start playing nice, it just never happens.

And here’s the question: do you think it will be the SJWs who start playing nice? It won’t. We know that from all past experience. So, as the addage goes, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

If you want tolerance and inclusiveness, you start by being tolerant and inclusive. It’s not that it doesn’t matter that “they” aren’t tolerant and inclusive, because obviously it would be nicer if they were. The fact that they’re not makes our job a lot harder. But our job is still to get to a community that’s tolerant and inclusive, and you just can’t do that with purges.

Quite the contrary, the way you get there is by making purges taboo. What you start with isn’t “hey, you purged us, you opened the gate, guess purges are OK now, so we’re gonna have one of our own!” Because at that point you have two purges rather than one, and they start to become normal.

Mary Robinette Kowal

“Thoughts on manners: Being “reasonable” and being angry” – May 5

Manners are an outward expression of your opinion of others.

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is described as, “his manners, though well bred, were not inviting.” What this means is that though he was correct on all the points of etiquette, the way he executed those points made it clear that he disdained the people to whom he was speaking.

I’ve been thinking about this distinction a fair bit recently, in regard to a number of conversations going around on the internet. I’ve been getting emails from people, or comments on my blog, thanking me for being “reasonable” and “classy” in my responses to various upsets, most recently around the Hugo awards. What disturbs me about these is that the people writing to me don’t seem to understand that I am angry….

The thing is… the reason that I can be “polite” and “reasonable” is because other people are expressing the anger for me. I have the privilege of being quiet only because other people are bearing the burden of our shared fury. Without the people willing to shout, the concerns would be dismissed. Look at the suffragette movement. Women had been talking about equality for hundreds of years before that, and it wasn’t until the early 1900s when women began breaking windows and chaining themselves to buildings in protest that the cause was taken seriously. Then the “reasonable” women were able to negotiate, because their sisters had borne the burden of shouting to create a space in which their words could be heard.

Redneck Gaijin on Redneck Gaijin’s Pitiful Little Life

“My thoughts on the Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, and Hugos brouhaha” – May 9

Why, then, do I oppose Sad/Rabid Puppies? (And I definitely do, by the way.)

Because Correia, Torgersen and Beale didn’t name one (or, if you want to uphold the pretense that they weren’t working together, two) exceptional work or creator per category. The Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies slates took advantage of the Hugos system (every nomination voter gets to recommend five choices, and five nominees are selected for each award). Their slates proposed three, or four, or even five nominees for most of the awards categories in a deliberate effort to flood the nominations and make sure that ONLY their works got nominated- and they were mostly successful.

In short: Sad/Rabid Puppies didn’t just try to give conservatives in sci-fi a voice; they tried to SILENCE ALL OTHER VOICES. They wanted to prevent any viewpoints not compatible with their own from receiving any recognition whatever- and they were very successful, as regards 2015.

That’s not just campaigning. That’s not even just rigging the results. That’s outright censorship. By gaming the system, the Puppies allowed a minority viewpoint to drown out and silence all others. And Beale in particular goes farther and demands that this effort be honored, and that those shut out sit down and accept it, or else he’ll destroy the Hugos outright.

Dreaming About Other Worlds

“2015 Locus Award Nominees” – May 6

Comments: In 2015, due to the fracas surrounding the Hugo Awards instigated by the manipulation of the Hugo nominating process by the supporters of the Sad and Rabid Puppy slates, the Locus Award nominee list took on greater significance than it had in many previous years. Several people have already taken to calling the works on the Locus Award list the “real” Hugo nominees, and noting that none of the works or individuals promoted by either of the Puppy slates appear on the Locus Award finalist list. What I think this list, and the general reaction to it reveals, however, is simply this: Even in the best case scenario for the Puppies, they will never get what they want.

Matthew Foster on Foster on Film

“How I’m Voting For the Hugos” – May 7

I had hoped that the slate nominees would reject their nominations, and a number of them did. But not enough. I expected a few more would do the gentlemanly (or ladyly) thing. That was the only way to truly repair this year’s Hugos, but now we have to work with what we have. So, to voting. You have  choices:

1. Vote normally, as if the nominees were all legitimate
2. Vote normally for non-slate nominees, and then No Award, leaving the slate nominees off your ballot
3. Vote normally for a few mainly non-slate categories, and No Award for the rest, leaving the slate nominees off you ballot.
4. Vote No Award for all, and leave all the others off your ballot
5. Vote No Award for all, and list non-slate nominees after.

…With that in mind, what do I support? I disagree with what Brad and the Pups want you to do, which is also what some well known authors who do not support the Pups recommend: voting as if all the choices are legitimate. Obviously the Pups want this, to win (they are big on winning). I have to assume the others are going along in the hopes that it will all be OK and that will be the least damaging to the award. But things are not magically going to be OK, and nothing will make the Hugo less meaningful then it being taken by slate nominees.

My metaphor has been of a race. If in the Olympics it was discovered that most of the runners in the finals of a 10,000 meter race got there by doping in the semifinals, they would not just run the final as if everything was normal. They would boot out all those illegitimate finalists–and it doesn’t matter if the finalists might have gotten there without drugs, or that they didn’t know they’d been drugged by their coaches. How they did get there was with drugs in their system, so they are gone. In the case of the Hugos, it is your job to boot out those who are not there legitimately.

So, I strongly reject choice 1. It is the wrong message. It makes the award meaningless by legitimizing what the Pups have done….

Me? I’m going with choice 3, but I applaud those going with 5.

Michele Lee

”Bad Seeds” – May 8

If you’ve been paying even half a bit of attention in the SF/F writing world you know about the conflicts that regularly occur throughout the fandom. *Acchhsadpuppieschoooooo* Bless me. There’s plenty of other people talking about it, so you don’t need me to say much.

Here in Kentucky there’s been a recent case of a family who had 10 children removed from their “homestead” and put in state care. (These points are related, I promise.) ….There are lots of pictures of this homestead online, which boils down to a 250 square foot ramshackle shack covered in tarps with no electricity, running water or toilets. There’s a lot of people online (likely the same people who throw a fit when CPS fails to remove a child who has been physically abused before the ultimate tragedy strikes) going mad over CPS’s interference.

There are days I feel like I’m part of the homesteading community.

This family doesn’t appear to be good example of homesteaders, instead they seem to be hiding dangerous behaviors behind a community that shies from what people consider the norm.

So this is my point, as a member of both of these communities, what responsibility do I have to stand up and say, “Hey, no, these people do NOT represent me or the ideas that brought me to this community.”

This is something I have struggled with a lot, all through my life. In religion, in multiple religions actually, in my circle of high school friends, in the writing community, the autism activism community…I could go on and on. There are a whole lot of people out there who circle the wagons and protect, without consideration. That kind of support can certainly be nice. But can it be dangerous?

I think the Sad Puppies bit shows it really really can. We, as communities don’t have to protect deplorable or dangerous behavior.

Nick Mamatas on Nihilistic Kid

“Good Writing vs Bad – Hugo Edition” – May 8

I often use these two lines from Farewell, My Lovely in class, as an example of excellent writing:

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

I then ask what we know about the blonde? The older students know definitively that “it” is female—the e in blonde is the giveaway. The younger, more politically annoying aware students will often point to and object to the “it” in “It was a blonde.” They have good eyes—the narrator is referring to a photograph of a blonde. And she’s attractive, strikingly so, perhaps even archetypal in her blondeness.

And what do we know of the narrator: he’s intelligent, creative, cynical, attempts to detach himself from his own animal nature, is irreligious but was likely religious at some point, likes to show off. We know more about him than about her. And there’s also a rhythm that carries us on—the second sentence wouldn’t work nearly so well without the first, which is a double iamb. (da DUM da DUM it WAS a BLONDE) Not bad!

And now, some sentences on a similar theme, from the Hugo-nominated novel Skin Game by Jim Butcher….

Ian Mond on The Hysterical Hamster

“Book Review: Skin Game by Jim Butcher” – May 9

What’s It About

While it’s book fifteen of the Harry Dresden series all you really need to know is that (a) Harry is wizard, (b) it’s essentially a heist novel and (c) the book mostly, though not entirely, stands alone.

Representative Paragraph

This more or less sums up Harry Dresden:

You know, sometimes it feels like I don’t have any other kind of day. Like, ever. On the other hand, I’m not sure what I would really do with any other kind of day. I mean, at some point in my life, I had to face it—I was pretty much equipped, by experience and inclination, for mayhem.

Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens

“Totaled by Kary English” – May 9

“Totaled” by Kary English is the first professional-level story on the Hugo ballot I’ve read so far. It’s well-written and well-edited (compared to the other finalists, at least), and English has been a quarterly winner in the Writers of the Future contest, so she seems like a writer who should be taken seriously.

You can read the story here.

Nicholas Whyte on From the Heart of Europe

“On the new Hugo voters” – May 4

After Sasquan’s spectacular intake of new Supporting Memberships following the announcement of the Hugo shortlists, I’ve seen a great deal of speculation on what this might mean in terms of votes. I think we can all be certain that most of these new members have joined with the intention of participating in the Hugos; how will they do so?

I thought one easy measure might be geography. Sasquan has published the geographical breakdown of its members as of 30 April; I have compared these with Loncon’s membership as of 31 July last year, the day when Hugo voting closed, looking only at the 50 US states and the District of Columbia. My intention was to see if I could detect a clear shift in Sasquan’s membership, as compared to Loncon’s, from “red” states to “blue” or vice versa. My reasoning is that if there has been a surge of membership from states where voters are generally right-wing, that might indicate a more right-wing electorate.

I have to say that this proved impossible to detect. I give the figures below, but there are only 11 of the 51 territories in question where Sasquan now has proportionally more members than Loncon did at close of Hugo votes.

David Gerrold on Facebook

I’ve created a new Facebook page, specifically for genre fans to discuss what they think are the best and most noteworthy works of the year.

Please visit and post.

Let’s have that discussion about what makes a book or a TV show or a movie award-worthy.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Recommendations/797389177024141?pnref=story

It's true, Sad Puppies. I don't understand humor. http://t.co/xXT2rBm1Nv pic.twitter.com/H3mAJnzcoB

— Alexandra Erin | patreon.com/AlexandraErin (@AlexandraErin) May 9, 2015

Nice Sad Puppies reference. Love it. #Stokers2015 #StokerAwards2015

— Agitated Spiders for Human Rights ???????????????? (@HorriblyJane) May 10, 2015

Brian Z. in a comment on File 770 – May 9

O Puppy! my Puppy! our nominations done,
Our blog has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The Hugos near, applause I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady slate, the ballot grim and daring;
But Hugo! Hugo! Hugo!
O rocket ship with fin,
Where by the stage my Puppy lies,
Clutching a losers’ pin.
 
O Puppy! my Puppy! rise up to claim your prize;
Rise up—for you the name is read—for you the emcee calls,
For you book bombs and starred reviews—for you the fans a-crowding,
For you they call, the graying SMOFs, propeller beanies turning;
 
Here Puppy! dear author!
The slated works shall win!
It is some dream that by the stage,
Clutches a losers’ pin.
 
My Puppy does not answer, his face is pale and clipped,
My author does not feel my arm, nor can of Reddi-Wip,
The publishers’ suite is safe and sound, its bar is closed and done,
Some other boor through victor’s door comes in with object won;
Slap a sticker on that cover!
But I with tonic and gin,
Walk the stage my Puppy lies,
Clutching a losers’ pin.
 

Future Hugo by Taral Wayne