The Hydrophobia That Falls On You From Nowhere 6/12

aka The Puppies of Wrath

Today’s roundup stars David Gerrold, Tom Knighton, Rand Simberg, Phil Sandifer, Abi Sutherland, Doctor Science, Edward Trimnell, Jenn Armistead, Lela E. Buis, Peter Grant, Sarah A. Hoyt, Natalie Luhrs. Robert Sharp, Lis Carey and Lou J. Berger. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Seth Gordon and Steve Moss.)

David Gerrold on Facebook – June 12

Okay — so far, so good. If you wanted to suggest that there is a certain insular attitude among regular Worldcon attendees and supporters, even a clique-ishness, you could make that case — from the outside, it could look like that.

But actually, no. Because any convention — especially the Worldcon — is open to anyone who wants to buy a membership and attend. So no one is being kept out.

The issue — the idea that I’m creeping up on here — is the perception of a science fiction community. It’s an open community. Anyone can be a member of this community. Just show up. The ceiling constitutes an introduction. (ie. “You’re in the room, you’re here, you’re one of us. Hello!”)

So, in actuality, the community isn’t insular and it isn’t a clique — but it does have a lot of people in it who’ve known each other for a long time, and that can be intimidating to newcomers.

Now — here’s where I’m going to make some assumptions.

1) Based on the evidence of his online screeds, Vox Day does not consider himself a member of the science fiction community. In his own mind, he apparently considers himself a righteous and noble warrior fighting an evil establishment that sprawls like a cancer across the literary landscape. Based on the evidence of his online statements, he is at war with the community. He wants to disrupt and destroy. He has — by his own devices — selected himself out.

2) Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia, and others who have identified themselves as the “sad puppies” are very much a part of the SF community. They have demonstrated — by writing and publishing stories, by attending conventions, by being nominated for awards, by writing blogs and participating online — that they have a personal investment in the workings of the SF community. They are not enemies, they are (to the extent they participate in fannish endeavors) fans like everyone else.

Now, having made those distinctions, let me expand on them. ….

 

Tom Knighton

“David Gerrold: Sad Puppies ARE part of ‘SF community’” – June 12

I’ve been very upset by some of the things I’ve seen from David Gerrold since the Hugo nominations were announced.  Honestly, knowing such a person wrote my mother’s favorite Star Trek episode was upsetting on a personal level that really doesn’t make any sense, but there it was.

However, Gerrold’s tone has mellowed recently.  Today, he stated something that few would acknowledge, and that was how Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and the rest of us are part of the science fiction fan community in a post on Facebook early this morning. ….

That said, I’m willing to explore alternatives, but only so long as the horrid things we’re called ends.  Gerrold brings up the Paris Peace Accords and the amount of time it took just to get things rolling for various reasons.  In light of that, a comparison to a bloody war, I think it’s fair to note that I see no reason for us to disarm if the other side refuses.  CHORF and SJW remain in the arsenal, and will be used if necessary.

Calling us Sad Puppies won’t bring them out from me.  Calling us racists, homophobic, misogynists, or similarly will.  I’m damn sick of it.  Those words have meanings, and they’re being stripped of those meanings by using them to describe minorities of all stripes who stand with the Sad Puppies simply because they like different books.

 

Rand Simberg on Transterrestrial Musings

“David Gerrold” – June 12

..says Sad Puppies are a part of the SF community.

Well, that’s mighty white of him.

 

Philip Sandifer

“John C. Wright Has Just Advocated For My Murder” – June 12

In the comments over at Vox Day’s blog, John C. Wright posted the following:

Wrought

The first line is Wright quoting a previous post of mine. The second paragraph is him advocating for my murder. Because he disagrees with my definition of mysticism. I am, to be clear, not particularly scared by this. I do not imagine that John C. Wright will now be hiding in my bushes, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. This is empty, vicious rhetoric of the sort that Day and Wright specialize in – sound and fury that, while not exactly signifying nothing, is still clearly told by an idiot. Hell, if I were a woman blogging about the stuff I blog about I’d get half a dozen far worse threats a day. The threat itself is not a big deal.

 

Doctor Science in a comment on File 770 – June 12

If any Puppies are in the neighborhood: *this* is what the conspiracy of Hugo voters you think has been going on for years looks like. Not covert conversations, not a sekrit batsignal telling us who the Approve Authors are this year, but a lot of people saying, “I just read this thing, it’s great!” and explaining *why* it’s great, with other people saying things ranging from “me to!” to “what are you, nuts?” to “meh”.

 

Edward Trimnell

“So why are they mad at Tor Books?” – June 12

The science fiction community is currently divided into two factions: For the purposes of our discussion here, we’ll use the names they’ve assigned to themselves: the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) and the Sad Puppies.

*  *   *

The SJW faction believes that science fiction is primarily a vehicle of identity group politics. For the SJW faction, the ideal science fiction story would feature an angry feminist of color who receives a visitation from a band of transgender aliens one night as she is driving home from a Women’s Studies seminar somewhere in Massachusetts.

Over the course of many chapters, the transgender aliens explain to her why all of her problems result from white male exploitation.

The plot line is resolved when the angry feminist of color leaves her husband or boyfriend, gets a closely cropped haircut, and moves into a lesbian commune in western Massachusetts. (A closing monologue about the evils of the George W. Bush administration is optional.)

 

Jenn Armistead in letter to Library Journal – June 1

If the Sad Puppies don’t want to be conflated with the Rabid Puppies or called mean words like misogynist, perhaps they should have done a better job of explaining how what they were doing wasn’t a reaction to the “large” number of minorities who won the Hugos last year (Wilda Williams, “Set Your Phasers to Stunned: 2015 Hugo Nominations Stir Controversy”). Yes, it’s lovely that your slate also has women and brown people and that women and brown people were involved in creating Sad Puppies, but if you are going to claim the past winners didn’t deserve their awards but received them because of their gender/race/sexuality/whatever, you have to be very, very careful with your messaging, because it is going to tend to sound like you don’t like women/brown people/LGBT/whatever winning awards instead of white men.

The choice of the term Sad Puppies also doesn’t help your position. It was obviously chosen as a nod toward the anti-SJW [Social Justice Warrior] term, and it is rather disingenuous to claim otherwise. At the very least, your message was not received as it was intended. At worst, you sound like Gamergaters crying, “But it’s about ethics in game journalism!”

At the end of the day, I don’t think it matters. This is about a small subset of the sf reading population vying with another small subset of the sf reading population over a popularity contest. The rest of us readers will continue to read whatever we prefer. If we don’t see ourselves and the works we care about reflected in the ­Hugos, we’ll just go elsewhere.

—Jenn Armistead, Literacy Coordinator, Tulsa City-Cty. Lib. Syst.

 

Lela E. Buis

“Replying to intent” – June 12

As a mere short story writer, I’m coming late to the front. I’m just picking up on the issues here. I don’t know what Vox Day has against Tor, but it looks to me like he’s attacking the editors as a way to get at the organization in general. As a battle-hardened flame warrior, I have to say that it’s important to look at the enemy’s intent instead of what s/he says. Attacks can be shut down if you know what they’re really about.

John Scalzi? Just a guess.

 

Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man

“Tor: the latest developments (or lack thereof)” – June 12

I wonder whether Tor’s and Macmillan’s lack of response to my letters, both public and private, is because they think I don’t mean it?  Do they think I’m just ‘small fry’, not worth bothering about?  Do they think my words are ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing‘? Do they think I’m making an idle threat, or don’t have any support?  Time will tell.  I know what other authors and individuals in the SF/F community have said to me.  Let’s see whether they back up their words with action.  Whether they do or they don’t, I know what I’m going to do if the situation doesn’t change.

 

Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt

“Dispatches From Another World” – June 12

But one thing is to know it instinctively – and even then when I write about it, people email me to tell me that I am wrong and “paranoid” and yeah, one is always afraid – and another to have one’s nose rubbed in it in the form of a supposed adult saying with the simplicity of a 12 year old that the people who oppose her are “racist, sexist, homophobic” and “bad to reprehensible” even before the “poopy-head” level classification of “neo-nazis.”

Look, it is the fact that Irene Gallo is sincere and, in her own mind, fighting on the side of angels, that is shocking and scary. And it fits perfectly with what I’ve seen in the publishing world (other than Baen, natch) in my years working as a professional writer.

These people don’t live in the world we live in.

Most of us – well, some of us – went through excellent universities, and read voraciously, and were subjected to the barrage of media that projected the same mental picture Ms. Gallo has: the left is eternally right (when they were wrong, their mistakes – like segregation – are now attributed to the right) and the future is a bright socialist utopia (really communist, but we’ll call it socialist so as not to scare the squares) and anyone who stands against it is an evil right winger, a fascist, a neo nazi and by definition racist, sexist, homophobic.

 

Natalie Luhrs on Pretty Terrible

“Links: 06/12/15” – June 12

Has there been any more fan writing about this? I’d really like to read more fan perspectives as I work my way through the giant pile of angry thoughts I have about this. I feel like the fan perspective is important, for a lot of reasons: first of all, most of us are doing this because we actually do love the community and most of the people who make up the community. Second, we often have more at risk: fan labor is almost by its very definition free labor, we have smaller platforms, and what happened to Irene Gallo is chilling across multiple axes.

I stand in solidarity with Irene Gallo. I respect the hell out of her and her work and I think she is doing amazing things with art direction. She makes an incredibly difficult job look effortless and easy.  And publicly chastising her for what she said on her personal Facebook page was wrong.

 

Robert Sharp on Medium – June 12

It is now time for a “personal opinions” icon. Millions of people like Irene Gallo could add the symbol to their personal social media accounts. Ideally, the symbol would link to some standardised “these are my personal views” text that would insure both the individual and their employers from being dragged into something that should not concern them.

What would such an icon look like? That is a challenge for graphic designers. It needs to work at extremely small resolutions. My initial idea was simply a shape with a letter ‘p’ in it, but that does not translate across cultures. Perhaps a speech bubble with a face or head inside?

I urge designers to take up this challenge.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF, by Ken Burnside” – June 12

This is easily the best of the Best Related Works Hugo nominees. Burnside lays out what thermodynamics really mean for military actions and combat in space, at least if you are writing “hard” sf, intended to be based in scientific reality.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Letters From Gardner: A Writer’s Odyssey, by Lou Antonelli” – June 12

The memoir portions are perhaps less fascinating than Antonelli imagines. It’s a bit of a slog to get to the first few little notes from Dozois, which, while obviously highly encouraging to a new writer for whom any personal comment from an editor, especially one as notable as Dozois, are in themselves very ordinary. They just do not have the  thrill for the reader that they would obviously and appropriately have had for Antonelli when he received them. What’s hard to understand here is the lack of the most basic proof-reading and copy-editing. There are errors of tense and number, but always when the error is just one letter, suggesting a typo that a spellchecker wouldn’t catch, and a human eye didn’t catch. There are dropped words that momentarily bounce the reader out of the narrative. And it’s not just one or two instances; it keeps happening. It’s as if Antonelli relied too heavily on his newspaper-honed ability to produce readable copy on short notice, and didn’t think he needed an editor, or even a proofreader. The danger of that is that after you’ve spent too much time with your own prose, you see what you meant to type, not what you really did type. It’s an unwise choice that weakens even the best work. All in all, I can’t see this book being of real interest to anyone except Lou Antonelli’s devoted fans. A “Best Related Work,” it is not.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Riding the Red Horse, by Tom Kratman (editor), Vox Day [Theodore Beale] (editor)” – June 12

Unfortunately, it’s a very uneven collection. It includes the very good The Hot Equations, by Ken Burnside, and the very disappointing Turncoat by Steve Rzasa. There is, early on, a casual endorsement of the probable “necessity” of genocide on the grounds that Those People aren’t smart enough to modify their behavior. A point Beale’s fans will have difficulty with is that such inflammatory language makes it less likely that readers will take in the point the author was attempting to make. A better editor would have caught it and told the author to dispense with pointless provocation and just make his point.

 

Lou J. Berger on Facebook – June 9

As David Gerrold proposed, WorldCon in Spokane this year will be a party, a place to revel in our shared love of Science Fiction, a place to be inclusive and supportive of one another.

Remember, we are ALL Science Fiction!

I’ll be passing these badge ribbons out to whomever asks for one at Sasquan.

We Are ALL Science Fiction ribbon

Lou J. Berger on Facebook – June 11

#?WeAreALLSF

The hashtag is gaining momentum, and if you agree that Science Fiction has been sundered, but believe we can repair the situation, please consider sharing the hashtag, along with a short paragraph or so of WHY you agree that re-unification of the various factions is vital….

There’s LOTS of room for all of us in the field of Science Fiction. Hijacking ballots, or dismissing milSF as “not real SF” says more about the person stating it than about the field at large.

We are ALL Science Fiction, and we’ve taken this genre from pulp to mainstream.

Let’s put down our scathing vitriol and find a way to support each other.

We are ALL Science Fiction.

823 thoughts on “The Hydrophobia That Falls On You From Nowhere 6/12

  1. @Jack Lint: “There was a SMOF card in the various Illuminati games from Steve Jackson Games.”

    Yes, and there still is. Somehow it always winds up getting controlled by the Goldfish Fanciers when I play. 😉

    @RedWombat: “Can state with some authority that Ursula Vernon would recuse herself from said slate,”

    ISWYDT. 🙂

    @Happy-Puppy: “BTW I will be nlvoting for HPMOR. For best novel next year.”

    Since it was completed in 2010, it is ineligible.

    @rrede: “That’s what some of the women’s tie-in novels do so well—they are transformative rather than derivative (sticking to ‘canon’) – “Ishmael” is one of the best, and with the extra fannish glee of Mark Lenard (the actor who played Sarek) also playing Aaron Stemple in Brides…”

    Reminds me of something Peter David did in his first Star Trek: New Frontier novel. Picard’s telling this bright kid about Starfleet Academy, and since Picard is all the kid knows about the Federation, the kid asks if Picard runs the place. Picard’s response is that no, he can’t really see himself running a school for gifted youngsters… which is both completely in character and utterly hilarious given the wider context. 🙂

    @Shambles:

    Tobias Buckell has a few more than two SF books out…

    @Silly but True: “Yes, clearly these people were difficult to work with but they were still trailblazers, and there’s certainly no need for the current organizations leadership to tell them to “shut the —- up” no matter how much work they feel was being caused by them.”

    So you’re literally saying that higher-status people should get a pass on their actions, no matter how reprehensible those actions may be? You are indeed silly.

  2. rrede on June 13, 2015 at 10:14 amsaid

    HILD! by Nicola Griffith is a book everyone should read

    I agree, but I still don’t understand it getting nominated for a Nebula, since it seemed to me that Griffith went out of her way to explain things that otherwise might have been seen as fantasy elements. Griffith is Guest of Honor at this year’s Readercon. Readercon is wonderful every year, but this time there’s an extra draw for Griffith fans.

  3. @Bruce Baugh

    “Whoops. How did I get it in my head that Beale’s Catholic? I don’t know, but I’m willing to get it out, since it’s not true.”

    It seems to me — increasingly, in recent years — that there’s no meaningful distinction anymore between right wing evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons. It’s like their political opinions and their religious opinions have been welded together into a seamless whole.

    When I was a teenager in the 80s, my evangelical church had a whole “here’s why the Mormons are wrong, wrong, wrong, and also, did we mention, wrong?” But by 2012, they hardly blinked to be voting for a potential Mormon president.

    @Peace Is My Middle Name

    “I also didn’t realize that they were in a future dystopia. ”

    My reading of it as a dystopia — outside the House of Stairs itself of course — was based on a couple of things — when one of the characters is talking about crashing on the freeway, and everyone is very impressed that she didn’t have a gas mask, which implies that the outdoor air isn’t breathable. And the fact that this is a society where it’s legal to take these kids and do such a thing without their consent.

    Also — Nimona! Why wouldn’t it be nominate-able next year? The graphic novel pub date is May 2015, isn’t it?

    (I love Nimona, so it’s super-duper my pick for next year, so I really hope I’m not wrong.)

  4. rrede on June 13, 2015 at 12:32 pm said

    Mary Frances: omg, you’ve read Kagan’s work?

    I don’t know that I’ve ever talked to anybody else who knew her work.

    I bet that neither one of you knew that Janet had written a film script (under a pseudonym). Janet was a very active east-coast convention fan before she started writing (and also after), and brought the producer along to a small con in Connecticut. He started coming to other cons in the BosWash area for a while, and the film was shown more than once late at night in hotel room parties in the 1970s. I’m probably not the only regular File770 commenter who’s seen it.

  5. @ Lori Coulson

    Gabriel F., elitist, yes, that’s a fair cop, and some of it boils down to frustration over the current situation — and a lack of tolerance on my part as well. The constant attempts of some to lure Eris to the forum is beginning to wear on me.

    I really get that. I’ve been pissed as hell with a lot of these trolls who come rolling in here and repeat talking points we’ve debunked a million times. When a new Puppy shows up and seems to speak without being quite so asinine, I like to at least extend the opportunity to talk books. After all, that’s what they keep insisting we don’t do.

    Who knows, maybe he’s just another Jeffro in here to collect outrage bait. But I like to talk books. 🙂

    I have no idea how Dune sucked me in, just that it did, and inspired a thirst that had me stalking the library shelves for more. The SF club that sprung from a college course on Classical Mythology helped me feed my habit and introduced me to conventions.

    Heh, I read Beowulf when I was 8. This was a terrible mistake that preventing me from sleeping for a few weeks. I’ve pretty much had a book in my hand as long as I can remember. I feel really blessed to have that be the case. My brother is “functionally literate,” in that he can read and doesn’t do it for pleasure, and it’s always sort of appalled me.

    That last is very true — it’s really frustrating when you know that lots of your friends absolutely loved a book, and you keep bouncing off of it every time you try reading it. Funny thing — sometimes I’ve gone back years later, and had no trouble reading it then. Sometimes its not the time to read that particular book.

    That was my experience with Dune. I knew it was considered a classic, basically “The Lord of the Rings for Sci-Fi” was how it was described to me. One of my neighbors was utterly obsessed with the book. And every time I picked it up, the very dry style combined with the en media res in a setting that wasn’t explained and used a lot of unfamiliar terminology… I just couldn’t get it in my head.

    I was a junior in high school before it finally clicked for me, and it was glorious.

  6. “One final irony: I first ‘met’ Mr. John Scalzi when we were on opposite sides of an Internet flame-skirmish. I’ve since come to like and admire the man as well as his work, and we even happen to have a few things in common besides our SFWA membership.”

    — Theodore Beale, 2008

  7. Kyra on June 13, 2015 at 1:35 pmsaid

    Hugo-winning authors who wrote tie-in books include Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, David Gerrold, Vonda McIntyre, Orson Scott Card, Kristine Rusch, and Joan D. Vinge.

    I don’t know off-hand about the others, but I can’t think of any tie-in books written by Asimov. Perhaps you’re thinking of Fantastic Voyage? That was a novelization, which I consider to be different than a tie-in book. If not, what book(s) were you referring to?

  8. Lori Coulson on June 13, 2015 at 1:39 pm said:

    General question regarding No Award. It is my understanding that if I want a work to get no consideration at vote counting time, I leave it off the ballot. If I consider nothing in a category worth giving an Award, I rank “No Award” as number one, and leave the rest of the category blank. If I find a work worthy, but it is on one of the slates, I place it -under- No Award. Have I got this right, or have I misinterpreted anything?

    That’s basically correct, except that the last bit is a matter of personal choice — if you want to really make the statement that you disapprove of slates, but consider a slated work worthy, this is one way of doing that. I’m doing that, for slightly different reasons, in the short story category, where one story was so good that it made me wonder how it had gotten onto the slates. I’m voting for it behind No Award, not because it was slated, but because there are other stories better than it, that got pushed off the ballot by the slates, and No Award is my proxy for those other works. In the Novel category, I don’t consider either of the slated works award-worthy, so they’re not on my ballot, but in addition, I think there were books that were better than The Three-Body Problem, so it’s going below No Award on my ballot.

  9. @Soon Lee

    I have read it, and I enjoyed it a lot. 🙂

    @McJulie

    I’m not sure if Nimona’s prior publication online might disqualify it? I think it depends how much is different about the print publication. I have similar worries about The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. I’d love to nominate both of them, but I’m not sure if they’re within the eligibility rules.

  10. Ann Somerville: PLease please please please do not fall into VD and his supporters’ trap of conflating Chip Delany with actual child molesters.

    For the record, I don’t, Ann–should have been clearer.

  11. Gabriel F. — I was a Senior in High School taking an English course whose subject was Science Fiction, and the teacher had Dune on her desk. As I really thought this particular teacher was groovy, so I asked if I could borrow it. I’m eternally grateful that she loaned it to me.

    And the book proved useful in other situations — I have used the Litany Against Fear many times. And Thufir Hawat’s advice to Paul (never sit with your back to a door) proved to be a life-saver in many a role-playing game…

  12. Lori Coulson: It is my understanding that if I want a work to get no consideration at vote counting time, I leave it off the ballot.

    Yes, but you also need to have “No Award” on your ballot, which says that you rank “No Award” higher than the work you are omitting from your ballot.

  13. Mike Glyer: It began three years ago because Larry Correia wanted a Hugo. He made it political when advocating on the merit of his work did not produce quite enough votes to get nominated.

    Eric: He made it political when people started saying he shouldn’t have been nominated because of his politics.

    Meredith: The only person whose word we have for that is Correia, and I’m not inclined to take his word for it without some very good citations. He has a habit of inflating statements beyond all recognition.

    Mary Frances: I think we can take his word for it that that’s how he understood what people were saying to him –- that that’s how he felt.

    I’ve said this before elsewhere, and I’ll say it again here:

    Do I believe Larry Correia when he said he felt like an outcast at Renovation Worldcon, and came home angry?

    Yeah, I do.

    Correia’s default resting state is “indignant and offended”. Check his blog — he was that way long before anyone at Renovation said something which he perceived to be an insult.

    Is it possible that Larry Correia went to Renovation with a positive attitude, ready to make friends with other authors and fans who weren’t familiar with his work, rather than in an aggressive, contrarian mood and spoiling for a fight? Sure it is.

    Do I think that is what actually happened? No. Not for a moment.

    In his now-edited post-con report, Correia says: But anyway, Lev Grossman won the Campbell. Looking at the results afterward, I got my ass handed to me.

    Correia doesn’t get it. He didn’t get “his ass handed to him”. He was a winner — by the very nature of being one of only 5 people nominated for the Campbell that year.

    But of course, he doesn’t see it that way. Because, to him, it’s not good enough for him to get a big piece of the pie. If he can’t have it all, then no one else should be able to have any of it, either.

  14. nickpheas: I confess I did find the whole Red Sonja cover issue a bit odd. There seemed to be surprising number of people pretending that there had never been a picture of Red Sonja seen before that there had never been Red Sonja comics (written by women even) and that there was no point of contact with Conan.

    That wasn’t the point of contention at all, with regard to the cover. The point was that a scantily-clad, badly-drawn woman was not a well-thought-out choice for the journal of a professional organization which represents both men and women.

    (The woman’s left lower leg was twice as long as her thigh.)

  15. Oh, I forgot to mention this too! Jim C. Hines — who has been mentioned in these very comments as being the initial cause of Larry’s decision to “fight back against SJWs” for his blog post about Larry’s rape-blaming — has written tie-in fiction for Fable. I guess the Puppies should be nominating him soon, hm? It is to laugh….

  16. Paul Oldroyd: I’ve spent a lot of today wandering around some of the darker recesses of the internet taking Vox Popoli as a starting point. I’ve come to the conclusion that Sarah Hoyt is definitely correct: they don’t live in the world I live in. Maybe that’s something to do with living in Europe and not understanding US culture. But it surely does seem.that they have little comprehension of how the world actually works.

    I was born and raised in the U.S. — and I guarantee you that Sarah Hoyt does not live in the same world I do. Her views are similar to those I see from people who never travel very far from their hometown, who don’t get any sort of education, and who do not do much, if any, sort of reading — apart from the Bible and Right-wing manifestos.

    And having not got out much, they spend their lives in a self-reinforcing bubble with others of a similar mindset, and are convinced that the vast majority of the country thinks the same way that they do (the rest of the world is irrelevant, as Those People are all Freedom-Hating Heathens, anyway).

  17. Thanks, Morris — I wanted to make sure I understood before I finalized my ballot.

    I’ve never had to use No Award this much before, so I was feeling VERY uncertain.

  18. BTW, Just rereading that Making Light/Electrolite thread where VD got the hump with Scalzi….

    Him calling Kim Stanley Robinson “Mrs Robinson” sums up his ignorance so beautifully. Cracks me up. (I mean, he didn’t just misgender KSR – he went the whole hog and assumed ‘she’ was a married woman too. Idiot.)

  19. rrede on June 13, 2015 at 6:35 pm said:

    Life affirming: Diane Duane’s Young Wizard series. … And her cat wizards

    Yes, I agree, and I consider these two series to be part of the same series.
    Looking on Wikipedia, I see that there’s a new Young Wizards book, Games Wizards Play, due out in February 2016. I’m excited about this, because this gives me an excuse to go back and reread all of the others.

    Also, a third Feline Wizards book, The Big Meow, which appears to be available only as an ebook, with the print version coming soon “in late summer 2011”.

  20. Ann Somerville: Him calling Kim Stanley Robinson “Mrs Robinson” sums up his ignorance so beautifully. Cracks me up. (I mean, he didn’t just misgender KSR – he went the whole hog and assumed ‘she’ was a married woman too. Idiot.)

    That was deliberate “satire” on his part. Though it’s a sterling example of Poe’s Law at work.

  21. Bruce Baugh: But even now, if [Puppies] were to make a serious effort to assemble a collection of the best writing reflecting right-wing views – going for stuff with graceful prose, engaging characters, careful editing, and so on, a collection where “Totaled” would anchor the foundation rather than having to do duty as the star on a rotting Christmas tree decorated with random trash

    That has to be one of the most lyrical, accurate descriptions of the Puppy slate I’ve seen yet.

  22. Camestros Felapton: I have been officially anointed a Morlock by John C Wright. I believe this a binding sacrament and I expect all the due privileges be accorded to me henceforth. Further, in recognition of my morlockyness, I have been accorded the additional rank of Magic Morlock. However I exempt you all from having to call me “serenity” – a simple bow will do.

    I remain unimpressed. According to Jeffro Johnson, I am capable of inciting “civil wars, church splits, divorces, and all manner of chaos”.

    I’ll see your “magic” and raise you one “omnipotence”.

  23. @Anne Somerville & Mary Frances

    Thank you for the catch and the clarification. I was hoping not to have to kickstart my Delany Defense Engine again, and now I don’t have to. 🙂

  24. Steven Schwartz @ 9:45 PM: I shouldn’t have made the mention at all, Steven, since no one had brought it up. It just seemed so obvious to me that that was what was coming next that I got careless . . .

  25. @Mary Frances : No worries! As you may have seen, I got tired enough of the Beales of the world complaining about Chip that I wrote it all down in a post on my blog, so the DDE is fairly easy to start and shut down these days. 🙂

  26. While we’re talking books and authors, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention Jonathan Carroll or Jonathan Lethem. Carroll’s The Land of Laughs was an astounding piece of dark fantasy, and although none of his later work hit me as hard, I still think he’s one of our great under-appreciated authors.
    Jonathan Lethem made a big splash with his wonderful Nebula-nominated first novel Gun, With Occasional Music, and has mostly slid out of the genre into more mainstream literary fiction, but everything he writes is worth reading. He used to be a Readercon regular, but since he got a college faculty job in California a few years ago, we haven’t seen him.
    Favorite surreal fiction reading moment: reading one of his short stories, about playing the “Mafia” game, and thinking, “Wait a minute! I’ve played Mafia with this man!”

  27. @ Ann Somerville

    No, I think that was actual ignorance.

    Like when a cat falls off of something, then immediately starts washing itself like the fall never happened. “I meant to do that!”

  28. Oof — it’s One AM (or Oh-dark-hundred) — I’d better get to bed…don’t want to miss Mass in the morning…

    Catch you folks later — thanks for all the books!

  29. Gabriel, exactly.

    And although it was a typo, Charles Stross referring to his “mean culpa over KSR’s gender” made me giggle.

    Mean culpa is perfect latin for “I meant to do that!” 🙂

  30. Meredith: Asked in the other thread but sadly by then it was almost all culture war and hardly any books: I loved Goblin Emperor, and I’m not very familiar with the courtly manners subgenre – what would you recommend that’s along similar lines?

    You might find Bujold’s ‘A Civil Campaign” in her Vorkosigan series worth a go.

    PIMM : Others have already thanked, but I would also like to thank CPaca for tracking all this down.

    Thanks, but please note I used the words “as best I can tell”. I think I’m pretty good at Google-fu, but I am open to the possibility that Clack will present a cogent link that blows me out of the water, in which case I will apologize. Until them, however, I’m pegging him as a concern troll.

    Chris Hensley : For those of you who aren’t aware of this particular bit of history, here is the link to VD’s dissection of the report SFWA issued as part of the expulsion process:

    Which, of course, may be just a bunch of bull-rhetoric, given his track record. Aristotle!

    And regarding life-affirming sf – yet again “The Goneway World”. The last kung-fu fight of the hero against the unbeatable monster Boss foe, in particular…

  31. @ Mary Frances…
    “And as Lori Coulson pointed out upthread, SFWA has nothing to do with the Hugo Awards anyway, or with the issue at hand.”

    The issue at hand I was responding to was a comment about cliques in our sci fi fandom. And of course SFWA has everything to do with it.

    All won has to do is spend about 2 minutes with the SFWA document dumps from SFWA 2013 controversies, and all of the related personal blogs of the same people commenting.

    The relationships and animosities of the SFWA is inseparable from the issues at hand,

  32. To Coulson: I’m not going to fall into tje trap of trying to prove my self somehow wotthy of having an opimion but you did spark a moment of curiosity and so I looked up how many Hugo mominated novels I’ve actually read and found out it was only 84 of them and almost none of those in the past 20 years.

    To Rev Bob: the final chapters of HPMOR were posted mar. 14, 2015. So I think it is eligible for a Hugo.

    As to whether Skin Game is best. I will think on it. My battery is down to 2%. But TGE I bounced off the names.

  33. Re: books to try if you liked The Goblin Emperor, I very much like Caroline Stervermer, A College of Magics, and its sequels. Also the Sorcery and Cecelia books that she co-writes with Patricia Wrede; they are in the form of epistolary novels and apparently began as an actual letter-writing game between the two authors.

    Courtly intrigue figures largely in Paul Park’s Princess of Roumania series, which I also liked very much. Western Europe has sunken into the ocean, and the countries of what was once central Europe, including Great Roumania, contend with each other by various means, some magical. I got a kick out of the fact that in this universe, the high-tech country that has gotten rich by selling weapons of mass destruction to everyone else is Abyssinia.

    And although they aren’t fantasy, the original Ruritanian novels, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, and its sequel, Rupert of Hentzau, are books that I dearly loved as an adolescent.

    Veering away from courtly mannerpunk but back toward actual fantasy, I adore Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. I was amazed that stellabystarlight, the Puppy who posted here briefly a little while ago, listed Aaronovitch as one of her favorite authors. I would have thought that for Puppies, the fact that the hero’s mother is African, as are other important characters, would make the books seem boring and preachy, works that could only ever win an award because of “affirmative action.”

    I’ve seen the Rivers books described as “if Harry Potter grew up and became a police officer,” and there is also an element of “X-Files, but with the London police instead of the FBI.” Highly recommended. The quality of the writing is definitely award-worthy, but the fact that it is a series, and so no one volume has full closure, could be a problem for award considerations.

  34. Ann: Yeah. I just think it’s funny to see Beale sucking up to Scalzi so effusively, three years after the supposed overt offence in that Electrolite thread.

  35. Estee, “I’ve seen the Rivers books described as “if Harry Potter grew up and became a police officer,” and there is also an element of “X-Files, but with the London police instead of the FBI.” ”

    Now, *that’s* how you sell me on a book 🙂 Not that I have read the HP books or care for the X Files but the idea of it all being in the Met, makes me drool with happiness.

    My ‘1-Click’ finger is getting a work out today 🙂

  36. Thanks Estee. 🙂 Lots of shiny books to add to my to-read pile.

    Slightly weird follow-up request: Anyone know of sci-fi books that are similar in feel and courtly mannersishness to Goblin Emperor? I think most of the recs have been fantasy, which I have a slight preference for, but I’m curious if the subgenre has any science fiction representatives.

  37. Meredith,
    Not as mannered, but how about biological steampunk airships? Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.

  38. Happy-Puppy: I’m not going to fall into tje trap of trying to prove my self somehow wotthy of having an opimion but you did spark a moment of curiosity and so I looked up how many Hugo mominated novels I’ve actually read and found out it was only 84 of them and almost none of those in the past 20 years.

    I’m not sure what you think this proves, other than that, when it comes to SFF, you’re not particularly well-read.

  39. @Tenar Darell

    Oh, I liked his Uglies books, and I’m definitely into biological steampunk airships. I’ll give it a go!

  40. @Kyra: “Tom Holt has written a bunch of comedies based on various fantasy concepts.”

    Love his stuff. The series that started with Doughnut has been rather fun, with the third book (The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice) doing a brilliant deconstruction of the stereotypical fairy-tale world from an economic standpoint. I am very much looking forward to the fourth book (The Good, the Bad and the Smug), announced for the end of July.

    @Hoppy-Poopy: “As to the fact I mispelt your name? Really?”

    I shall keep your indifference to names and their spelling in mind.

    @Mike Glyer:

    Title suggestion – “The Man High in Castalia”

Comments are closed.