In today’s roundup George R.R. Martin makes everybody mad, John C. Wright says “We are mad when they lie about us, they are mad when we tell the truth about them” , and Dara Korra’ti says you’re mad if you don’t show up to the Worldcon business meeting.
Kate Paulk and Abigail Nussbaum are mad at the same thing. Lots of others madly type their thoughts.
Then it gets verse.
John C. Wright
What is the Hugo Worth? – April 10
A private conversation with a well placed and influential editor in the New York publishing house was rather eye opening to me. It seems the Hugo, at one time, predictably bumped up sales for a work that won by a thousand books sold. Now, thirty.
George R.R. Martin in Not A Blog
“Where’s the Beef?” – April 9
Condolences, Brad [Torgersen]. You are a Hugo Loser. But hey, congratulations. You are a Hugo Loser. It’s an exclusive club. We get together annually, clank our beers together, and chant, “It’s an honor just to be nominated” in unison. Were you at the con? Did I give you a ribbon? If not, I’ll be sure you get one, should we ever met. Wear it proudly. The rest of us do. If that list I linked to is right, I’ve lost fifteen. When you lose, the fannish tradition is to congratulate the winner and shake their hand, then go to our Hugo Loser Party to get drunk and bitter. When I lose, my friends all tell me I’ve been robbed. Makes me feel better. Even when I know it isn’t true.
George R.R. Martin in Not A Blog
“What Now?” – April 9
(Here is where I will probably piss off everybody on the anti-slate of this mess. Sorry).
Over at Making Light, and on several other sites, various rules changes are being proposed to prevent this from happening ever again. There are so many different proposals they make my head spin. More nominating slots, less nominating slots, weighted voting, eliminating the supporting memberships, outlawing slates, limiting nominees to a single nomination, juried nominations… on and on and on. The worldcon business meeting is never exactly a funfest, but if the proponents of half these proposals show up at Sasquan, this year’s will be a nightmare. And will probably still be going on when MidAmericon II convenes.
I am against all these proposals. If indeed I am at Spokane, and if I can get myself up in time for the business meeting, I will vote against every one of them.
Most of them, frankly, suck. And the mere fact that so many people are discussing them makes me think that the Puppies won. They started this whole thing by saying the Hugo Awards were rigged to exclude them. That is completely untrue, as I believe I demonstrated conclusively in my last post. So what is happening now? The people on MY SIDE, the trufans and SMOFs and good guys, are having an endless circle jerk trying to come up with a foolproof way to RIG THE HUGOS AND EXCLUDE THEM. God DAMN, people. You are proving them right.
I hate what the Puppies did. It was based on false premises, and though it was not illegal, it was mean-spirited and unsportsmanlike. So how about we do NOT prove them right by rigging the rules against Sad Puppies 4? How about we try to be better than that? There is nothing wrong with the Hugo rules. If we want to defeat the Puppies, all we need to do is outvote them. Get in our own nominations. This year, the Puppies emptied the kennels and got out their vote, and we didn’t. Fandom danced the usual, “oh, too busy to nominate, I will just vote on the final ballot,” and for that complacency, we got blindsided. We lost. They kicked our fannish asses, and now we have the ballot they gave us. If we don’t want that to happen again, we need to get out our OWN vote….
The other approach is less radical. Vote NO AWARD in all the categories that are All Puppy. In the others, chose between the nominees (there are a few) that did not appear on either the Sad Puppy or Rabid Puppy slate, and place all the rest, the SP/RP candidates, under No Award.
That’s less insane than the “No Award For Everything” idea, but only a little bit. Sorry, I will not sign on for this one either.
Dara Korra’ti on Crime and the Forces of Evil
“we’d better all be ready to go to the business meeting” – April 10
I knew the Puppies bloc – the bloc voting their slate – was a minority in fandom. It’s only yesterday that I found out how small. They’re ten percent.
Ten percent voting in a block got this motley gang of white supremacists, vicious homophobes, misogynistic GamerGate opportunists, and innocent-bystanders-slash-human-shields complete control over most of the fiction awards.
And now we’ve been told that if we don’t sit there, ignore our legal voting options, and give them the trophies that 90% of fans did not want them to have at all… they’ll destroy the awards forever, or at least try.
It reeks a bit of desperation. I don’t think they understood that NO AWARD is a real thing, and now they’re going with threats, and claims of omnipotence, at least in planning. I think the NO AWARD movement has them destabilised.
But even without that, the rules can and will be changed. It takes two years, but unless they’re going to brownshirt-up the business meetings for the next two Worldcons, those rules changes are going to happen and this is going to be stopped…
…but then again, they do say they’re prepared for all eventualities.
Maybe they’ve tipped their hand. Maybe brownshirting up the business meeting is exactly what they mean to do. Come in a bloc, ram through round one of any rule changes they might want (like getting rid of NO AWARD, perhaps?), and most importantly, block any attempt to work around their awards manipulation. That’d be real high on their agenda, given that they’ve already announced they’re going to do all this again next year.
Brad R. Torgersen
“Vox plays chicken with Worldcon” – April 9
Frankly, I think everybody should just do what Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells and Scalzi and Correia and Jason Sanford and myself have been recommending you do, and read your voter packet and vote like the stories and books are just stories and books.
If Vox borks the Hugos in 2016, he is the biggest asshole SF/F has ever seen in its history.
Vox, please don’t be an asshole.
If the people who hate Vox bork the Hugos in 2015, they are the biggest assholes SF/F has ever seen in its history.
Vox-haters, please don’t be assholes.
Brad R. Torgersen
“Sad Puppies 3: were they contacted?” – April 10
Yes, I tried to contact as many people as I could. Hundreds of messages and e-mails. A few people turned me down, both before and after the slate went live at the beginning of February. I graciously pulled those who said, “Wait, I want off!” Many more have been unhappy about being later drafted for Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies alter-ego slate. For the latter case, I don’t blame them a bit, because many of the people I contacted for SP3 specifically said, “Don’t put me on anything Vox Day is going to be on,” and in point of fact, Vox Day is not on Sad Puppies 3 anywhere. I can’t be responsible for what Vox does. Only what I do. And I worked pretty damned hard to be courteous and reach out to people. Because I knew it was the gentlemanly thing. And I am sorry I missed some individuals, and that these individuals were unhappy with it. And for these failures, I accept full accountability. My bad.
But really, can I ask the field to step back and examine a deeper question? To go along with what George said above?
Why does being on a list force any author, artist, or editor, to have to explain anything?
Poor Annie Bellet had to roll out a long list of progressive bona fides to “prove” she is not in league with the dark forces. That she is a child of the light. That she is not now, nor has she ever been, a member of the Communist Party!
Why did Annie have to do that?
Mark Bernstein
“Help the Bitten” – April 9
But there are people, specific people, who have been harmed this year. I mean the people whose works and bodies of work would have earned them a place on this year’s final Hugo ballot, had they not been pushed off by the Puppy-slate entries. These are the folks who have been well and truly bitten by the Puppies….
I hereby announce the Help the Bitten initiative. Here’s what I propose, and plan to do:
1) Over the next four months, set aside a little money each month. Whatever you can afford, nothing more.
2) Once the figures are released, I (and, I hope, others) will create and post, as widely as possible, the Puppy-Free Ballot (PFB). In each Hugo or Campbell category, the PFB will list the top five (or more, in case of ties) nominees that did not appear on either Puppy slate.
3) Within the limits of your budget, choose actions from this list:
– Buy nominated PFB Novels
– Buy nominated PFB Graphic Novels
– Buy nominated PFB Related Works
– Buy anthologies that contain nominated PFB Novellas, Novelettes, and Short Stories
– Subscribe to magazines that contain nominated PFB Novellas, Novelettes, and Short Stories
– Subscribe to nominated PFB Semiprozines
– Buy works by PFB Campbell nominees – Buy works edited by PFB Editor nominees (both Long and Short Form)
– Buy books or prints by nominated PFB Artists
I admit to being at something of a loss as to what to do for the PFB nominees in the Fan categories. I’d love to hear your ideas.
Cataline Sergius on Reactionary Times and Dark Herald
“Sad Puppies IV: The Enpuppying” – April 9
Scenario 4. The Enpuppying. Puppies both Sad and Rabid run the table at WorldCon. Vox Day wins for best editor Long Form. No Award doesn’t appear on the final tally for anything.
In this unlikely scenario expect the SJWs to walk out of WorldCon and not participate in 2017 The Hugos and Worldcon will be abandoned due to their non-combative nature, they simply won’t want to fight a at all. Clearly the Koch brothers bought the Hugos and hired Vox Day to run it for them because they he is jealous of John Scalzi’s success. There is no point in fighting when you are this out gunned. They will set up their own juried award at another convention.
Steven Barnes on Facebook – April 9
I haven’t commented about the Sad Puppy situation. But as for gaming the Hugos, one possible rule change that would make this harder is to allow votes only to attending memberships, with pass-codes given at registration. Its a pity that thoughts like that are necessary. Karma is going to be interesting on this one.
D. Markotin on The Anarcho-Geek Review
“If I can’t have the toy, then I will destroy the toy” – April 10
Now, I’m not saying straight white cis-male conservative authors shouldn’t be writing fiction. But this sour grapes thing is bullshit. Doing this Sad Puppies thing in the name of “diversity” is laughable, on one hand, and on the other hand, is proof that our language, the language of diversity-as-a-positive-thing, is the dominant discourse. Even the conservatives want in. Doing this thing in the name of “anti-authoritarianism” is insane. Power structures such as white supremacism, patriarchy, and capitalism are every bit as authoritarian as the state. There is no such thing as conservative or right-wing anti-authoritarianism.
“Hugo drama MegaThread! Mad, sad, glad? This is the place to talk about it.”
Why this thread?
Since the Sad/Rabid Puppy Hugo Shortlist Takeover Debacle (SRPHSTD for short), we have had dozens of people from other subreddits coming to ours and generally breaking our rules. This has lead to hours upon hours of work for the other mods and myself, all of it unpleasant. Racist rants, casual misogyny, flame wars, trolling, recruiting people for political agendas, you name it. All behavior that is very much not welcome on /r/printSF.
You have probably not seen much of this, because the mods (and especially myself) have spent hours actively watching and moderating this subreddit to keep the level of discourse at the high mark that we expect of it.
In addition, there have been over a dozen threads submitted about this in the past 5 days alone. Enough to drown out other discussion on our small subreddit.
In an attempt to stem the tide and contain this all, we’ve set up this thread. All Hugo drama discussion is fair game, although our usual rules of civility apply. If you’d like to discuss the books themselves, you can do that elsewhere, but all drama-related Hugo threads will be removed, as will comments in threads that are not this one, and anyone trying to circumvent this removal on purpose or otherwise stir up shit in the rest of the subreddit will be banned.
Kate Paulk on Mad Genius Club
How Not To Write a Hugo Nomination Acceptance Post – April 9
Now, the Hugo award is still, despite the graying of Worldcon and various other things, more or less the most prestigious award in our genre, so it’s not all that surprising that people who are nominated for one will squee a bit on their blogs.
There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to do this. One of the nominees has provided a magnificent example of the wrong way.
It starts well enough with the nominee stating how gratified and stunned they are, and offering links to the nominated work (which, I might add, is well worthy of the nomination despite certain flaws in the assumptions behind the work. I recommend reading it).
So far, so good, right?
The next paragraph brings out the warning signs. First comes what looks on the surface like expressing the desire that the sequence of events – which lead to the piece that generated the nomination – had never occurred. The next paragraph is unremarkable, but then the real fail begins.
Yes, our oh-so-enlightened nominee explicitly links Sad Puppies to Requires Hate, and calls the Sad Puppies campaign “bigotry-driven”. I don’t know about you, but the last time I heard the definition of “bigotry” did not include “wants to see good stories regardless of who wrote them”. Just saying.
Abigail Nussbaum on Asking the Wrong Questions
“The 2015 Hugo Awards: Why I Am Voting No Award in the Best Fan Writer Category” – April 10
There is a huge difference between acknowledging that something has value and giving it an award. The message that the latter sends is one that I, personally, am not comfortable with. To begin with, there are huge problems with Mixon’s report. Some of them are not her fault–Sriduangkaew’s self-editing and the fact that so many of her victims would only speak on condition of anonymity mean that Mixon lacks citations for many of her claims, and I can see feeling that the importance of her cause justified ignoring the conventions of good journalism. Others, however, were entirely within her control. The report consistently treats all of Sriduangkaew’s excesses–her rage-blogging, her public bullying, and her private abuse and harassment–as if they were equally bad, whereas to my mind only the last one justifies the opprobrium that has descended upon her. In a particularly ill-judged segment of the report, Mixon divides the people who have sounded off about Sriduangkaew into “pro-abuse” and “anti-abuse,” even though it should be clear to anyone that this is an enormously complex situation with many nuances. (UPDATE: I had misremembered that this segment was in Mixon’s report. It’s actually in another LJ post by azarias.) The report’s emphasis on mathematical “proof”–Mixon includes charts and graphs to demonstrate, for example, that Sriduangkaew predominantly targeted women of color–feels perverse, especially given that Mixon is missing most of her sources. Worst of all, unsurprisingly, are the comments, which confirm my impulse from back in 2012 that most of the people who would take an anti-Requires Hate stance are ones that I want nothing to do with. It takes a mere instant for someone to show up and announce that Sriduangkaew’s existence proves that all anti-racist writing is bullying. Another wonders aloud whether Sriduangkaew is “really” Asian. In her essay, Loenen-Ruiz writes that giving Mixon a Hugo demonstrates the genre community’s commitment to protecting the weak and vulnerable. I think the comments on Mixon’s report demonstrate something very different.
Pat Cadigan on Facebook – April 4
Well, folks, if you don’t like this year’s Hugo ballot, don’t cry over it––vote.
If you want to like next year’s Hugo ballot, frickin’ buy a supporting membership to the worldcon so you can nominate and vote.
There is no “them.” You just weren’t there.
Anonymous blogger on Respectawards
“In Light of Hugos, Puppies, and Other News” – April 10
If our beloved Hugo awards, once reliable standards of quality sf content, have been subverted by malcontents, then we have little choice — we must abandon them to the malcontents. When someone shits the sandbox, you do not cover up the shit with more sand and say, “well, maybe the shit won’t stink next year.” It will. I promise.
Which leaves us with precious few options. But I believe that we can harness the power of emerging technologies, of the Internet, and of collective action to reclaim the awards space and create something new, something better, something immune from being turned into a political tug-of-war.
I call them the reSPECt Awards, honoring speculative fiction in all its forms. While this idea is newly gestated, I think it the proper course of action. We will make our awards better, stronger… well, you get the picture.
Steven Schwartz in comment on Novel Ninja – April 9
[third and fifth stanzas]
There’s room for both the sickly tales
and more robust ones; neither entails
sole claim on bookshelf space,
and, indeed, it’s not the case
that either one’s about to die,
so, Sad Puppies, no need to cry
unless you want, and need, and crave to drive my sort of tale to the grave….
And then, when puppies stop their barking,
and their smelly territory-marking,
perhaps we’ll get back to fannish games —
complaining about awards, muttering names
of people who we think should win,
without trying to get under each other’s skin.
Matthew Bowman in comment on Novel Ninja – April 9
[excerpt]
You say there’s room for all tales here.
Room for heroes straight and queer.
Room for stories, pop and lit,
Room for all that seems to fit.
It seems to me that you can’t see
The Puppies happily agree.
Marcus Bales on Facebook
“Ballade of Sad Puppies” – April 10
[final verse]
L’envoi
Fans! It’s not good politics
to vote for views, not writing, here —
vote ‘No Award’, not for the fix
that fakes the prose of yesteryear.
I think this might be the best thing Vox Day has written. It's so over the top that I kept laughing. https://t.co/TbydhKEWgG
— Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) April 10, 2015
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One thing that everyone probably should remember:
The Law of Unintended Consequences applies to whatever you decide to do to “fix” a “problem”. You could wind up shooting off a few fingers to take care of a hangnail.
I have said in many places that it may well be any proposed fiddling with the procedural rules will be counter-productive, even assuming an Army Of 2,000 Right Thinking Fans overwhelm the Business Meeting. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking about why this particular slate has raised so much outrage.
We all know that finalists have virtually never represented a majority of the electorate’s preferences; it’s nearly impossible with this sort of system. However, when the final ballot comes out, it’s clear that a majority of the electorate (indeed nearly everyone who votes) thinks that most of the nominees were probably worthy of inclusion. The very lack of widespread outrage is a sign of this. So is the fact that No Award has won only five times.
I speculate what would happen if there was a mechanism for the final ballot electorate to vote yes or no on each nominee, independent of their relative preference, answering the question, “Is this nominee worthy of inclusion on the ballot?” rather than “Would I prefer this candidate to win over all others.” I think that most years, if answered honestly, most finalists would get a “Yes, it’s worthy of inclusion,” but this year, I speculate that many finalists would find that a majority of the members of the current Worldcon do not think the nominee deserved to be on the ballot at all. And I also think that in honest, some of the Puppy nominees would pass the “is this nominee worthy?” test.
We have no way to directly measure this, of course, but right now the only way a voter can say, “This nominee did not deserve to be a Hugo Award finalist” is to vote it below No Award. Any anyone who says that “I bought my membership and nominated these works and they made it by the rules” but then says, “It’s wrong to vote anything below No Award” is a hypocrite. And anyone who says “If I win, I win, and if No Award wins, I also win” is an idiot.
Of course, if somehow we’re about to be visited by five or ten thousand Right Thinking Attending Members, then in fact they bought it, so they get to keep it. That’s how the system works. But not if such tactics sufficiently annoy people who normally cannot stand the sight of each other to the point that they’re all ganging together in self-defense. The final ballot needs a majority, not a 17% plurality. The Business Meeting needs a majority of the attending members present for two consecutive years to do anything substantial.
(But oh, do I wish I knew how many people were coming to the Business Meeting!)
The fact is that by attempting to “save” the Hugo’s the Sad Puppies have simply hurt the legitimacy of it. Rather than let a group of fans sort things out they have smothered free choice through slate voting. Their reasons, however noble they pretend to be, have failed to be coherent enough to be convincing. The articles by Matthew David Surridge and George R.R. Martin have thoroughly dismantled the irrational conspiracy theories of the Sad Puppies.This slate is a very small slice of fandom that has tried to shove their views down the throats of normal fans.
I’m pretty unconcerned with the politics of the authors I read. I like Orson Scott Card as well as Karen Lord. But the tactics of the Sad Puppies are ones of bullies which I simply cannot stand. I wasn’t aware of most of the people involved in the movement before the blow ups last year and this year. Now I think of them as “those assholes who think their opinion matters more than mine.” I’ll happily give out a pile of “no awards” before letting the bullies win.
Well if that’s the case, I do wish people would stop spreading the idea that 4/6 is a done deal and going to be the case next year (four nominations per category but six slots in the final ballot). Which is happening. It’s a terrible idea, if the claim is that SP doesn’t represent the majority, because it essentially guarantees a devoted minority can always have a couple slots, and sometimes take a whole category despite the cap on nominations.
Oh well, looks like I was banned from commenting to Paulk’s blog post in MGB.
Reading the comment section is still useful, I think, and it’s interesting to get some insight on what these new pro-Puppy Worldcon members really think about the issues (or what they want to share in public).
Many have stated that they didn’t vote for the whole SP slate and treated that more as a rec list. If that’s really the case, a bigger chunk of the nomination vote results may have actually been engineered by Vox Day’s troll hordes.
Maybe we can put the ringer leaders from both sides into the big brother house and see what kind of chaos ensues? There are cry babies and jackasses on all sides. I’m at the point where I say troll all of them.
Out of curiosity and as a longtime wargamer I had a look at Cataline Sergius’ analysis.
Leaving out the speculative slant, I feel it is flawed because the only possibilities considered are that some or all Sad Puppy candidates win Hugos, or that *nobody* wins them.
In order to properly assess a situation one has to look at every possibility, or at least as many as can be determined. Those possiblities can be charted out in a logic diagram: some, all, or no Sad Puppies win, some, all, or no other nominees win, and their various combinations.
The one possibility Cataline Sergius did not mention at all is that any Hugos might be won by non-Sad Puppy candidates, let alone the doomsday scenario (which any wargamer must be willing to consider) that non-Sad Puppies win Hugos but no Sad Puppies win any.
Whether or not Cataline Sergius thought that likely, in the interest of completeness and accuracy it ought to have been addressed. Otherwise it risks sounding like the sunny fantasies with which European military strategists entered the First World War.
I’d just like to note that I made my statement “There is no ‘them'” before I knew that the Sad/Rabid Puppies were an organised effort, with slates that their followers were to vote for.
Having learned better, I’d have to say that there didn’t used to be a ‘them.’
This year, there is and that’s a pretty sad state of affairs, to say the least.
Perhaps we should tackle this problem first by taking away the argument that slate voting is within the rules.
For instance: “3.7.4: Members should not vote for nominations by copying any slate of nominees suggested by others, but instead should make their own individual choices for what they believe are the best works.”
This would make it official that the membership opposes bloc voting. Anyone acting in good faith would honor this rule, and if a slate was proposed people could point to the WSFS Constitution to show that it is not allowed. There would be some social pressure on anyone who tried to encourage people to break this rule by promoting a slate.
At that point the problem becomes how to stop people acting in bad faith, but maybe that’s not as big a problem as it appears. The Hugos operated for decades without attempts to game the entire ballot, even though the strategic value of doing so was obvious.
What a shame that GRRM called the No Award solution “crazy.” Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. If we give the Sad Puppies slate awards, we tell the Sad Puppies “slates are okay with us.” If we do that, slates will be the norm. And the Rabid Puppies slate is the strongest slate out there.
I invite you to contemplate the resulting scenario: Anyone who hopes to get a Hugo must persuade Vox Day to put him on the Rabid Puppies slate.
I expect Vox Day is contemplating it.
I’m leaning more and more to the idea of voting No Award all across the line and not consider anybody for any Hugo Awards, as even the non-Puppy nominees have an unfair advantage when worthwhile rivals have been driven out by Puppy dreck.
No Award everybody, let the retro Hugos sort them out.
At minimum, I would think that Best Fan Artist should get a Hugo.
I think the fair thing to do is to honestly consider the non-slate candidates and decide if they deserve the award. I don’t always agree with the Hugo winner but I generally think they are deserving. If the lack of competition means that what was really nominated isn’t any good either then yeah, just put down “no award.” I’ll read those nominees and see what I think.
No changes to the Hugo Awards selection mechanism that get first passage this year will affect next year’s Hugo Awards. Anything adopted this year must be ratified in Kansas City next year and therefore will not take effect until 2017 at the earliest. The only Hugo-related changes up for ratification this year are relatively minor ones including formally changing the name of what appears on the final ballot to “finalist” and clarifying the status of electronically-published works in the “story” categories.
Martin Wisse: If you’re saying that there can be Retro-Hugo Awards presented in 2065 for 2015, you’re mistaken. Under current rules, Retrospective Hugo Awards can only be presented for years in which there was a Worldcon but in which no Hugo Award election was conducted. Even if the entire ballot is No Awarded, there was an election held, and you don’t get a do-over.
“No changes to the Hugo Awards selection mechanism that get first passage this year will affect next year’s Hugo Awards.”
True, and that’s a good thing.
But don’t you think there could be some immediate benefit to the passage of a vote this year that indicates the Worldcon membership’s opposition to bloc voting? If passed this summer, anyone who promoted a slate would have to overcome the perception that it was something Worldcon does not want to happen. Then if passed again, it would officially be something Worldcon considers against the rules.
I’m not suggesting this be the only solution considered — just the first step and likely the one that’s easiest to pass.
Utoh…
Anti-Sad Puppies subsidizing memberships?
http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/talk-with-me-about-being-a-fan-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy/
“And to my readers — If you can afford it, I encourage you to buy a membership to WorldCon and become part of fandom. If you cannot afford it… I will buy a supporting membership to WorldCon for ten people who cannot afford it. All I ask is that you join the conversation.”
TW:
I read that, and it sounds to me like she is urging outreach to be more welcoming of fans who have felt excluded from convention culture and the Hugos, in other words, exactly those fans who support the Sad Puppies.
Read her other posts. She is generally pretty classy and fair-minded.
“Anti-Sad Puppies subsidizing memberships?”
Except that the preceding paragraphs make it very clear she is talking to Larry Correia fans as well as Mary Robinette Kowal fans and that her main concern is getting enough fans into the Hugos to keep it from being burned down by Vox Day. It was very odd you left that part out.
I seriously doubt she will be buying a “Sad Puppy” a membership…
A more important point is will that open the floodgates to authors “donating” memberships to readers?
Imagine Vox making a similiar offer, I bet the anti-puppies would have a cow.
TW:
No, actually. Anyone willing to go to all the trouble of buying an attending membership in WorldCon and actually showing up is likely to be welcomed like every other fan.
WorldCon is *diverse*! People of every possible stripe attend it. So long as they act civilly, anyone is welcome. Anyone.
And there are security and harrassment policies to ensure that no one be subject to abuse. Fandom takes inclusiveness seriously.
Ive been to World-cons, I know the atmosphere…
And an author buying votes is unseemly at best, downright dishonest at best.
What is next? Sad Puppies offers a hundred memberships? Vox offers a thousand?
Why not have three slates every year? Sad Puppies, SJW, and interesting, innovative, creative work?
“I seriously doubt she will be buying a “Sad Puppy” a membership…
A more important point is will that open the floodgates to authors “donating” memberships to readers?
Imagine Vox making a similiar offer, I bet the anti-puppies would have a cow.”
That’s an awful lot of supposition with much backing it. Since MRK specifically encouraged fans of Sad Puppy Larry Correia I’m confident she’d buy one for one of them. She also didn’t mention anything about directing the votes of the people she buys memberships for.
Actual vote buying, like slate voting, is a problem the Hugos have dealt with before. It’s a similar issue in that if anyone finds out it’s being done then the award loses legitimacy. So if it is discovered that MRK, or anyone, is buying memberships and directing their votes then again the reasonable response is to leave their nominees off the ballot and put “no award” in that category.
A larger voting base makes both of these efforts more difficult and more expensive and is the best, most immediate, safeguard against these kinds of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the Hugos.
‘Imagine Vox making a similiar offer, I bet the anti-puppies would have a cow.’
Day is engaged in an effort to either own or destroy the Hugos, not that there’s much difference. MKR literally reached out to both sides in an effort to strengthen the Hugos. The worst thing about the latter is that it’s the sort of pretext the former likes to seize on to justify his crapulousness. And yet MKR’s approach of outreach and reconciliation is probably the best possible way forward. If SP voters participated in non-slate voting for the Hugos, nobody could complain. Their choices could be criticised, sure, but that’s fair game for everyone, and there’s probably far more overlap than anyone cares to admit.
Ugh, apologies: MRK
Sad Puppies was a recommendation list. Callling it a slate is just a propaganda tactic. Rabid Puppies was Vox Day doing what Scalzi and Stross did, it was “Award Pimpage” self-dealing. The two things are different, and it’s very interesting that Vox’s Award Pimpage is awful/terrible/ruining all that is pure, but Scalzi and Stross doing the same blasted thing was not.
And Sad Puppies is very much just the usual “here’s cool stuff, vote for it if it seems cool to you!”, just not from SJWs. That it swept the Hugos just means the SJWs are insincere about promoting any works other than their own and their little buddies’. It doesn’t mean Rethuglican gun nuts are going to murder the Hugos and eat babies on live television.
A few questions-probably, probably for Kevin Standlee.
1. Is the business meeting before or after the Hugo Awards?
2. When are the nominating statistics released, especially the number of supporting memberships? Can the number of supporting memberships be released after the voting deadline but before the business meeting?
3. Without the possibility of an individual’s ballot being made public to anybody (even if it’s only one person) can a program be run to give a number on how many individuals only used the SD/RP suggestions in their nominating ballots?
And remember to give generously to the John Scalzi Syndrome Foundation.
“Is the business meeting before or after the Hugo Awards?”
I’m not Kevin, but I think the business meetings are typically held on the second, third and fourth day of the convention, beginning at 10 a.m. So Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Hugo awards are on Saturday night.
“Sad Puppies was a recommendation list. Callling it a slate is just a propaganda tactic.”
It was called a slate by the guy who made it. it’s even in the title of Torgersen’s blog post on this topic – https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/
Human-Actually, what Locus does is a recommendations list. They have at least 11 recommendations per category, supplemented by columns by various recommenders discussing their preferred works (including things not on the reading list).
The SP/RP lists between them “recommend” no more than five in the majority of the categories. In terms of the fiction categories, the two lists have six novels, because Brad Torgerson listed a Gannon novel and Vox Day listed a Torgerson novel, while there are seven total stories “recommended” between the two lists. By comparison, Locus listed more than 50 short stories alone (more short stories than the SP/RP lists “recommended” in the three short fiction categories COMBINED) Essentially, the SP/RP campaign put a very limited slate of choices before people. Could they not come up with ten or more works they considered good enough and neglected enough to put on the list? The list they put out between them simplifies things for those who simply want to toss a monkey wrench in the machinery. There’s little effort involved in copying a list of five per category and you guarantee less dilution of efforts. It takes fewer nominators to have an impact and makes sticking a thumb in someone’s eye a lot easier and more certain. The two lists effectively form a ballot. That so much of the final ballot is from the two lists proves just how effective their tactics were,
@Steve, you left out this little bit from that post:
“After much combobulating, the official SAD PUPPIES 3 slate is assembled! As noted earlier in the year, the SAD PUPPIES 3 list is a recommendation. Not an absolute.”
So, it’s a slate… of recommendations. Clearly stated by the one who assembled it.
“Sad Puppies was a recommendation list. Callling it a slate is just a propaganda tactic.”
So, to be clear here, your theory is that the Sad Puppies got together, debated over and made a recommendation list, and then through total coincidence all decided to nominate that list. Also it’s okay to vote for a slate because Scalzi did it.
This is probably the worst part of the Sad Puppy posters I’ve seen. Not just posting dishonest things but the fact that they such a transparently, obviously dishonest posts. The idea that you think you’re fooling me with such a bad lie is itself kind of insulting.
Alan: The statistics on supporting memberships are updated from time to time at sasquan.org (see http://sasquan.org/member-numbers/). For data from last year’s Worldcon at a comparable time, see http://www.loncon3.org/documents/Loncon3_PR3.pdf (page 42).
However, I don’t think there have ever been statistics released in the past about nomination or voting breakdowns from attending members vs. supporting members.
Rcade — The Main Meeting (three hours long) is on Saturday morning, I believe.
TW — I believe that no-one who has an attending membership bought for them by a non-family member is allowed to vote anyway, so Kowal’s offer is just about getting diverse points of view to the convention, not about buying votes.
And Stross and Scalzi’s (or any author’s) mentioning which of their own books are eligible for nomination for their fans is insignificant in scale compared to VD’s bloc list of “recommendations”, as well as the kind of thing required by publishers with zero publicity budgets for midlist authors. Not to mention that all the Sad & Rabid Puppies seem to be pretty comfortable with the idea that they told their minions who to vote for, and were obeyed.
NelC: I don’t think there would be any bar to people using memberships bought by Kowal. A supporting membership held by a natural person — a human being — has no restrictions. (Only memberships owned by entities, or still held in the name “guest of” are restricted. When a “guest of” membership is transferred to a real person and accepted by the committee, the person can exercise its rights without restriction.)
“So, to be clear here, your theory is that the Sad Puppies got together, debated over and made a recommendation list, and then through total coincidence all decided to nominate that list.”
Evidence that all (or even 80%) of SPs voters all voted the same list?
I’d recommend you look at last year’s SPs results for contrary data.
http://www.loncon3.org/hugos/2014%20Hugo%20awards%20full%20details.pdf
I’d offer Correia’s Warbound as the baseline for total number of SPs voters, since SP2 was basically Correia’s personal campaign.
Correia’s Warbound – 184 votes to nominate
Hoyt’s A Few Good Men – 91
The Butcher of Khardov – 111
The Chaplain’s Legacy – 106
The Exchange Officers – 92
Opera Vita Aeterna – 69
Elitist Book Reviews – 107
Schlock Mercenary – 68
Toni Weisskopf – 169
Bryan Thomas Schmidt – 80
That’s some pretty heavy variance – over 50% between his two nominees in the same category.
I suspect Rabid Puppies will be much more lock-step, but that’s a Day thing, not Sad Puppies.
“So, it’s a slate… of recommendations. Clearly stated by the one who assembled it.”
The proponents of the Sad Puppies slate pushed it for months as a way to stick it to social justice warriors, using overheated rhetoric to attract people who would view that as a worthy goal. To suggest that it wasn’t a slate at all because they occasionally waved a hand at the notion of making your own choices is pretty rich.
If the slates were not intended to be voted in lock step, the organizers did a pretty poor job of promoting that fact, given that the slate took the entirety of six categories and 61 out of 80 slots (with 5 being slate-free only because they overlooked Best Fan Artist).
Worldcon this year is Wednesday-Sunday, so the Business Meetings are Thursday/Friday/Saturday mornings, with Friday being the Main Business Meeting. The Hugos are Saturday night.
Like I already said, the SJWs are insincere. Getting only 50 nomination ballots or so just means they aren’t such a big majority of fandom as they keep claiming, doesn’t it?
And just maybe there are non-SP people who heard about the SP recommendations, checked some of them out and maybe just maybe found them to be decent, Hugo-worthy nomination possibilities. The Amazon sales data suggests this, as if the tail of sales weren’t still quite strong, that would be a strong indicator that SP was picking just friends. But the sales are holding up months after the big book bombs, and that usually means randos stumbled onto the works and found them to be worth purchasing and reading.
I know it’s so hard to consider the possibility that some people might hear about cool stories and not be a straw puppy, but the data looks more like that than that there’s a bunch of zombie voting going on. Except maybe the Vox thing, but that’s the Ilk’s lookout, innit?
SJWs failed to publicize others and blame SP for not being all possible recommendations in SFF.
70 votes bought…yeah the Hugos this year are a joke.
From Twitter:
Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette
Between me, anonymous donors, @ShimmerStories, @eklages, & @jamietr that’s SEVENTY supporting memberships.
Thanks for pointing that out. I just squeezed it into my new roundup.
@rcade
“If the slates were not intended to be voted in lock step, the organizers did a pretty poor job of promoting that fact,”
From Torgersen’s announcement itself, first three sentences:
“And here it is! After much combobulating, the official SAD PUPPIES 3 slate is assembled! As noted earlier in the year, the SAD PUPPIES 3 list is a recommendation. Not an absolute.”
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/
As far as lock step, scroll up for the numbers for the SP2 slate, where you’ll see a ton of variance. We’ll see if history is any guide or not when the nomination numbers are released after the Hugos are awarded.
I’m neutral in this conflict because I do not like either side. But the Hitler parody WAS pretty funny, and Mr. Beale scores a point if he made it.
I would hope the anti-Sad Puppies come up with something funnier. Humor and satire are far more effective weapons than endless righteous indignation.
TW — Which nominations is Kowal telling people to vote for? They’re not bought votes unless there’s link between the memberships and an instruction to vote a particular ticket.
Or is Kowal hoping that the folk she bought memberships for will vote against the Sad Puppies just because she was nice to them? I wonder why the Sad Puppies never thought to be nice to people.
NelC-
Hope you have the same opinion if Beale pulls out his check book…who am I kidding, if he digs under the cushions of his couch, and doubles or triples whatever number they end up with….
Ha ha. Day didn’t buy a single vote. Kowal bought 70 and counting. In 2009 Neilson Hayden said that the hugos have a mechanism for preventing Kowalski tactics.
we will see.
Worldcon is going to rake it in. They should call it the Hugo Auctions. Anyone thinking Kowal is doing this out of charity is…delusional.
‘Kowal bought 70 and counting.’
Not what she did. Wow that’s dishonest.
TW— Hey, if Beale wants to pay my membership without conditions, that’s fine by me.